"White Lotus": Checking Season 3 for gay characters, homophobia, Thai guys, and Patrick Schwarzenegger's d*ck

Believe it or not, I'm actually thinking of giving The White Lotus Season 3 a shot.  It takes place in Thailand.  I've visited: beautiful temples and monasteries, the Grand Palace.  I took a class in Theravada Buddhism at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. I'm into Asian guys.

Sure, it's produced by major homophobe Mike White, and the earlier seasons had some of the most offensive gay predator stereotypes, but...it's Thailand.  

But before investing, let's see how homophobic it is with the "Season 3" anad the "Coming Up in Season 3" trailers.   

Trailer:

1. An Anglo husband, wife, and three young adult children, and a middle aged woman come ashore, followed by a plus-sized African-American woman, while the voiceover tells us, "At the end of the week, you'll be a different person." 

I think they are Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs, left), wife, daughter, and sons; and Belinda. 

2. Montage of female Thai dancers, Rick (Walton Goggins) kissing his girlfriend, and Three Women crying, screaming, and jumping out of a window.  The voiceover:  "What happens in Thailand, stays in Thailand."

3. Establishing shots of the resort, with the manager, maybe Fabian (Christian Feidrel),  saying "Our hotel is the best in the world."  

Montage of the Three Women hugging in the pool, Rick kissing his girlfriend, someone entering the ocean fully clothed, a ceramic monkey, gunshots, and drowning.  So we'll have some murders.

4. The Three Women toast each other. "To Thailand, and a week of memories."  Some couples on a boat. 

Then back to the Ratliff family from Scene 1.  Mom is happy that her children are all together, but they are miserable. 

5. Belinda from Scene 1 getting and giving massages, so she can bring her skills back to Maui.  I guess she's going to become a masseuse.

6. Rick and his girlfriend going to dinner.  She tells him that this is a wellness resort, so he should get a facial, because everyone thinks that he's her father.  She will help him find his joy again.

7. The Three Women hugging and laughing. One lies down in a bikini. 

8. Tax Evader Timothy Ratliff gets a phone call. He won't tell his family what it's about, because "We're poor now and Daddy's going to prison."

9. A masked robber invades a jewelry store.  Maybe he's Timothy, trying to make some money?  A cop, maybe Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) runs out to apprehend him,  and gets clobbered.  A new security guard is told, "Your job is to protect the hotel."

10. Cop Gaitok says "I don't want to hurt anyone," and fires his gun, while his girlfriend tells him "You've got to be stronger than this."

11. Tax Evader Timothy Ratliff asks his wife, "What if we lost everything?"  She would "not want to live." Uh-oh, she's going to be murdered.

12. The Three Women laughing and hugging some more.  One cries.

13. One of the Ratliff sons, I think Lochlan (Sam Nivola), asks his brother Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger, left),  "What if this life is just a test, to see if we can be better people?" over a montage of a shirtless guy approaching Massseuse Belinda, Rick holding a snake, and Cop Gaitok and his girlfriend watching a show and laughing. 

Saxon finds the "Life is a test" theory ridiculous.

14. A shirtless Saxon twirls a woman, Timothy pulls out a gun, fireworks, a woman in a bikini, Rick kissing his girlfriend, partying, Buddha, partying, a woman's legs, a corpse, screaming.

15. A man tells Belinda the Masseuse, "Go big or go home."

The only male character not shown with a girlfriend is Lochlan Ratliff.  Let's try the "Upcoming Trailer:" After the break

Matthew Jeffers: Elizabethan earl, comedic foil, gay dwarf who fights aliens. With short guy bonus

Link to the n*de dudes

 I don't like the latest (and final?) Walking Dead series, The Ones Who Live: Rick and Michonne, the "heroes" of the zombie Apocalypse even though they make really stupid decisions, are still alive!  Gay characters lose their partners after an episode, or don't even mention being gay except in an off hand comment, but heterosexual romance gets infinite space. 

