“Gay n***as be dumb as fuck. They don’t ever know when n***as is straight.”
According to comedians Kevin Barnett and Jermaine Fowler, the same could be said about the other side. Some straight dudes don’t even know they’re gay.
Offensive as that dialogue may be, it’s the revelatory sentiment surrounding Homo Thugs, a new Web series that premiered on YouTube last week. Developed entirely by the two New York City comedians, the show intends to expose the presence of homosexuality in a cultural environment where it’s not exactly recognized and celebrated.
Speaking shortly after initial buzz for the series garnered “Homo Thugs” a Friday placement on Gawker, Jermaine Fowler told the Daily Dot that the show first derived from an improv comedy sketch the two worked out at The Creek and Cave in Long Island City, Queens.
“It was originally just an idea that Kevin came up with about two in-the-closet homophobic gangsters who don’t even know the things they say are gay,” Fowler said.
“We realized that it was actually a great commentary on that type of extremely hypocritical heterosexual who hates on gays due to a code that he feels he has to uphold. It’s a type of overconfidence that’s used to mask a complete lack of confidence in who he really is.”
In “Soft in the Paint,” the premiere episode of Homo Thugs, that means shouting inviting, sexualized obscenities at a tank topped man walking down Fowler and Barnett’s street. The duo says they have a laundry list of topics and scenarios they’d like to play out, with new episodes set to post every two weeks.
“A lot of people think we had a political approach to the sketch, but that’s not true,” Fowler said. “We just enjoy the absurdities that ignorant people say, and we like satire. With all the celebrities that have come out recently [Anderson Cooper, Frank Ocean], we thought it was a good time for the sketch to come out.”
Photo via YouTube