Simon and Milo Don't Find True Love

In the fall of 2003, after they sang the theme song for the Disney movie Get a Clue, starring Bug Hall, the Canadian pop group Prozzak was splashed across the Disney channel.  They were renamed Simon and Milo, to avoid the association with drug use.

Their music videos were animated.  Simon (Jay Levine) was short and dark haired, well dressed, with a head that had the habit of separating itself from his body.  Milo (James Bryan) was tall, blond, and muscular, a stereotypic pretty boy.  And they had a back story.

Centuries ago, they were on opposite sides of a long, harsh war.  Finally they fought each other in hand-to-hand combat.  Then a voice from the sky told them:

You have been chosen to live in a time that is not your own, sentenced to walk the Earth in search of True Love.
Only True Love holds the key to your destiny.

Wait -- that's what every boy is told growing up: "Your only reason for living is to find and win your True Love."  Dudes aren't special.

They were zapped into the 21st century, where they were sometimes in high school, sometimes adult pop musicians.  

The music videos on the Disney Channel illustrated "Get a Clue" and three earlier songs: 

"Sucks to Be You" (1998): Simon and Milo go to a bar, where he tries to flirt with a lot of women:

You need to know I finally understand

And I gotta get in touch with you now but I can't

Just wanna tell you I'm sorry

I'm a bastard, it's true

Some bullies attack.  Milo clobbers them, but instead of expressing his appreciation, he rushes to propose to one of the ladies -- who rejects him.

"Strange Disease" (1999): Simon and Milo are high school students.  Simon becomes ill with "a strange disease," so Milo takes him to the nurse's office.  But the buxom nurse only makes it worse:

A little sexual frustration

Combined with lack of motivation

And a loss of concentration

I've got a strange disease

 

"It's Not Me, It's You" (2001): Richster Simon explains to Milo that he can't maintain a relationship because the woman always dumps him:

Share the blame, I do -- relationships take two

But all that you can tell me is that, "It's not me, it's you"

As he sits, depressed and lonely, Milo is there to offer his hand.  They walk side by side into the sunset.

Every gay boy who had a crush on his best friend in high school can relate.

Maybe Simon is looking in the wrong place? 

And nothing's ever quite what it seems

Just look a little closer at me

Wake up, who knew, it's me, it's you

Get a clue

There are lots of clues.  Milo never exhibits any interest in women, and he treats Simon in an unfailingly loving manner.  Most friends would tire of Simon's constant depression and self-doubt, but Milo never hesitates, always supports him, gently waits for him to realize who his true love is.

And once, as Simon flipped through a list of potential lovers, Milo's face was there.

But Disney didn't see it that way: all of the rather extensive press about the duo talked about Simon's quest for a girl.

Nor did Prozzak. The band released a new album in 2005, Cold Cruel World, with Simon older, but still depressed, still searching for true love.  Not with Milo.

The Kensington Runestone

Every summer from kindergarten to college (when I decided to stay home), my parents dragged me on a week's camping trip somewhere up north, to Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Canada.  It was usually pretty dismal, with no tv, no museums, no historic sites, nothing to do but hunt, fish, swim, and mess around in boats.

But during the summer after eighth grade, we went camping in Alexandria, Minnesota, site of the Kensington Runestone.

Young Swedish immigrant Olof Ohlman discovered the 200-pound slab of sandstone covered with Medieval runes in 1898.  It tells about a group of 30 Vikings who left Vinland "on an exploration journy" in 1362, and somehow made it to Minnesota.  One day some of them went fishing, and returned to find the men they left behind "red with blood and death," probably attacked by Skraelings (Indians).

Historians at the time -- and my junior high history textbook 70 years later -- stated categorically that no Europeans made it to the New World before Columbus, so this was a startling discovery, and immediately controversial.  The academic establishment decreed the runestone to be a fake, carved by Ohlman for financial gain.

In 1907, a historian named Hjalmar Holand bought the runestone, and spent the rest of his life trying to prove it genuine, describing how Vikings could well have made it to Minnesota in books like Westward from Vinland (1940) and A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America (1962). 

Most historians today contend that Holand was wrong: the runestone is indeed a forgery. But Alexandria loves its claim to fame.  There's a runestone museum and gift shop, and a 28-foot statue of a Viking, Big Ole.

Today, regardless of whether they believe that the Vikings got as far as Minnesota, all historians recognize that they reached the New World before Columbus, and established a permanent settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

What's the gay connection?

1. The Vikings who explored Minnesota were all male.

2. Olof Ohlmann was rather cute.

3. My junior high history textbook was wrong.  The adults either didn't know about the Viking exploration of America, or they were lying about it.  What else were they hiding? Maybe the upcoming "discovery of girls" that everyone at Washington Junior HIgh was always evoking was a lie, too.

Prince Valiant

During the 1960s, the Rock Island Argus printed mostly depressing 50-year old comic strips with jokes about husbands hating their wives or friends betraying each other, with little bonding (Out Our Way was an exception) and very little beefcake. Alley Oop and Prince Valiant were exceptions -- 50 years old, but muscle-heavy.

