Beefcake, gay subtexts, and queer representation in mass media from the 1950s to the present
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Jul 27, 2024
Fifteen glorious Gavins and magnificent muscle Munns from Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Ohio, and Hollywood
Jul 26, 2024
"Chewing Gum": Alien Afro-British girl wants to get laid, but her Bible-thumping boyfriend is gay. With Kenyan cock
Tracey (Michaela Cole, who also wrote and starred in the 2012 play) lives in the estate (project, in the U.S.) with her street-preacher mother, who lambasts lesbian couples in the square, and younger sister, who rarely leaves the apartment because Satan is prowling out there.
Her boyfriend of six years, Ronald (John MacMillan), is a Bible-waving super-fundamentalist who constantly criticizes her for being poor, illiterate, and "loose." They haven't even kissed yet. Can you guess what the big reveal is?
Another big reveal: Due to makeup artistry or CGI, Tracey does not look human. Her face protrudes too far, her eyes have that "Classic Gray" loook, and her mouth is distractingly huge. No one comments on this in the first episode, but she only interacts with people she knows. Maybe she'll be outed as an alien later.
Tracey has another option, if she ever decides to dump Bible Boy: Connor (Robert Lonsdale), a street poet who writes about existential angst while sitting on a dumpster, tries an awkward flirtation that starts with telling her that she looks like a slave, then backtracking that he meant it in a good way.
Tracey's best friend Candace, who disgustingly eats peanut butter by sticking her finger in the jar, has a sex problem, too: her boyfriend Aaron (Kadiff Kirwan) is boring in bed, being all gentle and talking about how much he respects her. She wants it rough.
But when she suggests livening things up, he doesn't understand: "I respect you. Why would I want to treat you roughly?"
"It's ok... you make sex moans like a little girl." That just makes him cry like a little girl.
Best friend Candace invites Tracey to the big estate party, but it's her anniversary with Bible Boy, so she is dead-set on getting into his pants. She dresses as slutty as she can during dinner, and back at his apartment, while he's looking for a book on how to not be slutty, she strips down to her underwear. He freaks out, runs out of the house, and starts yelling that she is a whore. "To think that I was going to take you as a wife. For my foolishness, may God strike me down!" He is then struck by a car.
Tracey calmly calls 999 and goes to the party, where she runs into dumpster poet Colin. They start making out, but as an alien she has no idea what to do and licks his eyebrows, sucks on his nose, and sits on his face while fully clothed.Tracey's sister, who saw the party going on and rushed across the street to fight Satan, bursts into the room and sees them!
The end.
Beefcake: Two guys strip down to have sex with ladies.
Gay Characters: Boy Tracey, a fruity guy dressed all in glitter, talks to the dumpster poet Connor at the party. He only appears in one other episode, but he has sex with a bear BDSM bottom in that other one.
Bible Boy insists that he is straight throughout, in spite of a few hookups, only coming out in the last episode.
Will I Keep Watching: Probably not. Two seasons of denial sounds excessive, and there are too many disgusting bits -- people feeding each other, slurping food off their fingers...gross.
See also: Gemstones Episode 1.6: Scott flirts, BJ is spanked, and Kelvin hooks up. With bonus Kenyan cock
Jul 25, 2024
True Blood: Vampires come out of the closet amid a Southern Gothic soap opera, with some nude dudes
Link to the nude photos
This is the stereotypic South of Eudora Welty and Mama's Family, where people named Hoyt Fortenberry shop at the Piggly-Wiggly and drink sweet tea on the veranda, where everyone is related to everybody else's great-grand daddy once removed, and where the War means the Civil War...um, I mean the War of Yankee Aggression.
It starts in media res, two years after vampires have "come out of the coffin," har har -- yep, the connection with LGBT people is just that heavy-handed -- due to the invention of artificial blood, brand name True Blood, which some humans have developed a taste for. Snooty fratboy Brett (Josh Kelly, top photo), looking for a store that sells it, learns too late that every long-haired, multi-ringed Goth isn't a vampire; and sometimes chubby rednecks are.
