Spike Island: Manchester Boys Bond at a Rock Concert

It seems that every year in the U.S., we see yet another movie about a group of high school friends facing the prospect of Growing Up: a heterosexist myth in which one abandons the exuberant buddy-bonding of high school for heterosexual romance, careers, houses, kids, and domesticity.

Usually it's set at an iconic moment in the filmmakers' life.

The British have their own versions, most recently Spike Island (2013), set during the heyday of The Stone Roses.  Yeah, I never heard of them either, but apparently they gave a famous "final concert" in May 1990 on Spike Island in Cheshire, and five working-class Manchester lads are desperate to go.

Not just for the music; they have their own band, so they have to get to the concert to give their demo tape to Ian Brown.  It's their only chance of escaping from their dismal working-class, married-with-children futures.

But they have no tickets, no money, and the concert's sold out. So they steal a florist's van and head out on the highway.

The main couple are Tits (Elliott Tittensor) and Dodge (Nico Mirallegro), who dread the upcoming end of their long-term friendship while competing over the same girl.

There's a lot more soap opera crammed into the weekend.  A dying father; an abusive father; a confrontation between brothers; a boy who doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps; etc., etc.  The characters are broadly-drawn cliches that we've seen a thousand times before: the jock, the nerd, the ineffective girl-chaser, the kid brother.

But there's also a lot of gay connection.  Both Tittensor and Mirallegro have played gay characters before, and they add a nice gay subtext.  Plus there's a lot of physicality in the boys' relationship, hugging, holding, hanging over each other.

And some semi-nudity.  Recommended.

See also: I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Serge Lifar: Gay Masculine Beauty during the Jazz Age

During the 1920s, the go-to guy for masculine beauty was a Russian ballet dancer named Serge or Sergei Lifar.

Born in Kiev, Russia in 1905, Lifar went to Paris in 1923 and joined the Ballet Russes as Sergei Diaghilev's newest protege-lover.  In 1925, he became lead dancer, to the consternation of previous protege-lovers who were no longer getting the best roles.

Ballet was big during the Jazz Age, maybe because it was the only art form that allowed audiences to see masculine biceps and bulges, and Diaghilev showed off Lifar's every chance he got.  In La Chatte (1927), Lifar entered the stage riding in a "chariot" formed entirely of men.

That didn't sit well with the other members of the ballet company.

In 1929, Diaghilev died, and Lifar moved on to become the director of the Paris Opera Company, where he staged and danced in his own creations, including a renovation of The Afternoon of a Faun in 1935, and Icare (1935), his masterpiece, about the Greek boy who flew too close to the sun.

But Lifar was famous far beyond the world of ballet.  He was photographed in newspapers and magazines. He was painted and sculpted.  He was on a stamp in the Ukraine.

He cavorted with artists, writers, and film stars, many involved in the gay culture of Paris Between the Wars, like Salvador Dali, Paul Valery, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, and Paul Robeson.

In 1944, during World War II, Lifar's collaboration with the Nazis got him "banned for life" from the Paris Opera.  He claimed that he was working as a secret agent (he returned in 1947).

And don't forget the "duel" he fought in 1958 with equally flamboyant ballet producer George de Cuevas.

Lifar was not openly gay, but his many liaisons with men were well known in the ballet world.  He also sought out the attention of wealthy women who served as his benefactors.

He died in 1986.

See also: The Chilean Bad Boy