Saturday Morning on Streaming Services: Looking for Representation in a Heteronormative World

Sometimes, on my morning cycle of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, I find unexpected treasures of gay subtexts or representation.  Sometimes it's a heteronormative bust.

Today I start with Netflix.  Four of the six "Recent Addition" icons feature women looking beleagered and vulnerable.  There's one group and one nuclear radiation symbol.  What happened to the men?

I'll try House of Dark Secrets, an Argentine anthology series about the various residents of a mysterious house (full of dark secrets) from the 1920s to the 2020s.  Thirteen episodes, and Argentina is one of the more gay-positive countries in Latin America; there must be some gay "secrets."  

Let's look: guy with a dead wife; performing male-female couple; mom who won't let her teenage daughters date boys; kidnapped girl; two college students want a three-way with the maid; ex-wife shows up; fleeing soldiers...

Girls' pajama party; mayor's illegitimate child shows up; kidnapped girl shows up as a 70-year old; woman finds some squatters; male-female couple take refuge from a pandemic.  

I fast-forward through the episodes with the soldiers, the squatters, and the college students (in case they're both boys).  No luck, although there are glimpses of beefcake amid the cleavage.

Well, I'll watch Bad Exorcist, a Polish series, animated with South Park-style cutouts, about an inept exorcist named Boner (presumably "inept," not "arousal").  In Episode 6: "a ghoul makes an indecent proposal."  So...he wants to have sex with Boner?  

Nope: it takes two scenes for Boner and the Ghoul to meet.  Finally, in Scene 3, the "indecent proposal": the Ghoul can't perform sexually anymore, being dead, so would Boner please have sex with his still-living wife?  I'm out.

On to Hulu, where my recommendations include endless animes.  I am drawn to one with the odd title The Irregular at Magic High School, because I've only heard "irregular" used as a noun with the group of street urchins that Sherlock Holmes hires.  Could there be some Baker Street Irregulars studying magic?

It has a length, detailed, and eminently unnecessary opening blurb; we've seen movies and tv shows about magic academies before.  Lots of them.  The gist: students at the academy are divided into the adept Blooms and the inept Weeds.  A brother and sister enroll, and get placed in different categories.  But since they're siblings, they won't fall in love, so maybe there won't be a heteronormative primary plot. 

They spend Scene 1 getting ready to matriculate, and discussing how much they love each other: "You're the most important person in the world to me.  I'd do anything for you.  I can't bear to be away from you, even for a minute.  Your smile lights up my life" and so on ad nauseam.  Way too much incest subtext!

Then Sister leaves, and Tatsuyi is stopped dead in his tracks by...The Girl of His Dreams!  I'm out.

What about Sorcerous Stabber Orphen?  Why the deliberate misspelling?  Ophen is a "powerful sorcerer" on a quest to rescue his "sis," who was turned into a dragon.  

Before I get invested, I'll check the episode guide: Orphen searches for his friend Azalia, whom he grew up with at the orphanage (that must be his "sis"); he meets "a mysterious girl," who offers to treat his wounds; he teams up with a girl named Leticia.  Lots of girls around, not many boys for subtexts.  But I check Wikipedia and do a keyword search anyway.  

This photo appeared in the keyword search for "Sorcerous Stabber Orphen" and "gay."  It doesn't appear to depict Orphen or any other character, and it's not in the same anime style.  But beefcake is beefcake.

On to Amazon Prime, which is always a wasteland of dead wives and girls of dreams.

 The first new movie is Anything's Possible, with an icon depicting a girl with a bare midriff and a guy gazing at her with Girl of His Dreams longing.  Sounds intensely heteronormative, but maybe she has a gay bff.

Whoops, according to the description, she's Kelsi, a trans girl, and the boy, Khal (Abubakr Ali), apparently comes from a conservative Muslim family, so their relationship is going to cause friction (there are Arabic subtitles, in case it's not banned in Saudi Arabia).  In the trailer, it looks like most of the friction comes from Kelsi's queer friends, who don't think that Khal is right for her.  

I probably won't watch: there are 163 beefcake photos of Abubakr online, every single one of them a .webp file, and I have other things to do today.  But at least I found some LGBTQ representation in the most unlikely place.

"Emergency": Three College Guys, One Dead Girl

 

Emergency, on Amazon Prime, sounds like a reboot of the 1970s tv series about paramedics, but actually the plot is more akin to the "dead hooker in the bathroom" comedies.  Here it's three college guys stumbling across a dead girl after a party.  They should call the police, but there's a problem: they're black, and the dead girl is white.  The police will shoot first, ask questions later.  

This is 2022, so doubtless one of the three guys will be gay.

Scene 1: Establishing shots of an elite college.  Sean (Donald Elise Watkins) encouraging Kunle (RJ Cyler) to go after a girl: "She like your big head.  Or small dick."

Kunle has been established as heterosexual from Line 1.  But Sean is rather feminine, and devotes himself to his buddy's romance, a standard "gay friend" trope.  So he must be the gay one.  

They discuss the possibility of Kunle  just having sex with her, not starting a romance.

Scene 2: Class.  The standard university lecture hall.  The professor notes that there's a trigger warning in today's reading, but the guys aren't paying attention: Sean is texting, and Kunle is gazing at the Girl of His Dreams, Bianca.  

