"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

Tommy Nelson and Boyfriends: Boyfriends, buddies, bromantic partners, crushes, and cocks

 

Link to the nude photos

In my earlier profile of Tommy Nelson, star of My Friend Dahmer and Cat and Mouse, guest on The Righteous Gemstones and Better Call Saul, I noted that he married a woman in 2023.  Thus obviously straight, right?

Wait -- there are lots of bi/pan people in the world.  A closer look at Tommy's posts on social media reveals a lot of pre-marriage boyfriends or bromantic partners including Alex Wolff and a non-actor named Ryan.  Plus implications of getting down to business, maybe as a joke, maybe not.

1. Watching tv with a buddy in Fairborn, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton.  I can't tell who belongs to which leg, but they are obviously being intimate. Tommy tells his followers to "laugh."

2. Beer bottle placed strategically over his crotch to emulate an erection.  We've all done that to attract gay men, who always look at other men face-crotch-face.

3. Tommy's main man Ryan.  He invites his fans to invent "ship" names. Rymmy and Tyan sound too weird.

4. A younger Ryan mowing the lawn.

More Tommy after the break

Tommy Nelson and Friends: Lots of gay-subtext roles, some dicks and butts, but no gay porn

 

Born in West Haven, Connecticut in 1997, Tommy Nelson been involved in local theater since he was five years old, with roles in The Laramie Project (about the hate-crime murder of a gay student), The Drowsy Chaperone, and It's a Wonderful Life.

Link to NSFW site

  Here he stars in It's a Wonderful Life

In front of the camera since age 9, Tommy has 31 acting credits on the IMDB, including canonical or gay-subtext characters in My Friend Dahmer (2017) with Ross Lynch (top photo)  and The Cat and the Moon (2019) with Skyler Gisondo and Alex Wolff (left)..

He has guest starred on The Righteous Gemstones, FBI, Better Call Saul, and Blindspot. 

Not a lot of beefcake photos on his social media.  Mostly Tommy does the cool-cat thing or demonstrates his leftist political leanings.

More of Tommy's friends after the break

Ross Lynch and His Brothers: Gay Positive or Homophobic?

You may think of Ross Lynch as just a voiceover artist and the star of the Disney Channel's Teen Beach Movie, or the gay-subtext Austin & Allie, along with Calum Worthy (middle).

But the talented actor and singer, born in Colorado in 1995,  is just one of a whole family of performers.  He is in the group R5, along with brothers, sister, and friend.

I've had approximately 100 of their close friends and girlfriends informing me that they're heterosexual.  What I can't figure out is whether they're gay-positive, heterosexist, or homophobic.

Riker, born in 1991, appears on the gay-positive Glee as Jeff, a student at rival Dalton Academy and  member of the Warblers singing group.  His character is often assumed gay and is shipped with Nick (Curt Mega).

But both Riker and Rydel, the female member of R5, retweeted a tweet that complained that Glee was  "gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay."  Sounds like they're a bit homophobic.  But then...he stars in Glee. Maybe it's commenting on the homophobia?

Rocky, born in 1994, is deeply invested in the band, but he has also appeared on screen a few times, notably in The Wedding Band, about four slackers who sing at weddings, including gay weddings.

Ellington Ratliffe, the drummer of the band, has appeared in Victorious, Red Scare, Raising Hope, and All You Need. 

 He tweeted to Riker that he was the "King of Swag," whereupon Riker told him that "Swag" means gay ("At least now you come out.")  Ratliffe responded: "Swag is still cool."  Homophobic or not?

So, how heterosexist are their songs?  "Can't Get Enough of You" and "I Want You Bad" are loaded-down with "girl! girl! girl!", but "Without You" and "Look at Us Now" omit pronouns.  And in "Never," the singer feels cold, so he gets his sweetheart's jacket wrapped around his shoulders.  That sounds like a male sweetheart.

To be complete, I should include Ryland (born 1997).  He's not in R5, but he stars in the Nickelodeon sitcom The Fresh Beat Band (2009-) as Mini Twist, leader of a group that hero-worships the older Twist (Jon Beavers, who played a homophobic jock in A Gaggle of Saints ).

Homophobic, heterosexist, or gay-positive?

"That Wilkin Boy" and Other Beefcake Wonders of the Archie Universe

The Comic Cave in Rock Island, like most other comic book stores, was devoted to the Marvel and DC lines.  If you wanted something else, you had to sort through the "Other" bins, which consisted mostly of Archie: Summer Fun, Christmas Stocking, Pals and Gals, Betty and Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, TV Laugh Out, Joke Book, on and on ad nauseam.

