LGBTQ Representation in "Never Have I Ever": Fewer Bulges, More Gay Guys

 An Advocate article tells us that Dino Petrera was happy to be called back to play the out-and-proud Jonah on Season 2 of Never Have I Ever, about an Indian-American girl struggling to become popular and get a boyfriend. Dino notes that he and his character are hearing-impaired, but he's still "confident and has a whole personality."    Maitreya Ramakrishnan, who plays Devi, tells us: "It’s awesome that the series shows multiple different characters who belong to the LGBTQIA+ community because the community cannot be truly represented with just one character."  Multiple gay characters?

Well, Devi has a lesbian friend who gets a romantic-entanglement story arc, and then there's Jonah, who spent Season 1 being the stereotypic catty, eye-rolling gay best bff.  Maybe he gets a more detailed story arc in Season 2, or maybe we will discover that there are other gay boys at the school?

Let's check it out.

Beefcake alert: The overt mega-bulge that cured Devi's paralysis is no longer emphasized, but the delightfully hunky Darren Barnet (top photo) still takes off his shirt in nearly every episode.  Plus there are several new hunkoids to dazzle the senses, such as Martin Martinez as Oliver, who becomes someone's boyfriend.

Episode 1:  No Jonah.  But there are multiple story arcs, so it's understandable.

Episode 2: At Devi's party, Jonah plays a beer-drinking game with the guys.  Later, he shrieks in horror when Devi's boyfriend Paxton is hit by a car. 

Episode 3:  No Jonah.  But Paxton has a subtext scene with his stoner buddy Trent, who wants them to stay together "for the rest of our lives."  So it's Devi-college or Trent-video games.  

Episode 4: They all compete in a 24-hour relay race.  Jonah isn't there. This is getting tiresome.  The nerd Eric (Jack Seavor-McDonald), who I thought was a throwaway character, has joined the group and gets a heterosexual-romance storyline (he doesn't play a gay character in Love in Moreno Valley, either) But no Jonah to be found.  We'll have to be content with Paxton's sweaty, muscular, slow-motion scene.  

Episode 5:  Finally Jonah appears, doing his nails in the science lab.  The girls asks why he told rival girl Aneesa that a rumor going around accuses her of being anorexic:  "I'm not fake, and people deserve to know what people are saying about them." But where did he hear the rumor?  He keeps a log of all the gossip, and can look it up: Eddie Tan.  (They trace it from Eddie Tan through several other people back to Devi,  who started it).  Later, Devi sees him being the life of the party in chemistry class.

Don't worry, the episode ends with a website where you can get information and resources on eating disorders.

Episode 6:  No Jonah, but a character who is an  "out and proud asexual" is mentioned.  That counts as LGBTQ representation, I guess.  

Episode 7: Nope.  But Paxton stares at fellow Devi-boyfriend candidate Ben (Jaren Lewison, left) in an empty classroom.  Could he be on the road to coming out as gay?  

No.  He spends the rest of the episode hugging and kissing Devi.

Episode 8:  The big Harvest Dance.  Fabiola blows off her girlfriend to work in the robotics lab.  The girls track her down.  Fabiola: "I don't fit in with the queer girls.  I'm as a bad as being a lesbian as I was being a closeted straight person."  

Jonah appears out of nowhere, noting that his hearing aid is tuned to LGBT people in distress: "It's hard living your authentic life after hiding for so long.  But the whole point of coming out is, you get to be who you are."  Moral: You don't need to imitate other people.  

Then he vanishes - appearing only in the distance, dancing with an unspecified boy.  No other same-sex couples visible.  Trent gets a girlfriend, so that gay subtext is squashed.  But Fabiola and girlfriend Eve are named prom queens.

See also: Never Have I Ever: The Bulge That Can Raise the Dead

J.C. Leyendecker: Your Grandfather's Gay Artist

In The Web and the Rock (1940), a classic American novel by Thomas Wolfe, the teenage George goes off to college, where he falls into star-struck, stammering love at first sight with Jim Randolph:

A creature of such magnificence that he seemed to have been created on a different scale and shape for another, more Olympian, Universe. . .he was all the Arrow collar young men, all the football heroes for the covers of the Saturday Evening Post...all the young men in the Kuppenheimer clothing ads, he was all of these rolled into one, and he was something more than all that.

In the early decades of the 20th century, George -- and many other gay men -- depended on advertisements for Arrow collars and Kuppenheimer suits for beefcake. They starred a handsome hunk known as the Arrow Man, drawn by J.C. Leyendecker (1874-1951).

