He is painstakingly aware of his own flaws and faux pas, and has no qualms about poking fun at himself and other gay men’s behaviours, from the banality of anonymous Grindr hookups and their obsession with going to the gym and having the perfect body. He appears to openly mock the standard activism which has pervaded so much of popular culture, and sneeringly scoffs at phenomena like gay Hallmark movies, Glee, the demise of the ‘white cisgender gay man’, and the rise of intersectional LGBTQ+ rhetoric. Paglia critiques both bourgeois ‘humanists’ who try to normalise homosexuality and postmodern queer theorists who claim that there is no such thing as a norm.Įichner’s wit combines both his Jewish roots and his experience as a gay man living in New York. Someone with homoerotic tendencies can either express their desires in a way that opposes nature, or can sublimate them to a supernatural end, but either way, they are inevitably caught somewhere outside the norm. Those ascribing to either a pagan or Judeo-Christian view of the cosmos understand that gay sex challenges nature’s design: it is positively closed off to procreation. ‘Homosexuality is not “normal”,’ she insists. This affinity for provocation and sharp socio-cultural awareness is in part related to the metaphysical implications of homosexuality. Gay men, writes cultural critique Camille Paglia, are often ‘arch, imperious commentators with stringent judgments about everything … the gay male brain seems to me permanently switched on’. Diverging from the ‘old trope of the outsider delivering sardonic observations here we have not someone who sits back and comments, but davka, a guy who darts about in public, accosting innocent people, mocking them so breathlessly that he doesn’t have time to veer into actual offence’. Writing for Tablet magazine, Sian Gibby says that Eichner is a ‘triumph of Jewish wit, strength, and I would argue existential health’. Many have noted that since his days on Billy on the Street, Eichner puts his own spin on the tradition of the Jewish comedian. ‘The humourist, like the prophet, would basically take people to task for their failings.’Īuthority figures were often the butt of jokes as a means of defending the less powerful from exploitation, turning humour into a tool for ‘social catharsis’.
Shtoch, or jab humour, says Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, is meant to ‘deflate people who consider themselves high and mighty’ – including the comedian themselves. Thanks to their ‘neurotic self-observations’ and their ability to examine the seemingly insignificant minutiae of everyday life (rooted in training in Talmudic study), Jews are able to open people’s eyes to human errors and hypocrisy through the use of humour. To use internet parlance, Eichner’s character comes off in the beginning of the film as determinedly ‘based’ and as someone who is unafraid to speak politically incorrect truths, but ends up becoming insufferably ‘cringe’ as the film closes.Īccording to Jeff Berkwits, Jewish comedians have always had an egalitarian bent, tending to ‘poke fun at’ and ‘tarnish the image of’ important people in power, as well as of themselves. This is part of the reason he caves toward the end of the film, opting for the very bourgeois romantic love story that he claimed to detest at the film’s start. Unfortunately, his insights never get to root of why same-sex sexuality is against the grain. His capacity for social criticism and self-deprecatory jabs reveal his profound insights into the nature of gay male culture and pro-LGBTQ+ rhetoric post-Obergefell. He fears the erasure of gay people from history books and thinks Obergefell is just another attempt to make homosexuality more palatable to the straight majority.Įichner, a New Yorker of Jewish descent who rose to fame through his Funny Or Die game show Billy on the Street, demonstrates his knack for Jewish humour and gay cultural wit. Billy Eichner, the film’s star and co-writer, is depicted as a traditional gay cynic, who mocks the modern ‘love is love’ trope and the prospect of same-sex monogamy in the name of maintaining homosexuality’s counter-cultural edge. Bros follows the story of a man who can’t decide if he’s one of the ‘smart’ or ‘stupid’ gays.
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