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The Showcase of Depravity

This is the long hard truth. It goes extra deep.

"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny." The Showcase of Depravity showcases... depravity. Wisdom and humor from the perspective of a few disgruntled (& sexy) video store professionals.

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Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Our first Brokeback Backlash

We recently got our first out-spoken anti-Brokeback customer.

But first, a little background.
There is this guy that comes in who must be at least 300 pounds and 40-something but looks like a morbidly obese child. The only thing that could better complete this picture is if he were licking a big wolly pop. This is probably due to his innocent, cherub-like cheeks and that, oh I don't know, he comes into the store decked out in full Boy Scout uniform all the time.
When I first started working at The Wave he was not only the most bizarre but also the scariest customer because he was really mean to me and he reminded me of a fear I've always had of being molested by Boy Scout leaders and/or enormously fat men. I honestly saw him as a nightmarish pedophile stereotype, and I'm not sure if his decided stance on the "values" of a film like "Brokeback Mountain" do much to ensure this assumption.

So he asked me if "Crash" was good and like a good trouble maker I said "it was OK but it didn't deserve Best Picture. What a rip!".
So he asked me what I thought should win, to which I replied "Munich"... but if not that, "Brokeback Mountain".
That's when he paused, got silent, looked down and said "Oh? yea... I am glad it didn't win, it's not my kind of movie". Ok, no biggie there... yet. So I asked him "well have you seen it?" and then, like most people who speak out against it, of course he said "No, I never will. It conflicts with my moral values".
Then Drew piped in from across the counter with "What values are those? LOVE??".
I giggled a little bit, the 300 pound 40 year old dressed in the boy scout uniform didn't find it funny.
I think he said something like "No, it just isn't what I view as natural and moral".

Thankfully for him he approached the issue in a calm and rational manor and didn't say anything disrespectful, per se, although everything he said was offensive. For this reason, we had no grounds to attack him, even though Drew is constantly looking for good ways to publically ridicule any conservative or fundamentalists.

The point is that this guy didn't have to say anything about it at all. Not only did he not know if we cared what he thought or not (because we don't), but he had no idea if we were gay or, like so many people think, if we are a gay cowboy couple. Drew and I get pretty close and often bump and grind with eachother, even at work.
He had no idea how offensive his statements could have potentially been, but like most conservative religious folk who are outspoken against movies about the human condition which they refuse to see, he just had to open his mouth and put his point out there.

I expect for more of this to pop up when BBM actually comes out on DVD, so stay tuned.

For more on BBM, see What The Balls?

-Jordan

2 Comments:

  • At 1:29 AM, Blogger Jordan said…

    I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree.
    my point was exactly that he didn't say anything out of line but that he said something that could potentially embarass, humiliate, hurt, insult and enrage who he was talking to. He assumed neither of us were gay. He still has his right to his opinion even if we were gay and he said it to us, thats not the question here.
    But my point was that he didn't have to say anything, but knowing that it could have been offensive he went ahead anyway.

    While I think Drew is almost always out of line and rude and arrogant, this time I think he had every right to not assume that the man's values were against homosexuality, because the movie isn't about homosexuality it's about love. Knowing already what the man's values were, pretending to be naive and asking "what values? love?" makes him look like more of an idiot than it does Drew. But that's just my opinion.

    Not only do I think the man was wrong in saying that to us when we didn't ask him even for his Best Picture pick let alone his religious values on a certain film, but I think he's also wrong for assuming something about a film he knows nothing about. Again, he has his right to his opinion, and he also has his right to ignorance. He is taking advantage of both.
    Like I said he didn't say anything that would rightfully warrant us to get mad at him as in "i hate those faggots" so the conversation stayed calm and reasonable and I respected his right to his opinion and directed the subject matter elsewhere. When he left we both very genuinely told eachother to have a good day and continued respecting eachother.

    Frankly, it made me feel extremely uncomfortable. If someone came in and said they didn't like "Crash" because it's against his anti-equality-for-races values I would also be upset about that. Or if he simply said "I don't wanna watch any movie with black people in it". But he has his right ot his opinion, just as I defend the right of the KKK to march in NYC. Doesn't mean he should be offering up his unsolicited opinions on "moral values" in a privately owned store to people he doesn't know at all.
    But that's just my opinion.

    I knew this post would generate some debate.

     
  • At 12:59 PM, Blogger Unknown said…

    Yeah, Michelle...

    And I think Jordan actually misquoted there because he was like "I don't like what that movie's about" and I said: "What? LOVE?" because it's not ABOUT homosexuality. It's not an epic dating back to ancient Greece. It's a love story about two men. That's it.

    So go jump in a lake with your conservative values - I'll be over here, sodomizing someone and casting my ballot for Hillary/Obama in '08.

     

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