We switch to the problems of Tara, who gets fired from or quits every job because she doesn't abide idiots and her best friend Sookie, who can read minds. Sookie and soon Tara work at Merlotte's Bar, where the owner, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), is in love with her. He won't come out with it, but of course Sookie can read his mind.
The only gay character so far is the bar's swishy cook, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), a stereotyped flamboyant, promiscuous queen who claims he's done most of the men in town, and likes to flirt with racist, homophobic rednecks to get them all scared. He doesn't get a boyfriend until late in the series.
That same evening, the bar's other waitress, Maudette, hooks up with Sookie's brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten). She's a fangbanger, a human who likes sex with vampires, because they get rough. She offers to show him the video, which turns him on so much that he wants to do rough sex, including strangling her...a little too enthusiastically. And she's taping the encounter!
Ryan Kwanten's butt is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends
More after the break
Kelton Dumont's nude photos, with new selfies, Jak, Gavin, and a bonus fratboy
Kelton Dumont, best known as Pontius on The Righteous Gemstones, has not been forthcoming with a lot of physique photos. This shoulder and arm is about all you're going to see. But nudity is another matter: he gave us a butt and partial dick shot on the show, and a search of hookup sites reveals some other possibilities.
#1. Charleston, February 2024. I think Kelton was at Bennington College during that month.
We know that Kelton went back to brunette, and they were filming Righteous Gemstones Season 4 in June 2024, so how does this one look:
#2. Hair is too long, but same size cock as the other one. A possibility.
On to the canonical nudity:
More Kelton after the break
Jul 24, 2024
The Harlan Coben Channel...I mean Netflix. 8 tv series with unraveling families, secrets, lies, butts, and cocks
You may have noticed that Netflix has turned into an all-Harlen Coben channel. I had never heard of him before tv series based on his novels started pushing out all other content, but probably with good reason. The tv series all have identical plots: a dead loved one, a funeral, someone who vanishes, a amily man or woman's "perfect life" starts to unravel due to the dark secrets that they or a loved one are hiding; and LGBT people do not exist. But some of the family men are hunky, so...
1. Michael C. Hall in Safe: A close-up of family man Mikey's wedding ring as he stands at his wife's funeral with his three daughters, one of whom refuses to hold his hand. A year later, he rushes into surgery, then returns to his secure neighborhood to a community barbecue, with nuclear familys playing paddleball and eating burgers.
His teenage daughter still hates him, but not to worry, she'll soon go missing, and her boyfriend will be dead, and there will be secrets and lies.
3. Hubert Milkowski in The Woods: A Polish production. A bearded man has a gun pointed at him. He flashes back to the summer of 1994, in the woods outside a summer camp, where the police are loading a body while gazes fearfully from his hiding place
4. Draegon Hennessey in Hold Tight: A sequel to The Woods. A depressed woman watches a video of her or someone else frolicking with a baby, then a middle aged man frolicking with a toddler.
Jul 23, 2024
Devon Werkheiser: Ned's Declassified gay panic, gay friends, bare butts, and a nude Nolan Gould
20 years ago, when LGBTQ people could never be mentioned on kids' tv, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide (2004-2007) was a gay-subtext classic.
The bully Loomer (Kyle Swann) who has a gay-subtext friendship with his crony, struggles to "come out" about his interest in fashion design -- as close to "gay" as they could get.
Buddy Jennifer is afraid to ask the school hunk (Alex Black) for a date, so Ned volunteers to do it. The hunk believes that Ned wants the date, and replies “Sure, but just as friends. I like you, Ned, but not in that way," boldly implying that gay dating is commonplace at Polk Middle School.
A Buzzfeed article on "21 Actors Who Came Out after Playing LGBTQ Characters" states that Ned was gay, but Nickelodeon was not permitting gay characters at the time, and I seem to recall Ned getting a girlfriend. It also states that Devon is gay in real life, but he's married to a woman, so probably not.
