“Я не гей” (“I am not gay”) is a reality TV program broadcast since April 25 on Youtube. And more than a million people have already seen it. Halfway between Secret Story and Koh Lanta, the concept is to reveal the homosexual among the eight men locked up together. Over the course of tests based on the most dubious prejudices – a candidate’s reaction to a stripper or stripper drawn by lot, blind identification and touch of a female or male buttocks, this last test making it possible to win an immunity trophy – it’s about exposing the “intruder” among heterosexuals.
Participants have 52 minutes per episode to stop their vote. One of them will be eliminated by the majority. If the homosexual person crosses the eight episodes without having been pierced up to date, he wins two million rubles (27,000 euros). Conversely, the sum will go to those who have identified it.
“Finding a homosexual in this country is like finding a working McDonald’s. There are certainly some, but not many and few people know about them”throw a Voice off after a traveling camera crossed a snowy landscape to a background of distressing music. The atmosphere heats up with the arrival of the candidates who greet with laughter a caged rooster, placed at the entrance to the TV studio. The “rooster” defines a homosexual in Russian prison slang. A deadly insult, so serious that it has now almost disappeared from everyday language. The participants then discover a living room decorated with photos of old men kissing, deer copulating. The stage is set.
The first test consists of sleeping together in the same room, in the same bed and sharing the same shower… Oiled men with prominent pecs and bimbos in very scanty outfits complete the scene. In just one week, the show has easily exceeded one million views on Youtube. If some comments describe the show as“interesting” or“fun”most bet on the coming out of the presenters. “The fiercest ending: Amiran confesses that he is gay and kisses Milonov. It will be megahype!”, writes a viewer. Another applauds the concept: “Anyway, guys, well done for making such a format of the program! Finally, viewers will understand that gays are no different from non-gays, that you can be straight and dumb, and that femininity or masculinity means absolutely nothing.”
A far-right and homophobic MP hosts the show
To frame the “game”, the show’s co-presenters: blogger Amiran Sardarov, who explains that he wanted to “entertainment and something socially interesting”and… Vitaly Milonov, a far-right Russian MP, known in particular for his LGBTophobic positions.
In 2013, he was at the origin of the law punishing with a fine any act of homosexual “propaganda” in front of minors. “Every day I will try to help participants identify the weak link”, he promises. In pictures tours in 2014 by France 24 in Saint Petersburg, Vitaly Milonov had spoken edifying words qualifying homosexuals as “child rapist sodomites”. In 2021, he received a reprimand from Russia’s Human Rights Council for calling for “sterilization” homosexuals.
In Russia, the 2013 law had been supported by 67% of the population, according to a poll quoted by Geopolis. A third of those polled even considered homosexuality to be a “disease that needed to be treated“. And states of mind have hardly changed, if we are to believe this study from the Levada Center in 2020 which establishes that one in five Russians believe that homosexuals should be “eliminated“. Judging “ineffective” the law of 2013, two deputies of the Russian Communist Party have also proposed to toughen it in 2015, providing for penalties ranging from a fine to 15 days in prison for openly homosexual men. They called homosexuality “deadly threat to all humanity”. In Russia, it was considered a crime until 1993 and a mental illness until 1999 (1982 in France). If homosexuality is officially decriminalized, Gay Pride is prohibited, activists regularly imprisoned and the beating of homosexuals tolerated, especially in Chechnya.
The international press, mocking but worried
For magazine Stubborn, “this is probably the most homoerokitch content in the country!” He also considers that the result is somewhat “contradictory”because “homoerotic as fuck…”. the Mirror [article en anglais] echoes the reactions on the web. “What’s the point ?asks a user who is worried about the consequences of the media coverage of the homosexual who will be revealed in the program: “Who are you going to expose next? The Muslims? The Jews?”
In a similar genre, one of the entertainment episodes Odd One Out from the American Youtube channel Jubilee which also consisted in unmasking the homosexual among seven people. But the game consisted of guessing by asking questions for fifteen minutes with a completely different goal: to create a movement of empathy for the good living together.