Baylen Bielitz: The kid version of the gay superhero Wiccan visits Oz and The Secret Garden, buddies with Jett Kyte, crushes on Spider-Man.

  

Link to the n*de dudes

I've been researching the actors who played Billy and Tommy, sons of the Scarlet Witch Wanda Maximoff in Marvel comics and tv shows.   They grow up to be superheroes Wiccan (gay) and Speed (bi), so did the casting agents make sure that the actors playing them were gay/bi, too?  

Teenagers: Joe Locke and Ruaridh Mollica (below).  Both gay.

Tweens: Julian Hillard and Jett Kyte (left). Both probably gay.

Kids: Baylen Bielitz (right) and Gavin Borders. 

(Ruaridh in action on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

I doubt that the casting agents were specifically looking for gay actors to play the preteen Billy and Tommy. They might not even be aware that LGBT kids exist.  But they if they were looking for resemblance to the older actors, they might ping on a gay vibe, or ask if Mom and Dad would object to their kid playing gay.  We'll start with Baylen Bielitz, five-year old Billy (the future Wiccan) on Wandavision.

Baylen was born in Southington, about 20 miles from Hartford, Connecticut, in May 2014.  He expressed an interest in acting and dancing when he was five years old, so his parents entered him into a local acting competition.  He won and got an agent, who started sending out video audition tapes (this was during the pandemic).  

 On his sixth birthday in May 2020, Baylen posts "It's my b-day, dance with me," noting that he always was inspired by Derek Hough.

Actor/dancer/choreographer Derek Hough, is straight, but he has played gay characters and fought for LGBT representation on Dancing with the Stars. He performed in the first male-male duo on the show, in December 2024.

A few days later, Bay got word that he had been cast as  Billy Maximoff.  Directly from kindergarten to the Marvel Cinematic Universe!  In the summer of 2020, he and his mom drove to Atlanta to film his scenes. 

I doubt that he knew the entire biography of Wiccan when he auditioned, but he does now.

Other on-screen roles came quickly.

2021:

He appears in The Gilmore Girls on stage and in several tv commercials.

Plus he gets to pose (or photoshop-pose) with Tom Holland's Spider-Man (n*de photo of Tom Holland on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

 2022:

He plays Younger Boy to Lucas Luchsinger's Older Boy in A Better Half (2022), a short about a man confronting his demons. 

Left: Lucas is now in college.  Most recently he starred in Antigone.

In an episode of Evil, about a team of Catholic exorcists, Bay and Robbie Crandall play brothers who are being bedeviled by a demon.  Or is it their mom, trying to push up the subscribers to her social media channel?  

The Noel Diary stars Justin Hartley as Jake Turner, a driven big city corporate type who returns to his small home town for Christmas and...well, it's the plot of every Christmas romcom ever.  Bay plays his younger brother in a flashback sequence.

More after the break. .

Bentley Storteboom: Dutch, 25 years old, or gay? Or all of the above? With KJ Apa's d*ck, Karl Urban's backside, and Gavin Munn

  

Link to the n*de photos

When I saw this photo of someone named Bentley Storteboom (censored for reasons that will become apparent), I concluded that he was obviously Dutch, about 25 years old, and gay.  Turns out that I was wrong about two of the three conclusions.

1. Is he Dutch?   Storteboom means "Fallen Tree" in Frisian, spoken by 400,000 people in the northern regions of the Netherlands, like these musclemen on the beach.

No, he's Canadian.

2. Is he 25?

No, according to the IMDB, as of this writing he's 13 1/2! 

  

He may look 25 in the top photo (especially the censored part), but here he looks like 16-year old Gavin Munn of The Righteous Gemstones.

Bentley was born in August 2012, in Maple Ridge, a suburb of Vancouver.  According to his mom, “He wasn’t your typical boy that wanted to play soccer or sports,” but he was interested in movies and the theater, and started asking about how kids got on tv.  His parents had no experience in performing arts, and had no idea.  Kudos for not trying to push him into sports, Mom and Dad.  My parents never let up.  "You're a boy!  Boys like sports!  Try out for football!"

They did some research, enrolled Bentley in the LeClerc School of Acting, and found him an agent, and he started auditioning at age six.  Soon he was appearing in commercials, and got the starring role in the student film Small Boy (2020): "After getting left out during a hide and seek game, a small boy realizes what he wants is different than what he was seeking from others."  So, different from the others?  Gotcha. 

That fall he won two Joey Awards (for Canadian youth): best actor in a commercial and best actor in a student film. 

