Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Know Your LGBT History

Very few actors who are considered legendary entered the industry in a prestige picture (okay, Meryl Streep did but it was one speaking line in the Oscar winning movie Julia) and Tom Hanks is no different.

Before he became known as the two-time Academy Award winning and Emmy-award winning 21st century version of Gary Cooper, Hanks did his time in lowbrow comedies, such as Bachelor Party (1984).

Bachelor Party had a simple plot. Hanks is a common bus driver engaged to heiress Tawny Kitaen whose family despises him. His even more low brow friends plan a bachelor party for him with hookers, drugs, a live band - the whole nine yards.

Meanwhile, there are forces, i.e. Kitaen's former boyfriend and her father, who are conspiring to break up the soon-to-be married couple.

Like I said, this comedy is lowbrow, very lowbrow with coarse humor and nudity all over.

That's not to say that I don't care for lowbrow. Some of it can be hilarious.

But a lot of it can be offensive.

That's not to say that Bachelor Party didn't have its moments. The late actress Wendie Jo Sperber stole the movie in certain places - especially at the end when she discovered that her husband cheated on her with a hooker.

And the movie also included a performance by one of my favorite new wave band of the 80s, the Waitresses.

Now for the lowbrow stuff.. I will omit the hot dog scene in the male strip club and scene where the donkey dies of a drug overdose during a strip act. But for the purpose of this site, I want to feature two very different scenes. One is totally offensive and I am conflicted by the other.

First let's look at the offensive scene. One of Hanks's buddies just finished having intercourse with a female he met at the bachelor party. However, after it's over, he discovers something about her. You know where this is going:

Gary's Dream "Girl"

Bachelor Party

— MOVIECLIPS.com

All I can about this monstrosity of a scene is that is demonstrates just how far the lgbtq community has come. When this movie came out, no one made any noise about the scene. Do you think we would be silent if some mess like this came out today?

And another thing. There have been many fights about pro-gay non-discrimination ordinances mostly because the religious right refers to them as "bathroom bills." The above image is what they want to convey to folks in order to scare them.

Now the second scene has me conflicted because I think it's funny. Here is the scenario - the villain of the piece, Kitaen's ex-boyfriend, sends some "entertainment" that was supposed to go to Hanks's bachelor party to Kitaen's bridal shower. The entertainment is two women "putting on a show." Why do I think this is funny? Simply because of how the actresses portraying the women shocked at what they are seeing behaved. We don't see anything graphic but their reactions are priceless. I hope I am not offending my lesbian sisters by saying this. Well judge for yourselves:

Bachelor Party Classic Scene : Shower Scene - The best video clips are right here

2 comments:

Michelle5:24 PM
I see what youre saying. The 2nd clip I didnt think was too bad, actually it was a bit of a fav back in the day. lol I feel like the "entertainment" wasnt hateful against LGBT's. I think their reaction would have been the same if the couple "performing" were man and woman. That crowd was extremely conservative. I think the reaction came from them being repressed and wound too tight. lol With that crowd it was probably more shocking that the couple was interracial.
Donny D.9:27 PM
One movie with a lot of anti-gay negativity in it that I keep remembering is As Good As It Gets. In it, Jack Nicholson's character rants anti-gay abuse at an emotionally beaten down gay man for quite a while before he's stopped from doing that, and not really punished, though forced to do something that goes against the way he was used to doing things.

When I see movies where there is unredressed physical violence or a lot of verbal attacks against one or more members of marginalized groups I can't help but think that those things are thrown in as a tasty bony for audience members with prejudices against those marginalized groups. I think there's a lot of pandering to audience prejudice that's not properly acknowledged by media commentators. That's one reason why this series on movie history is so important.

Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

Friday, August 12, 2011

Know Your LGBT History - Bachelor Party

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