Pasolini's Canterbury Tales: more gay characters and cocks than Chaucer imagined

Link to the cocks

The Canterbury Tales (I Racconti di Canterbury, 1972) is my favorite of Piers Paulo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life (others include The Decameron and The Arabian Nights), maybe because the set-up and many of the stories are familiar from my college claasses, so I don't get lost in the abrupt sedgeways.

And because I saw it last of the three, so some of the cast was familiar: Pasolini's lover Ninetto Davoli as a comic-relief buffoon, Franco Citti as someone morose and frightening,  Although I'm still annoyed by the closeups of random people with bad teeth grinning at the camera for no apparent reason, and the groups of people sitting around singing for no reason.

There is less full-frontal nudity than in the others, but for some reason the penises on display are much more impressive. The biggest of the lot -- probably the biggest portrayed in any film anywhere -- belongs to John McLaren.

Pasolini includes adaptions of 8 stories:

1. The Merchant's Tale: An old man gets a young wife, who is having an affair with Damian,  Oscar Fochetti, so two naked teenage gods (left) decide to have a little fun with them. While a naked boy plays the flute.

2. A new tale: A professional blackmailer, who has just turned a man (Philip Davis) over to the authorities for a same-sex relationship, meets the devil.  The execution of the sodomite is uncomfortable to watch, especially when one considers that similar atrocities are still happening in the world today, but at least the blackmailer gets his comeuppance.

3. The Cook's Tale: The foolish Perkin (top photo), channeling Charlie Chaplin, invades a wedding, hangs out with the guys, and has a three-way relationship with a man and his wife.

More after the break

Modern Tarzans

Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs' literary creation, was wildly popular in the 1930s and 1940s, appearing on the radio, in comic strips, and in now-classic movies, and inspiring a host of imitations.  His popularity waned later, although of course there were movies, comic books, a tv series, a Disney musical, and so on.  Contemporary adaptions must face a number of problems:

1. The myth of Darkest Africa may have played in the past,  but today everyone is aware that sub-Saharan Africa is not jungles and "savage tribes."  How would Tarzan fit into today's geopolitical landscape?

2. Without coming across as racist?

3.  And sexist?

4. The story is so intimately familiar, it seems impossible to put a new twist on it.

Here are the contemporary Tarzans:

Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996-2000).  Back in Africa without Jane, Tarzan (Joe Lara) has "epic" adventures that mostly rehash the books: he goes to Opar, Pellucidar, and so on.

The Legend of Tarzan (2001).  An animated Tarzan (Michael T. Weiss) and Jane face contemporary problems, mostly involving their friends disapproving of their relationship.

Tarzan (2003).   "This thrilling contemporary take transforms the classic Tarzan tale into a rapid-fire adventure."  Um...what was it before?  Jane is a NYPD detective who helps the Ape Man  (Travis Fimmel) combat the evil CEO of Greystoke Industries.  They also solve some regular crimes in this short-lived series.

Tarzan of the Apes (2008), a segment of Matinee, an anthology playing homage to the movies of the 1930s.    Edgar Rice Burroughs accompanies Jane to Africa.  The Ape Man, played by Aaron Sheehan,wears pants.

Tarzan Jr. and the Cuban Mercenaries (2010), an entry at the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival.  Remember Boy, Tarzan's adopted son in the MGM and RKO movies?  He's all grown up (played by Quint Hankel), and has taken over for retired Dad.  He must fight the Cuban mercenaries who somehow show up in the jungle.  Sketchy black and white, like an old newsreel.

Tarzan (2013).  Tarzan (Kellan Lutz) and Jane fight the evil CEO of Greystoke Energies in this German production.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016), a sophisticated, articulate Tarzan (Alexander Skalsgaard), living in London in the 1890s, returns to Africa investigate the atrocities committed by King Leopold of Belgium (who really was responsible for the horrific exploitation of the Belgian Congo).  Wearing a loincloth.

