homophobic

Are all teen comedies anti-gay? No.

Are some teens anti-gay? Unfortunately, yes. But the climate seems more tolerant now than when I was growing up in the '70s and '80s.

Some characters in the movie referred to Big Red as a b***h and a w***e. Granted, they didn't use the actual words. But they alluded to it. And yet, I don't see you whining about them using derogatory words in reference to a woman, or the kind of message it would send to teens. Kind of hypocritical. Don't ya think?

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People should learn to realise that the dialogue in a movie does not always reflect the filmmakers' ideologies and philosophies. They were just depicting high school life.

It's an ordinary high school day. Except that it's not.

by
meganmarybrady
» Sat May 5 2007 16:54:27
IMDb member since November 2004

I only caught a little bit of this film on t.v. (genre not my cup of tea), but I was surprised to hear two homophobic slurs over the span of 15mins: 'fag' and 'dyke', especially since it's a teen flick. What message are we sending to adolescents? It's okay to insult gay people? In this era of political correctness, I thought that most films have been rid this kind of stuff... or maybe I'm wrong/naive. Are all teen-comedies this anti-gay? I know that homophobia is rampant in schools, etc. But you'd think that film makers would at least try to expel it from their dialogue: there are many other insults out there to choose from!

I actually find this movie pretty progressive for a teen flick that came out in 2000. Yes some of the characters use homophobic slurs to insult people, but only the "bad guy" characters do this (like the mean-spirited cheerleader characters and the dumb jock football players). Aside from that, there's an openly gay character in the film which is unusual for a mainstream teen movie from the beginning of the 2000s. He isn't portrayed using ugly stereotypes (you could maybe argue that his being a cheerleader is stereotypical, but imo it doesn't feel that way in the context of the film). His sexuality is openly addressed once, briefly, and is a total non-issue to the other characters, and his being gay isn't treated by the movie as a big joke.

This movie treated the gay male character as an equal and friends, not only with females but with other males. This was very unusual even in 2000. It was so positive that it cancels out the bad uses of language towards Missy earlier. Kids say these things in high school, and certainly did in 2000. This movie did a great job in making gay kids "normal" in high school.