Q-Force, an adult animated series about LGBTQ superspies created by gay writer Gabe Liedman and starring LGBTQ actors in all of the LGBTQ roles, just released its first trailer. If you were to judge the series by the trending reactions on Twitter, however, you might get the impression this series made by and presumably for queer people is akin to a homophobic hate crime. While it remains to be seen whether the show is any good, the reaction has gone beyond any reasonable criticism and morphed into nonsensical attacks on the creatives.
The trailer is 40 seconds long and, beyond setting up the premise and listing the voice actors, it has basically four jokes. Two of them are genuinely funny: the first is when team leader Agent Mary bursts into a room to make an arrest, only to find no one there, and says, "I wasted all that masculinity on nothing," and the second is a quip about how "you can't pander to the gays" without coming off like "CitiBank at Pride." The clip's other jokes, in which Twink calls Agent Mary his "job daddy" and later says "my little butthole went boop," are more stereotypical and not particularly funny.
Q-Force could go either way quality-wise, and even the best possible version of the premise would inevitably invite a range of reactions. For some people in marginalized communities, making jokes about stereotypes is funny and empowering, while for others, such subject matter is too upsetting to laugh about. This type of humor is not for everyone, but attacking marginalized people for making jokes about themselves you dislike is not a progressive act.
Borat and The Boondocks contain jokes far edgier than anything in the Q-Force trailer, and it's completely valid to dislike such content, but if you called Sacha Baron Cohen an antisemite or Aaron McGruder a racist, you'd be completely missing the point. The fact is there is a big difference between self-effacing humor from minorities and punching-down humor from a place of privilege, and the fact Q-Force is written by, starring and animated by a large number of queer people does make a difference.
On top of that, all of the stereotypical gay jokes in the trailer are centered around one particular character, who is one of three gay male leads and one of five LGBTQ leads in the series. Stereotypes become harmful when people act as if they apply to all or even most members of a group; when there's a diversity of personalities shown within a group, having one more stereotypical character isn't as big of a deal.
If anything, a lot of the responses to Twink in Q-Force betray internal prejudices within the gay community where those who do fit certain stereotypes of campiness, femininity or hypersexuality are shunned for acting "stereotypical." While it's important that people understand not all gay men fit such stereotypes, it's equally important to understand that those who do fit those stereotypes are equally deserving of respect as their peers.
Shunning more "stereotypical" gay people becomes another form of respectability politics, wherein members of a minority judge each other based on what the majority deems acceptable rather than just accepting each other. It's particularly striking when people on Twitter claim it's "harmful" for Twink to speak with a "gay accent," never mind that it's only slightly exaggerated from actor Matt Rogers' actual voice. We've seen similar forms of this going on with the debate over whether kink should be allowed at Pride events -- it's an attempt to put down people who are harming no one but others fear will make them "look bad."
Q-Force could end up being hilarious or terrible, but it's clearly not being made from a place of bigotry. The fact that the outrage at the trailer has gotten so extreme that several of the show's storyboard artists have had to lock their Twitter accounts to block out harassment is frankly disgraceful. Let's wait until September to determine if Q-Force actually deserves any hatred -- and even if it does, the artists making it still wouldn't deserve any harassment.
Q-Force stars Sean Hayes, Gary Cole, David Harbour, Patti Harrison, Laurie Metcalf, Matt Rogers, Wanda Sykes and Gabe Liedman. It premieres on Netflix on September 2.
