Embarrassing confession: After watching Perez Hilton chronicle the events of his smack down, I made light of the situation. I feel icky for describing his video as a “little slice of heaven.” The histrionics featured in his A/V response remind me of high camp celluloid, the stuff Mommie Dearest and Showgirls are made of. Watching him yell and cry reminds me of Faye Dunaway standing in a rose garden, screaming for an axe. At first, his reaction to a relatively minor black eye seems over-the-top. How does one NOT laugh at a teary-eyed Perez screeching lines like, “You think Fergie is happy with happened!” and “Fuck you, Will.I.Am! God is looking down on you and SHAMING you! And, Fergie, you’re FUGLY, bitch!” My brain has a seriously difficult time reading this clash as anything but high camp. A Black-Eyed Pea gave Perez Hilton a black eye. The Black-Eyed Peas release their biggest HIT of the summer. The comedy synapses won’t stop firing.
After the 6th grader in me took his meds, I ventured over to Twitter and read a few hundred of the millions of responses people have penned about the incident. The hateful, homophobic reactions I read on Twitter put a mirror to my face. The SPECTACLE of a gay man being brutalized in a public setting has incited an online mob, complete with people (gay and straight) chanting that the loud gay guy finally “got what was coming to him.” I’m not saying that all anti-Perez reactions are inherently homophobic. I understand that many people don’t like Perez because they think he’s an asshole, regardless of his sexual orientation. But it would be foolhardy to think homophobia isn’t playing some role in the widespread initial reactions to his assault. (And I include MY initial reaction in this critique.) In high school, my peers loved watching me get hit and punched. Packs of wild teenagers would envelope me as I was pushed and kicked. I know firsthand how people react to a gay guy who’s loud and unapologetic about his opinions and sexual identity. I’m intimately familiar with violence that abounds when gay men have the audacity to verbally defend themselves. The “he got what was coming to him” meme is mostly about our culture’s hypocritical take on gossip. The message also reflects and perpetuates dangerous and pervasive attitudes about gay men who have the nerve to be loud, opinionated, and brash.
The most troubling response I’ve seen involves the doublespeak of denouncing violence, WHILE claiming Perez got what he deserved. My initial Facebook reaction, for example, begins, “I HATE violence, but. . .” There shouldn’t be a “but” in “I hate violence” statements. I challenge everyone to be consistent. We can’t speak out of both sides of our mouth. Perez was terrorized for practicing free speech, regardless of how vile his speech (e.g., “faggot”) may have been.
