Dick Guns
Click to viewwhole episode, worth watching
Some highlights from the Buzzfeed article:
“The topic of guns and masculinity - the equating of guns and dicks in particular - was a collaboration idea going on in the community,” Gordon-Levitt said. “It’s funny and it’s also really resonant. We didn’t know what we were going to do with it. When I had my conversation with Seth and Evan about doing something for the show, I was telling them about a few different things being talked about in the community and when this one came up they were like, We get paid lots of money to make dick jokes. This is our area of expertise. Then it was Seth who said, ‘What if their dicks were actually guns?’ That’s when we started thinking about it like a product.”
…Goldberg and Rogen’s first vignette focuses on the corporations who sell men Dick Guns, the second centers on a lawyer who defends men who accidentally shoot people with their Dick Guns, and the third is about a politician (played by Zac Efron) who builds his campaign on the paranoia of Dick Guns being taken away from American citizens.
“They’re all based on fear - every one of them,” Goldberg told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. “The first one: If you don’t get this, you’re not going to get laid. The second one: If you don’t join this, you’ve been taken advantage of. The third one: If you don’t do this, everyone you love is going to die.”
The emotional manipulation inherent in gun control legislation was something Gordon-Levitt strongly felt needed to be included in the episode. “Guns are an issue we all get very emotional about - on both sides - and there’s good reasons for that. So any time there’s a group of people with strong feelings about something, there’s going to be others who come in and try to take advantage of that,” he said. “Ultimately, that’s what all three of the Dick Guns segments are about: three different entities - an arms company, an attorney, and a politician - all trying to profit off of the emotional attachment we have to guns. That’s worth pointing out and making fun of.”
…“America seems like an easy place to shoot a bunch of people, and that should not be the case,” said Rogen, who was born in Canada. “I’ll be totally honest: It’s odd. You’d think after any number of the things that have happened over the last decade and a half, any one of them would have made someone do something to make it less easy to just shoot a bunch of people if you want to.”
He continued, “It’s bizarre that not a lot seems to be happening to change that. It seems obvious that it’s all money and political back-channeling, and whatever effort there would be to make better gun control is destroyed by money and lobbying and all the same bullshit that makes people hate the government and think it doesn’t run properly in the first place. It just seems pretty obvious, to me, that’s what is happening and why nothing has changed. It makes people richer not to change it.”