After the School Survival Guide, Devon capitalized on his teencom fame with Shredderman Rules Christmas in Paradise, and Love at First Hiccup, where his characters win the Girls of their Dreams.
California Scheming sounds like a comedy, but it's actually a thriller: "A teen seductress pulls three other privileged Malibu kids into her devious scheme, and unforeseen consequences force the group to face their own fears and mortality." Sounds awful, but at least it gives us an underwear bulge.
According to the reviews, Sundown (2016) starts out a teen sex comedy and turns dark. Plus it's "strictly offensive...trans- and homophobic and downright degrading, according to the L.A. Times. Devon and his buds show their butts during a "gay panic" scene.
Jul 22, 2024
Gemstones Season 1 Finale: Judy and Kelvin start to heal, Scotty joins the family, and we say goodbye with some random dicks
Link to the Season Finale Cocks
Back in Freeman's Gap : Church. In his sermon, Eli describes his visit to Aimee-Leigh's childhood home, where he interacted with her spirit. Cut to a flashback of the siblings collecting the money that Baby Billy and Tiffany stole from Scotty's van.
Rev. Seasons is redeemed: Cut to a flashback of Rev. Seasons (Dermot Mulroney) working in a hardware store (Baptist churches are autonomous, so if one closes you don't automatically get placed elsewhere). Eli offers him a job as pastor of the satellite church that Baby Billy abandoned. Rev. Seasons was a secondary Big Bad, but Eli stole his flock, so we are not sure who needs forgiveness more.
"If you're not rooting for your enemy's salvation, you are not in line with what the Spirit wants." Shots of Dot Nancy and her parents, BJ, Keefe (working security again), Martin's wife, a couple I don't recognize, and Jesse's crew (Matthew, Gregory, and Levi). Notice that BJ and Keefe are linked, structurally presented as the partners of Judy and Kelvin. They won't begin sitting together until Season 3.
Scotty is redeemed: "Aimee-Leigh knew this. That's why she wanted to help, no matter what." Shot of the spirit of Aimee-Leigh sitting in the congregation, glowing in ethereal light, with Scotty beside her.
Maybe, in spite of his machinations, posturing, criticism, and threats, in spite of the hints of abuse, this is what Scotty wanted all along. After all, the goal of the two schemes was to draw Gideon away from his family so they could spend their lives together. Maybe he couldn't admit it to himself, so it came out in random bursts, like calling Gideon "cute," taking him out on dates, and finally admitting, just before his death, that "you broke my heart." Aimee Leigh helped him understand what he needed, what he wanted, and she has made him a Gemstone.
Baby Billy grifts: "For when you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will forgive you." Cut to Baby Billy and Tiffany selling their new gimmick, pictures of his trip to heaven. I guess they haven't been redeemed yet.
More after the break
Fangbone!: 3rd Grade Barbarian and Boyfriend Fight Monsters
Fangbone (2014-2017) features a 9-year old warrior from the land of Skullbania who talks like Conan the Barbarian (and is voiced by Taylor Abrahamse). He was entrusted with a magical talisman (if you must know, the severed toe of the Venemous Drool) and zapped into our world, where he befriended "weird kid" Bill (Colin Doyle). Drool sends monsters and tries various psychological tricks to get his toe back, but Fangbone and Bill are always victorious.
You get the premise in the opening credits; the show itself is nonstop buddy-bonding, with almost all of the characteristics of a classic gay subtext: physicality, domesticity, exclusivity, lack of heterosexual interest, and permanence.
In "The Necktie of Change," Bill is annoyed by Fangbone's barbarian excesses; he forces Bill to wake up three hours early, stabs the toaster, and won't let him enter "the maw of the metal beast" to get to school. Then a magical photograph transforms him into a preppy who wears a suit and eats with a knife and fork. At first Bill is excited by this new toned-down Fangbone, but then he realizes that it was Fangbone's eccentricity that made him attractive. Besides, he can't fight monsters as a preppy. Constant grabbing of hands, arms around shoulders, hugging. Physicality.
