Ok tell me whether or not you think this is funny:
A man moves from NYC to wayyyyyyy up in the mountains - he thinks he wants to live off the grid. So about day 3, he is bored to tears and suddenly he hears a knock on the door. He opens it and there's a Mountain Man standing there wearing overalls and no shoes with a big wad of tobacco in his mouth. He spits and says, "Hey. Wanted to invite you to a shindig at my house this Sat night." "Hey, I'd love to come!" says the man from NYC. The mountain man shuffles and spits over his shoulder and says, "I gots to warn ya, there's gonna be some drankin." "I don't mind that!" says the man from NYC. The mountain man shuffles around again and spits over his shoulder and says, "And there's gonna be some dancin." "Fine by me," says the man from NYC. "Wale, " the mountain man says and shuffles around again and spits over his shoulder again, "There's gonna be some lovin." "That's great!" says the man from NYC. "I've been bored to tears! But before you go, tell me - what should I wear?"
"Don't much matter," says the mountain man, "Ain't gonna be nobody there ceptin' you and me."
Of course it's funny.
I wonder how many people here can really understand what it might be like to grow up, as I did, as a gay person in the 1960s, going to a boys boarding school, run by Quakers, in a world that was very, very intolerant of that sort of thing. Sometimes -- not a lot of fun, I assure you.
But I have always felt as if it was my responsibility to find some way to fit in, not everybody else's responsibility to make room for me. Of course, that gets harder when you insist on being yourself at the same time -- but all that means is that there are going to be places you really are NOT welcome. Oh, well, maybe those are places I'd just rather not be, and let's leave it at that.
Some of the best humour in history has come from the use of stereotypes, and placing them in unexpected situations. The overweight soprano ("it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings"), or the "Chinese Dance" (by slanty-eyed mushrooms!) in Disney's Fantasia.
The problem with stereotypes is that they are, often quite substantially, real!
The other problem, which I hinted in Disney's Fantasia, is that stereotypes are often at the very heart of some very great art. We cannot judge the past from our vantage point in the present. In spite of the racism that many claim in Disney's "Song of the South," racism doesn't seem to have played any part in its creation -- yet you'll not find a copy available in any Disney venue to this very day.
Funny, I always have this notion that "Drag Queen" describes something very, very different from transvestite. What Rue Paul's "Drag Race," and what you are seeing is charicature, performance, entertainment, exaggeration. Then go watch "Mrs. Doubtfire." Perhaps a bad example, but there are transvestites living in our midsts, men who dress as women but do it in a way that is understated in comparison to the drag queen, because they're not trying to shock, they're trying to live their life as they feel it.
Goodness, this rant could go on forever! I'll try to sum up: try to see the use of "stereotype" from an artistic point of view, rather than from a politically correct one. Political correctness has too many pot-holes, too many traps.
Let me give an example from my early life in that boys' boarding school: In my second year, a new boy approached me one day and blurted out, "I hear you're a fruit. Are you?" And my answer was, "No, I'm the whole freakin' orchard!" Trust me, he got over himself.
