"Once I had a secret love..."
-- Doris Day, "Secret Love" (1953)
"Everywhere people stare
Each and every day
I can see them laugh at me
And I hear them say
Hey, you've got to hide your love away"
-- John Lennon, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" (1965)
"Girls like me
Have to hide our hearts away..."
-- Kelly Porter, a fictionalized character based on Lesley Gore in "Grace of My Heart" (1996), singing the song "My Secret Love," co-written by Gore, Larry Klein and David Baerwald
From "Romeo and Juliet" to "Avatar," few romantic myths are as compelling as the Secret Love -- the love that dare not speak its name because society, or families, or the lovers themselves just aren't ready to face it yet. A lot of perfectly ordinary relationships go through this phase, too, for all sorts of reasons. I know a pair of high school seniors who've been seeing each other surreptitiously because his socially conservative South Asian Subcontinental parents don't want him dating while he's in school. But it's really no big deal for either of them.
So, I don't quite get why the French "Come As You Are" McDonald's commercial about the dad, the gay teenager and the secret boyfriend is such a matter of consternation for Bill O'Reilly. Other than, of course, that he is Bill O'Reilly, so it's kind of his job to say things that make him appear ridiculous. The ad employs a perfectly familiar formula -- only this "secret love" story isn't the traditional tale of tortured melodrama; it's a sweet little comedy, an unobtrusive private exchange played out in a bustling public place.
Watch the 45-second spot above. This miniature slice-of-life consists of 20 shots and about eight set-ups, associating McDonald's with a tender, funny moment between a father and son who obviously love each other. It's adorable. There's nothing that unusual about it -- ads often seek to link brands or products with concepts and emotions designed to make you feel good about them, even when they have little or nothing to do with the ostensible items being promoted. Here, it's the idea of McDonald's being a place in which family memories are made, where you can "come as you are" -- which means not just how you're dressed, but whoever you are. Everybody's welcome. This isn't their first trip to McDonald's together, and it won't be the last. It's a third place in their lives, where they meet each other... as they are.
So, look at the skill with which the simple story is told: The boy, sitting at a table, takes out a school group photo. His phone rings. We see his dad from across the restaurant, standing in line at the counter. "I was thinking about you, too," he says to the caller, gently touching the likeness of one of the kids in the photo, which we only glimpse (a bit of intentional misdirection), but we assume the person he's singled out is the one on the phone. "I'm looking at our class picture. I miss you too." He looks up and sees his dad returning with the food. "My dad's coming, I have to hang up."
Dad sits down and tells his son, "You look just like me at your age." He boasts about being "quite the ladies' man!" (A sly Jerry Lewis reference, perhaps?) The boy looks at him, with a frown and a smile, the way any teenager would -- like, yeah, OK, I don't want to hear about it. Then dad delivers the quiet zinger: "Too bad your class is all boys... you could get all the girls." The whole piece turns on the this (penultimate) shot of the kid's reaction: he pauses, considers the absurdity of the moment, stops as though he's about to say something, then gently dismisses the comment with a little laugh as he looks directly into his dad's eyes. In the final shot, from across the room, the father is still talking. A young girl in a red baseball cap (McDonald's employee?) walks by and checks out the boy. The female voice on the soundtrack sings, "I'm going down my road..."
A classic, understated, feel-good spot, I'd say. The first time I saw it, I came away with the feeling that I was already watching a memory-in-process -- that the boy and his dad would look back and laugh at this funny little almost moment that passed between them. I don't see it as a vignette about a closeted kid or an aggressively heterosexual dad; they're just going down their respective roads. If anything, I get the feeling that the kid is ready to come out to his dad any time, but decides that this particular moment isn't quite the right one. It's almost as if he's choosing not to interrupt pop's little self-flattering trip down memory lane... Or maybe he just wants to savor his "secret love" in private for a little while longer... Sometimes waiting for the right moment can be a delicious pleasure.
Then again, imagine what might happen after that last shot. It's fairly open-ended. As I re-watched it, I could envision the boy changing his mind and deciding to use the opportunity his father's remark has handed him. Or, wait, what if dad isn't as goofy and clueless as he appears? What if he already knows his son is gay, and is trying with delicacy and love to bring up the subject the best way he knows how, to open the door for a possible conversation on the subject? What if he's telling his son he's proud of how he turned out?
It's a smart ad that stands up to repeated viewing (as a TV commercial should); well-written, -acted and -directed; and admirably subtle and low-key -- especially when you consider that it's for a monstrous multi-national chain of fast-food restaurants.