.Michonne hasn't heard from Rick for years, but she knows he is still alive, and is so desperate to find him that she leaves her two kids behind to search the zombie-infested wilderness.  And she keeps running into people who put their own lives on hold, abandon their family and friends, and leap into deadly danger to assist her in her search. "Heterosexual romance is Everything!  Of course I'll help you!"

But I liked Nat (Matthew Jeffers), the loose-cannon chemistry expert who...drops everything to help Michonne find Rick, becomes her swishy gay-coded best buddy, and dies on the way (it's a sacrifice for heterosexual romance, which is Everything, so he dies happy).  He doesn't display any heterosexual interest of his own, and he's got a cool "screamstick" that can take out helicopters.  In the video game, it's a level 34 weapon that causes 7284 points of damage and can "destroy heaven and Earth."

I'm into short guys, as you know from my profiles of Ryan Pinkston, Daryl Sabara,  and Frederick Koehler -- so really short guys are something of a fantasy.  The shortest I've ever hooked up with was about  4'10."  

Enough about the 4 feet.  Let's talk about the 10 inches.

Matthew Jeffers is 4'2"

Born in Baltimore in 1991, Matt graduated from Towson University with a degree in theater arts. He has 9 acting roles listed on the IMDB, notably 34 episodes as nurse Mark Walsh on the medical drama New Amsterdam (2018-22).

More after the break

Matt Smith: Who doesn't want to see the d*cks of Christopher Isherwood, Charles Manson, Superworm, and Dr. Who?

Link to the n*de photos

We've been watching the 2011 series of Doctor Who, the seemingly endless British sci-fi series that sends the last remaining Time Lord through time and space to save Earth, an alien planet, or the entire universe.  Again and again.  Oddly, when his world-saving takes him to modern day Britain, there are plenty of exteriors, but when it is a distant planet or the far future, all we see are endless corridors. 

Doctors regenerate every few years, getting new bodies and personalities.  Right now it's Matt Smith, an effervescent, jokey type, with an inner trauma that sometimes comes out.  After all, he saw the destruction of his people, and he's over 1,000 years old, so dozens of human companions have died, gotten lost, or left him to go on with their lives.

Matt Smith has appeared as the Doctor in dozens of projects outside the show itself: videos exploring odd corners of his universe, video games, a lot of four-episode miniseries, spin-offs starring former companions Sarah Jane and Amy Pond

The children's program Blue Peter. 

Comic Relief: Red Nose Day, An Adventure in Time and Space...I got tired of counting.  You have to be British to really understand his amazing popularity.

The Doctor would be enough for a career, but Matt has played a wide range of other characters, mostly based on real people:

Christopher Isherwood, the gay author of A Passage to India and Maurice, in Christopher and His Kind, a 2011 adaption of his memoirs. Left, the one without the biceps.

Rowing star Bert Bushnell in Bert & Dickie, 2012.  Neither was gay.

More after the break

Superman: You'll Believe a Man Can Fly

Superman first flew in 1938, and for the next 40 years he had comic books, movie serials, cartoons, and radio and tv series, but no feature films.  Nor, for that matter, did any superhero except for the tongue-in-cheek Batman (1966).

That all changed in December 1978.

 It was a dreary winter, dark, cold, and snowy, with movies about angst, tragedy, and lost love: The Deer Hunter, Same Time Next Year, California Suite, Moment by Moment, Oliver's Story.  I was depressed; a semester into college, and I hadn't met any gay people, or learned of any gay writers except Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde.  Superman was a bright spot, a cozy childhood memory (though it too had a cave of ice).

Director Richard Donner was careful to include every familiar aspect of the Superman myth: the doomed planet Krypton, the elderly farm couple of Smallville, the Daily Planet, Perry White, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, the Fortress of Solitude, Lex Luthor. And some from the familiar TV Superman of the 1950s, who used to change clothes in a phone booth (no old-style phone booths left in 1978).

Indeed, everyone was so busy checking off their list of Superman conventions that they forgot to pay attention to the plot: Lex Luthor plans to drop a nuclear bomb on the San Andreas Fault, thus causing California to slip into the ocean, whereup he will get rich by selling prime oceanside real estate in Nevada.

