The jokers behind the recent “God hates a fag” video that caused quite a rumble online, have made another video which I hadn’t noticed until the other day when “Donnie” himself told me about it.
I managed to track ‘Donnie’, known in the real world as actor Joey Oglesby, and he was kind enough to spare me a few moments to chat about his video ‘The Bible Says’ in which the Donnie character sings about how “God hates a fag.”
Although Joey hasn’t yet (to my knowledge) admitted that ‘Donnie’ is him, there is now no doubt. According to ‘Donnie’ a new video will be coming out quite soon, and “work is progressing” on the C.H.O.P.S (Changing Homosexuals Into Ordinary People) program.
However, the latest video on Donnie’s own website seems to add a lot more humor to the subject which so many people, including YouTube, Google Video, and Myspace, all had a sense of humor failure about.
At this stage I’m glad that the Davies camp are playing up the joke a little more obviously, but I’m still a little puzzled as to where they want this to go next. Another video will surely not have anywhere near the same effect and at worst might even be viewed as being deliberately antagonistic toward both Christians and gay people.
If the original video was made to promote discussion using humor about how the church vilify and struggle to treat gay people in a way that they should, then it pretty much achieved it’s objective. But a lack of follow-up leaves me feeling a little disappointed that ‘Donnie’, or the group behind the prank, may have let a valuable opportunity to raise a few good questions (aside “who is Donnie Davies?) pass them by.
The sad truth though is that while Donnie and his ‘Bible Says’ video fade into the forgotten, the very real attitudes that made so many wonder if his video might actually be real, are still out there and part of the religious opinions of more people than perhaps we might want to think about. Perhaps that is the point that Donnie Davies should now be making?
Wrote the following comment on Feb 26, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Simon,
I don’t know if you saw this a couple of weeks ago but I think they did call it a joke.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3egOusDlgKI
Wrote the following comment on Feb 27, 2007 at 4:30 am
The thing is, as funny as it was, the video got removed from every major website yet, as I mentioned before, the real “Gid hates fag” vidoes remain online.
Thanks for the link tho Lendo.
Wrote the following comment on Feb 27, 2007 at 5:03 am
This is the first I’ve seen of this. I didn’t laugh, but I think it wasn’t funny to me since I found so much sad truth to it.
The reality of such a total disconnect between “the church” and the guy/lesbian; cross-gendered culture (among many other cultures) is sad to me. But I guess I should watch it again and let myself laugh despite the truth. Because I know that most humor is found in spite of the reality, no matter how despicable it is.
Thanks for sharing that though, Simon.
Wrote the following comment on Feb 27, 2007 at 4:37 pm
i think controversy for the sake of controversy is worthless… so hopefully he goes somewhere with this whole campaign. I wonder if he had any direction when he originally started publishing videos.. I mean he set up a whole website, I wonder what his goals are with it… if there were any. I guess in the coming months that will become apparent.
On the flip side, he may not have expected the response he’s received, this may all have really caught him a little unaware. I’m not sure if this is the case, but if it is, he would simply be reacting to a situation.. with no idea where he’s really going with all this and in more confusion then he’s created for other people. This would be a really hard position to be in.. not knowing what to do now that so much chaos has been created- but this may not be the situation at all.
Wrote the following comment on Feb 27, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Well they created three sites and some very polished videos. I think they knew full well what they were up to. Yes, I think it was funny, but where does that go now?