Posted on 11/11/2003 2:52:22 AM PST by glorgau
U.S. cable network Comedy Central is planning to turn the American make-over hit "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" upside down with a new show called "Straight Plan for the Gay Man."
Debuting in February, the new show will parody the Bravo channel's "Queer Eye" series and male stereotypes in general as a team of straight comedians -- the "Flab 4" -- teaches a succession of gay men how to pass as heterosexuals.
The make-overs include lessons in such areas as spartan home decorating, oafish manners, less-than-fashionable wardrobes, and an overdeveloped ego to mask all personal failings, production executive Lou Wallach told Reuters on Monday.
He said the network is currently producing three hour-long episodes centring on three gay men looking to go straight for a day to satisfy some personal curiosity about life on the "other team."
Jonathan, an upscale fashion salesman seeking greater insight into the lives of blue-collar workers, will try to get a job as a meatpacker. Roger, a yoga instructor who has always wanted to play a round of pickup basketball, will square off in a competitive game of street hoops. And Stephen, an entertainer with lots of female friends, will venture into the hetero club scene to try his luck as a smooth-talking babe magnet.
As the end of each episode, the Flab 4 will accompany their straight-A students to see if they "pass their tests."
The format is a role reversal of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," in which five gay men with expertise in good grooming, food, fashion, culture and interior design come to the aid of a hapless heterosexual slob. The show has drawn the highest audience numbers ever on Bravo, and a half-hour version proved popular on sister broadcast network NBC.
Comedy Central, a Viacom Inc.-owned network that reaches some 84 million homes, is best known for such offerings as the subversive animated comedy "South Park" and the newscast satire "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
A spokesman for NBC and Bravo, which are owned by General Electric Co., said the networks were aware of the plans for the parody show but had no comment.
Horse puckey.
This is more feminization of the culture, again portraying men as having "oafish manners, less-than-fashionable wardrobes, and an overdeveloped ego".
Part of the "men-are-scum" mentality.
hmm...me..a man..overdeveloped ego..oafish manners,bad wardrobe...hehehe i love me!!!!
Yeah, but it sounds like they will just make fun of straight men (the story mentions straight guys teaching gays "oafish behavior" and how to be slobs, etc.). Just because we probably aren't interior decorators, the show will imply that we don't know how to vaccum the floor or take out the trash -- all we do is burp, throw beer cans on the floor, and trip over rats on the way to the fridge.
Can you imagine the protests if a show even made light-hearted fun of gays? Evidently this show will make fun of the hetero singles scene -- fair enough, there should be plenty of material to make fun of -- some loser saying, "Hey babe, what's your sign" is good for a few laughs. But you will never see a show making fun of the gay club scene, with its drug use and frantic sex with anonymous partners and so on, and other things too gross to mention (or so I have heard).
I have a small idea of how blacks must have felt when the white supremacist culture made fun of blacks and portrayed them in "safe" roles in minstrel shows as either yes-men or bumbling idiots -- it was all designed to make whites feel superior and justify their poor treatment of blacks. I say again -- I have only the smallest of ideas -- I have of course not faced anything like the overt hatred that many blacks had to live with for a century after Reconstruction. That being said, I think much the same thing as the minstrel show mentality is going on in the pro-counter-culture entertainment industry. Their hatred of anything more or less traditional is obvious. However, don't you dare make fun of the counter-culture -- you will quickly find out that they are as tolerant as the old Ku Klux Klan.
Boy, will he be surprised when he finds out it is not what he thinks.
They could call it "SEMPER FIve."
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