The professor continues: "Today we're going to talk about hate speech." Suddenly her powerpoint slideshow displays the N-word.  She begins a lecture on the word's "unique space in American vernacular.," and says it!  "What makes the word so powerful?"   

Having not heard her introduction, the guys sizzle.  "She can't say that.  It ain't right!  She don't know shit!"

Professor asks them to comment, but they are saved by the bell.  Wait -- class just started!  And there are no bells in college.

Scene 3:  After class, Bianca (the Girl of Kunle's Dreams) approaches the guys to ask if they want to protest to the Student Senate.  They skip over all of that and tell her that tonight they were be going on the Legendary Tour of nine parties.  They will be the first black students to be invited to all nine, which will get them immortalized on the Wall of Fame in the Black Student Union.

She leaves.  The guys discuss the N-word again, interspliced with how much Bianca is into Kunle.

Scene 4: In the lab, Kunle examines his bacteria cultures, while Sean criticizes him for doing school work.  They're in college!  They should be partying, not studying!

Sean leaves, and approaches the third friend, Leo (Amar), for the tickets to the various parties on the Legendary Tour: "You're lucky.  I was about to give these to a cute freshman chick, but she was getting too attached.  I ain't into romance, bruh."  

Leo is identified as heterosexual in his first line, too.  What's up what that?  Oh, well, there's still Sean.

Whoops, Sean isn't paying attention -- he's busy gazing at the Girl of His Dreams!  He rushes over to flirt.

Three out of three identified as heterosexual, and it only took 10 minutes.  I'll fast-forward to see if there are any gay couples at the parties.

The dead girl -- actually just unconscious -- appears in their apartment before they can even get to a party.  They have no idea how she got there.  If they call 911, the police will come, and they'll be "shot first, arrested later."  But how can they get her to a hospital? Two black men driving a car are bound to be stopped....

The third guy is not Leo, but Kunle and Sean's other roommate, Carlos (Sebastian Chacon).  He doesn't express any heterosexual interest, at least none that I could tell from fast-forwarding.  And he almost hugs Kunle -- maybe a minimal gay subtext.  Otherwise it's the same old story -- movies can depict black characters, or gay characters, but never both.

Case File no. 223: Kabukicho: Sherlock Holmes, Watson, Moriarity, and Mrs. Hudson in the Red-Light District of Tokyo

 

The anime series Case File no. 223: Kabukicho has an unwieldy name (with an n° that's impossible to get right) because producers were worried about copyright infringement.  In Japanese it's Kabukicho Sherlock: an outré revision of the Sherlock Holmes mythos.  I've watched three episodes.

Kabukicho is the red-light district of Tokyo, a realm of "chaos and insanity," where Mrs. Hudson, Holmes' housekeeper from the original stories re-imaged as a muscular, bearded man in a wig and a dress, runs the Pipe Cat bar (along with several drag queen assistants). 

 When a case come in, she offers it to her team of six detectives, "weirdos, freaks, bozos, and loons," who compete to solve it and get paid.  

She also flirts with every man in sight, which they always find shocking and repellent, and I find distasteful, recalling the predatory gay guy who can't keep his hands off the poor, innocent straights.

There are two other gender-bending characters: Lestrade, a male police inspector in the original stories, is here a woman in male drag, and detective Mary usually presents as masculine as well.

Sherlock Holmes, a depressed, possibly suicidal failed rakugoka (comedic monologue performer), usually solves the case by noticing clues that the other detectives ignore.  

Dr. Watson (top photo) comes to Mrs. Hudson with an unusual case, but ends up hanging out at the Pipe Cat.  Eventually he moves in with Holmes (just as a roommate), and becomes one of the detectives.  The gay subtext that appears in many versions does not exist, however, as Holmes specifically states that he doesn't like Watson, and Watson begins dating a woman.

John Moriarity, a master criminal in the original stories, is here the 16-year old leader of a revision of the Baker Street Irregulars.  He seems to have a crush on Holmes: he is pleased to discover that Holmes and Watson do not share a bed, and at the bath house, when Holmes' towel falls away, he is very pleased to get a look at his penis.

Cases often reflect the plots of the original stories.  I recognized "The Red-Headed League" and "The Scarlet Band." 

At first I enjoyed looking for reflections of the Sherlock Holmes mythos, and I was pleasantly suprised by the gender-bending.  But Mrs. Hudson is so predatory, and the objects of her interest so shocked and disgusted, that it gradually became clear that this is not a gay-positive world.  Why couldn't some guys return her interest, or at least reject her politely instead of recoiling in shock and horror?

There are four major heterosexual romances and no gay relationships, just an occasional subtext.   Plus -- spoiler alert -- the Big Bad of the series, Jack the Ripper, turns out to be one of the drag queen hostesses at the Pipe Cat, a hoary stereotype of the transgender villain.  And everything is framed by the constant assertions that what we are seeing is "chaos" and "madness."  LGBTQ people belong to a sordid underworld.  

Watson is cute, though.

Addendum: A review reveals that there is a gay couple in a later episode, who the detectives treat with derision and disgust.