For years, gay male performers were left out of the edy landspe or tokenized wh . Now, a new wave of entertaers are succeedg by playg to themselv.
Contents:
* straight gay guy comedy *
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTFor years, gay male performers were left out of the edy landspe or tokenized wh . “I remember Googlg gay ics and nothg g up, pecially gay Black ics, ” says Perks, whose blazgly funny stand-up work rang om sweet to goofy to rnchy. ’”Even as a kid, Perks uld vaguely perceive that gay entertaers were, certa other realms of pop culture, “havg a moment.
Havg a moment, the late ’90s and early ghts, meant that, sudnly, a gay performer or character would appear a space that had been prevly domated by straight people — say, at the center of a TV s like “Will & Grace” or a stand-up special, or as the voice of reason to the leadg lady a romantic edy like “My Bt Friend’s Weddg” — and everyone uld appld and say, “We solved ! ” It was a pop-cultural phenomenon that started to surface when Perks, who’s 31, and other gay edians of his generatn were middle school. Gay edy isn’t niche ’s all changed so fast that at one pot, while he’s discsg a sketch about rporate sponsorship of gay pri paras that he did wh Lil Nas X last May, Yang, 31, tch himself and says, lghg, “Why am I talkg about this the past tense, like ’s another era?
(The podst format, which gay obssns n be discsed and nstcted at length, or which the hetero world n be filtered through gay sensibili, as is on Sam Taggart and Gee Civeris’s “StraightLab, ” has bee fertile turf for emergg edy stars. ” says Rogers, who, like all of his lleagu, has many ncurrent projects; he spent an early month of the panmic hostg (hilarly) a pet-groomg realy show lled “Hte Dog” for HBO Max; he -created a short-form seri lled “Gayme Show” (“for Quibi, rt peace”), whose wrg room was “entirely stocked wh queer people”; and he will have a regular role on a new Showtime edy lled “I Love That for You, ” tentatively schled for this sprg, wh the “S. ” Lyn’s style of humor — bchy, suatg, spiked wh alhol, rancid wh self-mockery — was rarely overtly queer; was what would now be scribed as “queer-d” — other words, legibly gay to anybody, gay or straight, who knew what signifiers to look for but to the obliv, merely droll.