Like Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth, Leyendecker was a famous illustrator who drew hundreds of covers for The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and other magazines. The two artists were friends -- Rockwell was a pallbearer at Leyendecker's funeral.  But their styles and themes could not be more different.

Rockwell:
Small, timid, humdrum lives in small towns.
Domestic spaces
Heternormative boy-meets-girl-themes
Probably heterosexual, though he sometimes crushed on his male models.

Leyendecker
Brash, bold, glittering lives in Manhattan, Hollywood, and Chicago
Homoerotic spaces
Endless beefcake and appreciative male gazes.
Gay, often used his lover Charles Beach as a model.

Leyendecker and Beach lived together for over 40 years, while he produced some of the most homoerotic art outside of Physique Pictorial.  

His work was coded so that gay audiences "in the know" would catch the homoerotic content, while heterosexuals stayed oblivious.

And it worked: heterosexuals never "figured it out."  When he died, his obituaries called him a "lifelong bachelor" survived only by his sister.

"Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest": Russian Witch Steals Children

The puppy-dog-cute 17-year old Oleg Chugunov (left) stole the show as the naive assistant to loose-canon police detective in Major Grom: Plague Doctor.   So naturally I wanted to know if he starred in any other project available with English subtitles, and if there were any hints of gay identity (they would have to be hints, to accommodate the restrictive Russian media laws). 

Here's one hint: queer-coded purple glasses.

And another: a starring role in Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest (2020), a horror movie about the mythical witch who kidnaps children.  A review stated that there was a gay subtext. So I ordered it on Vudu.

Scene 1: A dark street in an urban neighborhood.  Egor (Oleg), a young teen, walking alone.  Suddenly a woman approaches and tells him that he's dead.  Surprise!  It was a dream.  He awakens in a sunlit room with his mother at the door.  She criticizes him for reading fairy tales and doing origami (a sensitive, artistic kid -- gay coded!).

He goes down to breakfast.  Dad (Alexey Rozin) asks him to help install a nanny cam.  They argue about "respecting your mother."  But she's his stepmother! Uh-oh, in fairytales stepmothers are always evil.

On the way out, Egor smiles at the baby in its crib.

Mom tries to make breakfast, flubs it, and breaks down: "Alexey, I can't take it anymore!"  Take what?  Egor's resentment?

Scene 2:  Young teen girl on the way home from school.  Uh-oh, love interest!  Bullies attack.  Egor intervenes and gets beat up.   She walks away.  He runs after her, overcome by hetero-horniness: "Hey, you're the Girl of My Dreams! What's your name?"  "Dashka or Dania."  But her stern, scary mother calls her away.  "I thought we agreed: no boyfriends!"

She goes into the house.  Egor stays behind, overcome by emotion.  Dania, Dania, Dania.  Say it loud and there's music playing.  Say it soft and it's almost like praying.  I'll never stop saying Dania.  Do I even need to bother with the rest of this?  But I'm sticking it out, looking for that darn promised gay subtext.

Scene 3:  At home, Egor looks at a lot of photos of Dania on his phone and gushes about how beautiful she is.  He is interrupted by a weird noise:  the new, scary nanny is vacuumming the kitchen floor, as if she doesn't know how modern appliances work.  She criticizes him for spying on people: "You'll grow out of it.  If you grow up, that is," she says, reaching out to him with sharp claws.

Scene 4: Late night.  Egor goes into the baby's room, watching himself on the nanny cam.  Wait -- someone is sitting in the chair, but only visible on the nanny cam!  A lady with claws and a bird-face!  He runs away in a panic.  The door opens -- he throws a basketball to defend himself -- and hits Stepmother!

Scene 5:  Dad reviews the nanny cam, and doesn't see any mysterious bird-woman.   "Look, I understand your anxiety, but your Mom is dead.  It's time to forget her, pretend she never existed.  You have a new mother now."  Harsh!  

Scene 6:  Anton (Antyon Zhigulin), one of the bullies, is working at the supermarket.  He sees Dania and is so awestricken that he drops a box of tomatoes.  Wow, the Girl of His Dreams, too!  Girlfriend has to swat them away like flies!   His mother, the manager of the store, yells at him for wasting produce: you're useless, you're an idiot, I curse the day you were born...and by the way, don't come home until after 10:00 pm because I'm expecting company.  Two abusive mothers!  Are there any nice women in this movie?

Later, Egor tries to get with Dania, but she rejects him.  Angry, unaware that "no" means "no," he snipes: "If you were nicer, maybe you'd have friends."  