Rory J. Saper plays the teenage, jungle-bound Ape Man.

Tarzan and Jane (2017), an animated teenage Lord of the Jungle (Giles Paton) with super-powers in a new children's tv series.

"I May Destroy You": Drama pretending to be a comedy about gay and straight victims of sexual assault in the Black British community

  

Since I watched Chewing Gum, MAX recommended another comedy set in the Black British community.  Not that I mind.  In I May Destroy You. Arabella became famous as the voice of the milennial generation with her first book, Chronicle of a Fed Up Millennial.  Facing writers' block as the deadline for her second approaches, she goes out with her friends to party, and something happens in the club restroom.  

She doesn't remember much, but it way have been a sexual assault. She puts her book on hold to find out what happened, with the help of her two friends, Terry and Kwame, who is gay.  I'm reviewing Episode 1.4, where Kwame and his boyfriend Damon (Paapa Essiedu, Fehinti Balogun) get a Grindr hookup.

Scene 1: Arabella sees a therapist about her trauma: she's fine when there are other people around, but when she's alone, the flashbacks become intense.  Also, she can't focus, and her book deadline is approaching.

Meanwhile, Kwame is in the supermarket texting someone.  He goes into the bathroom and has oral sex with a store clerk - we just see Kwame's knees in the stall, and the clerk as he leaves.  Afterwards he doesn't even look at Kwame as he rings up his purchases.

Back to Arabella: the therapist suggests finding some friends she can trust, and doing relaxing activities like yoga, jogging, or crafts.  Arabella texts her roommate Ben, to see if he's interested, but he's busy tonight, band practice.

Scene 2: Arabella attends Kwame's aerobics or self-defense class: they run in place vigorously, while he yells that they're going to defeat their enemies.  Are you an eagle or a pigeon?  

He takes a break to greet a shy guy whose grandmother liked his water-aerobics class earlier.  Kwame asks him out for coffee.  This dude is a major player, man.

Scene 3: On their coffee date, Kwame complains that his homophobic Dad can't even look him in the eye.  His date, who turns out to be Damon from the plot synopsis, has never met a brother who was...um...before. 

Kwame tells him: "You can say it.  Tell me what I am."  When the date says "A gay guy," he asks "Are we the same?"  He accepted the date, didn't he?

They have no place to go, since Kwame lives with his Dad, and the date with his Nan.  But how about if they find a  hookup on Grindr, and go to that guy's place? 

Scene 4: Arabella in the coffee shop, meeting with Zain, Karan Gill, whom her agent hired to help finish the book.  Except the coffee shop is closing.  How about his office?  No, her trauma won't permit being alone with a strange man.  A bar?  Ok.   

Meanwhile, Damon posts on Grindr: "A top and a bottom looking for a third." With a place, right?  He sorts through the responses, looking for a hot one. 

Scene 5: At the bar, Arabella reads a section of her book, about the main character finishing her Sprite and going to the toilet, while her date smears chicken grease on himself. Editor Zain doesn't like it. Neither did I.  I know I'm not in the intended audience, but it was disgusting. 

Uh-oh, Arabella notices a guy staring at her, another guy touching his girlfriend, the waitress bringing someone a drink, and starts to freak out.  She has to leave.

Scene 6: Arabella visits her brother, Tobi King Bakare, but he's just getting ready to leave for church.  She's just there to retrieve the arts and crafts supplies from her old room, anyway.  Then on the bus, trying to keep from flashing back to the sexual assault, and back to her apartment.

Meanwhile, the guys are on their way to the hookup.  Date Damon asks Kwame if he'll have to do anything with the other guy.  A three-way on your first time together?  Dude, you're asking for trouble.  They kiss on the doorstep, just as the Hookup, maybe Samson Ajewole, opens. 