In O'Reilly's TV comments about the ad, he intentionally missed the point ("Does that make you hungry for a Big Mac?"), then attempted to comfort himself by proclaiming: "OK, they want to make a political statement selling burgers, they are entitled to it. It will never run in the USA."
Well, never's a long time, and I wonder how many Americans -- even those of O'Reilly's age -- would view it as a "political statement" rather than a family moment, like the Kodak commercial with the parents giving the kids a puppy on Christmas morning. According to a recent Gallup poll, acceptance of gay relationships is now the majority view in the United States. And, as NY Times columnist Charles M. Blow noted, "the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived ['gay and lesbian relations'] as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent."
Bill, your days are numbered, you Bold Fresh Piece of Inanity (not Hannity), you. Go get yourself an Angus.
36 Comments
I think that anything that's not conventional by some group's standards will always be taken as part of a political statement b someone or the other.
My friend, for example, was determined to look at The Hurt Locker as either indicting or supporting the Iraq War and/or the American military, and it took me a long time to convince him that, as far as the movie was concerned, the Iraq War just was, that its real concern was merely soldiers, and their relation to war. And I've still not convinced him that Inglourious Basterds doesn't glorify violence, that it just uses it.
And, worst of all, whenever a movie is seen with violence, someone will brand it 'torture porn'. And when there's male-female power relations (mostly violent ones, but not necessarily), someone will brand it misogynistic (I just read a piece in today's paper about a movie directed by someone called Michale Winterbottom which was branded as misogynistic but the description of which in the same article made it sound like an examination of gender power relations).
I think it comes from too much theory and too little feeling.
I'm not quite embarrassed enough not to reveal that I found the commercial somewhat moving, because (for one, we don't often see the casual assumption of heterosexuality foisted on kids, but more saliently) on the topic of this ad running in the US, I think O'Reilly's kind of right. How many gay-themed ads have we had in America? Commercials tend to speak in shorthand, and for most Americans, a straight couple is a quick signifier of romance, happiness, support or what have you, so commercials extremely rarely feature gay relationships, which unfortunately perpetuates the status quo of people viewing gay relationships differently (or more accurately, since it's a passive sin, not viewing gay relationships with semiotic similarity), and the cycle repeats.
I do recall a Levi's commercial that made some relatively shallow waves a few years back for featuring a gay couple. It was also produced with a straight couple, but I saw both versions on television before Youtube. It's clear to me that the best way to fight ignorance like O'Reilly's appetite-suppressed response to a closeted gay teen is to normalize, which can take time but is indisputable: Iowa has allowed gay marriage for over a year, and the state is hardly a contemporary Gomorrah. Accepting the ubiquity of marketing, America could use more commercials with gay characters, if only to keep one of a series of French McDonalds ads from getting any play with the Right.
Now that I think about it, though he cynically attempts to associate gay romance with stomach-churning, O'Reilly's disgust likely stems from the Right's contempt for diversity for diversity's sake. After all, the ad campaign is practically a PSA for acceptance--at McDonalds anyway. On this issue, in this instance (as with the Arizona school mural), I think minority representation is a positive good at nobody's expense.
Nicely said. I don't understand objections to "diversity," either -- and I've posed the same question to gay friends when they're going through their coming-out phase: "Doesn't it get boring to be around only gay people all the time? It's got to be as tedious as hanging out with only straight people or white people or upper-middle-class people or people your own age. Where's your appetite for diversity?!?!"
To me, the sentimentality displayed in the commercial seemed oddly placed. There is a very different picture portrayed in the United States’ McDonalds commercials. The image we get here is more the boisterous fun of eating. Everyone is peppy and with a huge toothed smile and is yucking it up with the person taking their order. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t respond positively to the commercial. A quiet, genuine moment doesn’t match well with the ersatz reality I’m accustomed to from McDonalds’ U.S. advertising. When I saw the commercial close with the message “come as you are”, to me it was pretty explicitly saying “Attention closeted-gay teens, you will find refuge here!”, though if I had been exposed to the entire ad campaign I might have responded differently. I guess different cultures demand a different experience from their grease-soaked potatoes.
Who cares what Bill O'Reilly thinks about the commerical. What would Don Draper say?
Maybe after Don fired Sal, he went to France and directed this spot.
I finally did view O'Reilly's segment on the ad and found his remarks rather innocuous given all the ire they've evoked.
