Tuca & Bertie: Female Empowerment among Birds

Reading the press -- "Creator Lisa Hanawalt is fighting back against the repressive boys' club of adult animation"; "She expects men to hate-watch her show" -- I expected the new animated series Tuca and Bertie to involve heavy-handed message stories, endless fights against sexual harassment, glass ceilings, income disparities, and women's freedoms of various sorts, "Me Too" writ large.

 But there is nothing in this show that even the most un-woke, objectifying, toxic masculinity-breathing alpha male would find discomforting. Indeed, only three episodes even deal with sexist objectification:
Bertie's boss at the bakery inappropriately touches her.
She recalls a childhood sexual assault
She tries to deal with the catcalls that women get all the time.

Another evokes the glass ceiling: Bertie's ideas at her other job are not taken seriously.  But it turns out that she's just not assertive enough.  When she speaks up, the boss is happy to offer her a promotion.

Maybe they think alpha males will object to the discussions of boobs and other lady parts.  But I thought they enjoyed that sort of thing?

Tuca and Bertie are a pair of active-passive bffs, a female buddy tradition dating back to Thelma and Louise and Laverne and Shirley, or farther,  to the ingenue-sassy sidekick of the 1930s screwball comedies.

Tuca (Tiffany Haddish) is an uninhibited, irresponsible free spirit toucan who bounces through life.  She has to learn to be more responsible.

Bertie (Ali Wong) is a needy, insecure, micromanaging, perfectionist song bird, saying things like "I really should be working on that big presentation."  She has to deal with her crushing anxieties.

The third major character is Bertie's live-in boyfriend, Speckle (Steven Yeun, top photo), who doesn't really have a lot to do except ask "Then what happened?" 

You may have noticed that they are all birds.  This world differs from Bojack Horseman's world, where animals are a distinct minority.  Here it's mostly anthropomorphic birds, with a few other animals and sentient plants thrown in.  Humans are so rare that when they appear, they seem like an oversight; some animator forgot.

I especially like the sentient plants, which are, as far as I know, unique in the world of animation. 

Sometimes inanimate objects are alive and sentient, too.  Bertie's boob plays hookey and comes back drunk.  The subways are giant worms.  A yeast infection is comprised of sentient insects. 

The surreal landscape is more interesting than plots, which we've seen a thousand times before:

Tuca goes on a date, but is so nervous that she ruins it.
She is injured but afraid to go to the doctor.
Bertie and Speckle decide to buy a house.


Beefcake:  None. These are birds.

Gay characters: The upstairs neighbor, the theatrical Dapper Dog, may be gay. 

There are lots of lesbian couples in the background.  Two become pivotal in an episode: Bertie's old swimming coach and her wife.

See also: Bojack Horseman

Annihilation: 10 Minutes of Sadness, 5 Minutes of Confusion, Then Netflix

"I got some new blue-rays for Christmas," my date says.  "Take your pick."

Ok, this is tricky. The movie can't be too long, or it will postpone the end-of-date trip to the bedroom.  It can't be too serious or depressing, or it will put a damper on the date.  And it can't be too complex, or we won't be able to talk...or kiss.

The Black Klansman.  A black guy joined the Ku Klux Klan? Sounds too serious/depressing.

Battle of the Sexes.  About a tennis match between Billie Jean King, who everyone thought was gay in the 1970s, and some guy.  Gross.

The Shape of Water.  Water doesn't have a shape; it fills whatever container you put it in.  Sounds like a complex artsy piece.

Annihilation.  The cover art shows a team of space explorers  -- and the blurb says something about an energy field that threatens to destroy the universe. A space ship in the far reaches of the galaxy!  Just the thing!

The only problem is, it looks like the explorers are all women, so there won't be any beefcake to rev our engines in preparation for the bedroom.

Still, it beats The Shape of Water.  I choose Annihilation, and my date puts it into his blue ray player.

Wait -- this isn't outer space.  It's some college in our world, where a professor of cellular biology named Lena (Natalie Portman) gives a lecture on cancerous tumors and mourns her dead husband.  She rejects a party invitation and goes home to paint the bedroom and mourn her dead husband some more while a depressing song plays.

"Helplessly Hoping," by Crosby, Stills, and Nash

All of it.  Every single verse.  Every single word.  While we watch her paint.

No scene about the paint drying?

Then the husband, or his ghost, shows up, and instead of being surprised or happy or saying "I thought you were dead,"  Lena chats with him normally. 

We don't know what they are saying, because the song is still bleating.  But they hold hands through a water glass.

This isn't at all what the cover blurb promised.

I grab my cell phone and look up the plot synopsis on Wikipedia:  Lena and her husband Kane went on a four month expedition to investigate "The Shimmer," an electromagnetic field.  Now Kane is dying, and they don't remember anything that happened during the four months.