More after the break

Seann William Scott: From homophobic to gay-positive roles, with three butts, two bulges, a dick, and Gavin Munn

 

Link to the nude photos

Seann William Scott first became famous as Stifler in the American Pie franchise (1999-2012).  I 've never seen any of them (although I know what they do to the pie), but I found a list of his "most disgusting antics"on the fan wiki. 

• Accidentally drinks a guy's cum
• Gets urinated on by a guy
• Forced to kiss a guy
• Has sex with a guy and two dogs
• Digs a ring out of dog poop
• Accidentally has sex with an old lady.  

As you can see, same-sex acts top the list of disgust.

Seann took a serious -- well, at least not comedic -- dramatic turn in Final Destination, 2000, about teens who survive a plane crash, except fate didn't want them to survive. 

 

Former teen idol Devon Sawa also starred.

Then it was back to raunchy comedy in Road Trip, 2000, about four college buds on a road trip to see boobs and retrieve an incriminating tape.

Dude, Where's My Car (2000), about...um...a stolen car, required Seann to kiss Ashton Kucher.  Both actors were interviewed about how the managed to do something so disgusting.  Plus there's homophobic jokes, gay panic jokes, and lesbian jokes, covering all the bases. 

The tv series Dukes of Hazzard was infamous for sculpted bods and enormous bulges of Bo and Luke Duke, John Schneider and Tom Wopat.  The 2005 film version, starring Seann as Bo and Johnny Knoxville as Luke, emphasized Daisy Duke's short-short.

In Role Models (2008), Scott plays an energy-drink salesman assigned to be a role model to a foul-mouthed young boy.  Homophobic jokes and gay slurs abound, but at least we get a shot of his butt.

More Stiffler after the break

"The Eyes of Tammy Faye": A gay-positive light in a homophobic era, with nude photos, not of the televangelists

  

Link to nude photos

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) takes us back to the golden age of televangelism, when the big names were world-famous celebrities with huge political and social influence.  They had dinner at the White House.  They were parodied on Saturday Night Live.  

1. Jerry Falwell (Vincent D'Onofrio) turned his Moral Majority into a seething- ground for anti-gay hatred.  He blamed them for everything.  An airplane crash in Peru -- must have been some gays on board.  Rise in teen pregnancy -- gay rights make our kids think they can do anything they want.  Your basement is flooded -- God is punishing you for not hating gays enough.  "A homosexual will kill you as soon as look at you."

2. Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) proclaimed that God was punishing all of the gays by giving them AIDS, but they wanted to infect as many straight people as possible, with the goal of destroying society before becoming extinct.   They had special rings that, when you shook their hand, would prick you with a little of their blood, so you would catch AIDS and die.  They would spit on your food or cough on you on purpose

3. Jimmy Swaggart (Jay Huguley) said that he would kill any gay man who looked at him romantically.  He saw his huge tv ministry decimated after two prostitution scandals, in spite of his famous "I have sinned" speech. 

4. Oral Roberts managed to build a whole homophobic university with sleazy fundraising techniques, like claiming that if viewers didn't send in $8,000,000, God would kill him.

5. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (Andrew Garfield,top photo and left, Jessica Chastain) ran the PTL (Praise the Lord) Club.  Jim always promoted homophobia and denied allegations of "homosexual activity," even after he was convicted of defrauding his viewers out of $150 million and sentenced to prison.  

Tammy Faye, however, believed in compassion.  In 1987, she interviewed Steve Pieters, a gay minister (who had AIDS), without ever saying "God's punishment." She asked stupid-sounding questions like "If you've never been with a woman, how do you know you don't like it?". but later explained that those were the questions her viewers had.  

She regularly attended pride events and was interviewed in gay magazines through her post-PTL years.  Her heavy make-up made her look like a drag queen, and she went with it, attending -- and judging "Tammy Faye Drag" contests.

Tammy Faye was not entirely gay-positive: she didn't support same-sex marriage, and continued to believe that same-sex acts were sinful.  But so was premarital and extramarital sex between straight people; why should gay people be subjected to discrimination and prejudice?  