Ok, that was ridiculous even for a comic book.

The Man of Steel was played by 26-year old Christopher Reeve, a virtual unknown (he had one movie credit and a few tv appearances). He was hired for his muscles, his square jaw, and for his uncanny ability to be both sexy and wholesome at the same time.

He didn't disrobe during the movie, but he favored us with some beefcake shots in teen magazines and in the faux-gay After Dark.

 He was interviewed in gay magazines, an almost unprecedent act of solidarity in the 1970s, and in 1982 he played a gay character, the protege of playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Cane) in Death Trap.  I can still remember the gasps of shock when the two characters kissed on-camera.

Gay-positive Christopher Reeve and his studly physique provided the only gay interest in Superman.  No buddy-bonding in high school, no boy pal, no subdued homoromantic sniping with Lex Luthor.

It was a heterosexual love story, and rather a sappy one.  Audiences twittered and squirmed when Superman and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) flew endlessly through the skies of Metropolis hand in hand, while Lois thought: "Can you feel what I feel? Do you know what you're doing to me?"

On the other hand, she wasn't a complete Girl Scout.  She asked, "How big are you...um, I mean, how tall?", leading to considerable speculation about the Man of Steel's package.

Christopher Reeve was paralyzed in an equestrian accident in 1995, and died in 2004.  Margot Kidder died in 2018.  They're both gone, but that magical night in the midst of a cold, dark, dreary winter lives on.

See also: Jeff East: Tom Sawyer's boyfriend, young Superman, n*de fratboy, Pumpkin prey

Skyler Gisondo's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 2.  Skyler plays Jimmy Olson in the 2025 Superman movie.

"Young Rock" Episode 2.8: The Rock hits the big time, with lots of locker room banter with wrestling greats in skimp suits

 

Young Rock is a fictional autobiographical series about the childhood of Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, bookended by his presidential bid in 2033 (the U.S. could do worse: Dwayne is a gay ally),   I reviewed Episode 2.8, which features Miles Burris as Hunter Hearst Hemsley, a flamboyant blond wrestler.  I figured that he was a parody of Gorgeous George (1915-1963), who riled up the audience by pretending to be gay, so there might be some gay subtexts or homophobia. 

Link to NSFW version

Scene 1: Johnson Family Ranch, 2033, three days before the election. Dwayne's bromantic partner, Randall Park, and his staff are waiting in the kitchen.  The doctor comes out of his room and says "I don't think he's going to make it...to his campaign event tonight!" (Har-har).  He's got food poisoning from bad clam chowder.  "And he's asking for his boyf...best buddy."

Scene 2: Dwayne tells his boyf...best buddy that he's going to the event anyway.  When you face a challenge, you meet it head-on, like he did in 1996 when he got a call... the WWF is taping in Corpus Christi, and they want him for a "dark match" (before the main match, to get the crowd revved up). His first professional wrestling gig!  He just needs to quit his job at the gym and borrow some wrestling gear. 

Scene 3: Dwayne (Uli Latukefu) arrives in Corpus Christi, and is picked up by his opponent, Steve Lombardi (Scott Colton), The Brooklyn Brawler, a 32-year veteran who broke his dad into wrestling years ago. So this guy is over 50 and still wrestling?  The arena is sold out -- 15,000 fans.

Scene 4: Back in 2033, bromantic partner Randall asks if Dwayne was scared.  "No -- I was where I wanted to be."  

Next Dwayne meets the man in charge of his match, ex-wrestler Michael P.S.Hayes (Brad Burroughs).  The PS stands for "Purely Sexy." His advice: "Follow the Brawler's lead, and keep it simple.  You got six minutes. "But how do you want me to go over (lose the match)?"  Hayes and Brawler both laugh: "Kid, we flew you here to win."

Dwayne is shocked. Winning is unheard-of for your first match! He wants to call his parents, but there's no time. Anyway, they're getting the scoop on a WWF chatroom on America Online (if you remember AOL, you're getting brochures from the AARP).