But occasionally you hit a comic in the same recognizable style, same recognizable pals and gals, but with different names and maybe a change of costume.  Riverdale and the regular gang is far in the background, or altogether absent.  Apparently John Goldwater thought that a new crop of teen characters would expand the market.

Expand the market, when The Big Five (Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie) and a dozen or so supporting players had personalities malleable enough to fit thousands of plotlines, in every genre imaginable, from teen angst to wacky adventure to mystery to superhero spoof?

Apparently.

Reading them was an eerie experience, like a dream where the people you know are a little off.  But they had some beefcake joys of their own.

Wilbur (1944-1965) is the oldest, appearing only a few years after Archie himself, and the closest to the Riverdale gang.

Wilbur is blond, not a redhead, but he has all of the other Archie characteristics, including a sardonic best friend, a nemesis, and two girlfriends, the girl-next-door and the it-girl.  Except in this case "Betty" is a brunette and "Veronica" is blonde.

Not much of beefcake interest. Wilbur was portrayed as rather scrawny, like the 1940s Archie.

And no crossovers into the Archie universe.  No wonder -- the characters would be looking at their doppelgangers.

Bingo, That Wilkin Boy (1969-1982), was a modernized version of Wilbur (both of them have the last name Wilkin, no "s"):  a 1960s guitar-strumming, bell bottom wearing hippie with a talking dog named Rebel and a with-it sidekick (more Reggie than Jughead).

 Also notable, his girlfriend's father is not an industrialist, like Mr. Lodge, but a bodybuilder.  It was always nice to see a chest and abs on someone over 16.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1971-1983) was the most popular of the non-Archie characters, allowing the introduction of magic into the plotlines. There weren't a lot of continuing teen characters, just Sabrina and her hapless boyfriend Harvey.

Harvey was always scrawny, never particularly muscular.  You could see more beefcake with the Archie comics in the summertime beach issues.

 At first they were portrayed as living in Riverdale, just with a different group of friends, so the Archie gang was in the background (here she talks boys with Archie supporting character Ethel).  Later the setting shifted to Greendale, and the Archies vanished.

Sabrina has spun off into several tv series, most recently The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, with the hunky Ross Lynch (top photo) miscast as Harvey.







Josie (1963-1982) started out as a distaff Archie, a red-headed Everygirl bookended by the  "that's not a good idea" Pepper and the walking id Melody (who sang all of her lines, musical notes filling the speech balloons). They all had boyfriends, and butted heads with an obnoxious rich twin-set, Alex and Alexandra Cabot, drawn identically to Veronica and Reggie.

In 1969 the book was completely revamped into Josie and the Pussycats, a musical group consisting of Josie, Melody, and the with-it African-American Valerie.  The boyfriends vanished, although Josie started dating the muscular Alan M (the reason for the refusal to use his last name is never explained).   Alexander Cabot became their manager, and Alexandra remained their chief foil, out to destroy them because they refused to let her join the group (because she insisted on renaming it Alexandra's Cool-Time Cats).  Oh, and she got witchcraft powers somehow.

The group traveled all over the world to perform, but their home base was Midvale (no competition with Archie's rock group).  But later they moved to Riverdale, so Archie and the gang could occasionally appear.

Alan M. became more muscular as the series progressed, until in the spin-off tv series he was completely ripped (plus he sported an ascot like Fred on Scooby Doo).

In the 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie, Gabriel Mann (right) played Alan, and his last name is revealed: Mayberry.

I can see why he went by Alan M.

The 10 Ultimate Hunks of the Ultimate Spider-Man

I was never a big superhero fan to begin with, and Spider-Man was at the bottom of my list.  He's got a crush on a girl, his name has a stupid hyphen, and the 1970s tv series had an awful theme song:

Is he strong?  Listen, bud...he's got radioactive blood.

And I walked out of the 2003 Spiderman during the first scene, when Peter Parker, narrating, insists that "Like all stories, this story is about [a boy and] a girl."  Horrifying heterosexism!

But I may have to rethink my anti-Spidey sentiments.

The Ultimate Spiderman (2012-), an animated series on Disney XD, has a teenage Peter Parker being trained by the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (I don't know what they are, either).

During his adventures, Peter encounters teenage versions of just about every superhero in the Marvel Universe, mostly being voiced by uber-muscular actor/models. The 10 Ultimate Hunks are:

1. Drake Bell (top photo), formerly of the gay-subtext heavy Drake and Josh, as Peter Parker.

2.Ogie Banks as Luke Cage (the African-American Hero for Hire of 1970s comics).

