by Douglas
Messerli
Michael O'Donoghue
and Bob Tischler (head writers), Dave Wilson (director)
Dad, I’m Straight / 1982 [TV (SNL) episode]
Like so many short
gay films before it, the September 23, 1982 episode of Saturday Night Live,
reversed the standard coming out trope, as the Dad (Howard Hesseman), clearly a
gay man who has divorced his previous wife, greets home his college-age student
son (Gary Kroeger). To help his son come out to the reality of his life, Dad
has even made a date with for his son with a handsome young medical student,
Mike.
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The
only problem, as it soon becomes apparent, is that his son has returned home
with serious news, a problem which he is sure will be difficult for his father
to accept: he’s straight.
The standard outing tropes are used to
seemingly new effect here, “Where have I gone wrong,” I should have played with
you more when you were younger.” “I never should have left your mother bathe
you.”
It’s all a very smug heterosexual gimmick
inverted to suggest perhaps that the standard reactions to a gay son reporting
his homosexuality to a bigoted heterosexual father might not be so very
different these days from a homosexual father dealing with his son’s
heterosexuality.
The only problem is that we know that the
society in which this young boy has grown up would still completely embrace his
heterosexuality, and any problems the gay daddy back at home might hint at are
merely in jest. The society at large will have already laid its large open hand
upon the boy’s back with utter acceptance. This is a total farce.
Moreover, there’s something disturbingly
sleazy about this sketch when Mike calls, the father explaining that the date
has fallen through but that he might still come over to watch TV with him.
This SNL piece simply doesn’t work for
anyone truly involved in the LGBTQ community, and its forced laughter of
inversion seems more than canned and actually quite offensive. And Hesseman’s
prissy straightening up of the couch pillows at the end take us right back to
the early days of homosexual stereotyping.
Los Angeles,
January 31, 2025
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema (January 2025).
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