Scene 5: Locker room.  While dressing (or undressing), Dwayne is greeted by The Iron Sheik (Brett Azar left), a retired "heel" (bad guy) who has moved into heel management.  He promises to call Dwayne's parents. during the match to give them updates. Gee, these wrestlers are a big happy family.   

Dwayne also meets Stone Cold Steve Austin (Luke Hawx, bottom photo) who will one day revolutionalize wrestling, but now is stuck in a non-speaking persona; Downtown Bruno (Ryan Pinkston), The Undertaker, Mantaur, and Mankind (Brock Dunstan), his future tag-team partner.  Mankind thinks that winning his first match is a bad idea, since if he wins and the crowd doesn't like him, he'll be finished as a wrestler. 

Finally, a long-haired blond in a fancy suit, carrying a cane (he "looked like he was late for a fox hunt"), introduces himself as Hunter Hearst Hemsley, or Triple-H ( Miles Burris).  He will become world champion 14 times, one of the Rock's most important heels, and off-stage, one of his closest friends. They spar with each other, but without using any feminine-slurs.  Ok, so not a parody of Gorgeous George after all, a real wrestler.  He built his persona as rich-snob rather than feminine-gay.  

Scene 6: Showtime!  Everyone gives Dwayne encouragement: "It doesn't matter if you wrestle for ten years or ten minutes.  You make this moment happen!"  He walks out, waves to the crowd, ignores the heckler who asks "Who the hell are you?" The Brooklyn Brawler comes out, threatens the crowd, and gets booed.  "Six minutes to change the course of my life," Dwayne thinks.  Of course he's going to win, but he has to do it in a way that excites the fans. 

They wrestle; Dwayne actually throws the Brawler into a somersault!  I thought it was impressive, but the crowd jeers.  Back stage, Triple-H laughs.  Hey, are you still playing a character, or are you actually a bully?  The Iron Sheik suggests Dwayne show his legs, get some sexiness going on.  

When the Brawler starts pulverizing Dwayne, the crowd is silent. Uh-oh, they're supposed to sympathize. "What do we do now?" Dwayne asks, panicking.  "Just sell it for awhile.  If the crowd cares about you, they'll respond." 

So Dwayne plays at being in pain, and the love of the underdog kicks in.  The crowd starts encourage him to fight.  As if strengthened by their encouragement, Dwayne bounces back and uses amazing acrobatic moves to finish off  the Brawler.  Everyone backstage is ecstatic.  The kid has showmanship!

Scene 7: Back in 2033, Randall wants to talk about his first stage experience: in college he starred in an all-Asian version of The Hudsucker Proxy.  This puts Dwayne to sleep, so Randall says "Sweet dreams, Big Prince," and leans over to kiss him.  Dwayne wakes up, and he backs off. I take it you're hoping to move the bromance into boyfriend territory?  The end.

Beefcake: Lots.  Half the episode takes place in the locker room, with those muscle studs walking around in those skimpy little wrestling tights.

Heterosexism: None. Young Dwayne has a brief telephone conversation with someone who may be his girlfriend.  Only one insult about someone's lack of sexual practice.  No homophobic slurs.

Gay Characters: None that I know of.  There are wikipedia pages for 48 "openly" gay professional wrestlers, but none of the guys in this episodes.

Gay Subtexts: Deliberate, with Randall Park being in love with Dwayne.

The Inside Scoop: The inside look at pro wrestling was interesting, and the pop-ups useful in figuring out who these guys were. Dwayne is a little too quick to tell us the moral of the story, but after all he is supposed to be sharing his wisdom.   

My Grade: A-

There are a lot of wrestler butts and one penis on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

"Everybody Loves Greg": Vincent Martella grows up, plays Phineas, dates some guys. With some d*cks and Skyler Gisondo

 Link to the n*de dudes

We've been watching Everybody Hates Chris (2005-2009) on Hulu: a nostalgia sitcom featuring the  childhood adventures of comedian Chris Rock, who provided the commentary.  Young Chris (Tyler James Williams) attended an all-white middle school, where everyone hated him, except his teacher, who pitied him for..stereotype of the week.  

