I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the original 2000 Scary Movie film could have gone down in history as one of the best comedies of all time had the film’s legacy not been tarnished by four increasingly uneven sequels, three of which didn’t even involve the original film’s masterminds, Shawn and Marlon Wayans of the brilliant Wayans family.
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but at that moment in 2000, Scary Movie just perfectly captured the cultural zeitgeist and parodied it perfectly. Now, 26 years later, there’s controversy over the trailer for the sixth film in the series and the use of a joke about pronouns of a nonbinary person—a controversy that, honestly, I’m not on board with, even as a transgender person myself. I haven’t seen the upcoming Scary Movie film, so I have no intention of defending the movie as a whole. It’s perfectly possible that the film contains jokes that I would find offensive and problematic. But I want to make the case that not only should the joke in the trailer be seen as inoffensive, it’s an important joke from an important ally of the trans community, and we should be encouraging more jokes of this nature.
First, to give you some background, the first two Scary Movie films (the best ones) were written by Shawn and Marlon Wayans (and a handful of co-writers, including Shawn and Marlon’s nephew Craig in the case of the second one), and were directed by Shawn and Marlon’s brother, Keenan Ivory Wayans. After that, new writers came in and ruined everything. But the new film (which is once again just called Scary Movie, but which I’m going to call Scary Movie 6 for clarity) is the first since 2001 to involve the Wayans family again, with Shawn, Marlon, Keenon Ivory, and Craig all contributing to the script.
The recent trailer that sparked controversy features a scene on a subway where a robot-like creature (designed to look like M3GAN of the 2022 horror film of the same name) removes a mask to reveal that they’re actually the masked killer from the previous Scary Movie films (which is based on the Ghostface from the Scream films), brandishes a knife, and stabs a person on the subway. Another passenger screams out in terror “Oh my god, he stabbed her.” At that point, the person being stabbed stops in the middle of the stabbing to shout “Not her! My pronouns are they/them. He stabbed them!”
Everyone is reporting that “Gen Z” is having a meltdown at this joke. I wonder how much of that is true and how much is just certain media outlets fanning the flames of controversy. But let’s say that there is controversy that’s not completely manufactured. There’s one important question to ask: Why?
What about this scene is offensive? Is anyone in the scene stating that the victim’s pronouns, or their larger gender identity, is invalid? Ghostface has a brief moment of saying “Huh?” at the situation, but that could just as easily be the killer’s confusion over why their victim is still talking while being stabbed. So why are we trying to argue that this is problematic? Is every instance in which a cis person mentions trans people considered to be an insult? As a transgender person, I thought this joke was hilarious. Yes, it’s a weird time to correct someone about your pronouns. You are literally dying. And at the same time, it’s funny because I would probably do that!
I feel like there’s this assumption that the joke in the trailer is coming with some sort of malicious intent, and that just tells me that anyone who is calling this problematic doesn’t know much about who Marlon Wayans is. Marlon has talked extensively about his relationship with his transgender son Kai, who does use they/them pronouns, and his journey to come to accept his son’s new identity. I’ll admit that Marlon does sometimes struggle with remembering the correct pronouns and sometimes uses words like “grief” to describe his experience with Kai, which I know some transgender people find to be a problematic term in that context. But, overall, Marlon has proven himself to be a loving father of his child and a big advocate for accepting your child for who they are.
“(I talk in my comedy special about) my transition as a parent, going from ignorance and denial to complete unconditional love and acceptance,” says Marlon in an interview with New York radio station Power 105.1 FM (which was transcribed by TODAY). “I think there’s a lot of parents out there that need that message, and I know I’m dealing with it.”
So I would argue that Marlon Wayans is definitely an ally, even if he’s an imperfect ally. Hell, even I screw up pronouns from time to time, and I’m trans. Cisnormativity is really hard to unlearn. I think he’s shown that he’s a supportive parent of a transgender child, and that’s what matters. And, once you see that, I think it becomes apparent that the joke in the Scary Movie 6 trailer is coming from a friend and not an enemy. And that friend gave us a gift with this joke, and it’s a gift we’re not appreciating.
You see, conservatives and hack comedians have often leaned on really mean-spirited jokes about transgender people, and they have about three jokes that they keep repeating over and over again. The most famous is the “I identify as an attack helicopter” joke, of which there are many variations. But this joke from the Scary Movie 6 trailer isn’t that. It doesn’t punch down; it doesn’t invalidate, and it’s genuinely a different joke than the ones that keep getting repeated. I would argue that we, as the transgender community, should be trying to tell the world that yes, there are ways to make jokes about transgender people without being transphobic. There are ways to find humor in our experience that don’t punch down and don’t put us as the butt of the joke. That’s exactly what this joke in the trailer was.
It feels almost like the transgender community is so used to being treated maliciously in the media that we can’t recognize what is and isn’t intended as an insult. Now, I’ll admit, the interviews with the Wayans Brothers about being against “cancel culture” were somewhat cringeworthy, and the fact that they put “Without Me” by Eminem (whom I’ve also defended, but that’s another story) in the trailer suggest that the Wayans Brothers are courting controversy with this new movie. But nothing in the trailer really offended me. Even the scene where someone turns up at a door looking to do “half gay shit” and Shawn Wayans’ character says “Why just half gay?” doesn’t feel like a punch-down at all. It feels like there’s a lot of empty boasting about how offensive this film is really going to be. But maybe I’m wrong, and the whole thing is a problematic clusterfuck once we get to see the full film. We’ll find out when it hits theaters June 5.
Photo courtesy of social media
