Fox was hesitant about the "Men on ..." sketches before the series premiere. According to series creator
Keenen Ivory Wayans, the chairman of Fox sat down with him to try to persuade him to pull "Men on Films" from the premiere episode. Damon Wayans reported that after Fox moved
In Living Color from its original 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time to 8:00 p.m., Fox censors began exercising more editorial control over the sketches. "David will say something to me [in a "Men on ..." sketch] and it will cut to me and I'm smiling. What I said was taken out. It happens a lot." The "Men on ..." series was controversial within the LGBT community. At the time Blaine and Antoine were the only recurring gay characters on network television, also making them the only African American gay characters on the air. As evidenced by a 1992 survey by the San Francisco chapter of the
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, opinion was split roughly down the middle on the sketches. Half of respondents found the sketches humorous while the other half found them offensive and dangerous. Gay African American filmmaker
Marlon Riggs sharply criticized the sketches, saying that they perpetuated "a notion that black gay men are sissies, ineffectual, ineffective, womanish in a way that signifies inferiority". In an appearance on
The Phil Donahue Show following
In Living Colors second season, Damon Wayans responded to critics of "Men on ..." by saying: Well, first off, all the sketches on the show have to be looked at within the context of the show, and it's not as though we isolate any particular group. We make fun of everybody, and so I don't think anybody should have a chip on their shoulder—when it's a free-for-all. And the other thing, too, is, the sketch is not a bashing sketch. We don't do jokes about any issues related to gay people. It's really a play on the extremes of the stereotype, and that's it. In 2021, Grier gave his thoughts on whether the sketch could be done today. He said:At the time, as far as I know, there were no
out gay or
trans/
genderfluid cast members. There was nothing in that comedy which I felt was homophobic gay hatred. But I also am smart enough to know it’s not how your heart was behind the joke; it’s how that joke or that characterization lands with other people. So that was a long time ago. I don’t think we could do that now, which is fine. If
Living Color were on now, I would hope that there would be more than one gay cast members in the show, and then they could tackle this humor using their voice.Author
J. L. King, whose writings explore the
down-low phenomenon within the African American male community, cited Blaine and Antoine, along with
drag performer
RuPaul, as images of what the word "gay" means to African American
men who have sex with men to explain one reason why such men do not identify themselves as gay. Cultural critic Angela Nelson places Blaine and Antoine in the context of what she identifies as the "sophisticated sissy" alongside characters like Lindy (
Antonio Fargas) from the film
Car Wash. These characters depict African American homosexual males as effeminate and/or cross dressers. The "sophisticated sissy" characterization frequently appears in dialogue between two (ostensibly heterosexual) black male characters, often in the context of one character accusing the other of being weak in his handling of women, and is often accompanied by a stereotypical limp wrist or hip swishing gesture. == See also ==