Marvin/Fred: Lucas Cruikshank's Secret

Having not been a teenager for a few years, I sometimes have trouble figuring out what modern teens like.  What's the attraction to Lucas Cruikshank, for instance?

Other than the obvious -- his shirt comes off a lot.

In 2008, he was a 15-year old kid in Columbus, Nebraska, posting youtube videos about an annoying 6-year old named Fred.

They "went viral."  Millions of hits.



In 2009 he appeared as himself on Nickelodeon's ICarly, about teens hosting a webshow.

Then came Fred: The Movie (2010), which kept the high-pitched voice but turned Fred into an oddball teenager.  I didn't watch due to the heterosexist plotline (Fred tries to win the girl of his dreams), but I noticed the muscular John Cena playing Fred's "real dad."

I didn't see Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred (2011), which immerses Fred into a parody of teen horror movies.

Or Camp Fred (2012), a parody of teen summer camp movies.

But I did switch channels during these movies enough to notice a lot of shirtless and semi-nude shots of Lucas, Jake Weary (the bully, left), and sundry minor characters, but not a lot of girls in bikinis.

Teenagers apparently couldn't get enough of the squeaky-voiced oddball kid, so he got his own tv show in 2012, with the same bully (Jake Weary) and girlfriend (Daniella Monet).  There were only 12 episodes.  I watched a few.

1. A refreshing lack of girl-craziness for Nickelodeon.  Ok, heterosexism required that Fred have a "girl of his dreams," but she seemed more of a buddy than someone walking in slow motion across the schoolyard.

2. Buddy-bonding. The bully, for all of his blathering, seemed to actually like Fred.

3. A frenetic, campy energy that skewered gender pretensions along with every other cliche of teen life.

Lucas's latest project, Marvin Marvin (2012-13), was a "my secret" sitcom about an alien boy living with a human family: a hunky dad (Pat Finn), mom, older sister, younger brother, and feisty grandpa (Casey Saunder).

 I watched a few episodes. No beefcake shots, but Marvin does favor rather tight jeans.  Plots involve the standard crazy powers and misunderstandings of human norms, with the gay symbolism of the outsider trying to fit in.  And this time there's no question: Marvin is not interested in girls (except for an episode where he wants to date a girl in order to fit in).

Lucas is gay in real life.  No doubt that's a big part of his character's gay symbolism, although significantly he didn't make any public announcements until after he left Nickelodeon.

Also see: Six Degrees of Separation, Lucas Cruikshank to John Cena.

Rescuing Boys on 24, Part 4: Josh

After rescuing the gay-vague teenager Scott (Michael Angarano) on Day Six of 24 (2007-8), terrorist chaser Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) struggles with his own “bad father,” Phillip Bauer (James Cromwell), an industrialist who has been secretly selling nuclear devices to the terrorists. Philip Bauer is the most villainous of the “bad fathers” on 24, not only capable of murdering his children, like Navi, but of murdering them purely in the interest of financial gain.

He kills his son Graem  (Paul McCrane) and then abducts his teenage grandson, Josh (nineteen-year old Evan Ellingson).  He uses Josh to set up a trap for Jack, but Jack manages to elude capture and rescue the boy, with a hug that seems more paternal than the one he bestowed upon Derek last season.  Later Josh is captured again, and again Jack rushes to the rescue. This time the hug is a little more effusive.

Finally the evil Vice President, conspiring with the elder Bauer, orchestrates a third capture.  At this point one doesn’t quite understand the strategic importance of constantly capturing and recapturing Josh, except to give Jack someone to rescue; he is a symbol of Jack and the elder Bauer’s competition, proof that one of them has “won.”  This time Josh manages to free himself and nearly kills Bauer before Jack comes storming in.  As Day Six draws to a close, Josh seems not at all traumatized, for a boy who has faced a nuclear explosion, the death of his father, and three murder attempts since breakfast.

 Like Derek, Josh seems to actually enjoy the adventure.  He rejects the idea of returning to his mother and begs Jack to take him along.  Jack promises that they will end up together, but he has something that he “needs to do” before their relationship can become permanent.  After another teary-eyed full-body hug, he grudgingly lets Josh go.

Jack’s relationship with Josh, like his relationship with the other rescued boys in the series, slips uneasily between conventions of fraternal and romantic desire.  Obviously Jack is literally the boy’s uncle (and, since he was in a relationship with Josh’s mother before she married Graem, perhaps his biological father, too).  But the gradually increasing physicality of Jack’s emotional involvement plays quite differently than the emotion he expresses toward his own daughter in Days One and Two, or the sudden intensity of his interest in Behrooz or Derek; it is as if he cares more and more about Josh with each rescue, and begins thinking of him less as a boy to be returned to his mother than as a permanent part of his life.

