superbad=superhomophobic

okay, i'll just admit it. last night i saw superbad. i'm not even going to make any excuses; i love george michael (michael cera of arrested development) and i couldn't wait to see him in his very own movie. so i bought my ticket, put on my bathroom humor hat, and sat back to enjoy the show.

unfortunately, what could have been a sweet and raunchy movie about endearingly self-deprecating losers trying to get laid was completely overshadowed by the gratuitous use of the word faggot. am i only one who finds this disturbing and not in the least funny? apparentally i was the only one in the theatre, because the audience was ROARING everytime the main character called his dorky friend fogell "faggle" in a fit of hetero rage.

seth rogen (co-writer) and judd apatow (producer) are the current golden boys of geek humor. we have given them the green light to go ahead and give us the underdog hero. We're tired of the hot guy who cheats, or doesn't call--bring on the dork who listens and puts the pussy on a pedestal. but instead of the thinking person's american pie, superbad is a testimony to the hegemony of homophobia-it's like air. imagine if a movie came out today in which the main characters used the n word at least once in every scene. right, that wouldn't happen. even though we still tie gay people to the backs of trucks and drag them until they die, it's okay to have a movie for kids that shows the heroes using the word faggot.

in light of the country's (and the world's) attitude towards gay people, i found the insidiousness of the homophobia in this het-fest chilling. it's just too small a leap from hate language to hate violence-what if at the end of the movie fogell had told his best friends that he was a fag? it might've turned into a high school version of boys don't cry.

when isaiah washington said the word faggot to his gay co-worker, he had to go to rehab. when chunky disheveled teenager seth says it to his well-groomed effeminate friend, we laugh. what kind of a fucked up message are we sending?

Mr. Rogen and Mr. Apatow, you seem like intelligent men. Your humor can be edgy, vicious, and hysterically funny. You do not need to rely on faggot jokes, fat jokes, retard jokes and ethnic jokes, like some of the less talented in the industry. these only detract from the quality of your work and perpetuate hate.

to sum it all up, this movie is only worth seeing if you rent it and can fast forward through any part where michael cera isn't speaking, or if you really hate gay people.