In 2020 he won an iconic role in the series finale of Supernatural (2020).  As Dean is dying, he tells his gay-subtext partner Sam that he must "carry on."  The time for the "manly love of comrades" is over; it's time to accept his heterosexual destiny.  A few years later, Dean looks down from heaven and sees that Sam has acquiesced: he's got a wife and kid (Bentley). And the kicker: they're playing ball!  Bentley might not be "like the other boys," but his son is.  We hear the Kansas song:

Carry on, my wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done.
Lay your weary head to rest.  Don't you cry no more.

Funny, I feel like crying at this negation of the gay experience. 

Episodes of Nancy Drew (2021) and YoShowBiz (2021) followed, but Bentley's big break  (at age eight) came with what the local papers breathlessly praised as "a recurring role on a hit tv show!"  It was Riverdale (2017-2023), the campy, over-the-top, NSFW adaption of the Archie comics world. 

KJ Apa, formerly Archie, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

More after the break

George MacKay: The time-traveler's buddy chooses movies about endless pain, misery, and despair. Just because he has a small di*ck?

  

Link to the n*de dudes

I've been watching 11.22.63:  Jake (James Franco), disillusioned by how awful his life (and everything in general) is in 2016, takes a time portal to 1960 in an attempt to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy and make life perfect. In Episode 2, he hooks up with Bill (George MacKay), a Kentucky redneck with a standard Stephen King backstory -- abusive father, murdered sister.  

They have to live together for several years while waiting for Lee Harvey Oswald to show up, so they pass themselves off as...um... brothers.  Not much of a gay subtext--  Episode 3 is entitled Other Voices, Other Rooms, but it has nothing to do with the Truman Capote novel about gay awakening, and Bill's heterosexual identity is established very quickly, when the guys relax by going to a gentleman's club.  But at least some people suspect that the two are a gay couple, and Bill is beaten up in what we would call a homophobic hate crime. Later he is institutionalized and given shock therapy, a common experience for gay men in the early 1960s.  And killed.

So, a queer-coded character, displayed in his underwear a lot.   Enough for me to check to see if George MacKay has played any other gay-subtext roles, or is gay in real life.

He was born in 1992, and broke into film as one of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan (2003).  Then he played a gang member in The Thief Lord (2006), which has a gay-subtext romance.

Next came a long string of angst dramas 

The Boys are Back (2009): man with a dying wife and estranged sons.

Private Peaceful (2012): Tommo (George) has a brain-damaged brother, sees his father being crushed by a tree, loses the Girl of His Dreams to his other brother (Jack O'Connell).  They go to war together, and Bro disobeys an order to abandon the wounded Tommo, and is executed.  Sounds delightful.  

How I Live Now (2013): Daisy, who has a dead mother (of course), survives a nuclear war, sees her friends massacred, finds her boyfriend (George) severely injured, and nurses him back to health.  Lovely.

 

The Outcast (2015), a two-part tv movie: Lewis (George) sees his mother drown (of course), and grows up feeling responsible, so he self-harms and sets a church on fire.  He spends time in prison, then confronts his toxic family members (hint: every man is bullying and abusive),  and confesses his love for The Girl of His Dreams before..you guessed it...going to War. Ugh!  Or as one reviewer notes, a "relentlessly emotional, heart-tugging story of tragedy."

Does every single one of George's movie and tv roles involve the endless misery of life?  I'm surprised someone doesn't start singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Let's check his gay and gay-subtext roles:

I  already reviewed 1917 (2019).  The tragedies piled on World War I soldier George and his gay subtext boyfriend (Richard Madden) were laughably unyielding.  The darn thing was too grim even for torture porn.  But the gay subtext lasted until the last scene, with a last-minute tacked-on reference to a girlfriend back home.  I can hear the writers panicking: "Wait, we forgot to establish that he's straight!  Quick, add a line about a girl!"

 On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: Richard Madden is n*de in Sirens. He's playing the gay Ashley Greenwick (stereotyped name, that) caught in the act.  I don't know who the disgusted buddy is. 

Pride (2014): Members of the gay group LGSM are raising money for the families affected by the British Miners' Strike (1984).  Joe (George) is so closeted that his out-and-proud boyfriend dumps him, and dies of AIDS two years later.  Bummer, but at least it's a gay role.

True History of the Kelly Gang (2019): George plays the notorious Australian bushranger (outlaw), who has a gay friend (Nicholas Hoult) and likes to hang out affectionately with his male crew, but also gets a girlfriend.  It ends badly.

