#ianowt spoilers
Hey um Netflix? Having dads calling their sons faggots is… cool, but maybe add a scene where the son processes that? Maybe give a reason for that? Just a thought
I’d argue it’s a form of queerbaiting!
But yeah, straight people just have more sympathy for a boy being “mistaken” for gay than an actual gay boy. And writers aren’t stupid. They want to leave it open to “interpretation” so they’ll never explore the sexual inner lives of Stanley Barber or Billy Hargrove or others.
They’ll have these very visibly straight boys be called faggots and let straight viewers say “Hey that’s rude! [x] isn’t even gay!” and let gay viewers pop our monocles and say “Of course, all that womanizing was a front! I see you bitch!”
They use that ambiguity to give us faux representation. Not even that. The false promiseof future representation, hinting at character arcs or subplots that will never happen outside the minds of fanfic writers.
And what’s weird is that Brad calls Syd a slur, and that has obvious consequences and is treated with real weight by the story. So like… are they trying to have their cake and eat it too? Or are they thattransparent about it? Stan being called a faggot doesn’t matter as much because he isn’t gay.
I mean, it’s true to life, straight boys generally brush that off. But full tea, most of them think they have f word privileges later in life and get offended when receiving any pushback on it.
So yeah, Stan doesn’t process being called a faggot because it’s an inconvenience for him. It’s rude language. “Great talk dad,” is his response, because he has nothing to fear. He’s not a faggot. He only looks like a faggot, according to his dad. His dad doesn’t even accuse him of being gay. Stan’s not even under homo suspicion.
It’s equal parts queerbaiting and obnoxiously using bigoted violent language as cheap window dressing to make characters who aren’t the targets of that language look more sympathetic for a scene.