I do agree that O'Reilly misses the point in attributing political motivations to what is really a “slice of life ad. As you point out, these types of ads, which McDonald has certainly used before, are not intended to simply evoke a Pavlovian response in viewers.
That said, I also kinda see the point of some gay activists who cite the O'Henry twist of the spot, that the son is in the closet, as problematic. Your backstory aside, the ad's tagline could be "McDonalds: Come as you are (living a lie)"
I see what you're saying, but the kid deserves a break today! He's only a teenager -- and lovin' it!
Re: O'Reilly's remarks, I agree that in general he's pretty toothless and certainly doesn't seem especially passionate about the ad, more bemused by it. It's clearly a puff piece. Though the Al Qaeda reference was, um, uncouth.
But he does say, "You know, straight people are gonna watch that, too," and I just cringe. The suggestion that no straight people can look at such an ad and take away the intended message is absurd on its face, but my ire is really piqued by the cynical double standard. I won't hold my breath for him to defend gay viewers of straight-themed commercials.
I don't think he had any idea of what he was really trying to say with the "outrageous" al Qaeda remark (gay people are terrorists?), but I was struck by the same thing you were: "You know, straight people are gonna watch that, too." And... what? They won't like it because one of the characters in a hamburger commercial isn't Straight Like Them? Good heavens -- what will women and girls think? Neither the father nor the son are female! Surely it will alienate half the population because they are not "represented"! Those McDonald's ads featuring young black families must just confuse the hell out of Bill O'Reilly, for he is neither young nor black! What "political points" are McDonald's trying to score with such ads? After all, old white people are going to watch them, too. How will they be able to relate?!
To a guy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. O'Reilly makes his living being political, so he thinks everyone else does too. MacDonald's wants to sell hamburgers in France, and cynical guys whose jobs depend on being right think that this sentimental slice of modern life will make French people feel good about buying MacDonald's burgers. That's all.
Can't wait for the ad with the scary guy trolling for his next rape victim in the parking lot. Maybe after that they could do the one with the creepy older guy checking out all the young kids and offering them candy. (After all, wouldn't most of the NAMBLA crowd like burgers--they're just like the rest of us, right? [Well, except for the vegetarians, but that's a different argument.]) How long would it be before McD's could do a zoophilia ad? (Love that beef!)
I got yer diversity right here, Jim.
Troll. You are probably a pedophile. Consenting gay adults have nothing to do with any of the groups you mentioned. Only your sick mind went there, all by itself. What does that say about you?
Jim Hawk Jr. Jr., you assume the next step from being gay is being a pedophile or rapist when really a "gay person" is no more likely than a "straight person" to do that. (These terms are in quotations because they are overly simplistic labels but I'll work with them for now so as not to confuse you.) Some people are gay, some people are bi, some people aren't sure what they are exactly (and are society isn't intellectually advanced enough to know how to talk about them) and today's obesity rates would suggest some people are attracted to Big Macs. It's a strange world of sexuality out there but it doesn't have to be a completely scary and ugly one as you imagine. There is no logical link between being gay and being a pedophile or rapist, this is just your own misunderstanding and fear.
And I'm all for diversity but if you insist on seeing things this way then I for one hope not to meet you or people like you anywhere.
The ad's message is simple: MacDonald's Makes You Gay!
Dare to enter their restaurants and you're a Royale with Cheese away from turning into Neil Patrick Harris.
Neil Patrick Harris is AWESOME!
Two boring points first:
First, I don't really believe in gay or straight; the vast majority is in between more or less.
Second, I hate commercials, and this one is no exception; there's a kind of soulless vibe, but this doesn't have the insulting of my intelligence nor the relentless pounding brainwashing to efficiently get their plug received by those who may just be walking by the television for whatever reason (those of you who ARE watching it, or not walking around the room not noticing the tv, be damned; this isn't about you active minds thinking about things, but passive impulse-buyers); so I did appreciate that low-key aspect you mentioned.
So, aside from its shamelessness, I don't think there is necessarily a "gay" theme going on, but it might just be suggesting that that kind of thing isn't so unusual when there's nothing but guys everywhere, his school being a boys school. In other words, if he went to a different school with girls, he might be with a girl instead. However, the commercial does have a good spirit of acceptance and I think that's the overall message it wanted to convey, regardless of what the subject matter is being discussed; the boy clearly feels accepted unconditionally: so if anything, Mr. O'reilly should be praising its unconditional capitalism, but the only logic extremism has is fear of "the other."
