Things meant to be progressive just end up being incredibly offensive

[u/Character_Growth_397]

What If - In one of the comics Miles becomes Thor, and it's full of stereotypes about black people such as the Mjolnir having graffiti on it and the infamous "by Odin's fade"

Emilia Perez - Everything about the movie

[u/jbwarner86]

There's also the subplot of Homer becoming an ordained minister specifically to perform same-sex marriages when Reverend Lovejoy won't, but then he admits that he's only in it for the money and will marry anyone to anything, including animals and inanimate objects. These are exactly the kinds of ridiculous talking points that conservative pundits of the day were using against the legalization of same-sex marriage, saying that it'd start a slippery slope of hedonistic debauchery that'd lead to total societal breakdown.

...So, is the show for the LGBTQ+ community or not? Because the episode treats them all like one big stupid joke. Which is very in keeping with the general attitude towards gay people in the late '90s and early '00s, which touted itself as progressive but really wasn't - "We're going to acknowledge that you exist, but we're still going to treat you like walking punchlines."

[u/sisdom-weeker → u/jbwarner86]

Yeah, it's also just a worse episode than Homer's Phobia which tackled gay rights much better

[u/Garlador → u/sisdom-weeker]

Different writers, and a clear divide in quality. I don’t know how they screwed that one up so badly.

[u/Jet-Rex-Design → u/Garlador]

Homer's Phobia is Season 8 which was on the border of what you could call "mean Simpsons" and "There's Something About Marrying" was Season 16, deep into "mean Simpsons" which had a very different tone. The heart was already draining out of the show and they were aiming more for shock and mean spirited humor to keep up with that early 2000's 'we're edgy and dark' phase that comedy went through. I've seen a lot of breakdowns that show a shift in humor style somewhere around the tenth season or so.

[u/SeaworthinessDue1650 → u/sisdom-weeker]

“Dad, why did you bring me to a gay steel mill?”

[u/Funkitron → u/SeaworthinessDue1650]

We work hard and we play hard!

[u/DeliciousDeer1096 → u/Funkitron]

Everybody dance now!

[u/Aardvarkinaviators → u/DeliciousDeer1096]

Hot stuff coming through!

[u/7and2make10 → u/sisdom-weeker]

And I love the screw the audience joke where Homer is at a lesbian bar and he goes there is something wrong here I know this lesbian bar has no fire escape enjoy your death trap ladies. And someone goes "what was her problem".

[u/maxedonia → u/jbwarner86]

You know what thank you for pointing this out bc the marrying anything to anything line seemed like an innocuous throwaway joke to me in context at first. But even if it may have been written to be that way in practice it still is exactly a talking point being used against same-sex marriages at that time. Oof.

[u/catstone21 → u/maxedonia]

I am probably wrong but I took it originally as a signal to how stupid that arguement is. And even mocking the concept marriage as this lofty thing.

Homer represented the capalist part of america but clearly his anything to anything marriages would stand legally.

Marge's story was the struggle for people to actually accept others and not just talk.

I fear the man being a man and not a trans person is a fig leaf to the "centrism" that the simpsons haved leaned into most of their run time.

[u/_Solani_ → u/jbwarner86]

"We're going to acknowledge that you exist, but we're still going to treat you like walking punchlines."

So, they're being treated exactly like everyone else then. Very few things are treated as sacred in the Simpsons and everything is free to be mocked.