by Douglas Messerli
Unknown filmmaker Come As You Are / 2010 [commercial
advertisement]
Perhaps the lamest of all gay ads was the 2010 McDonald’s commercial
touting the line: “Come As You Are.”
A young teen is sitting at a McDonald’s booth waiting as his father purchases their order. In front of him is his class graduation picture, and soon after he gets a call from what appears to be his boyfriend, the cute boy almost stroking the figure on the picture as he speaks.
.png)
.png)
He quickly
announces he has to hang up as his father returns with their food. His father,
seeing the school photo, asks if it’s his class graduation photo, to which the
boy responds positively handing over the photo for his dad to glance at.
His response is a
young gay boy’s nightmare. “You look just like me at your age. Let me tell you,
I was quite the ladies’ man! Too bad your class is all boys…you could get all
the girls.”
These words,
obviously, are just what a 17-year-old who might be on the brink of coming out
would love to hear on an outing with father to the local hamburger joint. Perhaps
you can come to McDonald’s “as you are,” as long as you don’t let your dad know
of your true sexual interests. This is truly the “don’t ask, don’t tell” theory
of life.
.png)
The cute kid
smirks, knowing that he’ll have to put off talking about the issue with Pappa
for while longer.
Los Angeles, July 18, 2024
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment