I'll Tell You When to Laugh at the Gays

1980s Prissy Hollywood Rainbow Connection

Jul 15, 2024

Two cops, one a fey file clerk, the other straight who casually uses the word faggot, are paired up to solve a murder in the gay community.

Partners is Paramount’s soft-centered reimagining of Cruising. It straddles the line between acceptance and intolerance and struggles between wanting to wave a flag of bigotry or drape itself in a rainbow flag of compliant programming. Maybe the use of outdated gay jokes and pitiful stereotypes was late-20th century Hollywood’s way of resisting the inevitable politics that were just beginning to outwardly promote gay lifestyles. 1982 was a year for having it both ways and Partners ridicules while it accepts. Partners is the grimace you make when forced to hug someone you don’t like.

Most of the comedy is modeled after gay prissiness and ineptitude with stale Odd Couple jokes baked into it. This guy is such a woman for cooking and keeping a house tidy! A pink VW driven by the undercover cops is supposed to be funny when we see it driving in traffic. Cut to wide shot, laff at the fags.

The extreme stereotyping of gays that Partners so heavily relies on, is no longer offensive, but the passing years have not made it funny either. A leering queen may paint gays in an unflattering light, but it’s a rare moment of humor. When Sidney Lassick makes a cameo as a squealing sissy, that too, is funny. These are the best moments in Partners and the only times I laughed, but my favorite moments can’t even be appreciated by the intended audience who is meant to be amused or disgusted by the sight of men in abbreviated denim shorts.

40 years later, Partners manages to remain an interesting enough time capsule, in both the gay cultural sense and how Hollywood has handled the once taboo subject.

(1982; James Burrows)