If Bill wants to comment on French advertising, he should move to France. Please.
If McDonald's ads were like this here, I might feel more kindly inclined to McDonald's! I think its a very sweet ad. And what the heck does O'Reilly even care - its not running here. Of course that's the point, he DOESN'T care, he just knows it will generate controversy and thus ratings. That's the true level of soullessness involved here!
Although I don't think really many people in any country would consider a fast food joint of any kind a good place to come out to your parents I admire McDonald's balls for attempting to rebrand themselves that way!
Yes, Bill, go get yourself an Angus. Just make sure no one sees you drop the g.
What I find ironic is the fact that you had to have watched Bill O'Reilly in order to write this article. If you don't like Bill O'Reilly, then why are you (or anyone else for that matter) watching him the first place? Is it because you secretly enjoy his show?
I guess this is the irony: I don't watch FOX News any more than I would read the Wall Street Journal editorial page or Arynan Nations web site(s), but I saw the O'Reilly segment about this ad online from somewhere else. I honestly don't remember where. So, then I went to YouTube and watched the ad itself. If O'Reilly hadn't brought it to his viewers' attention, I probably wouldn't have known about it, either. But I was happy to learn about it anyway.
Thankyou! Finally someone calls out the WWall Street Journal editorial page for what it is! :D
Between Reilly's comments and a commenter here I'm beginning to realize the level of stupidity behind their assertions, a low I was not initially able to fathom. I originally understood them to be grouping gays in with child rapists or U.S. hatin' terrorists. Now I see something even stupider. The uh... I don't wanna say thinking so let's go with good old fashioned insanity... goes something like this: if we open the McDonalds door to gays then we are encouraging thoughtless acceptance of anybody who is "different" from "us" in any way, even to the extremes of rapists and terrorists.
What can be concluded from such a view are two things: 1) it's against any sort of progressive thinking, open-mindedness, tolerance or just plain logic (cause is there really anything "progressive" about acceptance of gays? they're just gay! whatever that means... but still you get the point) and 2) such a commenter assumes everyone in the world is as dumb as them, equally unable to tell the obvious difference between supporting diversity and, well, supporting rape and Al Qaeda...
Now I've done and said some totally off-base things in my life myself. I've been lazily tolerant, empathetic and non-judgmental before really thoroughly thinking through concepts of morality all the way. I'm in my early twenties, I'm sorting out ideas of right and wrong. And when I was in my teens I was homophobic too. Then I saw "Brokeback Mountain" and afterwards couldn't deny I loved these characters and felt for them even if I didn't understand their sexuality. Since then I've seen more movies on the subject, read books, taken classes, I have a better understanding even if it's not my sexuality (at least I don't think... but ya never really know until you know). Here's my point: how much thinking does it really take to accept someone whose gay? Any? Does it just take seeing a little two hour movie about them? How could anybody get it so wrong as O'Reilly has here? Or, as Roger Ebert recently simply put it, "how do they get that way?"
I think David Lynch should have written the dialogue to go something like: "Why are there people like Bill in the world?" Cause Frank really is a lot simpler to imagine, for me anyway, perverts are a dime a dozen and though not easy to stomach they are easy to account for. The levels of stupidity FOX news sink to... It would be comic genius if it weren't a real-life horror show!
It is something of an over-simplification to equate sexual perversion, in general, with a special proclivity for sex crime (as sex crimes are now effectively defined, but they have changed immensely and will likely continue to do so). While some aberrant sexualities are statistically associated closely with crime, many others are not. I think your point is that "everyone" eats at McDonald's and yet McDonald's only wants to feature politically correct humans in its commercials. That is hardly surprising. Like McDonald's is no trying to manipulate people. In any case, it will be a long road before McDonald's extends its "Come as you are" slogan to everyone and you will probably not see commercials inclusive of those with S&M or pedophilian inclinations for many years. (Though, come to think of it, I've often been a bit suspicious of Ronald himself in this regard. Maybe he is just ahead of his time.)
Ronald The Rapist: "You'll be hungry, I'll sell ya. When the fries are down, these uh... civilized people, they'll eat my burgers. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve..."
Funny response John S., though I'm not sure if it was to me or Jim Hawk The Third or who. I hadn't really thought of the point that McDonalds just picks out which groups are politically correct to cater to, maybe that was his intended point. But his writing reveals his prejudices. I just don't understand how you jump from gay to sex criminals, except by using extremely superficial logic, or hatefully/misunderstandingly, or as a knee-jerk reaction against diversity of any kind, or as some twisted combo of all the above.