In "The Mom of No Return," Bill's Mom discovers that he has been fighting monsters with Fangbone, and forces them to separate. They are miserable without each other. Besides, Fangbone can't fight monsters adequately by himself. Mom finally relents, and Bill rushes in to save the day. Permanence.
Not many episodes involve friends outside the core duo. I watched "The Pitch of Black," in which Fangbone takes the gang camping (aka "Skullbanian sky-snoring"), to check on their interactions. He insists on roughing it -- no wifi, no tv, no "phones of smart." Then shadow-monsters attack! The friends consist of Dibby, who talks like a robot; Patty, a sarcastic girl; and a chubby eyeglassed person. They act as a group, leaving the Fangbone-Bill pairing intact. Exclusivity.
Only one episode mentions a girl or a woman: Fangbone is stressed out being responsible for the fate of two universes, so Bill finds a previous Guardian of the Toe to give him a pep talk: Wargrunt of the Bare-Claw Bear Clan, a giant adult Valkyrie-person. But she turns out to be evil, hoping to use the power of the One Ring -- um, I mean Toe -- for her own ends. No heterosexual interest.
All that's missing is domesticity: Fangbone lives by himself.
Fangbone! is based on a series of books by Michael Rex, who has published many other children's books about monsters and warriors. No indication that the subtext is intentional.
But no indication that it's not intentional. Here another of his characters displays heterosexual interest, so why did he ensure that Fangbone and Bill don't? A suggestion of authorial intent.
My Grade: A
Jul 21, 2024
Love Lies Bleeding: Lesbian neo-noir in the New Mexico desert, with bodybuilders and bonus dicks
Link to the bonus dicks
Friday's Movie Night movie was Love Lies Bleeding (2024), about a lesbian couple involved with bodybuilding, gun-running, and murder. I was not happy with the choice, thinking that it would be constant breasts and other body parts, but the sex scenes are actually quite subdued: a flash of breast in the first, fully clothed in the second. And there are two scenes with beefcake.
The story: In a New Mexico desert community that seems to be all desert, no community, Lou runs a run-down gym, then goes home to her horrible apartment to feed her cat and be depressed.
Meanwhile, homeless bodybuilder Jackie -- wait, how can you work out six hours a day and eat 5,000 calories while homeless? -- has sex with JJ (Dave Franco) to score a job as a waitress at main local business, a shooting range which is also a front for a drug-and-gun smuggling operation.
Left: Dave Franco's buttDepressed Lou visits her relatives so she can be a tad less depressed. Surprise: JJ is her brother! He was cheating on his wife earlier! Casting stupidity: Lou and JJ look exactly alike, but he is actually her brother in law, and the woman playing her sister looks absolutely nothing like her.
Next, Bodybuilder Jackie wanders into Depressed Lou's gym. They bond over clobbering some sexist jerks played by Keith Jardin, left, and Jerry G. Angelo, below. Lou has a side gig selling illegal steroids to gym members; she gives Jackie some for free because, you know, she's cute. Soon they're kissing, then sexing, and then Lou invites this random hookup to move in. Not smart, girlfriend.
Although this is small-town New Mexico in 1989, the lesbian couple is accepted with utter nonchalance. I imagine if it was two guys, the townsfolk would horrified.
The only problem: Depressed Lou's employee, the ditzy comic-relief Daisy, has a crush on her, and is jealous of this new person in her life. This will become important later.
Oh, wait, I forgot the other problem: when Depressed Lou brings Bodybuilder Jackie to meet the family, and it comes out that Jackie had sex with her brother-in-law JJ, she recoils in disgust. First, she doesn't believe that "bisexual" is a thing; either you like girls, or you like boys. Second, why JJ? He's an abusive jerk. Lou often wants to kill him. Uh-oh, don't tell your bodybuilder-girlfriend with a sketchy past that you want to kill someone.
More after the break