Many evangelicals today still hate LGBT persons, but imagine what it was like in the 1980s and 1990s, when almost all of them did!  My sister didn't speak to me for five years after I came out (my brother was always fine with it).  In that morass of homophobia, Tammy Faye was a beacon of hope.  

There are frontal and rear photos in the NSFW version of this review

See also: The Hard Work of Forgiveness: A Gideon/Scotty Story

"My Friend Dahmer": How did they avoid the myth that all gay men are murderers? With bonus Kartheiser cock.

  

Link to the bonus Kartheiser cock

I wanted to review My Friend Dahmer, because it stars Ross Lynch and Alex Wolff, two of the top teen idols of the 2000s, and both strong gay allies.

Plus perennial gay-subtext favorite Tommy Nelson and several gay actors, such as Harry Holzer, left, and Cameron McKendry.

And Vincent Kartheiser, who played the surly son of the vampire/  private investigator Angel,  then grew up to star as Pete Campbell in Mad Men. 

But could I stomach it?

When Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted of killing, dismembering, and eating 17 young men between 1978 and 1991, homophobes were jubilant: "This proves what we've been trying to tell you: all gay men are murderers!"  

As early as the 1920s, Freudian psychologists like Wilhelm Stekel proclaimed that "overt homosexuals" were responsible for most murders and rapes, and men with "repressed homosexual conflict," for most other crimes.  Through the 1960s, criminologists and sociologists generally agreed. Talcott Parsons argued that Nazi concentration camp commanders were all gay, since no one else would enjoy genocide.

During the 1970s and 1980s, criminologists promoted the myth of "uncontrollable rages" that resulted in almost all gay men murdering their partners, or being murdered.  Or they figured that the main reason men have sex with each other is to satisfy "an inner fury against prolonging the race," that is, to kill future generations. 

Today articles and books in the field of criminology ignore LGBT people except as victims of hate crimes and domestic violence, and in lists of deviants on "the margins of society":

Drunks, vagrants, paupers, homosexuals, prostitutes

Homosexuals, murderers, vagrants, scum

Homosexuals, infanticides, cannibals, murderers

Given the ongoing homophobia in contemporary criminology, how the hell could you make a movie about Jeffrey Dahmer without falling back on the old myth that to be gay is to be a murderer?

Some of the reviews seem to be promoting the myth: it's about "a gay, cannibalistic serial killer," placing gay, cannibal, and serial killer as equally disturbing. Ross Lynch commented in Out Magazine about playing a "gay necrophile." 

Gulp.  Well, here goes...

More after the break

Ian Winningkoff: From "Sulphur Springs" to "Grease," with some teen idol co-stars and hunky Danny Zukos

   

 Link to the nude photos

The New Orleans-based actor, model, and basketball star Ian Winningkoff has eight acting credits on the IMDB.

Including Secrets of Sulphur Springs, a Disney Channel teen thriller about kids who travel back in time to uncover the secrets. Preston Oliver plays focus character Griffin.

And several locally-produced shorts, including Revelation, Dies Irae, Good Girl, and Birthday Surprise. Eli Barron is his usual costar.

Ian's most famous role to date is Young Chuck Montgomery in Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones.  In a flashback to 2000, he plays a sort of backwoods Tom Sawyer/ Barefoot Boy with Cheek of Tan terrorized by his hard-core  fundamentalist parents.  He grows up to become one of his father's most loyal militia men, played by Lukas Haas. 

Ian is also deeply involved in local New Orleans theater.  He has appeared in Legally Blonde, The Addams Family, Shrek, and Into the Woods, Jr.

More Ian after the break

Peter Scolari: Wacky inventor, gay dad, Tom Hanks' bosom buddy, icon of my childhood. WIth bonus dicks

 

Link to the nude photos.

It's sad when you discover that one of the icons of your childhood has died.  Sadder when you discover that he died in 2021.  