In Femme (2023), George plays Preston, a homophobic gang member  who beats up and then starts hooking up with a drag queen.  But she gets revenge by filming their encounters and showing his friends, so they suspect him of being gay.  Preston gets angry and beats her to a pulp, but doesn't kill her.

OMG, George, what is this, Hee-Haw?

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

More after the break

Alkaio Thiele: A Waverly Place wizard, a gay boy, Peter Pan, and the Devil. With some Greek d*cks and photos that tell you if he is....

Link to the n*de photos

The Disney Channel teencom Wizards of Waverly Place (2007-12) about a family of wizards, gave us a bear dad (David DeLuise), hunky sons Justin (David Henrie) and Max (Jake T. Austin, left), some hunky friends (Dan Benson, Gregg Sulkin), a bisexual daughter, and a huge number of gay subtexts (in spite of the heteronormative erasure in the scripts) .  

The sequel, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place (2024-26), features eldest son Justin as a middle school vice principal, charged by the Wizard Council with protecting the Chosen One, while raising his newly wizardized sons, Roman  (Alkaio Thiele, right) and Milo (Max Matenko).

Alkaio Thiele, 15 as of this writing, plays son Roman with the standard teencom hetero-horniness, but checking his Instagram and Facebook pages, I see hints of gay potential.

1. An interest in muscular physiques.  He posts a lot of photos of muscular co-stars, plus at least three where he is wearing a muscle suit.

2. A photo that I can't post or describe here.  You have to just see it, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

3. A drag piece where he is playing himself and his mother at the same time.

Wait -- that's his actual mother.  I checked her Instagram and Facebook pages: masculine presentation, she/her pronouns, married to a man, two children.  Previously a nurse, now Alkaio's manager.  Kudos on your gender fluidity, Mom!  

What are they up to?  It looks like she is removing a hair net from his head.

Alkaio grew up (rather, is growing up) in Castro Valley, near Hayward in the East Bay, 27 miles from the gay neighborhood of Castro Street in San Francisco.  

He is of Greek ancestry.  Alkaios, "Strength," was the son of Perseus and Andromeda, an ancestor of Hercules.

A random Greek guy on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

 He  began his career in musical theater, playing:

The Artful Dodger in Oliver!

Peter in Peter Pan and Wendy

Sam, a preteen with a girlfriend, in Love Actually Live.

More after the break

"Christmas on Repeat": "Groundhog Day" romcom with Matthew Lawrence, Peter Pan, a bodybuilder, and some d*cks

 

Link to the n*de dudes

After successfully finding a gay romance tucked into the final scene of Falling for Christmas, I decided to check out some other recent Christmas movies to see if a gay character snuck in under the noses of the homophobes.  First up,  Christmas on Repeat, because it features one of those day-keeps-repeating plotlines, and Matthew Lawrence (sigh), one of the trio of muscle-hunk brothers who brightened the 2000s.  

Scene 1: The Day Before Christmas. Andrea spent the night at the office, because she's a workaholic, but not to worry, her assistant got presents for her husband and kids, and arranged for bonuses for the office staff.  On her way out, her boss, Nick (Matthew Lawrence, sigh) stops her: they have to shoot a commercial tomorrow -- on Christmas Day! --  and the guy in charge of the account is taking Christmas off, so... No fair!  Why don't you do it?

She calls her husband, John (Gary Poux), to say she's on the way home.  He is upset, because that means she will want to cook breakfast, and she's an awful cook.  Wait, how is she going to fall in love with Boss Nick?  Maybe she's just the conduit, and Boss Nick will be the one who falls in love with someone else.

She mentions the "not being home for Christmas" thing, but he's used to it: she works every Christmas.

Scene 2: She stops to buy some groceries -- the supermarket parking lot is empty on Christmas Eve?  And the donation-collecting Santa Claus knows her name.  Creepy.  He points out that there will be a shooting star tomorrow night with "off the charts" magic.

Scene 3: At home, she greets her teenage children. Lexi, who looks like a 30-year old supermodel, has a new dance routine -- this is depressing, as Andrea and her husband used to dance, before she got too busy. 

And Matt (JJ Whyte), who is hope because he decided not to stay overnight with his friend Ryder.  Tell me more about your "friend," dude.

Back story: Lexi is from Andrea's first marriage, Matt from this one.  I guess they want to explain why Lexi is so melanin-deprived.  Or they could have found a 30-year old African-American supermodel.

Scene 4: Andrea works on her laptop until late, and goes to bed after Hubbie is already asleep.  Don't worry, I won't say anything about the BBC she's missing out on.

