"It turns me on when a man looks like a terrorist," says waiter Martin Hranáč. He says he films the videos to stop customers from "beating him with a tray".
He burned out as a waiter - and started making videos
When he's not serving, Hranáč, 42, tours the Czech Republic with his comedy tour Crazy show. But he gets most of his attention on TikTok - some of his videos have even been seen by over four million viewers. Hranac is said to have been motivated by his own burnout - and a desire to vent about what working in gastronomy entails - to film his Tiktok sketches, which self-ironically poke fun at the plight of waiters and waitresses.
"To keep from beating them with a tray, those people, I started making videos," he let himself be heard on Honza Dědek's 7 Falls. But he doesn't want to complain about the customers. "It's not the main fault of those people, it's my fault. It's my fault that I didn't leave the restaurant business a long time ago."
But he says his work doesn't just serve as inspiration for creating content. "I might even enjoy it a little bit. Some kind of fetish. I don't know if I've gotten a little carried away with it," Hranac, who says he has an "allergy" when he comes to work,said in an interview. "I'm getting the hang of it. And then I take a Neurol. I only take half of it because when I used to take a whole one, I would go to other tables," the waiter continued to exaggerate.
How do you know a professional?
"We waiters are minimum wage psychologists," he went on to describe his time in the restaurant business. Hranac, who found a job in a five-star hotel in Germany, claims with exaggeration that he has his customers read. "I know everything. If he's there with his mistress, how long they've been together, if she's happy, unhappy..." he enumerates. In the same way, he says, he can form a quick opinion the moment he sits down as a customer in a restaurant. "I know a professional. Because he doesn't do service like me," he glossed on the talk show 7 Falls of Honza Dědek.
Long live stereotypes, not just about gay men...
"You wanted to be a waiter since you were a kid?" followed up with a logical question from Honza Dědek. "I wanted to be a hairdresser. But my father forbade me. He said: a faggot, and a hairdresser, we might as well have named him Kamil and lived in Hulín," joked Hranáč, whose family had strong musical influences. He himself also tried his luck as a singer in SuperStar, played a "ballerina" and a "dog" in the Semafor theatre, and even got his fans to vote him into 29th place in last year's Golden Nightingale.
The height of attraction? Black women and black men
The theme of work is also reportedly key for Hranac in his love life. "I used to pick on thugs like that, that's what I liked. But today, when I see a guy in overalls and I know he's going to work? That's exciting! Those values change, over time," Hranáč said of how his preferences have changed since he turned 30, adding that before his 30th birthday, he was "getting high" on men of Arab descent.
"I enjoyed it. When it looks like a terrorist, it turns me on," he rebuffed the talk show audience with another catchphrase. "But not now. Now I've figured out what I like. I like black people," Hranac stated - and followed right up with another series of unfunny jokes not even worth repeating.
Gay as a humorous "figurehead"? Convenient
Why, you wonder, does this openly gay man - who drops one stereotypical anecdote after another, defines himself against the LGBT community and exaggerates many things to the extreme - get taken seriously by a significant part of the majority society, and yet is enthusiastically applauded for his self-presentation?
Because he wants nothing from society. He calls neither for respect, nor for change, nor for the elimination of prejudices and stereotypes, and even allows many heterosexuals to stare at him with open mouths, to laugh out loud at his movements, tone of voice and homophobic rants.
Homophobes often do these things to other gay people in other, less amusing contexts - but as Martin Hranac's audience, they get the "green light" to do so, and are still praised for apparently having a sense of humor and an open mind when they don't mind listening to a gay person's stories. They can't go much lower than that.
If all gays "functioned" this way, it would make mainstream society supremely comfortable. After all, when someone presents themselves as a humorous "piece", it's easier to move them around the chessboard when it comes to the more serious games.
