Muslim is the new Gay
Mark Steyn opines:
This month, the CBC launches a new sitcom, Little Mosque On The Prairie. That’s a hit title, but I kinda wonder if the show itself will be quite as funny. I’m all for “edgy” “dangerous” comedy that “explores” “controversial” territory, and the interaction of Islam and small-town Canada would appear to offer rich and highly topical possibilities. But I wonder if in practice the joke won’t – nine times out of ten – be onthe “irrational” fears and woeful ignorance of the white-bread hicks while the Muslims are droll and amusing about the deplorably provincial prejudices. In other words, if the mullahs will forgive me, Muslim is the new gay. A decade or so back, sitcoms began introducing gay characters who get all the sharpest wittiest lines. They’re curiously desexed gays (butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, never mind anywhere else), just as these will, I’d wager, prove to be curiously deIslamized Muslims. But the intended impact is the same: to make Islam something only uptight squares fret about.
Presented for your delectation by the Gentleman Farmer at 7:52 AM
Comments on "Muslim is the new Gay"
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Yeoman said ... (10:19 AM) :
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Anonymous said ... (8:50 PM) :
post a commentIndeed, you can always tell how trendy something is by how Hollywood portrays it.
Additionally, you can tell how trendy it is by how many adherants it will suddenly have in Hollywood. When Buddism was hip, you had Hollywood types discovery it (Richard Gere, Victoria Principal). When being gay was cool, lots of Hollywood types suddenly became gay, even if they never stopped engaging in serial hetrosexual polygamy otherwise. Now, I'm sure, we'll see quite a few Hollywood types discover that they are Moslems.
“Little Mosque” depends of offensive stereotypes for its humour.
Also, while at times funny, I do wonder about how “real” the situation is. I once saw a show about how the Nazis made two propaganda films about the conflict between the British and the Irish. The films, at least according to those who were interviewed who had seen them were quite good. The only problem was that the people in the movies were not Irish. What I mean by that was that the culture of the Irish portrayed in the films in no way reflected actual Irish culture as I guess the Germans who wrote, produced, and acted in the movies never took the time to get to understand the traditions and feel of the Irish people. It just wasn’t important to them because in the end it had nothing to do with the Irish. It was as one commentator of the movies said “Germans talking to Germans”.
And that is kind of what I am getting with the “Little Mosque” show. In the end it isn’t really about small town Saskatchewan or Muslim communities living within small town Saskatchewan. In the end what it comes down to is just Liberal Urbanite Canadians talking to Liberal Urbanite Canadians, with their political message being far more important to them than whether or not the situation portrayed reflects a real situation in the country accurately enough.
By the way, why does “The She Mayor” remind me so much of the mayor on South Park?