He had a bully with an endless supply of racist terms (Travis Flory), a white best friend (Vincent Martella), and at home, Dad with about 35 jobs (Terry Crews), way overbearing Mom (Tichina Arnold), bratty little sister (Imani Hakim), and a little brother (Tequan Richmond), who was bigger, and far more attractive: everybody was in love with him, which was usually fine,but a problem around Valentine's Day, when the truckloads of cards, candy, and wedding proposals arrived. 

It was quite homophobic, even for the 2000s.  Chris Rock's commentary displayed revulsion and disgust whenever he could: "Hey, this ain't Brokeback!"  One episode featured Chris befriending a gay student, but they called him "androgynous."

Nearly 20 years later, the cast varies on their level of homophobia, from Terry Crewes and Tyler James Williams (ugh!).

To Tequan Richmond and Imani Hakim (allies)

 To Vincent Martella, seen here at a Clippers game with Mikey Reid.

After Chris, he became the voice of Phineas in the animated Phineas and Ferb, which is endless: 140 episodes from 2007-2025, plus thousands of movies: Christmas Vacation, Across the Second Dimension, Mission Marvel....

Vincent has also done other animation work, like the video game Final Fantasy XIII, Batman: Death in the Family, and Disney Infinity

Left: Vincent and Mikey have fun during the COVID quarantine.

Vincent's live-action work includes Patrick in three episodes of The Walking Dead: he is a member of a zombie holocaust survivor community in an abandoned prison. Then he get sick, dies, zombifies, and creates a new zombie infestation.

I have a question about this Cupid costume.  

More after the break. 

Popeye: The First Gay Superhero

When I was a kid, Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat often showed Popeye cartoons.  They were awful, nothing but heterosexist morality plays.  In every single one of them, the absurdly macho sailor Popeye and Bluto vied for affections of sexist stereotype Olive Oyl, they fought, and Bluto was pulverized (even though he had a far superior physique).

Then I stumbled upon a book called Popeye: His First Fifty Years, which talked about Castor Oyl, Ham Gravy, King Blozo, Tor, and Oscar.  Who were these people?

I discovered that the cartoons were the latest incarnations of  E.C. Segar's "Thimble Theater" comic strip, which began in 1919, starring get-rich-quick schemer Castor Oyl and his wise-cracking sister Olive.  In a 1929 continuity, Castor hired gruff one-eyed sailor Popeye for a sea voyage.  He became so popular that Segar added him to the cast, honed down his rough edges, and eventually made him the star of the strip.  It continues to run in some newspapers today.

There have been Popeye comic books almost continuously since 1948, published by Dell, Gold Key, Charlton, Harvey, and IDW.

There's a lot of gay content in the comic strip and comic book Popeye:

1.  He's sweet on Olive Oyl, but his main emotional bond is with Castor.  They run a detective agency together, rescue each other from danger, argue, break up, and reconcile.

2. Popeye has no interest in women other than Olive, but he develops several gay-subtext male friendships, notably with King Blozo.

Similarly, he becomes the object of desire of several men.  Reformed villain Tor keeps trying to kiss Popeye and saying that he loves him.

In fact, male friendships drive far more plots than quests for heterosexual romance.

3. The comic strips and comic books mostly occur in male homosocial spaces -- ships, boxing rings, detective agencies.  But Olive constantly disrupts those spaces.  The other characters keep telling her to "wait here" or "stay home where it's safe," but she is a full participant in every adventure.  And when there's trouble, she proves herself a competent fighter, as good or better than Popeye himself.

4. Popeye has no qualms about gender transgressions. He frequently dresses in women's clothing to accomplish some plot point.  When he becomes the ward of the infant Swee'Pea, he joins a women-only parenting class.

All that changed in the heterosexist "every man's fantasy" world of the cartoons.