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This Testicle Will Self-Destruct In Five Seconds

Of all the things society can get away with, threatening a man's sexuality has to be one of the most idiotic, especially when the issue at hand isn't something as serious as endocrine disruption or excessive drug use but a goddamned summer movie that appeals mostly to women called Sex In The City. Simply not having enough interest in the movie or the show it's based doesn't seem to be enough for some people though, and so we get one "gay panic" article of several along with quite a few confused commenters not quite getting that gay men and women aren't the only targets being aimed at or that it isn't about men not being the center of attention. One such commenter also asks if Sex In The City turns men gay, can Iron Man turn a woman lesbian. It's a nice question, except that if there were a flood of articles on the internet daring to assert such a thing, it would clearly be labeled in no small part of the blogosphere as misogynist, homophobic, etc. in far larger numbers that what's going on here since that's what happens when enough women don't like what an article says about them (one thing to remember about the Forbes.com article concerning career women). In the meantime, we get to pretend that men can easily turn gay and deserve nothing but mockery for it without any more than a murmur of misandry in the crowd, much in the way that the spell checker picks up misogyny but not misandry.

Since I'm in a cynical mood as usual, I'll go so far as to call these gay panic articles for what I see them as - word of mouth marketing. Even if that was all it was, I don't see exactly why it was necessary to take this approach when one thing Sex And The City already had going for it was that the leading stars were female (despite the "gay men in drag" snark from a NY Times piece) in a summer season where most movies are supposed to be male-dominated. Oiling up the hype machine with the ol' sex anxiety snake oil wasn't necessary for anything besides subsidizing the snake oil salesmen and getting frustrated consumers to see SATC just because they're pissed off at what some article writer suggests about some peoples' sexuality. If 'Wall-E' beating out 'Wanted' in the first week is any indication of a trend, maybe the fact that SATC also got #1 over Indiana Jones in it's opening week points to a trend of moviegoers not being that interested in action movies when given a choice between it and another genre. If that's the case, then this is sufficient enough of an explanation for me as to how this summer's movies can be expected to do (and why the videogame industry is still raking it in), though it doesn't immediately invite ridiculous attacks on heterosexual male sexuality, and I guess that's not as important to some people.

Labels: annoyances, posted in windows

posted by el-chozo-loco @ 1:35 PM