Peter Scolari was short, blond, muscular, handsome -- perfect.  Born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1955, his tv career began in 1978, with some guest spots and a starring role in the short-lived Goodtime Girls, with such future stars as Annie Potts, Scott Baio, and Adrian Zmed.  It was set during World War II, so the "good time" was just a gushy tagline, like the tv shows Happy Days and..um..Good Times.

In 1980, Peter hit television fame with Bosom Buddies, pitched to the network as a "witty Billy Wilder-style buddy comedy, like Some Like It Hot."  The network only heard Some Like it Hot, and put the buddies, Peter and then-unknown Tom Hanks, in drag. They explain in the intro that it's just so they can live in an all-female residential hotel; they're heterosexual, so "it's all perfectly normal."

In the second season, they minimized the "they're guys in dresses, har har!" jokes to concentrate on the buddy-bonding.  The two became lifelong friends off-camera, too. Tom Hanks states that they were "connected at the molecular level."  Today we would call it a bromance.

 The theme song, Billy Joel's "This is My Life," was an anthem for all of the gay boys of the 1980s who fled homophobic small towns for the freedom of West Hollywood or New York:

I  don't need you to worry for me, cause I'm all right, 

I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home. 

I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life. 

Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone.

Next came episodes of Steambath, which was Loveboat at the baths, with no gay characters; Finder of Lost Loves, which was Loveboat with private detectives, with no gay characters; and Love Boat.

The next tv show I saw Peter in was Newhart (1984- 90), with Bob Newhart as the proprietor of a rustic New England bed-and-breakfast, later the host of a tv show, Vermont Today. Peter played his producer, Michael Harris, who falls in love with heiress-turned-maid Stephanie.  No beefcake -- in an interview, Peter said that he never takes his shirt off because Michael "doesn't have biceps like this"; no gay characters, and it ends horribly, when the whole series turns out to be the dream of the psychiatrist Bob Newhart in his old show. 

Still, as it bounced around the schedule with Designing Women and Kate and Allie, it provided some glimpses of gay potential, like the three buddy-bonding brothers, Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.

I didn't see much of Peter after Newhart. I was living in West Hollywood, then New York, and not interacting much in the Straight World.  He had some guest spots on Empty Nest and Burke's Law,  voiced Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, and had a starring role in Dweebs, another short-lived series about computer nerds.  Future queer-friendly comedian Kathy Griffin also appeared.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Series sounds awful, but it won two Emmies, a review calls it "the best-written kids' show on television," and it lasted for 68 episodes. Peter played the guy who shrinks kids, and Thomas Dekker, who would grow up to have a chest, played the kid who gets shrunk. 

More Peter after the break

Actually, the shrinking in the title was just to draw in audiences from the movies. Peter's character invents a lot of things: glasses that allow you to see the dead; a time machine; a brain-swapping device, a clone machine; a love drug.

More tv shows follow:Touched by an Angel, Ally McBeal, Reba, The West Wing, Commissioner Loeb in Gotham, Peter in Madoff, and then his magnum opus, Girls, 2012-17.

The Girls are in their 20s, living in New York City, and, according to wikipedia, having "post-feminist conversations around the body politic and female sexual subjecthood." 

There are various men in their lives, including Andrew Rannells, who dated Hannah in college before coming out as gay in Season 4, and Peter as Hannah's father Tad, who comes out as gay in Season 4 also, and starts dating Keith, played by Ethan Phillips.  

They don't get to kiss, but at least we have a chance to see Peter's penis, and his butt.

Near the end of his life, Peter had a nine-episode story arc as Bishop Thomas Marx on Evil, the horror drama about Catholics priests and secular dudes fighting demons.

