I don’t have enough time to fully dive into the silliness of this Slate piece arguing that Archer is especially homophobic, but I do want to highlight one bit of especial silliness:
On the other hand, Archer often plays off the kind of homophobic stereotypes that historically fostered so much fear and hatred toward gay people. Ray is often depicted as hypersexualized, and while he’s not alone in being oversexed (see: Pam), the trait feels quite loaded when applied to a gay man.
Dude: Every single character on Archer is hypersexualized! The show’s premiere episode’s opening sequence ends with a post-menopausal, matronly woman masturbating to the visage of a Russian KGB general! Archer sleeps with, by my rough count, 23,927 women in the show, often two or three at a time! Krieger created a virtual anime sex kitten girlfriend/wife! Pam is, well, Pam! Cheryl gets off on being choked and slapped around! The two least sexual characters on the whole show, Lana and Cyril, spend most of the first half of the first season trying to figure out ways to get it on! (If I remember correctly; it’s been a while since I watched the entirety of the first season.) But how dare you show that the gay dude is a sexual creature because, Oh-Emm-GEE! SterEOtypes!
Gah. Anyway. Carry on.