Scene 5: Here are the things she does wrong on Christmas day:

1. She doesn't recognize her son Matt's friends

2. She is unaware that he has stopped being interested in basketball

3. She tries to make pancakes, but sets the kitchen on fire.  Not being able to cook is apparently a major sin in this world.  Maybe this movie is pushing the nuclear family myth, where Dad works and Mom stays home to cook. 

4. She doesn't stop the "Clean, Green, and Prestine" actress and director Paul (Terry Woodberry) from sniping at each other.

Director Paul yells at the actress, she quits, and then he quits.  And gets heterosexualized by mentioning his wife.  Darn.  

Noah Matthews Matofsky: Head Lost Boy, model, disability advocate, Oscar Wilde fan, boyfriend. With bonus n*de Matthews and Captain Hook's hook

Link to the n*de photos

Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) omits the most egregious heterosexualization of recent Peter Pan movies by skipping the usual Peter-Wendy romance, and by  making Captain Hook (Jude Law) gay.  Well, he's usually gay-coded, but his time around he mentions a childhood  boyfriend  -- Peter himself (Alexander Molony), who refused to leave Never-Never Land and grow up, while Hook choose an adult career as a pirate.

I got the same rhetoric when I was a kid: "When you grow up, you will drop your same-sex loves  to devote your life to what really matters, finding and winning the Girl of Your Dreams."  I turned 14, 15, 16, 17 and the joy I felt in masculine smiles never vanished, but my boyfriends began to treat me as a mere chum, someone to discuss girls with. They were Captain Hook leaving Neverland, but I remained, refusing to "grow up."    

Some of the other male actors were of interest, including Joshua Pickering (Wendy's brother John Darling), who according to wikipedia is 4'5", a member of the Short Guys Brigade.  And Noah Matthews,  who plays the gay-coded Lost Boy Slightly: the leader, the only one who remembers anything of his life before Neverland, and the most musical.

Sorry, that's another Noah.  Slightly was played by Noah Matthews Matofsky, the first actor with a visible disability to star in a Disney movie, a leap forward in disability representation.

Especially since the character Slightly is not disabled. Noah was cast because the casting director, and then director David Lowery, loved his audition (they also bonded over a comparison of the Lost Boys and Lord of the Flies).

This was the 16-year old first on-screen acting job, and rather daunting -- he had to spend six months in Canada during the COVID pandemic, spend hours filming in the hot sun, and still do his schoolwork.  But he loved the challenge, and there were perks -- the Lost Boys shared an apartment with a pool on the roof, so after the shooting and schoolwork, they had pool parties.  Tell me more.  

And Michael Darling (the one with the teddy bear) was played by Jacobi Jupe, brother of Noah's crush Noah Jupe (left). It's not everyday that you get to hear all of the gossip about your crush from your roommate.

More after the break

"Zip and Zap and the Captain's Island": Peter Pan, a crush on Dad, a gorilla Sherlock Holmes, and the boys all bulked up

The Spanish bad boys Zipi y Zape, sort of Dennis the Menace squared,  first appeared in a comic strip in Pulgarcito magazine in 1947.

They have since spun off into many more comics, three movies, a television series, a video game, and tons of merchandising.  But Zip and Zap and the Captain's Island (2016) is, as far as I know, their first appearance outside el mundo español.

Zip (Teo Planell, top photo and left) and Zap (Toni Gómez, right) are lanky androgynous teenagers who remind me of the Sprouse twins on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, except that they're constantly insulting and yelling at their parents: stick-in-the-mud novelist Pantuflo (Jorge Bosch) and his wife (who is so mousy and withdrawn that she doesn't get a name in the cast list).

At Christmastime, they visit an isolated island so Dad can meet with a publisher.  They get lost, and end up at a children's home run by the enigmatic Miss Pam (Elena Anaya), a sinister butler, and a cackling, demented nun.

The next day, Miss Pam tells Zip and Zap that, due to all their mischief, their parents have abandoned them. They will live at the children's home forever.  

Oh, and won't you meet two other new residents, the too-cool-for-school Macky (Máximo Pastor, recent photo left) and super-inquisitive flibbertigibit Flecky (Iria Castellano).

Zip immediately starts a gay-subtext buddy-bond with Macky, while Zap gets a goofy hetero-crush on Flecky.

Did you figure it out?  Yep -- Miss Pam has lured the family to the island. She is using a retro Frankenstein machine to regress "troubled parents" to their 11-year old selves, before they lost their primal joie de vivre.  She's Peter Pan, making her own crew of lost boy-adults who shouldn't have grown up.

The children's home is occupied mostly by regressed parents, except they're not really regressed.  The parents are locked in a chamber while their young selves...but not really.  At the end of the movie, all of the regressed parents leave the island to rejoin their parents.

Wait -- Zap gets a crush on his own mother?  Why does that bother me, when Zip crushing on his own father seems fine?

But we're not done.  Miss Pam is also collecting people who look or act like literary characters...then...turning them into other things. So she turns a detective who acts like Sherlock Holmes into a gorilla.

Why not turn him into Sherlock Holmes?

A girl who looks like Pippi Longstocking has an octopus-submarine like Captain Nemo's Nautilus

The children are being controlled by a magic snow globe kept in an aquarium.

Did I mention that it's Christmastime, for no apparent reason?

I think you're just supposed to give your brain a rest, let the bizarre imagery flow over you, and wait for the father-son and mother-son couples to hug. 

By the way, since the movie came out, Toni Gomez has lost his androgynous long hair and hunked up a bit.  His photos online mostly show him modeling and kissing girls.

Wait -- why is it the Captain's Island?  There is no captain.....

See also: Noah Matthews Matofsky: Head Lost Boy, model, disability advocate, Oscar Wilde fan, boyfriend. With bonus n*de Matthews and Captain Hook's hook

"The Claus Family" A Pretty Princess Doll for Tommy, and a Shirtless GI Joe for Jules

Dakota Lotus: The Disney Channel's Coop sings, shows his pitts, brings on Christmas depression.

I was searching for former Disney teencom stars to profile, and this guy popped up.  

A great name: Dakota Lotus.  

And a great physique.

Unattractive face, but with biceps like that, who cares?

And obviously gay: his Instagram posts show him hugging, gazing at, dancing with, and asking to pitt-lick a boyfriend named Joaquin.

Wait -- that was just a tease.  The other 1,360 pics and reels show Dakota with a girl, hugging, kissing, frolicking in London, posing in formal wear, eating, celebrating Valentin'e's Day, and saying things like "I've never met anyone like you" and "you don't meet your soulmate by chance."

Ok, so he's straight.  But no doubt he's done a lot of gay and gay-subtext roles.  

Dakota was born in 2004 in Santa Barbara, where his mom Autum Lotus performed for the Cirque de Soleil.  He started classes at  the Adderly School for Performing Arts when he was only five years old, and appeared in an unspecified number of plays.  The only one mentioned in his bio is Peter Pan and Tinker Bell: A Pirate's Christmas at the Laguna Playhouse in 2019.

Dakota played John Darling, one of the young Darling kids, who gets to play pirates and sing.  Meanwhile Peter (Lincoln Clauss) is torn between girl-next-door Wendy and pixie-licious Tinker Bell.  

Lincoln Clauss is gay in real life, and played the nonbinary Evan on Batwoman.

Dakota's first on-screen acting job was in the Disney Channel's Coop & Cami Ask the World (2018-20): Dakota as Coop and Ruby Rose Turner as Cami host a show within a show, Would You Wrather?, in which fans get to solve their problems by voting on two options, or vote on what prank they should do (the wikipedia article is unclear).  

Their friend Fred (Albert Tsai), younger brother (Paxton Booth), and widowed Mom all have problems, too.  

Left: Paxton Booth.  I just liked the ice cream cone.

All of them are heterosexual, and get one or more boyfriends or girlfriends.  Cami's two boyfriends are played by heterosexual actors who fill their social media with pictures of their girlfriends and wives.  Actually, all of them do, except for Albert Tsai, now a Film & Media Studies major at Columbia University.

More after the break

Are the Pantos Gay?

I have studied English literature, watched British tv, known people from Britain, visited several times, but before last year I had never heard of a pantomime, except as something mimes do.  Apparently people raised in Britain have fond memories of going to pantos at Christmastime, but nobody ever talks about it.

It's is a type of musical comedy performed during the Christmas season, using well-known stories.   Next winter, for instance, you will be able to attend the pantos of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Peter Pan, Puss in Boots, Aladdin, Dick Whittington, Treasure Island, and Robin Hood (prices range from $12 to $30 U.S.)

IThe basic plot must be familiar, since it will be skewed, augmented with satiric bits, slapstick, references to current events, and ad-lib scenes.  The audience, mostly children, will interact with the cast, boo the villain, ask questions, shout "He's behind you!", and even argue: "Oh, no it isn't!" "Oh, yes it is!."

There are five standard characters, plus a chorus and various comedic players:

1. The Principal Boy, traditionally played by a girl in drag, but now more often a tv star, such as Ray Quinn of The X Factor as Aladdin (top photo), or a boy band hunk.

That explains why, when I saw Peter Pan back in the 1960s, Peter was played by Mary Martin.  And why the audience had to shout "I believe in fairies" to save Tinker Bell's life.  Panto roots.  But it doesn't explain the creepy dog in the nanny cap, or why people who aren't sick need to take "medicine."

2. The Dame, usually the Main Boy's mother, traditionally played by a man in drag.



3. The Comic Lead, the Main Boy's zany friend or servant, often played by another celebrity, such as  wrestler Nick Aldis as the Genie in Aladdin (left).

4. The Love Interest, an attractive woman with whom the Principal Boy will fall in love. If the original story lacks hetero-romance, not to worry, one will be added.  For instance, in the Wizard of Oz panto, Dorothy falls in love with someone named Elvis.

5. The Villain, male, female, or a drag performer.

Questions immediately arise: why the drag?  What does it mean to watch a woman in male drag fall in love with a woman?  Does it ameliorate the heterosexism of the boy-and-girl plotline?  Are the pantos gay?

Maybe not.  Maybe the drag serves to accentuate rather than challenge gender norms.

Although there have been pantos for adult gay audiences, such as Peta Pan (a lesbian version of Peter Pan), Get Aladdin, and Snow White and the Seven Poofs, some gay writers who grew up with the pantos felt that they weren't "for us" 

And attempts to incorporate gay characters or situations into the traditional panto have met with hysterical hand-wringing of the "It's for kids!!!!" sort.

If you still haven't met your beefcake quota after seeing a panto, check out the Boxing Day Dips, hundreds of people -- mostly cute guys -- dashing into the ocean nude, or at least wearing as little as the censors will allow.

"Crazy Fun Park": Dead gay teens come to life in an abandoned amusement park in Australia

 

Crazy Fun Park, on Hulu:  Chester's best friend Mapplethorpe has died in a tragic accident at an abandoned amusement park. He is "grief-stricken without his soul mate," until he discovers that "the soul of his mate may not be alive, but is very much kicking."  Don't get too excited -- in Australia "mate" just means "friend."  Still, I wonder if there are any gay subtexts here.

Episode 1: "I Don't Want to Grow Up."  Ugh, are they going to present same-sex romance as something you grow out of to pursue a "real" grown-up heterosexual romance?

Scene 1: Mapplethorpe (Stacy Clausen, left), an energetic, goofy blond, is hanging all over the button-down, "that's not a good idea" Chester (Henry Strand) as they work on their history presentation, Zombie Joan of Arc fighting zombie Da Vinci.  Whoa, these guys are hot for each other.

Scene 2: Time for school, so they skateboard through Asphodel Heights (get it?  it's the flower of the underworld) and arrive ten minutes late.  The teacher makes them re-do the assignment.  They grin at the new girl, Violetta.  Uh-oh, a Love Interest, but at least she's not walking in slow motion, hair blowing in the wind.

Scene 3: Out in the hallway, they're accosted by bullies, but at least no one makes a homophobic slur: Mapplethorpe is called "rat-licker" and "bleached brains."

On to a mountain overlook.  Chester wants to move to Melbourne, where they won't be laughed at all the time.  Maphethorpe counters that they have everything they need in Asphodel Heights: a butt-tree (what do they do to it?), a Pride Rock (nothing gay-specific about it), and an Ambiguous Pole (it's actually called nonbinary).  We're getting some gay references that you'll only catch if you're looking for them.  

Scene 4:   Hanging on each other, the guys stand at the entrance of Crazy Fun Park, which opened way, way back in the Dark Ages (1979!), and closed after some accidental deaths.  They've never had the nerve to go inside (through a scary demon mouth?  I wouldn't, either).  Suddenly they encounter Violetta (naturally), who belongs to a club that photographs abandoned structures.  This is all a tease; One of the guys is going to fall in love with her, guaranteed.

Scene 5: The inside: a roller coaster, a ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and a parody of famous statue of Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse (if you look from the right angle, Walt has an erection).  

Uh-oh, the fortune-telling machine lights up!  But the park has no electricity.  I'd be running, but they stick around. Mapplethorpe reads his fortune-card, but won't tell the others what it says.  A spider causes them to run screaming from the park.

Scene 6: Violetta joins the guys on their walk home from school.  Her family runs a funeral home!  

She invites them inside to help her develop the pictures she took yesterday, but she can't find her film roll.  Besides, Mapplethorpe is scared, so Chester hangs all over him, and they leave.

Scene 7:  Split screen of the guys going home, greeting their parents, and texting each other about asking Violetta to help them write their horror comic.  Mapplethorpe is against it. Chester; "You didn't have to be so rude to her today." Well, he was jealous.  She's the competition.  

Mapplethorpe: "We need her as much as a turkey needs a ukelele." I've heard a phrase like that about lesbians, so maybe he's saying "We're gay. We don't need women hanging around."

Scene 8:  In the morning, the guys are late to school again.  This time there's a presentation on Melbourne Creative Arts High School. The teacher wants him to apply: don't let "misguided loyalty" stand in your way of artistic greatness!  Uh-oh, the eternal question, love or career?

Later, Mapplethorpe finds Chester in the library, re-doing their Joan of Arc report into something conventional.  But when Mapplethorpe touches the scanner, it crashes, and the keyboard catches fire!  Chester is irate, thinking that he ruined the report on purpose, and tells him to "grow up."  Maplethorpe lashes out at Violetta, who happens to be watching, and storms out.

Scene 9:  At home, Mapplethorpe tries video-calling Chester, but gets rejected.  "He hates me!" he exclaims.  Mom disagrees; "You two have a bond that is so special, it could survive anything"  Not that special -- it's called "being in love."  It happens to most people. 

Apprised that you should never go to bed with bad feelings, Mapplethorpe goes to Chester's house to make up. He tries to apologize, but Chester says "It's not me you should be apologizing to."  "So this is about her?"  Durn women, always interfering.  Why can't it be just two guys, living together and doing the things that married couples do? 

"We've got to grow up eventually," Chester says.  Yep, their same-sex love is temporary, to be abandoned for mature hetero-romance.  "What if I don't want to?" Mapplethorpe asks, but of course he has no choice.  He gazes longingly at Chester and then steps aside: "Let's go to the Crazy Fun Park and find her lost film roll.  That will get her to like you again, right?"  Chester won't do it; too dangerous

Out on the street, the jilted boyfriend reads his fortune-card: "Can you surrender that which you desire most?"  Looks like you already did.  He goes to Crazy Fun Park by himself and walks through the scary demon mouth. Violetta wakes up, precognitively aware that something is wrong.

Scene 10:  In the morning, Chester is waiting to walk Mapplethorpe to school.  He never shows up.  Assuming that he's upset over the breakup, Chester rushes to school by himself, but Mapplethorpe isn't there!  His Mom calls: he didn't come home last night!  Then the police: "Was there any reason Mapplethorpe would go to the park alone."  I thought this was a comedy.  It is definitely a drama. 

We cut to the body being taken to Violetta's funeral home, as she gazes mournfully.  Chester goes to the park and calls for Mapplethorpe, hoping that this is just a prank.

Wait -- things start to turn on, a display of stuffed animals barks, and a scary clown squirts him with jizz (it's actually pink, but ok).  The mask comes off: it's Mapplethorpe!  "Welcome to Crazy Fun Park!" he exclaims.  The end.

In future episodes, Mapplethorp and Chester will meet other teens who died in the park, in tragic (and gruesome) ways, and are trapped there, coming to life every night.  Fortunately, the park comes to life, too, so they can go on rides and such.   A few are heterosexual, but most seem to be gay: the Peter Pan Syndrome, gay as arrested development, being a kid forever.

So, Mapplethorpe is obviously in love with Chester, but is it subtext or text?  I can't tell for sure, but:

1. Episode 8 features Mapplethorpe befriending another park resident, a boy ghost named Zed.   He doesn't remember his real name, or anything about his life before dying -- until he remembers that he is trans 

2. Henry Strand has played a gay character before.

3. Writer/director Nicholas Verso also wrote and directed Boys in Trees: a boy named Corey encounters his old friend Jonah, whom he left behind to "grow up."  As they walk home,  we gradually realize that Jonah has died, and his home is in the cemetery.  Sounds like a similar set-up, with a similar theme of LGBT people as stalled on the way to adulthood, unable to "grow up."

So maybe it's text, but done so obliquely that you won't see it unless you're looking for it.  Everyone else will read them as platonic pal.

Twelve Forever: The First Gay Protagonist of Any American Children's Program

In Twelve Forever, a 12-year old girl named Reggie is terrified by the prospect of growing up, so she creates a fantasy world called Endless Island, and populates it with interesting characters like Flower Woman (with flowers for eyes), Brown Roger (a small, hairy thing), and Guy Pleasant (half rock star, half dog).


For antagonists, she conjures up the Butt Witch and her henchman Big Deal, who try to force her to grow up.  She convinces two of her real-life friends, Todd and Esther, to come along.


Sounds like H.R. Pufnstuf meets Peter Pan, except those islands were real.   I'm not so sure about Endless Island. It sounds very much like a psychotic delusion.

I became interested due to an episode in which the Butt Witch tries to break up the romance between two burly wrestlers, Mack and Beefhouse.  Two burly male wrestlers!

The other characters are completely nonchalant about their gender, saying things like "I can't wait to find my soulmate," and so on.

This is definitely a gay -positive show.  Reggie herself gets a crush on a girl named Connelly.

Unfortunately, Reggie is such a self-centered jerk that she's impossible to watch.  When Connelly displays interest, she makes an excuse and runs away.  Repeatedly.

Imagine: you're 12 years old, you find a girl you like, and she makes it very clear that she wants nothing to do with you.   How's that for a crushing childhood trauma?

Later, at the school dance (4 male-female couples and Reggie), Connelly shows up, and a flustered Reggie forces her friends to leave, even though they are having fun.

Isn't it always the way: you find a gay-positive character, and they're unpleasant and possiblypsychotic?

Oh,well, who am I to nit-pick?  This is the first gay protagonist of any American children's tv program, cause for celebration.

"Come Away": Alice Liddel and Peter Pan are Half in Love with Easeful Death

 

I'm a big fan of all things Alice in Wonderland, and while I don't care for the Peter Pan mythos, the premise of Come Away (2020) sounded intriguing.  Alice and Peter as siblings who visit Wonderland and Neverland together?  And by the way, they're black.  Race relations in Victorian society!  So I plopped down my $19.95 to Vudu's Theater at Home service the day it started streaming.

And then I started kicking myself.  

1. Dreary, depressing, obsessed with death -- ok, no problem. -- have you actually read the Alice and Peter Pan books?  Stay a child forever, if you can.  Growing up is terrible.  You have to do icky things like get a job and get married, and then you die. 

Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread, with bitter tidings laden, shall summon to unwelcome bed ⁠a melancholy maiden!

2. Race is irrelevant Victorian society -- ok, no problem.  Maybe the black actors were cast because they aced their auditions. 

3. But it is unforgiveable to make us slosh through the melancholy, dreary, painfully depressing world of adults, where it's always winter but never Christmas (sorry, wrong book) to the bitter end, and Alice and Peter NEVER GO ANYWHERE!  

They're supposed to be exploring Wonderland and Neverland, for chrissakes!

The plot: Alice, Peter, and their older brother David live in dreary Victorian England with their progressive parents, Jack (David Oyelowo, top photo) and Rose (Angelina Jolie), having pretend adventures.  Then one day they are all playing pirates when David falls into the lake and drowns.  

The family falls apart.  Jack descends to a world of gambling, gambling debts, and child neglect.  Rose, delusional and about to die of grief, takes to her bed and drinks.  Snobbish Aunt Eleanor arrives, plotting to send Alice away to boarding school, which strikes me as an excellent idea, but is presented as a fate worse than death.  Well, a fate the same as death.  

Don't let the smiling faces fool you.  After the first five minutes, no one ever smiles again -- for the rest of their lives.

Alice and David try to ease their pain by rumbling through the Victorian underworld, encountering tawdry real-life versions of the characters and situations of Neverland and Wonderland  For instance, a Mad Hatter prototype runs the pawn shop where they are trying to raise some cash to pay Dad's gambling debts.  

But there is no Wonderland.  There is no Neverland.  There is no nothing.   

Peter, who blames himself for David's death and the destruction of the family, never manages to move on.  He "never grows up," vanishing into his father's world of gambling, drinking, and death.   Alice grows up, marries Mr. Darling -- the same thing as death -- has three kids (Michael, Wendy, and John), and writes the books as a form of grief therapy.

So if Peter Pan comes through the window, he will be Wendy's uncle?

The books were actually written by J. M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll, who were living in England during this period and occasionally smiled. Wouldn't it have been cool if Alice and Peter met them?

Or if, like, they actually had the adventures the movie promises?

This lying, deceptive piece of con-artist garbage reminds me of The Bridge to Terabithia, which also lures you in with the promise of an alternate world fantasy, only to punch you in the stomach: "Fooled you! This is a movie about a child dying, but you already paid, so we don't care."

Beefcake: No.

Gay characters: None specified.

Heterosexism: Alice and Peter are siblings, so thankfully no pre-teen falling-in-love.

My grade: F-.