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Eddie Murphy…what can be said of the transvestite prostitute-assisting comedian who took advantage of his first standup film to berate “fags” and then use his second standup film to defend his berating of “fags?”

Murphy was at the height of his career when Delirious and later, Raw, were released. What was disturbing was not just the homophobic nature of the comments, but the length he gave to the subject. The stereotype of the effeminate man seeking to rape a straight man was in full effect, and you’d be hard pressed to argue the point with Murphy in either film. He defended, and later retracted some of his comments in the press, but by then, the world’s biggest comedian had spoken, and gays were Bad People.

In Living Color had much of America laughing due to Damon Wayans and David Allen Grier’s Blaine and Antwon, hosts of “Men on Film.” Yes, they were hyper effeminate caricatures of black gay men, but most viewers, black gay men included, saw them in the context of a show that celebrated the extreme.

That the phrase “two snaps up” gained popular usage attests to the popularity of the show, and, perhaps, that Blaine and Antwon were speaking to something directly linked to the earlier liberation movement--that is, in Antwon’s words, “You be you!”

Martin Lawrence would be the first mainstream African American comedian to incorporate a more egalitarian view in his standup. Both his You So Crazy film and CD discuss friends coming out to him. Of course, given the rampant homophobia, each depicts the friend as not really wanting to be considered gay.

On the CD, he’s on a road trip where the heat inspires the friend to offer to cool Lawrence off, first, innocently enough, then in increasingly intimate ways. Each time Lawrence questions his friend who was previously assumed to be straight, the friend protests, “You don’t have to be gay, no fag, just because you let a friend run an ice cube over your body and let the ice drip all over your nipples, c’mon!” In the film, Lawrence is getting high on marijuana with a male friend whose recollections of their youth become increasingly homoerotic. When Lawrence is obviously taken aback, the friend lays an emotional guilt trip on him, leaving Lawrence confused about how to respond. Urging his friend to speak openly about whatever he’s trying to say, the friend asks to “suck his dick.”

As the audience laughs, he turns the situation on the audience and asks the men in the audience what they’d do if their friend did the same thing. When the men respond in the negative, he calls them liars and mimics the “straight” man who receives oral sex from other men. Humorous, but truthful.

Chris Rock used his HBO series to highlight his mostly political brand of comedy. It was no surprise when one skit opened, dealing with racial tension. As two men, one black and one white encounter each other on a dark street, each anticipates violence from the other.

As each man angrily asks what the other is doing in that neighborhood, the tension rises until…the white man grabs the black man and kisses him! As the black man reciprocates and holds him tighter, the audience screams in shock (clearly nobody saw it coming). A voiceover explains that gay sex can bring men together regardless of race with the tagline, “Gay Sex. It’s colorblind.” Not necessarily true, but most definitely a novel suggestion for racial unity!

Bernie Mac had to deal with homophobia recently, from, of all places, himself. His popular stand up routine included a humorous and frank discussion of his caring for his crack addicted sister’s three children. The kid that would get the most laughs would be his nephew, described as a “little faggot.” In spite of his rough delivery, between the lines, you could tell that he had love for the kids.

Unfortunately, between the lines wasn’t good enough. Mac never considered the hurt that his comedy could cause a young boy who wasn’t out of grade school. Concerned about the effect his actions had on the boy, he eliminated the homophobic references from his standup, went to the boy’s school and stressed the importance of his nephew in his life and, when it came time to create a show based on his family, modeled his nephew’s character on himself as a child, stressing his inquisitive nature rather than questioning his sexuality.

In the film Life, Mac played a gay inmate, again stressing the character’s humanity and love of his cellmate over a stereotypical portrayal.

In popular culture, the role of the African American male is often stereotyped as being that of rapper, athlete, or comedian. Regardless of the politics that determine this, or perhaps because of them, the comedian, while sometimes falling back on old homophobic stereotypes, is often also the first to challenge them.

Martin Lawrence, who would later become Eddie Murphy’s contemporary, put black homosexuality in the context of male interaction, as opposed to the “us versus them” dynamic other comedians, like Eddie Griffin, used. Bernie Mac would learn first-hand the power he could wield as a black entertainer, and has committed himself not to use it against his gay brothers and sisters; like Pryor and Foxx before him, there’s a willingness to speak to these issues.

Whether or not the general public is ready is another question entirely, but as long as there are people who can make us laugh at our differences and the things we do, rather than who we are, there’s hope.

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