Posted by Midwest at as3-216-68-40-81.fuse.net on January 03, 2003 at 03:51:15:
Ever since Clerks I've been pimping K. Smith movies to nearly every person who hasn't been exposed here in the good old fly-over states (think Ohio, Indiana, downstate Illinois). Some like him, some don't. I usually begin to distrust those who don't . . .
But anyway, I showed Clerks to a friend of mine who'd never seen it before and we got to talking about whether the gay jokes in Clerks might be considered offensive. In particular, we talked about the scene in which Jay posts the "I Eat Cock!" sign on Quick Stop door and Randal comes out to stare at J&SB through the glass, clearly lining up behind the "I Eat Cock!" sign so it appears that he has said "I Eat Cock!" The question, in order to make it very specific, was: Is this offensive?
I'm certainly not an authority on gay jokes, but the here's a summary of the theory about why that particular scene "could" be offensive. Randal, who we will say for the sake of argument is not a gay character, is made to look ridiculous with the "I Eat Cock!" sign because it is considered both funny and insulting to suggest that Randal would be saying (or shouting) "I Eat Cock!". If it is in some way insulting to someone to be understood as a person who eats cock, then the underlying presumption of the joke is that a male eating cock is strange and funny. Another friend suggested that here the film is making something that many people derive pleasure from is wrong, i.e. "eating cock." The reason this whole line of argument may seem strange and sort of vague is because I'm trying to give it a fair hearing, but I haven't quite parsed it out.
My position on this: The scene's funny to me because there is a subtle undercutting of the gay joke. What's funny is how Jay guffaws loudly at his sophomoric antics. In other words, I'm not laughing at the "I Eat Cock!" sign as much as I'm laughing at the fact that Jay thinks such a dumb joke is funny. On the other hand, Randal looks so serious behind the "I Eat Cock!" sign that it seems incongruous. So, to my way of thinking, the fact that K. Smith shows Jay laughing at Randal and not just Randal is altering our perspective on the joke. So, to restate, my position is that K. Smith is actually commenting on the gay joke itself, because the joker (Jay) is shown to be ridiculous.
The woman I watched Clerks with maintained that what was funny was the fact that the audience knew something that Randal didn't. But this didn't seem as compelling to me. I wasn't laughing at Randal, I think, as much as at Jay.
On the other hand, if I laugh at the "I Eat Cock!" joke which I sort of do because it is such a weirdly obvious dig--I asked--does that make me a bigot? I can tell that posing a question like this will elicit a myriad of answers from the board (hopefully) and probably open me up for some terrific zingers. Oh well.
Part of the reason this is an interesting argument to me is the fact that I get to write "I Eat Cock!" about 25 times in the post. Heh-heh.
Midwest