Prince Valiant was a color strip that appeared only on weekends.  Like Gasoline Alley, it featured characters aging in real life, but it was unique in having no speech balloons; text appeared at the bottom of each panel, making the strip seem more like an illustrated novel than a comic.

When it first appeared in 1938, Val was a young prince from Thule (modern day Norway) who traveled to Britain to become one of King Arthur's knights. Later he returned to Thule to help his father regain his throne, then traveled across Europe and Asia, fighting Goths and Huns, visiting the Holy Land (long before the Crusades).  By the 1960s, the middle-aged Val had settled in North America.

Generally Medieval fantasies (and real epics like The Song of Roland) offer little beefcake; knights wear shining armor, and their northern climate doesn't permit much skinny-dipping.

Sigfried in The Nibelungenlied gets naked, and Sir George in The Magic Sword (1962),  and Lancelot (Nicholas Clay) in Excalibur (1981) take their shirts off, and that's about it.  But in Prince Valiant,  Val was shirtless more often than not.  His muscular physique was drawn in full color and in loving detail.

Unfortunately, through the 1960s, Val retained a 1930s page boy haircut, red lips, rosy cheeks, and long lashes, giving him a rather feminine appearance that didn't lend itself to romantic fantasies.  The name "Val" didn't help much.

And there was little buddy-bonding.  During the 1930s, Val sparred with rival prince Arn of Ord, but they became little more than grudging friends.  In fact, the main plotlines involved the fade out kiss.  First Val and Arn competed for the hand of the fair maid Ilene.  Then she died in a shipwreck, Arn was dropped from the strip, and Val turned his attentions to the fair maid Aleta.

They married, and in 1947 their son Arn was born (the first European baby born in North America).   Eventually they had three more children. When I started reading the strip in the 1960s, Arn was a mischievous teenager, but soon he, too, married.

 Hal Foster, the original cartoonist, also drew Tarzan for many years.   He died in 1982, but the strip is still going strong.

The Norsemen: Do You Want a Simpering, Backstabbing, Cowardly Sissy-Man as Your Chieftain?

The Norsemen )Vikingane)  is Monte Python light, finding humor in the incongruity of modern sensibility in Viking times:   "You can't go on the raid, we have a couple's night planned."

It's filmed in a replica of a Viking-Age farm in  Avaldsnes, Norway, usng authetic costumes and implements.  The actors  film every scene twice, first in Norwegian and then in English.  Their accents range from mild to nearly incomprehensible.  This makes the modern references evern more humorous ("Find your bliss!")

It's  quite plot-heavy; if you miss an episode, you're sunk.

1. The Vikings of Norheim pay tribute to the evil, powerful Jarl Varg.  When they discover a map to a new territory in the West (England), he schemes to get his hands on it.

2. When Chieftain Olav is murdered, his brother Orm (left) takes over, even though he's unqualified, having never been on a raid before because he's a weakling and a coward.  He's also gay.

Not open, andwhen he's accused, he denies it, but he has homoerotic drawings and dildos in his bedroom, he won't sleep with his wife, and when he is raped by one of Jarl Varg's men (while dressed as a woman for a play), he enjoys it.  He explains that according to Viking law, only the passive partner counts as "homosexual," so he tried to be as energetic as possible.

So a weak, cowardly, sneaky, underhanded, potential fratricide is gay but in denial?  I don't like that at all.  I don't care if Viking times were homophobic.  They could have made Orm a great warrior, not a sniveling pansy stereotype.  At least he doesn't lisp, and he was only shown sewing in the first scene.

2. Rufus (left), a captured Roman slave, regales Orm with stories of the pansexual  orgies he used to attend (but when he fantasizes about them himself, the players are all women).

None of the Vikings have ever heard of acting, so Rufus talks them into building a theater and letting him put on a play.  He wants to make Norheim the cultural capital of  the North.

Later, Rufus, Orm, and one of the women become outlaws.  I don't think they become lovers.

3. Arvid (left), a great warrior, wins a farm  by challenging its owner to combat, but he dislikes Liv, the wife he gets as part of the deal; she is into "feelings," and he'd rather be out pillaging.  He also apparently has affairs with Chieftain Olav's wife Hildur and Orm's wife  Frøya.

I had to check wikipedia. I can't tell the women apart.  Except Froya, who goes on raids, rapes men, and then cuts off their penis as a souvenir (she wears a chain of them arund her neck).

When Orm is disgraced and forced to flee the village, Arvid becomes chieftain.

There are many other named characters who have little snippets of plot:

1. Kark, a slave who earned his freedom but decided to stay on as a slave ("there's no greater joy than doing backbreaking work for no money)

2. Orn (top photo), who insists on sitting next to his best friend Ragnar during raids.

3.  Sturla Bonecrusher (left), hired as Rufus' assistant/bodyguard when he's working on the theater project. When Rufus tells him to "discipline" a recalcitrant worker, he knocks the guy's head off.  Literally.

Not much beefcake, on or off camera.  Rufus gets the only significant shirtless/bulge exposure.

And the blatant, blatant homophobia is a major turn-off.  I keep hoping for Orm to be redeemed, but throughout Season 1 he just keeps getting worse. Then I keep checking to see if Norway happens to be a homophobic country, but apparently not. So WTF?