Sketch Comedy's Greatest Gay Hits

On the other side of the coin we find Little Britain’s Daffyd Thomas, played by out actor Matt Lucas. Constantly referring to himself as “the only gay in the village,” Daffyd expects to encounter rejection from his neighbors, but is instead frustrated when people show sensitivity to gay issues and accept him. In one such sketch (which was banned in Poland) Daffyd tries to cause controversy by setting up a stall selling poppers and sex toys at the church fair, only to find that the new vicar is openly gay (clip below NSFW):

We’re not out of the woods yet…

While there’s plenty of progress to be seen, there are still a good number of comedians who seek to establish their “edginess” by making jokes at the expense of minority groups, including gays.

Comedy Central’s Mind of Mencia frequently relies on gay sexuality as fuel for gross-out humor. One such sketch imagines the divorce proceedings for the first gay male couple to marry. When the judge suggests that one of them should declare himself “the female” in the relationship in order to receive preferential treatment, a lisping, flamboyantly-dressed Carlos Mencia starts fighting with his similarly limp-wristed boyfriend over who bottomed the most during sex. Mencia’s depictions of gays are frequently effeminate and fixated on sex.

Even shows that have gotten it right in the past have made their missteps. On Saturday Night Live, “Gays In Space” took a look at a futuristic spaceship manned by a gay crew. The crew, wearing silver and magenta uniforms with short shorts, make lispy, catty comments at each other while sipping cocktails. Later, they encounter a ship run by a lesbian crew who all wear flannel and have their hair styled in mullets. While the intent may be to defuse these stereotypes by taking them to an extreme, the sketches aren’t effective, and aside from a hilariously campy opening and closing theme song, the humor in “Gays in Space” is a misfire.

More recently, SNL did a sketch about the revelation that Albus Dumbledore from the Harry Potter books was gay. In a series of “missing scenes” from the Harry Potter films, we see Dumbledore enacting various gay stereotypes, ending with a scene at a gay wizards’ bar full of buff men barely dressed in leather. Although the sketch begins by mocking the simplistic reactions to the fictional character’s outing, by the end it is mining those simplistic attitudes.

MadTV missed the mark in a sketch where two gangsters get into a fight and wind up in homoerotic positions. Unlike the two football fans from a couple years back, once these guys acknowledge their attraction to each other, their voices and mannerisms change, as if acknowledging same-sex attraction turns one effeminate.

In 2007, gay cable network LOGO launched the first-ever gay-targeted sketch comedy show, The Big Gay Sketch Show. But even a show by and for gay people missed the mark in some of its weaker offerings.

The show’s first episode featured a parody ad for the “pocket gay friend, ” a doll-sized gay man who offers style advice, cooks gourmet dishes and acts as a confidant for little girls “not quite old enough” for a real gay friend. The sketch seems to want to be a parody of “fairy godfather” stereotypes that see gays as sages who exist to help heterosexuals improve themselves, but unfortunately doesn’t go past simply presenting dated gay stereotypes.

In another sketch, Fox’s Nanny 911 is re-imagined as “Tranny 911,” where two cross-dressers offer advice on how to raise an unruly child. The characters in the sketch are tackily dressed, full of sassy attitude, openly steal and repeatedly draw attention to their masculinity – an insensitive, clichéd gag that should have been left in the past.

While sketch comedy has been on the frontier in terms of current social issues and has generated considerable dialogue regarding gay concerns, it’s still frustratingly easy to find examples of comedy that play to simplistic stereotypes and dated clichés of homosexuality. Things have progressed quite a bit in the past few decades, but there’s plenty of ground left to cover.