3. Greg Cipes as Danny Rand, aka Iron Fist.

4. Matt Lanter (left) of 90210 as Harry Osborn, Peter's best friend, destined to become his nemesis, the Green Goblin

5. Logan Miller (left) as Sam Alexander, aka Nova.

6. Travis Willingham as the blond god Thor.

7. Roger Craig Smith as 1940s Superhero Captain America

8. Oded Fehr as some sort of mummy superhero.

9. Bodybuilder Terry Crews, formerly of Everybody Hates Chris, as Blade.

10. Disney teen hunk Ross Lynch as my favorite Marvel comics character, gay-coded werewolf Jack Russell, Werewolf by Night.


See also: Bring on the Spider-Men.

Ross Lynch's Top 10 Hunks

Austin & Ally has become the Disney Channel's most popular teencom, due primarily to the charm and charisma of Ross Lynch as aspiring singer Austin Moon, and his chemistry with Calum Worthy as goofy sidekick Dez.

But they aren't alone.  Disney has done a good job of filling the screen with models, beefcake actors, muscular physiques of all sizes and shapes.  Here are the top 10 Austin & Ally hunks:

1. Noah Centineo (left) as Ally's crush Dallas. The actor has also appeared on Jessie, Shake It Up, and Marvin Marvin, and he will be starring in the upcoming How to Build a Better Boy (2014).

2. Cameron Deane Stewart (left), who starred in the gay-themed Geography Club (2013), as Jace, boyfriend of the exuberant Trish.

3. Gabriel Benitez as a keyboard player in the episode "Secrets & Songbooks."

4. Singer/songwriter Trevor Jackson as Trent, Trish's ex-boyfriend.

5. Gregory Marcel (left), star of the gay-themed Sun-Kissed (2006), as Austin & Ally's Stage Manager.

6. Little Person actor/comedian Nic Novicki as "Larry" in the episode "Mixups & Mistletoes"

7. Troy Osterberg (left) as Ethan, a boy who flirts with Trish in "Costumes & Courage."

8. Greg Worswick as Bill, who works at the Surf Shop.

9. Travis Wong as a Ninja in the episode "Real Life and Reel Life" and a dancer in "Viral Videos and Very Bad Dancing."  He also had a recurring role as Yamato the Fighting Robot on Supah Ninjas.

10. Cody Allen Christian, Mike Montgomery on Pretty Little Liars, as Ally's old friend Elliot.

Teen Beach Movie: Not Your Grandfather's Homoeroticism

Teen Beach Movie premiered with frenetic hoopla on the Disney Channel last month, and has been repeated many times since.  It reprises the premise of Pleasantville (1998), with Tobey Maguire as a teen who gets trapped in a 1950s sitcom.  Here the teenage Brady (Ross Lynch, #4 on my list of Unexpected Disney Channel Teen Hunks)  and his girlfriend McKenzie (Maia Mitchell) are trapped in the 1960s beach movie Wet Side Story.  

After becoming acclimatized to beach movie conventions, like you go in the water but never get wet, and you randomly break into choreographed song and dance routines, they draw the attention of the stars, Tanner (the bulgeworthy Garrett Clayton, Disney's Next Big Thing) and his girlfriend, thus upsetting the plot and jeopardizing their chances of getting home.

Meanwhile, there's a bitter -- yes, bitter -- conflict between the surfers and the bikers, and two villains, one flamboyantly gay-coded, build a diabolically fiendish Weather Machine to drive the teens away from the beach.

Back in the real world, McKenzie's evil aunt hatches a dastardly plot to send her to college. The horror!

Throughout, I was wondering:

1. Do we really need a parody of beach movies, a genre that ended in 1967, enjoyed by the grandparents of today's teenagers?

2. I'm all for sending girls a message of empowerment, but should that message really be "Don't go to college!  Stay on the beach and become a surf bum!"

3. In the original beach movies, Frankie Avalon, Jody McCrea, John Ashley, Tommy Kirk, Duane Hickman, and the rest of the guys wore swimsuits throughout.  Biceps and bulges were emphasized.  Why does Brady never once take his shirt off?  Tanner hangs around with his shirt unbuttoned.  The other stars remain fully clothed.

4. Why do all the songs sound like they came from the soundtrack of Grease?

5. A gay-coded villain?  Really?

6. The original beach movies were overbrimming with gay subtexts.  Frankie is torn between the wild homoerotic freedom of the surf and conventional wife-kids-house-job with Annette.  Here McKenzie is torn between the wild heterosexual freedom of the surf and college, while endless songs extol boys liking girls and encourage every boy to find a girl.

The only gay subtexts I could find were:
1. The gay villain.
2. Both of the male leads are extremely feminine.  Disney seems to have hired them explicitly because of their outrageous swishiness.
3. Butchy (John DeLuca), the leader of the bikers, doesn't express any heterosexual interest, and he has a homoerotic moment with Tanner when they decide to work together to save their friends.