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Buzz Feed
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Boy Meets World Praised For Resurfaced Gay Joke
It's fair to say that whenever a clip from an old movie or TV show resurfaces online, it typically doesn't go down too well amid today's cultural climate. Whether it's a joke that no longer lands, a stereotype that's aged poorly, or even just an entire storyline that feels shockingly inappropriate by modern standards, it's incredibly rare that the content from decades ago manages to age well. Which is why Boy Meets World fans were left pleasantly surprised when they rewatched a 'gay joke' from a 2000 episode of the show that was recently posted to Reddit. The clip was taken from Season 7, episode 13: 'The Provider,' which first aired more than 25 years ago, in January 2000. For context, one of the episode's storylines follows Eric Matthews, played by Will Friedle, after he finds a 'lucky penny' on the floor. To prove that the penny has made him invincible, he tells his friends to watch as he seemingly goes to pick a fight with a burly footballer called Rocco in front of his teammates. Approaching Rocco while his friends look on in horror, Eric says: 'Hey, Rocco, just curiously, as an athlete on the football team, is it a distraction being gay?' The live studio audience gasps at this question, but they were delivered an instant plot twist when Rocco gently reaches out to Eric and exclaims: 'Thank you.' 'It's OK,' Eric kindly smiles back, reaching out to comfort the footballer. Rocco then tells his teammates: 'I've been holding it in for so long… Fellas, I'm gay.' But his teammates barely react, with two of them replying: 'That's OK, Rocco, so are we!' And after pressing play on this clip with bated breath when it resurfaced on Reddit, viewers were pleased that a 'gay joke' that initially appeared to be set up for a cheap laugh or offensive punchline actually flipped the script entirely. The moment became sincere and emotional rather than a gag, and this inversion challenges the audience's expectation that a joke about sexuality will be derogatory, which was pretty progressive for of making anybody the butt of the joke or degrading a character, the humor in this scene comes from the surprise twist, and the irony of multiple members of the football team being sets a tone of normalization instead of ridicule when it comes to representing gay characters on screen, and also offers a surprisingly refreshing image of masculinity and male friendship for this time. Needless to say, people were quick to share how impressed they were by the scene in the forum's comments, with one person writing: 'That's an actually great and powerfully positive joke that was definitely ahead of its time 👏' 'Based on the title I was already cringing but that was actually a really great message, especially for the 90s. It could have gone real bad real fast,' somebody else added: 'I remember this. Great scene and messaging.'Others acknowledged that the scene was actually in keeping with Eric's character, too, as throughout the show he was always shown to be hugely emotionally intelligent — despite other shortcomings that turned him into bit of a caricature at wrote: 'I appreciate how they kept Eric's insightfulness about people til the end, despite his flanderization. For however dumb he seemed otherwise, he really could read people and connect with them well.'And another concluded: 'Eric Matthews- Subverting everyone's expectations since the 90s.' Do you love all things TV and movies? Subscribe to the Screen Time newsletter to get your weekly dose of what to watch next and what everyone is flailing over from someone who watches everything!
CBC
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Extraordinary true stories of survival on the land fill Northlore with 'magic of the Yukon'
Five storytellers sit around a campfire, and as their stories weave together they grow, through animation, into lore. "I think we were trying to grasp a bit that magic of the Yukon, the spell of the Yukon," said Melaina Sheldon, a Tlingit actor and writer who, alongside David Hamelin, co-created and co-produced Northlore, the National Film Board, Northwestel and CBC Absolutely Canadian documentary. "It's a bit elusive, what we've done, because it's not paranormal," said Sheldon, adding it's "somewhere in between. We pinned down as magical realism." The spark for the 54-minute film was a live-action and animated short shown at the 2020 Available Light Film Festival: The Provider told the story of Gary Sidney Johnson's first moose hunt as an adult. "It was kind of like the pilot for Northlore," said Johnson, an entertainer and cultural ambassador in Carcross, Yukon. The stories of Northlore involve meetings with animals and survival experiences: An unexpected goose sighting while skiing a glacier, a wolf trailing a river journey, a life-or-death illness linked to a beaver, and a meeting with a group of rams that bullets won't touch. Sheldon says the animation, created with Winnipeg-based Dene artist Casey Koyczam and his team, allowed the film to recreate parts of the storytellers' pasts without having to hire actors, especially for the moose or eagle. Melissa Matheson Frost's story goes back to her childhood at her family's camp, when she got seriously ill, thousands of kilometres from any hospital. Her grandmother, Alice Frost, drew on traditional knowledge to help her heal. "To see her grandmother Alice Frost in animation — she's passed on, but she's like, for me, a Yukon superhero," said Sheldon. "That's what it feels like to see young Dennis [Shorty, one of five storytellers in Northlore], to see Gary [Johnson]. These are heroes within the territory." The film came full circle for its premiere at the Available Light Film Festival in Whitehorse on Feb. 7, but heroes still sometimes get nervous before the big day. When he first shared his story, Johnson was worried hunters with more traditional knowledge might look down on him, "but if anything it's had the opposite effect," he said. Men thank him for his story, and share their worries: 'I went hunting one or two times and I'm embarrassed about letting people know I've only went a few times,' or things like that." For Frost, who's from the Vuntun Gwichin First Nation and grew up in the Yukon, the film fits how oral history keepers share their knowledge. "We don't tell people this is how you do things. You tell them a story, and … it encourages them to ask questions, it encourages them to research and wonder, and that's the kind of magic in it, is the empowerment." "The First Nations of this land have a lot of stories and legend," Sheldon added. "This is how legends come to be, is you make your own legend … and these stories grow in their epicness and in their telling." Sheldon hopes Northlore inspires others to make and share their own stories:
