"The Great North": Bears, Moose, Bigfoot, and a Gay Son in the Alaskan Wilderness

 

Stuck in a hotel room in Indiana and unwilling to get a Grindr hookup with pandemic Phase 2 going on, I watched Fox's Sunday night lineup.  A game show about legos, The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, American Dad, and a sitcom I never heard of before, The Great North.

It was set in a small Alaska town near Anchorage, with animation very reminiscent of Bob's Burgers -- even a child in a bear costume, like Louise's rabbit ears (I couldn't tell their gender).  None of them were given names except for a woman named Honeybee, so I had to make some up.

The primarily plot in the episode I watched involved Guacamole Man and Bear-Child doing various barters to get avocados, so they can make guacamole for Honeybee's birthday party (they end up bartering a plane trip to Anchorage with Guacamole Man's ex-girlfriend).

In a second plot, a Clueless older man tries to create a Shrek theme for the birthday party, but he's never seen the movie, so Sarcastic Teenage Boy tells him about it -- and gets everything ludicrously wrong, I assume on purpose.

In a third plot, a young woman is living in Fresno with her various brothers and sisters, and trying to recreate When Harry Meets Sally with her boyfriend -- later we discover that she is Honeybee, the one with the birthday, back before she moved to Alaska.  

Whew, confusing character overload! There was no way to tell which were important and which incidental, and only one was given a name.  Of course, I was mostly interested in whether any were gay.  Time to consult wikipedia.

Beef (Nick Offerman), the patriarch of the family, is divorced.  He has four children (the writers didn't think that might be a bit much?).

1. The adult Wolf (Will Forte, top photo), who is married to Honeybee.  He must be Guacamole Man, and the Fresno story is about when they first met.

2. Teenage Judy.  I think Honeybee was telling her the Fresno story.

3. Ten-year old Moon, the Wolf-Child, apparently something of an operator.

4. Teenage Ham (Paul Rust, left) is gay.  He must be the Sarcastic Teen.  

A gay character in a starring role!  That's more than we ever got on Bob's Burgers (although I'm still holding out for a gay Gene).  Now, if Ham could only get a boyfriend.

Episodes to date: a moose breaks into the cabin and steals Judy's clothes; the town celebrates the Not People Festival (to demonstrate that they aren't cannibals); Judy and Ham have heterosexual romance-problems; Honeybee's birthday party; a curling competition.

In Episode 6, Judy asks regular character Crispin (Julio Torres) to the big dance, without realizing that he's gay.  He agrees because he wants to get close to his crush, Ham.  The two boys end up dancing, then kissing, but Ham rejects Crispin because you don't steal your sister's date.  But Judy is ok with them dating.

More episodes: The school mural; Bigfoot; a wilderness "expert" who turns out to be a dud; a blizzard; a Titanic party. 

Only one centric episode?  With dozens of characters, what do you expect?  I understand that Ham and Crispin continue to date, anyway.

Bob's Burgers: The Most Gay-Positive Sitcom on TV

Since 2011, Bob's Burgers has been airing on Sunday night, in the company of Family Guy and American Dad.  But it is quite different from those programs.

1. The father and mother in the nuclear family are not insensitive jerks.
2. They accept their children's idiosyncracies, instead of berating and belittling them (on American Dad) or maiming and murdering them (on Family Guy)
3. There are no sociopaths (like Roger Smith and Stewie Griffin), who kill, maim, and express same-sex interests all in the same scene, as if they are all equally disgusting.
4. There are few if any jokes involving menstruation, masturbation, vomiting, golden showers, diarrhea, or body fluids in general.
5. No one ever collapses in a pool of blood.
6. No one ever expresses hatred of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Jews, Muslims, women, gay men, lesbians, or transgender persons.

In short, you never think you're watching a Nazi recruitment film scripted by potty-mouthed third graders.

It's about a small, struggling burger joint in a resort town in New Jersey, run by aspiring chef Bob Belcher (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, top photo) and his New York accented wife, Linda (John Roberts).  Plotlines generally involve restaurant problems, such a visit from the health inspector, competition with the pizza place across the street, or buying a food truck -- and the problems of the three kids:



1. Shy, socially-awkward teenager Tina (Dan Mintz).
2. Chubby preteen Gene (Eugene Merman), an exuberant nonconformist who may be gay.
3. Preteen rebel Louise (Kristin Schaal), who always wears bunny ears (no one in the family seems to care).

Heterosexism appears on occasion.  A boy band has only female fans, and when Gene gets a secret admirer, everyone assumes that it must be a girl.  But not often.  Usually same-sex desire and relationships are seamlessly integrated into everyday life.

Bob gets a part-time job as a taxi driver, and finds himself driving a group of drag queens home from the bars.  Does he:
a. Freak out, but learn tolerance.
b. Rescue the drag queens from homophobic harassment.
c. Invite them to the restaurant.

Answer: C.  Invite them to the restaurant.

At Christmastime, Bob decides to reconcile with his estranged Dad, Big Bob.  They meet in a gay bar called the Junkyard.  Why?
a. Neither of them realize that it's a gay bar until they get hit on; then they freak out but learn tolerance.
b. Big Bob tells Bob that he's gay and closeted; that's why he withdrew from the family.
c. Big Bob likes hanging out there with his gay friends.

Answer: C.  Big Bob just likes hanging out there.

Gene announces that he is gay.  What happens?

a. The family freaks out but learns tolerance.
b. The family goes overboard with acceptance,
c.  Nothing.

Actually, this episode hasn't appeared yet, and it's not likely to, because stories require conflict and, at least on Bob's Burgers, there wouldn't be any.  Being gay is perfectly ordinary; the family wouldn't have a reaction to it.

By the way, John Roberts, the voice actor who plays Linda, is gay.

Fox's Heterosexual Rocky Horror Picture Show

I'm not a purist who believes that The Rocky Horror Picture Show  is sacred writ.  I'm all for sanding down the plot inconsistencies, booting the jokes that mock women and the disabled, adding some racial diversity, and modernizing the dialogue ("You look like you're both pretty groovy.")

But I would have preferred the new version which aired on Fox last week to keep it gay.

The problem is, same-sex activity is not nearly as shocking  today as it was in 1975.  Richard O'Brien intended for Frank's same sex desire to be disquieting, and his "wedding" to be downright diabolical, far more sinister than Eddie's murder.

Today married men are commonly shown on tv commercials, eating soup.

How to restore that frisson of dread?

How about making Frank transgender?  Transpeople receive far more hostility and fear than gay men and lesbians.

How about Laverne Cox, arguably the most famous transgender person in the world, as Frank?

So far, so good.  Except:

1. Only a few lines are changed, mostly to eliminate profanity.  Frank is still a "sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania."

A transvestite is a man or woman in drag.  Not a transperson.

Columbia's story of first meeting Frank still has the line "He had a pick up truck and the devil's eye."

For awhile, I thought Cox was playing Frank as a male drag queen, but no, in all the interviews, she says "transgender."

2. This changes the dynamic of the movie immeasurably.  Making it more sexist.

The scenes where Frank seduces Brad and Janet no longer involve sex.  They involve Benny Hill antics of sexual harassment: leering, chasing, butt-slapping.

For that matter, all of the sexual activity is sexless.  When Janet sings "Touch me!", Rocky obliges by touching her...shoulder!

The attempted sexual assault ("You'd Better Wise Up, Janet Weiss") is much more violent, with Frank and Janet getting into a "girl fight" melee.

I guess we shouldn't expect oral sex jokes and breast-fondling with High School Musical director Kenny Ortega at the helm and two former Disney teencom stars as Brad and Janet.

Or anything gay.

3. It's way heterosexist.

The original had three gay male relationships -- Frank with Eddie, Brad, and Rocky -- and six heterosexual (count them!).  No lesbian, unless you count Columbia and Magenta grabbing at each other.

The new version has two lesbian relationships -- Frank with Columbia and Janet -- and seven heterosexual  (count them!).  No gay male.

And lesbian relationships are much more acceptable to the heterosexual "male gaze," so they're worth only about half as much in queering the text.

Meanwhile, the Transylvanians dance "The Time Warp" in strictly boy-girl configurations.

In the original, Rocky shows no interest in Frank during "I Can Make You a Man."  In the new version, Staz Nair plays him as obviously into the buxom leading lady.

In the pool scene ("Don't dream it, be it!"), Brad and Rocky look like they are about to kiss, but Janet intervenes.  Boys don't kiss!

This is a heterosexual Rocky Horror.

I don't care if there are  a few rainbow flags scattered about.

Grease Live: Still No Gay People at Rydell High

Grease (1978) was my coming-out movie, mostly because of the theme song, with lines I misheard::

The adults are lying, only real is real.
We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel. 

The movie itself was unremittingly hetero-horny heterosexist: boys and girls circle each other, preen, posture, try to hook up, and finally succeed, with some uncomfortable gender politics.

No gay content except for a couple of homophobic jokes.

I just saw Grease Live (2016), a live version that aired on Fox.  Nostalgia about nostalgia, a 2016 broadcast adapting a 1978 movie which was itself an adaption of a 1971 musical set in the year 1959.

Got all that?

The plot stays the same: at Rydell High in 1959, Danny, leader of the T-Birds, and Sandy, member of the Pink Ladies, play a game of desire and rejection, "cool" greaser vs. "good girl" amid such nostalgic settings as a malt shop,a sleepover, and a drag race.  In the end, Sandy abandons the good girl act and pretends to be sexually voracious, thus driving Danny wild and winning his heart.

Meanwhile, each of the other T-Birds hooks up with one of the Pink Ladies.

The T-Birds are:

Danny: Aaron Tveit (top photo)
Kenicke: Carlos Pena Vega (left)

Doody: Jordan Fisher (left)
Putzie: David Del Rio (below)
Sonny: Andrew Call

How did they update the 1970's classic?

1. The cast is multi-ethnic, with plenty of interracial couples.
2. Sandy is from Salt Lake City, Utah, not Australia.
3. Danny defends Eugene the Nerd, and eventually invites him to join the gang.  Eugene also gets a girlfriend, a female nerd, and shows killer moves at the dance contest.
4. Pink Lady Jan, previously ridiculed for being fat, is now ridiculed for being weird.
5. There are male and female cheerleaders, but the dialogue, oddly, assumes that they're all female.
6. They changed some of the dirty lyrics, but they kept the rape-promoting "Did she put up a fight?" from "Summer Nights"

Gay Changes
1. During the dance contest, the coach reads the rules: in 1978, "male-female couples only," followed by a homophobic joke against Eugene.  In 2016, the line was changed to "couples only, no singles, no triples."  Which would have been great if there were same-sex couples, but there were none.  As the scene stands, it completely erases even the awareness that gay people exist.

2.  In 1978, Kenicke asks Danny to be his "second" in the drag race at Thunder Road; they hug, then jump apart in homophobic panic.  In 2016, they see the other guys staring before jumping apart. Kenicke asks "What are you looking at?"  Seems more homophobic.

3. In "We Belong Together" in 1978, each T-Bird is paired with his respective Pink Lady, except for Sonny, who looks shocked when he is paired with a dog instead of Marty.  This shot was cut in 2016.

I looked carefully, and couldn't see anyone who looked like a same-sex couple in any of the crowd scenes, at all.  In "We Belong Together," everyone pairs off into male-female couples.  Even the curtain calls are male -female couples.

If director Thomas Kail could introduce interracial pairings as unremarkable and commonplace in the 1950s, when they were anything but, then surely he could have introduced a gay couple or two into the dance contest or the final carnival scene.

But he didn't.  38 years later, gay people are still not welcome in the world of Rydell High.

See also: Grease 2: The Gay Connection; I Lost It at the Movies.