Suddenly the bullies attack.  Egor and Dania run away, into the dark forest right next to the playground.  The bullies follow.  Supermarket Boy Anton trips over some wires, and is grabbed by a scary guy with a knife: "Get out!  If I see you again, I'll cut your head off!"  A deranged hermit living in the woods?  Maybe he's gay-coded.

Meanwhile, Egor and Dania seek refuge in an abandoned building.  It contains a gigantic furnace, which, Dania says, was used to burn people alive during the Stalin regime.  Their souls are still nearby: they call your name, and when you turn around, they steal your face!  (this will become important later).

Suddenly Egor has a video sent to his phone of the nanny cam, with the baby replaced by a doll.  They rush back to his apartment.  The baby is fine.  

But in the morning, the nursery is empty!  Plus Dad and Stepmother are unaware that the baby ever existed; they think the room is empty because they're redecorating.  When he insists that they've forgotten his baby sister, Dad assaults Egor and locks him in his room as punishment.  Egor calls Dania.

Scene 8: Dania getting ready to meet Egor.  Mom intervenes: "You're too beautiful.  Boys are going to try to seduce you,  That's what happened to me, and I got pregnant, and my life ended  in tragedy.  Do you want to have a daughter that you'll hate as much as I hate you?  Forget this Egor and practice your piano!"  Three abusive mothers, maybe four!  What's going on in this town?

Ahh -- the piano teacher is the scary nanny!  She makes Dania practice harder and harder, until she collapses!

Meanwhile, the other bullies tell Supermarket Boy Anton that Scary Guy (Igor Khripunov) has a cabin full of vintage World War II weapons.  He decides to break in and steal some.  

Dad wonders if he was too hard on Egor, beating him up for inventing an imaginary sister.  "You did the right thing, dear," Stepmother cackles.  "Children must know their place."  I'm still waiting for the gay subtext.  Maybe Supermarket Boy Anton has a crush on Egor?

Scene 9:   Egor escapes from his room and tracks down Dania, who acts like she's in a trance.  She keeps saying "She'll come back."  

Supermarket Boy Anton and another bully grab them and take them to Scary Guy's cabin.  They have to go inside and do some recon, in preparation for the weapons theft.  Still waiting.  Why Anton an abusive back story if he's not going to turn into an ally?   In the cabin, Egor hears a baby crying, and there are photos of the Scary Nanny, plus Egor, Dania, and Anton, and lots of other kids.  We've got a perv stalker on our hands, guys! But he stalks boys and girls both, so he's not gay-coded. 

Egor calls them into the cabin to look; the other bully vanishes, so it's just Supermarket Boy Anton.  Whoops, Scary Guy comes back!  They hide; he finds them and attacks; they overpower him and tie him up

Time for some explanations:  Scary Nanny is Scary Guy's wife, who died after their daughter disappeared.  There's always a dead wife in the back story, but I didn't expect it here.  I thought Scary Guy would be gay.  She's been kidnapping kids, who disappear, and every trace that they ever existed vanishes, and people's memories are wiped.  That's what the photos are for -- when one goes blank, it means a child has disappeared.

But who would steal children and erase their existence?  Daria googles it: Baba Yaga, a Slavic witch who occupies the region between the living and the dead.  

Scene 10: Egor and Daria set out to find Baba Yaga and get his baby sister back.  Supermarket Boy Anton wants to join the team.   Egor rejects him: "We don't need you."  Too much competition, dude?  Daria feels sorry for him and lets him join.

I'll stop the scene-by-scene recap there.

Beefcake: No.

Other Sights: A housing development in Russia.

Child Abuse: Always caused by a witch's spell. 

Gay Subtexts: Egor and Supermarket Boy Anton interact only through Daria, whom they are both in love with.  During the climactic battle, Baba Yaga tries to distract Egor by telling him "Your friends have forgotten you," and flashing an image of Daria and Anton cuddling.  Interesting that she doesn't say "your girlfriend" has abandoned you.

Anton and Scary Guy seem to develop some affection for each other.  They rescue each other, and hug, and in the last scene Scary Guy takes Anton's hand and leads him away.  But they have more of a father-son vibe. 

LGBT Inclusion: Casey Mongillo, who voices Egor in the English-language version, is nonbinary.  Plus Aleks Le, who voices Mikha (Anton), tweets that he can't wait for more LGBTQ inclusive plotlines.  Don't tell anyone in Moscow.

Horror:  Very effective scares and plot twists.

My Grade: B