How Fox Packaged Homophobia as Entertainment

That isn’t what actually happened on So You Think You Can Dance last Thursday, of course. Instead of an interracial couple being presented in that fashion, it was a same-sex couple – Misha Belfer (who is gay) and Mitch Kibel (who is straight) – who danced the Samba together, a first for the show.

But everything else described (and a little more) did happen, only with a gay twist.

Misha Belfer (left) and Mitch Kibel

“It’s Raining Men” played as Mitchel emerged from the bathroom and as the camera zoomed in on the men’s restroom sign to emphasize his gender. Shots of the two men, dressed in typical ballroom dancing garb (think Dancing with the Stars but less outlandish), walking in slow motion to their audition were intercut with shots of them twirling about in the rather erotic Samba fashion.

During the critique segment, all of the judges expressed either discomfort or confusion over the pairing while Lythgoe did indeed praise the actual dancing. However, he qualified that praise by saying he could only do so as long as he blocked out the men’s gender. He also noted that much of the show's audience might find the men "alienating."

Lythgoe ended by suggesting the men try dancing with women and went so far as to say “Who knows? You might like it.”

Belfer and Kibel did then briefly dance with opposite sex partners before being dismissed to the strains of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” More specifically, as the camera followed the men walking away, the lyrics playing in the background were “This is a man's, a man's, a man's world. But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.” 

Much has been made of Lythgoe’s comments made during the show, and more notably, concerning a number of tweets he sent out using Twitter (I’m not a fan of “Brokeback” ballroom) once the controversy erupted, for which he subsequently apologized.

While Lythgoe’s comments and tweets are deplorable, they are hardly the first from him and have been documented before.