Josh, for his part, never treats Jack as an uncle or surrogate father, but always with a feverish sort of physicality, always with an arguably romantic passion.  Again, the bond is not deferred by heterosexual imagining: Josh never mentions a girlfriend or expresses any interest in girls.

Rescuing Boys on 24, Part 3: Scott

Day 6 (2007-08) of 24, the dramatic series about terrorist-hunter Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) having a Very Bad Day, begins with a covert gay relationship between peers that offers a frame for interpreting the rescuer-rescued relationships that Jack had before, in Days 4 (Behrooz) and Day 5 (Derek), and that he will have later.

High schooler Scott Wallace (Michael Angarano, left) is quite taken with his classmate Ahmed (Kal Penn, below, who is 30 years old and doesn't look anything like a teenager, thus remaining true to the older-younger dynamic of the homoromantic bonds on 24).

When his Dad is arrested as a terrorist, Ahmed has nowhere to go, so Scott invites him to move in.  Later Scott gives him a "friendship necklace."

But Ahmed's feelings for Scott are complex, obvious affection coupled with obvious scorn (“You can’t even pronounce my name correctly,” he snipes.  “It’s Ach-med, Not Ah-med”).  No wonder: He turns out to be a terrorist, like his father.

When he is shot and cannot deliver a package to the terrorist headquarters, Ahmed takes Scott and his mother hostage to force Scott's father to do it.

After the package is safely delivered, the terrorist leader orders Ahmed to kill Scott, apparently trying to get him to prove his loyalty by doing away with the person he cares for the most (the same thing happened with Behrooz in Day 4).

 As Ahmed is struggling, torn between his love for Scott and his duty to the terrorists, Jack Bauer storms in to the rescue.   Then both boys vanish from the story; the main rescue is still to come.

As usual on 24, the boy in need of rescue is played by an actor well-known for gay projects.  Michael Angarano had a recurring role as the flamboyant Jack’s son on Will and Grace (2001-2006), and starred in the overtly homoerotic Lords of Dogtown (2005); both he and Evan Ellingson (Josh, from later in the day) starred in the gay-themed Bondage.

Rescuing Boys on 24, Part 2: Derek

Day Five of 24 (2006-07), the tv series about fighting terrorists in real time during a very long day, begins 18 months after Jack Bauer watched the Counter-Terrorism Unit betray his teenage friend Behrooz.  He has changed his name and taken a job as a day laborer in northern California.   He is renting a room from Diane Huxley (Connie Britton) and probably dating her, though he spends more of the first hours of the day trying to bond with her teenage son Derek (eighteen-year old Brady Corbet).

When he discovers he has been framed for the assassination of the President of the United States, and that Russian terrorists are planning to release nerve gas into a shopping mall, Jack springs back into action.  Derek tails him, and they are thrown together for a morning-full of helicopter jaunts and last-minute rescues.

Jack keeps apologizing for getting Derek involved, but the boy doesn't seem to mind.  In fact, he seems to relish working side by side with Jack, like a superhero's sidekick or one of the Adventure Boys in pre-1940s boys' books.  He refuses to leave even when he gets an opportunity.

About halfway through the day, Jack rescues Derek from a hostage crisis at a regional airport, and his mother arrives to take him home.

When will I see you again?” Derek asks.  This is an odd question to ask of his mother’s boyfriend: the use of “I” suggests that he expects a more direct involvement, and “see you” seems to evoke romantic dates rather than outings to the ball park.

Misty-eyed, Jack admits that he will be staying with the CTU, that this is a permanent goodbye.  Then he envelopes Derek in an amazingly enthusiastic full-body hug, his face against Derek’s neck.  Again, he seems to have forgotten that Derek is his girlfriend’s son.  He does not  treat Diane this way; their goodbye is courteous at best.

 Jack may imagine himself a “good father,” trying to “be there,” become a “man around the house” for Derek, but through the episodes the bond does not appear at all custodial; indeed, Derek rescues Jack nearly as much as he is rescued.  And, for the first time in the series, the bond is not deferred by heterosexual imagining: Derek has no “bad father,” so there is no paternal competition, and he expresses no heterosexual interest of any sort.

