The "too close for comfort" effect.

So I have dubbed it. About two months ago, EGM interviewed the creators of Army of Two, and as one of their questions, askwed whether there was more to the relationship between the two mercenaries than mere comaradery.

That this question comes up at all says something about the way our society is changing. Homosexuality is becoming mainstream, or at least is given some publicity, bringing the question of "how do I feel about this" into average America's living room.

It is my position that this has been subverted, and made into a championing of homoeroticism, rather than a question of it. Let's say for argument's sake that 10% of the world's population really is homosexual, if certain demographic studies can be trusted. Hell, let's say 15%. Why is every instance of brotherly affection, then, turned into a smirky nudge to your neighbor's arm?

Lord of the Rings is the best possible example I can think of for this. Some people look at it and say "It's quite clear to me that they're both gay. Totally flaming." You can take your pick of the characters, because, apparently, they're all gay.

I'll admit, this little clip drew more than a chuckle from me. But this reading of the film was not there until people made the leap of judgment that said "Oh, obviously." The thing is that, no, it's not quite clear. You're impressing stereotypes onto characters that you've been watching for an hour and a half. You don't have any kind of prescient insight into what's going on, you're just making a shallow judgment based on what your perception of gayness is.

The same holds true for quite a bit of Hollywood and by extension, video games with aspirations of becoming interactive cinema. So let's go back to Army of Two. The game developers put them in a tandem parachute, or have an animation of one slapping the other's butt, and everybody puts their hand over their mouth in shock.

At what point did we leave the logic train? A letter in this month's EGM insists that the senior producer for Army of Two needs to "grow up," that he was very defensive, that their love interests in the game are "Duh, each other!" Now, however defensive Reid Schneider might have been, why do you have to insist on their homosexuality? How does doing so mean anything different from insisting that they're not?

I'm interested in other people's opinions on this, particularly some of the gay members on the board, and to see if you think homosexuality is currently being overrepresented, underrepresented, or somewhere in the middle.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I think it's a result of the latent tabloid mentality in a lot of people that makes them want to see gay connotations in strong male relationships. Ridiculing something and processing it superficially requires less thought and is easier to digest than seeking an underlying deeper meaning.

The whole application of the term "gay" to anything that is superficial, vapid and silly is an insult to gays as well and does them a disservice. Apart from a few British TV shows I have never seen an American gay role that was not somehow flamboyant and petty; maybe there are art house films where that trend is broken but I don't know of any.

Maybe the trend in insinuating that characters might be gay is a way of diverting attention from the fact that heterosexual men themselves are in general becoming less manly, more "metro". By pointing out someone who is even more feminised than they are, they can feel better about themselves.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I feel that homosexuality isn't being treated fairly still. It's given the treatment of what an immature child would do, basically giggle at hearing the name. Often times in media the gay person is shown as being extremely flaming, which is not true for all gays. Over time however, they will eventually be given their due. This is just another stereotypical phase that the media likes to go through. It happened with blacks, Mexicans, Asians and it's happening to gays.

I personally don't know what the obssession is with calling everything out that remotely has two characters of the same sex getting in 'touch' with each other. I guess it's just some humor for them to cope with it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I've been given strange looks by people i don't know if i'm just walking through a mall with one other guy friend. I'm not gay, but it's obvious that some people think that two guys walking together alone means they're gay.

I've never really noticed that i've never seen a non-overly-flamboyant gay role in TV or even in many movies. As the media continues to pound this image of homosexuality into our minds, and the more they point it out to us (cause they are, and they're doing a bad job of it) the more we're going to believe that we can identify it, thus resulting is us keeping and eye out for it more.

I'd say alot of people's assumptions that everything is gay is cause they want to get a rise out of someone. They want attention by being the one to identify more homosexuality. It's happening more and more.

I found that LOTR orgy thing to be a perfect example of this. People think it's funny cause according to the media that's what being gay looks like. WTF ever, i had to share a bed with a guy for two weeks while i was on music tour. Does that make me gay? I'm sure if it had been in a movie, people'd assume i was.

BTW, am i the only person who thought that video was a complete waste of time?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Yeah, the homoeroticism fanaticism is getting a bit carried away these days. Personally, I enjoy it. It's fun. I don't seriously think there are homosexual relationships going on with real people or intended in a work of fiction, though. Most of the time, it's just one way of interpreting a situation, and I think the creative industry is well aware of these possibilities.

At this point, it's just plain good marketing to write relationships in movies/games/etc in such a way that there's a possibility for consumers of any orientation to derive some vicarious enjoyment by reading between the lines. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, and real life relationships can be vaguely erotic or whatever so it makes sense. It's just when people argue about characters or celebrities, as if we know for a fact what they do in the bedroom, that it becomes a problem.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Skexis

You're impressing stereotypes onto characters that you've been watching for an hour and a half.

This is true, however, in movies or even in video games or books, a character is sort of... "Condensed." You see a lot of their personality and character traits during the length of the movie. You're almost encouraged to make conclusions about those characters based on the tidbits you saw. They're not precisely real people. Even well-written characters can only be known to a certain depth, so making assumptions is almost necessary.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?