Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Know your lgbt history - Martin Lawrence and that 'gay guy' on his show

Friday, December 18, 2009

Know your lgbt history - Martin Lawrence and that 'gay guy' on his show

Martin (1992-1997), a sitcom starring comedian Martin Lawrence was broad and not for everyone's tastes.

I'm ashamed to admit that I found certain episodes and characters (particularly the ones created by Lawrence) to be hilarious.

Then there are other characters who are just downright insulting.

One character in particular is the gay man who hits on Lawrence in two episodes.

I will admit that I sometimes find a broad portrayals of a gay men to be funny, but not on a show which features no lgbt characters except for that broad one.

And especially not when the show is geared towards a community (in this case being the African-American community) in which lgbts are mostly pushed in the closet.

Hell, the gay guy isn't even given a name (although Lawrence does call him a "fake RuPaul).

In this clip, Lawrence is trying to distract his girlfriend by making suggestive motions. The gay guy picks up on his vibes starting at 3:25. Keep watching the clip so that you can see what Lawrence's friends does so as to tell the gay guy that they aren't interested. It can be considered as funny, but I found it insulting:

Then in this clip from another episode, Lawrence meets the unnamed gay guy at the DMV. Phony hilarity ensues at 0:37:

2 comments:

Dawn said...: Thank you for that great list of links - I have some watching to do this weekend.; 4:57 PM
BlackTsunami said...: Knowing how iffy youtube is, some of them may not work. But I'm sure the majority of them do.; 5:02 PM