Gay Children On The TeeVee

I was just watching some shitty movie on network television called “Yours, Mine and Ours”. It was directed by Owen Wilson, and I just stopped on the channel long enough to be introduced to one of the characters in the film; a gay effeminate asian child. In the scene I watched, he was helping his mother pick out an outfit. “How’s this color?” she asks him. “Fabulous,” he responds.

Blaahhh! Stereotypical gay children on TV makes me want to throw up on myself.

Sometimes I wonder if America will remember the early portrayal of gay children in the movies as a shameful period, like the period they’d rub black make-up on white people’s faces to symbolize their blackness, or the days of Aunt Jemima and the chuck and jiving “negroes.” But while portrayals of African Americans in major motion pictures have moved beyond the blatantly stereotypical and racist (into a more covert, subversive kind of racist), portrayals of gay children are especially heinous in their blatant BLAAHHH LOOK AT ME! I’M A GAY CHILD!

Somehow I doubt this child would be so comfortable with his sexuality at such a young age. While his mom was a hippie, she certainly did not look like one of those PFLAG hippie mom, though I guess you never really know it.

I should probably admit right here that I was also a flaming gay child, and of course I didn’t realize it. Gay children are sometimes flaming, and I was a flamer. At first I wondered if perhaps my own discomfort with the gay asian stemmed from the tinge of recognition I felt when I saw him in the movie.

But not really…While a well-acted portrayal of a gay child may have brought back memories, this gay asian child struck me as some bizarre poorly-imagined homosexual, The actor is totally straight, the mannerisms forced, the movements awkward and false.

Also, the child did not act like a gay child. He acted like an adult gay man trapped in a child’s body. Clearly a focus group had been convened, and had listed all the traits they associate with gay males, and then the child actor had to adopt all of these characteristics.

This is a lazy movie, using lazy stereotypes. Forshame Owen Wilson, forshame.