Gay as a pejorative

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

“Ladies and Gentlemen, electric cars are gay,” Vaughn’s character Ronnie Valentine says. “I mean, not ‘homosexual’ gay, but ‘my parents are chaperoning the dance gay.”

-         The Dilemma

 

This preview has been getting a lot of negative press because of the use of the word ‘gay’ as a pejorative.

This is a pet peeve of mine among young people. I’ve noticed that 10-19 year olds seem to default to ‘gay’ way too much. So for me, it’s not a question of sensitivity to treatment of homosexuals as it is to the lame minds of our youth.

Ron Howard has said he will not remove this comment from the movie. I kind of think it fits the sort of comment and back peddle you typically hear from a Vince Vaughn character.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/10/ron-howard-on-the-dilemmas-gay-joke-it-stays-in-the-movie.html

So my questions:

1)       What do you do when you hear someone say “that’s gay” as a pejorative?

a.       What is a more apropos term/slang? I don’t want ‘lame’ coming back because of my time spent in the 80s…. I feel ‘lame’ is the gateway word to ‘gnarly’. Gnarly makes me want to gag myself with a spoon…like totally.

2)       Are you planning on seeing this movie? Does the ‘gay’ comment affect your decision?

3)      Is it okay to call Sponge Bob and Flapjack gay okay? I mean…come on they are gay..right?        

Comments

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

1) Generally I nonchalantly proceed as if they'd just declared whatever-they're-talking-about to be literally homosexual, such as an electric car which only wants to fuck other electric cars of the same gender. This makes things get very confusing very fast, and if they want the conversation to proceed as if they'd expressed distaste for whatever-they're-talking-about, they'll have to go back and clarify.

a. Almost universally, when 'gay' is used in this way, there's something more specifically crappy about it which would be mentioned instead. This depends on context but I don't think there's a good one-size-fits-all substitute.

2) No, and no. The quoted dialogue is a joke about the practice of using gay as a pejorative, and I don't think it's all that hard to distinguish between one layer of meta and two. I still probably won't see the movie.

3) Flapjack is bi.

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

1) Well said
a) I'll have to think about this more.
2) EXCELLENT POINT! Never looked at it this way.
3) Bi implies sex with women. I disagree Flapjack is as gay as an all man orgy is babyoil.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

I disagree with 2, not because I think it's clearly the opposite but because it's literally impossible to tell from the trailer whether it's in that context. It's just out there by itself, with why it's supposed to be funny up in the air. (It's not a very good trailer.)