As for your first comment there, agreed.
It may not be deliberate, but you need to be careful about associating S&M with pedophilia. S&M is perfectly natural. Peodaphilia is not.
Not sure I follow you there Aussie. What do you mean by "natural"? ("Normal?") I wouldn't say either are particularly ideal or healthy if that's what you're saying... In any case, yeah, they are separate types of sexualties... Which of course isn't to say someone couldn't be both. (Until they're locked up, then they'll just be a zombie in a dangerous animal zoo.)
Some people just group em all together in one big, unhappy, dysfunctional family. With gays in there too apparently, like there's some chain of command with gays as the gatekeepers and as you go deeper into weird sex castle you eventually get to King Pedo and his rapist knights... and their visiting friends/ business partners from across the pond, Al Qaeda. So if McDonalds says it's okay to be gay, my god, do they invite the whole kingdom of Pervertland and their adjoining anarchist country Hatemaerica?
Note: I should have said *unless* said they are locked up, instead of until (which assumes they will commit some sort of crime just because they are an S&M pedophile, which they probably have no control over, all they can do is control their sexuality... like anybody in that respect). My writing teaches me my own prejudices now.
Also, I might have been a little bit cynical about if they are locked up (calling it a zoo and all). That said, no petting, kids.
Karlos, S&M encompasses a wide range of behaviours. It includes everything from dripping candlewax onto one's lover and spanking them (on the least extreme end of the scale) to erotic asphyxiation and beating up one's partner almost to death one the extreme end. The latter two are not natural in the slightest. However, spanking, the use of candlewax, being whipped and rough sex (to use a few examples) are healthy. Whether they are ideal or not is open to subjective interpretation. Personally I think they are as ideal as vanilla sex.
However that is not really the point. To put S&M, which is often more about fantasy than actual pain (and when it does involve actual pain, is relatively minor; such as with the use of dominatrixes), in the same catogory of peodaphilia is not only ignorant but incredibly inaccurate. It's like saying that gay people are paedophiles. The truth is that while some sex offenders may practice extreme S&M, it is entirely different to the S&M that many people, knowingly and unknowingly, practise.
BTW, just to make it absolutely clear, I do not support the use of 'erotic asphyxiation and beating up one's partner almost to death' at all. It's just that S&M comes in different forms; similarly to pornography which has playboy on one end of the scale and rape fantasy on the other.
I'm not sure where I grouped them altogether? Maybe I did somewhere and haven't caught myself? You keep saying I'm associating them but, from what I can see of my comments on this page, I've been arguing what you are, that it is very ignorant and incredibly inaccurate to make these sort of generalizations, grouping gays with sex criminals and, yes, grouping S&M with sex criminals would be wrong too (unless they happen to be that too)... Read what I wrote and you'll see I'm on your side, man! Were you originally responding to *John S.* above (I see a sentence there that may have set you off on this)?
If that's what it is, no worries, I've mistaken who said what before too, easy enough to do online. Just get it right man, that's all. (For the record, the first time on this page that I associated the two together was when I was, mostly in jest, suggesting the hypothetical combo of both S&M and pedo (and sex criminal) and went into a little eccentric digression about that, where I got a little tripped up on my assumptions... and corrected myself, myself.
But, anyway, thanks for the clarification, I guess. Yeah, you're right, it is very subjective. Me personally, and I don't intend this is a judgment against it but maybe it is, "healthy" doesn't seem like quite the right word because it implies there's something objectively beneficial there. (Can we just settle on... "pleasurable to some", maybe?) Also, and this I sort of let go at first but now I'm gonna go there, when you said S&M is "natural" before but then said pedo wasn't... well, I get lost there. Natural as in... nature? What do you mean by natural? Cause I'm pretty sure you'd find pedo animals out there too. Does that make it "natural"? (I'm not saying it does or doesn't per se. What's your definition of "natural"?)