Peter died in October 2021 after a two-year battle with leukemia.  I will always remember him as an emblem of the infinite promise of the 1980s, the dream of West Hollywood.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven

And now I'm getting depressed. F*ck the Sadness, let's get some dicks in here, or on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Girls also starred Andrew Rannells and Matthew Rhys-Davies's cock or a prosthetic.  Evil also stars Boris McGiver as a Monsignor, which I assume is a person of importance in the Catholic Church

Darn, it didn't work

They'll  tell you you can't sleep alone in a strange place

Them they'll tell you can't sleep with somebody else

But sooner or later you'll sleep in your own space

Either way it's O.K. you wake up with yourself

My job as an athletic trainer

 

Link to the nude teams

When I was a kid, I hated sports -- who would willingly submit to having hard round projectiles hurled at them? -- but my parents wouldn't believe me.  "You're a boy!  Boys like sports!" they kept insisting as I unwrapped Christmas presents of basketballs and baseball bats.

Denkmann Elementary School didn't offer gym classes, so they insisted that I choose something from the Parks & Recreations Department "Kids' Sports" program.  So I took judo for three years, stopping only when the dojo moved across the river to Davenport.

Washington Junior High offered a full range of team sports, so they began pushing me toward baseball, basketball, or...shudder...football. I compromised with wrestling, but dropped out after an unfortunate penis incident during a match. 

When I was about to start tenth grade at Rocky High, home of the Rocks, the litany began again: play a sport, play a sport, play a sport.  With even more urgency, since a boy with an aversion to athletics might be a "swish."  My Dad even forced me to try out for junior varsity football!

Noticing my dismay, my gym teacher, who was also the football coach, came up with another idea.  He asked if I had my Red Cross First Aid certificate.  I did. Then he suggested that I might like a job as an athletic trainer.

What do they do?

1. Run tape measures over athlete's muscular bodies to measure them for uniforms
2. Make sure the cups are snug but not so tight that they squeeze their extra-large sex organs
3. Massage their muscles if they get a cramp

4. Watch them carefully in the locker room after games to make sure they're feeling ok
5. Pass out towels as they walk naked toward the showers.
6. Tape and splint their muscles if they are injured.

Um...there are jobs like that, and not just in gay fantasy novels? Why didn't anybody tell me about this before? Sign me up!

Oh, and you get to watch all of the games from the sidelines.

Well, every job has its drawbacks.  I worked as an athletic trainer through my sophomore and junior years, until my parents insisted that I get a "real job," one that paid in bucks instead of biceps.

I've often wondered why the coach thought of me for the job.  

Nude teams on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Robert De Niro's 15 Gayest Movies, from "Bloody Mama" to "Dirty Grandpa," with 5 De Niro dicks and 1 butt

In addition to being one of the most accomplished actors of our time, Robert De Niro is a strong gay ally.  In 2016 he received the GLAAD Excellence in Media Award, for media professionals who have made a significant difference in LGBTQ representation

He has 135 acting, 39 producing, and 2 directed credits listed on the IMDB, but these are the gayest, with gay characters, buddy-bonding subtexts, beefcake, or nudity.

1. Bloody Mama (1970). The 27-year old's first nude scene in an anti-Establishment tale of Ma Barker and her crime family.  Mama gives the squaling Lloyd a bath, and his penis pops out.

2. Mean Streets (1973): buddy-bonding between two Italian-American hoods, De Niro and Harvey Keitel.

3. 1900 (1976): buddy-bonding between two Italian boys, one rich, one poor (De Niro, Gerard Depardieu).  Their three-way encounter with a woman features frontal nudity.

4. Taxi Driver (1976): Travis Bickle becomes a vigilante, and rescues lesbian Jody Foster. Mega beefcake.

5. New York, New York (1977): "Lullaby of Broadway" romance between De Niro and gay fave Liza with a Z.

6. The Deer Hunter (1978): Depressed Vietnam War vets. One of De Niro's first nude scenes.

7. Raging Bull (1980): A self-destructive boxer.  Beefcake.

8. The Mission (1986): buddy-bonding in 18th century South America, between a Jesuit priest and a reformed slave trader (Jeremy Irons, De Niro).

More after the break