(mellow music)
- [Narrator] The early 2000s brought us many spoof movies.
We have that trend to thank for some
pretty incredible comedies, and also probably
the worst movies of all time.
- I'm Batman.
- I'm a ginger princess.
- [Narrator] There was the good Wet Hot American Summer.
- Cut it out, Bobby, your fine.
- [Narrator] The solid Not Another Teen Movie.
- This is not a cheer-ocracy.
I am the cheer-tator.
I make the cheer-cisions around here
and I will deal with the cheer-onsequences.
- [Narrator] And the so bad you probably forgot
it existed epic movie.
- Welcome, my name is Harry Potter.
- [Narrator] But the best to do it,
without a doubt
was the Scary Movie series.
- You're, you're behind the couch.
- What?
- [Narrator] For some reason, nine-year-old me
was allowed to watch these extremely raunchy movies
without any parental oversight.
Yes, many of the gags in these were very dumb
and fart jokes were common.
- What's that noise?
- Oops, I farted.
I didn't think you would hear me.
- [Narrator] But in a lot of ways,
they were actually pretty smart.
They rounded up all the ridiculous tropes
in '90s horror and sent them up with absolutely no limits,
like the damsel in distress.
- Oh, look at me, I'm all dead.
- [Narrator] Or how black people always die first.
- How come every time some scary shit happens
that we need to stick together you white people
always say let's split up?
- [Narrator] And the bumbling law enforcement.
- What was she like in bed, Cindy?
Ah, tried to get you.
(laughs)
It's an old police trick, it's an old police trick.
Didn't fall for it.
Good for you, kid.
- [Narrator] We also have scary movie to thank
to introducing the comedic genius of
Regina Hall to the wide world.
- Well, shit he might have some money.
We already committed murder.
We might as well rob his ass.
- [Narrator] The movies came from the Wayans brothers
and the first two remains some of the most
successful movies ever from black creators.
- The Wayans Brothers was
a good show, man.
- [Narrator] But, after all these years,
there is one character that really
sticks with me.
Ray, who's played by Shawn Wayans.
As a young black gay kid,
I don't remember any characters
on the big or small screens
that I truly related to and who also looked like me.
Ray was kind of that.
I knew I was gay and I was excited
to see his character.
If Scary Movie seems like a sad place
to look for roll models, well,
I didn't really have a lot to choose from.
The depiction of Ray's sexuality
was relatively innocuous at first
and pretty indicative of humor in the early 2000s.
- But wait! There's your boy!
- [Narrator] Ray wears clothes that
are stereotypically gay but seems
oblivious to that fact.
- Does this shirt make me look gay?
- Nawh, man.
- What about now?
- [Narrator] He makes his girlfriend, Brenda
dress in men's clothing
when they have sex.
- I like that look.
- [Narrator] And he's a very supportive friend.
- But he cares for me in a different way,
you know like,
like bringing me flowers and running my bath water,
and there's nights when I wake up screaming
and I look over and Ray is in my bed holding me.
- [Narrator] The joke here is Ray is very gay
and he doesn't know it.
Funny, right?
- What?
I aint gay.
- [Narrator] But then his character takes a turn.
Not only does Ray turn out to be,
sorry, spoiler alert,
one of the murders in the first film,
but there is also a running gag
that he is actually a sexual preditor.
- Surprise Cindy.
- [Narrator] He hints at assaulting one of the characters.
- Oh what are you gonna do?
Frame him?
- Nawh, we're just having a little bit
of fun with old daddy-o.
- [Narrator] And then the height of the second film,
he actually rapes an evil clown doll.
Okay, I never said these were high brow films.
What I didn't know at nine was that
there is a long history of depicting queer people
as dangerous sexual deviants
and this one falls right into that sad cannon.
A character being queer or a little effeminate
was long and easy way to nudge the audience
about who the bad guy is.
Think of characters like Him
from Power Puff Girls.
- Oh, snake beast.
- [Narrator] Or Scar in the Lion King.
- Precisely.
- [Narrator] Or eve Buffalo Bill from
Silence Of The Lambs.
- Rubs the lotion on it's skin
or else it gets the hose again.
- [Narrator] In a movie as silly as this,
the same thing happened
and it's no less insidious.
When I look back a the Scary Movie
series now, I think of the ideas
I might have internalized from Ray,
that my sexuality was a punch line.
Or worse' Something to be afraid of.
I was comfortable being gay at a young age
but these movies were one of the first times
I realized that other people might not be
and that it might be something I needed to hide.
We're now in the era of movies like Moonlight
and shows like Pose,
where black queer characters
are more present than ever,
but at the time, characters like Ray
were some of the only glimpses
of ourselves on screen.
The Scary Movie series will always be
some of my favorite comedies
but it hurts to know that some of the success
came at my expense.
- Ain't nobody stabbing me.
(dramatic music)