Maybe this is just my opinion but this idea of any sort of natural sexuality is one of the biggest myths out there. ALL sexualities are perversions. There's nothing normal about any, they're all and each unique constructs, and only natural as so far as we are all kind-of-sort-of a part of a "Nature." And that's not to say we don't have total control over our sexualties, not at all. Nor does it mean sex is evil... or good. It just is. Some sexualities are less dangerous than others. Some are even productive in the sense that they lead to giving life. But the birthing process and the sexuality that caused are two (or three) independent events (what caused the attraction and the result of it... as well as the inbetween stage). So you have to isolate the sexuality itself and really look at what the logic is behind it. I think what you'll find is usually the logic is pretty thin and it's, for the most part, just a fetish deeply embedded in the person's psychology. They can't stop themselves from feeling the attraction and, if their "nature" happens to be a destructive one, that's their tragic curse. What they may be able to control, if they have enough conscience to battle it, is stopping themselves from acting on the impulses. (And when I say some sexualities, like S&M, seem less ideal than others, I'm speaking strictly from a practical standpoint... and maybe also with some concern for that relationship, perhaps unwarranted.)
I hope this has been an educational experience. Anybody is free to disagree with me on this theory (or anything else)...
Ps. Somebody really needs to make a movie about all this, sorting it out. (If there isn't already a few I don't know about out there that touch on it... In roundabout ways "The Crying Game", "Happiness" and, in an abstract way, "Naked Lunch" and the work of William S. Burroughs... come to mind. But only lightly touching on what I'm saying above. Also, I've never seen Jim's "It's Pat!" but I'd be interested just based on this discussion.)
Holy hell, how did we get here from an innocent little, maybe even a little cheesy-obvious McDonalds commercial...
*also, sorry if this is a double-post*
Sorry, I was unclear. I know that you didn't put them together. I was more reacting to your comment 'I wouldn't say either are particularly ideal or healthy.'
I guess when we talk about what is natural and what is not, and I like your comment that all sexuality are perversions, we need to ask why peodaphilia is illegal. The reason is because of the lack of consent. No child is in a position to give consent. That is why I used the term unnatural to describe peodaphilia, since it automatically involves the lack of consent (of course, what may be peodaphilia in one society may not be regarded as such in other societies, since the age of consent varies). Add violence to it, such as with rape (which is also about the lack of consent) and you have something, which whilst not necessarily unnatural, is certainly not ideal.
S&M, or at the S&M that I regard as 'healthy' is entirely different as it is fully consensual and isn't violent.
Isn't there some irony in McDonalds, which has endured so much ridicule for not serving actual food, using a gay character in an ad, given that gays were so long treated as if they weren't actual people?
As to O'Reilly, I don't worry about him. There were a lot of people who couldn't accept blacks in the 60s, or liberated women in the 80s. His attitude is a holdover; just give it time, and the number of people who feel as he does about gays and spout their intolerance will dwindle.
Yes, the kid is cute. Yes, the ad is charming. And yes, O'R needs to be played off.
What is of more interest to me is the change over at McD's. While it may be myth, the legend goes that the original Ronald McDonald was fired because he was gay. Nevertheless, there's no comparable commercial here in the US...which shows exactly where McD's really stands. This is a business decision pure and simple. And I guess that's identical to why O'R raised a fuss.
What I really found most interesting here, Jim, were your observations about the storytelling technique and ambiguity of meaning within the ad. And with that in mind, it is even more understandable why the ad is French, with nothing comparable here in the US.
Sorry to be leaving another post so quickly Jim, but I think you may be interested in a thought that has been discussed elsewhere about the reason why so many males are now apparently more accepting of gay relationships (the NYT poll mentioned at the end of your original post).
The argument goes that these days, the surest way of getting people to think that you are gay is if you are anti-gay. Think: "wide stance," and "lift my luggage," and all the other nonsense we've been hearing from right-wing, self-hating gay GOPers. This reasoning leads to the conclusion that (some) straight guys simply see being anti-gay as a marker of actually being gay. And rather than risk that, they now have to project a more accepting attitude.
I don't really want to buy that, but who knows. More logical and less convoluted to me would be to look at it from and evolutionary perspective. Less competition for females would certainly make me a very happy camper if I was straight, and I might even encourage some of my friends to start playing for the other team.
No Jerry Lewis reference here. It's a good English translation, though.
The father says: "J'avais la même tête que toi à ton âge. Je peux te dire que je faisais un vrai carton avec les nanas! Dommage qu'il y a que des garçons dans ta classe... T'aurais toutes tes chances."
A more word-for-word translation would be: "I had the same head as you at your age. I can tell you that I scored well with the chicks! A pity that there are only boys in your class. You would have all the chances."
The boy smiles after "vrai carton avec les nanas" because it's a very old-fashioned way of putting this - a typical U.S. sitcom feature where someone gets a laugh by talking like in the 1970s.
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