Ted 2

The(ir) Blurb...

Months after John's divorce, Ted and Tami-Lynn's marriage seems on the same road. To patch things up, Ted and Tami-Lynn plan to have a child with John's help, but their failed efforts backfire disastrously. Namely, Ted is declared property by the government and he loses all his civil rights. Now, Ted must fight a seemingly hopeless legal battle with an inexperienced young lawyer to regain his rightful legal status. Unfortunately, between Ted's drunken idiocies and sinister forces interested in this situation to exploit him, Ted's quest has all the odds against him.

Director/writer Seth MacFarlane has never been particularly thoughtful when it comes to the representation of minorities in his work. With Ted 2 though, he has included some of his most defamatory and cruel transphobic jokes. In one scene, Ted borrows John’s laptop and finds pornography featuring trans women. He yells at John, “You sick bastard. Look at this, ‘chicks with dicks’! [...] There are no chicks with dicks, Johnny, only guys with tits.” John yells back that he has a disease, needs help, and it’s a “relief to finally be caught.” The two smash John’s laptop with a hammer and throw the pieces in the Boston Harbor out of fear someone would see the porn in his web browser history.

First, this offensive language dehumanizes transgender women – reducing their lived experience as women to being “guys with tits.” Furthermore, this particular scene fetishizes transgender women, while shaming anyone who may be attracted to a trans person. As the majority of Americans continue to learn about trans people through what they see in the media, this type of defamatory “humor” directly correlates to the disproportionately high levels of hate violence that affects transgender women. The scene easily could have been removed without any bearing on the plot. This film - like most of MacFarlane’s work - is designed to appeal to his idea of what straight cisgender males find humorous, but he needs to learn that appealing to one audience does not have to mean insulting and alienating others. Ted 2 also included the return of minor gay character Guy and introduced his new boyfriend Rick. The two exist more for comic relief than story. Out comedian Kate McKinnon also appeared as herself in a brief Saturday Night Live Clip.

Why even try to explain and/or analyze this kind of mentality?