Gay rom-com Bros reveals the insufferable narcissism of the woke Left – Washington Examiner
The governing premise of Billy Eichner’s new movie Bros is: “Love is not love.” This means, as Eichner’s character Bobby Lieber explains, that gay love is not the same as straight love: “That is a lie we had to make up to convince you idiots to treat us fairly.”
By “you idiots,” Bobby means “straight people,” whom Eichner is now blaming for the movie’s dismal opening weekend. By the gentlest possible estimates, Bros grossed about 40% less than expected. That, says Eichner, is because “straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up.” But since his entire premise is that gays and straights lead fundamentally different, even mutually unintelligible lives, why should he expect straight people to care about a gay romantic comedy? To fault them for their disinterest after all but insisting upon it is astoundingly childish.
BILLY EICHNER SLAMS ‘STRAIGHT PEOPLE’ FOR LGBT FILM BROS’S DISMAL BOX-OFFICE DEBUT
I am among the (apparently) select few who saw Bros this weekend and liked it. But it is unquestionably the portrait of a micro-demographic. If you’re in or adjacent to that micro-demographic, it’s charming, relatable, and funny — sometimes even hilarious. On the other hand, if you’ve never lived among affluent liberal homosexuals in an American metropolis, the jokes are likely to fall flat. This isn’t even slice-of-life filmmaking. It’s sliver-of-life, cut with one of those surgical blades that’s only a few atoms wide.
The movie’s two protagonists — Lieber, a neurotic media personality, and the hunky but hidebound Aaron, played by Luke MacFarlane — form an unlikely attachment after meeting at a club. There follows the usual rom-com plot template, overlaid with extraordinarily specific jokes about the absurdities of gay dating in New York. When Kristin Chenoweth appeared onscreen to present an LGBT award wearing a voluminous pile of rainbow-colored feathers topped with a rotating model of the Stonewall Inn, my husband and I about lost it. But that’s because we were sitting in a row of other gay men, all of whom recognized Kristin Chenoweth on sight (she’s the Broadway diva who originated the role of Glinda in Wicked, duh).
There’s not really good evidence that Bros was kneecapped by heterosexual distaste. But if the straights did stay away, can you blame them? Here is a movie co-written by and starring a man who celebrated good press with cheers of “sorry homophobes.” A movie whose straight supporting characters are clueless and square, even when they show support for the non-straight leads (“Gay guys are my jam!”). And, above all, a movie whose central premise is that the particulars of gay life deserve microscopic scrutiny — precisely because they are so radically different from those of straight life.
Yet now, Eichner has the audacity to feign indignation when his avowedly insular movie has predictably limited appeal. At this point, straight moviegoers would be well within their rights to ask: “What, in God’s name, do gay people want from us?” Eichner seems to want them simultaneously to recognize that they will never understand gay life and also pay to see a movie about it. He wants to indulge in minute analyses of tiny subcultures while also enjoying mainstream appeal. His is the precise narcissism of the modern social Left, wrapped up in a perfectly entitled nutshell: “You cannot fathom the black/gay/trans/whatever experience, but you still have to listen to me discuss it in tedious detail.” What a nightmare.
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In reality, where sane and normal people live, gay love does indeed involve its own distinct perplexities and complications. But they are not so unique that they cannot be grasped by straight people, nor so cosmically profound that they reward unending study. Eventually, gays, like all the other adults in the world, have to take ownership of their personal challenges and then integrate into society at large.
Refusing to do so turns you into a perpetual adolescent, screaming at dad that he will never understand while also mocking him for trying. Bros didn’t fail because of homophobia, or because of any other moral inadequacies in “certain parts of the country” (we all know which parts). It failed because decent people, gay and straight, find the current vogue for parochial self-regard and moral posturing extremely distasteful. They are right to.
Spencer Klavan is an associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books and host of the Young Heretics podcast. His forthcoming book, How to Save the West, is available for preorder now.