I don't know why, but the boys Jack rescues are usually played by actors who have significant gay-themed roles in their backgrounds. Brady Corbet played a troubled asexual teen who buddy-bonds with a gay teen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in Mysterious Skin (2004).

Dominic Zamprogna

Dominic Zamprogna looks quite similar to fellow General Hospital star Jonathan Jackson.  But he's shorter, with straight hair, a rounder face, a much more muscular physique, and no qualms about frontal nudity.

Also Dominic is pf considerably more interest to gay fans.  Among his homoromantic subtext and gay-vague roles:

The voice of Atreyu in the Neverending Story animated series (1995).

The Boys Club (1997): Canadian boyfriends (Dominic and Devon Sawa) and their buddy Stuart Stone accidently invite a killer into their midst.

Odyssey 5 (2002), a Canadian tv series about time-traveling astronauts: his Justin Deckard develops a new drug that allows him to mind-meld with Neil (Christopher Gorman).

Stargate: Atlantis (2004):  On a planet where everyone dies at age 25, his Aries disapproves of his boyfriend Keras (Courtenay J. Stevens)'s alliance with the Earth explorers.

The vampire Beau on Supernatural (2006).

He's also played heterosexuals on several movies and tv series with gay characters, including Edgemont, The L Word, Deadly Skies, and of course General Hospital. 

Rescuing Boys on 24, Part 1: Behrooz

Though in the 2000s gay characters were commonplace on cable and even appeared occasionally on network television, the suspense series 24 (2001-2010), about federal agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) saving the world from terrorists in real time (every hour-long episode covers exactly one hour in a very long day), offers only homophobia.   One executive producer, Joel Surnow, is a self-professed “right-wing nut job” who openly expresses his dislike of gay people.  Of more than a hundred characters, none were explicitly designated as gay or lesbian.  Two were bisexual, both evil.   

  

But in spite of the incessant heterosexism and homophobia, men rescue adolescent boys with amazing frequency.  In nearly every season, the day begins with an adolescent boy climbing half-naked out of bed or flexing his muscles before a mirror or lounging by the pool in a swimsuit.  As the day progresses, he is  kidnapped, tied up, and threatened by one or more “bad fathers.”  Finally Jack Bauer rushes to the rescue; man and boy melt into each other’s arms and promise to stay together forever.

    

Although boys with bad fathers appear in earlier days, the homoromantic rescues begin in earnest on Day Four (2005-6).  After years of emotional and physical abuse, teenage Behrooz Araz (sixteen-year old Jonathan Ahdout) hates his father, Navi, but he is not aware that the elder Araz is a terrorist.  Then his girlfriend sees too much, and Navi orders Behrooz to kill her.  

He is unable to comply, so his mother does the job, and the nonplussed Navi orders a henchman to take Behrooz out into the desert and kill him.  Behrooz escapes from his assassin and runs away, with his suddenly repentant mother tagging along.  

At a hospital where his mother has sought medical attention, Behrooz meets Jack Bauer, who promises to keep him safe “from now on.”  Then Navi reappears, tries to kill Behrooz, and finally holds him hostage in the hospital basement.  Jack comes storming in to the rescue.  

Jack’s response to the rescue is a surprising throwback to the physicality of 1940s adventures.  He has spent only a single previous scene with Behrooz, hardly enough time for a realistic emotional intimacy to develop, and since he rescues hostages frequently as part of his job, he should be dispassionate and professional about it.  Yet he hugs Behrooz enthusiastically, has difficulty letting go, and tells him that everything will be ok now, as if he intends to personally guarantee the boy’s safety.  Perhaps Jack wants to atone for his job at the CTU, which has put his own daughter at risk several times previously.  Perhaps he fancies himself a “good father” substitute for the evil Navi. But mere guardianship cannot explain the effusiveness and physicality of the bond.  

Later in the day, Behrooz waits at the CTU for the crisis to end so he and Jack can embark upon whatever future they have agreed to.  Jack is captured by head terrorist Marwan, who wants the boy (for no comprehensible reason except that he is important to Jack), and suggests a trade.  Jack adamantly refuses, but to his horror, the CTU agrees.  We see Behrooz for the last time tied up, being driven away by henchmen, no doubt to his death, while Jack looks on in anguish and yells his name (in two deleted scenes on the DVD, we learn that he was rescued  just in time, but not by Jack).  

Again, Jack seems far more distraught than one would expect from a seasoned federal agent faced with the demise of a near stranger. One wonders just what sort of future he expected with Behrooz.

Not to worry, he'll get a new teenage boy pal in Day Five