Menudo: Latin American Boy Band

When I was in high school, studying French got you Tintin, Alix, and Spirou et Fantasio, but studying Spanish got you Papa Soltero, Que Pasa USA and  Menudo.  The boy band (Spanish slang for "young, untried, uncooked") was formed in 1977 by Puerto Rican promoter Edgardo Diaz.  They were a "revolving group": members retired on their sixteenth birthday, and were replaced.  To date, there have been 33 members, including future superstars Ricky Martin and Robi Rossa.

To date, Menudo has released over 40 albums, and a number of their singles have charted in Latin America.  They became popular in the United States in 1983, when they appeared on Saturday morning tv, singing and acting in brief sketches in English and Spanish.

Their cuteness was an obvious draw for gay kids and teenagers, especially when teen magazines began to display endless shirtless, swimsuit, and speedo shots.

But their music was a draw, too.  It was good, evocative, literate, and expertly arranged.  Not to mention accessible to both male and female fans.  At least in Spanish.

It's hard to make Spanish songs non-gender specific, but they often managed it.  For instance,  "Mas Que Amor" (More than Love):


Cuando estoy contigo, no se ni quien soy
no se ni como hacer, me quedo sin palabras
(When I'm with you, I don't know who I am, I don't know what to do, I'm left without words).

But in the heart of the homophobic 1980s, the English translation made sure that boys could sing only to girls::
When I'm next to her, I'm a mess.
The words just don't come out right.

Or "Perdido Sin Ti" (Lost without You):

Perdido sin ti, perdido en el mar
Como un laberinto en la oscuridad
(Lost without you, lost in the sea, like a labyrinth in the darkness.)

The English lyrics aren't nearly as evocative, and give the "ti" a gender:

I'm losing control of myself this time, she's got me losing my head.

Both Ricky Martin and Angelo Garcia (left) are publicly gay, and many other current and former members are gay-friendly.

Ralph Macchio: Up the Academy

Born in 1961, the short, skinny Ralph Macchio had huge, remarkably soulful eyes that allowed him to feign childhood innocence well into the 1990s, when his fellow teen idols had long since grown into roles as beefcake heroes or disillusioned suburbanites.   He was hired while still in high school to provide a sarcastic voice to Up the Academy (1980) a teen nerd comedy about a Chachi clone named Chooch sent to the abusive Weinberg Military Academy, where he makes friends with three "inmates."  All of them displayed a heterosexual prowess so intense that it provoked anxiety in their fathers: muscular Oliver  (Hutch Parker) got his girlfriend pregnant and ruined his dad's political career; sex-crazed Ike (Wendell Brown) slept with his televangelist-father's girlfriend; and cleptomaniac Hash (Tommy Citera) slept with one of his Arab father's spare wives.

Though the boys take a weapons class in which teacher Miss Bliss (Barbara Bach) presses guns to her breasts, otherwise they are subject to constant adult attempts at “perversion.”  A lisping, mincing “cultural affairs” teacher named Sisson, e.g., Sissy (Tom Poston), accosts them in their dorm rooms, offers erotic tuck-ins, and, explaining that he’s collecting the laundry, drools “Why don’t you slip out of your little undershorts?”  They learn ballroom dance with male partners, but when a dance with real girls is held, an off-key acapella group called “The Landmines” drives everyone away.

The primary threat of “perversion” comes from macho teacher Vervegaert, who tells Hash that he will “rip his balls off” and then corners him in the lavatory in a parody of a male rape (“You want to be my friend, don’t you?”).  Vervegaert is unable to acquire girls on his own, so blackmails the boys into acquiring Oliver’s girlfriend for him. The boys get their revenge by photographing him in ladies’ lingerie and publishing the photos during the big game, thus labeling him a "fag" and forcing him to leave town in disgrace.

However, since the “fag” is exteriorized and far away, the boys are amazingly intimate with each other.  They spend most of the film naked.  Do military cadets really do their homework in their underwear, or sit together on their bunk with their legs pressed together?  Though they drool, groan, and kvetch over girls, their relationships with each other take obvious precedence. They go to great lengths to help their friends; Ike, in fact, gives up a date with Miss Bliss to help Oliver.




The teen magazines ignored his costars, but they loved Ralph Macchio, who was soon displaying his dreamy bod in pinups next to Scott Baio and Robby Benson.  Pulled in to provide additional cuteness to the last season of Eight is Enough, he became patriarch Dick Van Patten’s pet, even invited to appear with Dick and Timothy Van Patten in a nepotistic project called High Powder (1982).  But his big break came with a homoromantic buddy-bond with Matt Dillon in the classic Outsiders (1983), which led directly to the blockbuster Karate Kid (1984)

Time Bandits

When I came home for Christmas break in 1981, my brother told me, "Go see Time Bandits! If you like Monty Python, you'll love it.  Believe me!"  I liked Monty Python, and besides, he was right about Meatballs (1979) and Popeye (1980), so I went.

It was awful.

11-year old Kevin (Craig Warnock) lives in a dreadful British suburb with abusive parents -- they watch tv  (in the movies, watching tv is a sign of weakness of character, or in parents child abuse). So he escapes through books (which apparently are ok).  His favorite subject is history.  He has plastered his bedroom walls with pictures of Medieval knights and ancient Greek warriors.

Not to mention a cut-out of a muscular Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, in red-striped bikini briefs, placed right next to the light switch so Kevin can see him every time he turns the light on and off.

Neglected, misunderstood kid who reads a lot, and likes nude men.  So far, standard gay-vague.  All he needs is a boyfriend.

Enter the Time Bandits -- six dwarfs who used to work for the Supreme Being. They have stolen a map that shows the location of holes in space-time, which they are using to steal fabulous treasures from Napoleon, Robin Hood, and so on.  They kidnap Kevin and bring him along.

We're supposed to like the dwarfs, but they're manipulative, greedy, self-serving, reprehensible.  With no buddy-bonds.  I kept trying to find special pairs among them, but they acted as a solid mass of reprehensible egoism.

Kevin finally finds the place he belongs, ancient Greece, where King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) offers to adopt him. Not a boyfriend, but at least a hunky father figure, like Jai's Tarzan.  But the moment someone starts to care for him, the dwarfs arrive and spirit him away.

Wait -- what happened to the opening, where Kevin was carefully established as gay-vague?  Nothing comes of it.

But at least ancient Greece was sunlit.  Every other time period is drab, washed-out, depressing.

Not even any beefcake to liven things up.  Agamemnon never takes off his shirt.  Michael Palin is tied up in his underwear, briefly.

Finally -- after many, many people are cheerfully killed,  the Surpreme Being catches the dwarfs, chastises them, and sends Kevin back to modern-day Britain.  Is he better, wiser for the adventure?  Has he recognized his true self?  Does he at least click his ruby slippers together and say "There's no place like home?"

No.  Not at all. His parents explode, his house burns down, and he's left homeless and orphaned on the street, much worse than before. Roll the end credits.

Roll a shot of me and my date blinking as we leave the theater, silent until one of us says "We could have seen Taps. . .or Ghost Story...or Piranha 2."

Cue to us going back to my house and chasing my brother around the room.