Wait -- what I'm watching has absolutely nothing to do with the plot synopsis.

No wonder this was one of the biggest bombs of 2018.  It's about mourning a dead husband who might not be dead, but probably is.

It's very risky to walk out of a movie, or turn it off, during a first date.  But I can't stand any more of this dreck.  I start kissing and groping my date, hoping to distract him.

It works.  We get up and head toward the bedroom, leaving Lena to mourn her dead husband in peace.

Are there at least some hunks wandering around?

Of 11 named characters, only 3 are men:

1.David Gyasi (top photo) as Daniel, the professor who invites Lena to the party. All that beefcake wasted on two lines.

2. Oscar Isaac (photo 2) as Kane, the dead or not dead husband.  Except he's clean-shaven.

3. Benedict Wong (photo 3) as Lomax.  A good alien name: "I am Lomax from...France."

Then there's Ben Collaco as an unnamed scientist.

And Matthew Simpson as an unnamed special ops agent.

I wouldn't know.  I just lasted through the first 15 minutes of bedroom-painting and confusion.

That Girl: Will and Grace for the 1960s

Why did That Girl (1966-71) made my childhood list of tv programs “good beyond hope"? The tale of Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas), madcap wannabe actress on the loose in a bright, effervescent New York City, had  some beefcake -- hunky guest stars and Don Hollinger (Ted Bessell) in extra-revealing 1960s pants.  But there were no same-sex plotlines, no same-sex romances. It's about a boy and a girl.

But still, Marlo Thomas and Ted Bessell were both gay allies.  Ted previously costarred with gay actor Jim Nabors on Gomer Pyle and bisexual Glenn Corbett on  It's a Man's World.  Today Marlo Thomas writes a column on gay and women's history for The Huffington Post.

And they do not portray Don and Ann as in love. Indeed, they rarely even kiss. Instead, depictions of their evenings together often fade out with Don wisecracking and Ann laughing, like warm and caring friends enjoying each other’s company (in the third season, ABC helpfully added a kissing scene to the closing credits, to remind us that they were to be taken as a romantic couple).

Instead, they often treated the romantic reading of their relationship as a joke: in “The Good Skate” (September 1967), when Don presents Ann with a small jewelry box, she concludes that it contains an engagement ring and gapes in horror: she doesn’t want to get married. But it really contains a skate key.

Surely most lovers would consider such a joke rather cruel, but Ann laughs it off as mischievous fun.







ABC wanted the couple to marry in the last episode, but they refused. The series ended with Ann and Don trapped in an elevator en route to a Women’s Liberation meeting.

Two decades later, when Marlo Thomas and Ted Bessell discussed a reunion movie, they agreed that Ann and Don had remained close friends, but never married.

They wanted fans to be free to explore their own feelings, instead of believing that their destiny necessarily lay in a cookie-cutter, assembly-line heterosexual romance. She and

Bessell took pains, therefore, to ensure that their characters could be read in any of the many ways that women and men might approach each other as equals: perhaps as romantic partners, but perhaps as friends. In that last category it is easy to read Don as a gay man.

14 Beefcake Stars of "Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23"

Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23 premiered in April 2012, oddly following the family-friendly Modern Family.  After 7 episodes, it was renewed for a second season, but episodes were shown out of sequence, leaving viewers confused.  In January 2013, it was abruptly cancelled, leaving 8 episodes of 26 unaired.  But you can see the whole series on Logo and Netflix (unfortunately, still not in the right order).

It's a buddy comedy about a wholesome, idealistic girl from hayseed-stereotyped Indiana, June Colburn (Dreama Walker) and her apartment mate, the fun, glamorous, and utterly amoral Chloe (Krysten Ritter), who makes her living through scams and frauds (but this is the New York of Friends, not Seinfeld, so even the evil are rather nice).  Through a constant stream of mishaps, crises, and long-cons, June learns to be more spontaneous, and Chloe develops a conscience, of sorts.

Their partner-in-hijinks is James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek, playing "himself" as obsessed with his dwindling fanbase and trying to make a comeback on Dancing with the Stars.  Celebrity competitors and colleagues often appear: Dean Cain, Frankie Muniz, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Richard Dean Anderson.

There's not much gay presence, except for screaming-queen Luther (Ray Ford), James' assistant, and some gay-subtext vibe between James and Mark (Eric Andre), the manager of the coffee shop where June works.

But the beefcake is constant.  The 26 episodes feature at least 14 hunks, mostly with their shirts off.

1. and 2. James Van Der Beek and Eric Andre (above).

3. Michael Blaiklock  (left) as Eli, the "pervert" who openly spies on them through the open window and offers friendly advice.

4. Michael Landes as Scott, Chloe's father.  She sets June up with him, without mentioning that parental thing.  Personally, I don't have any problems with dating guys old enough to be my father, or young enough to be my son, but June freaks out.

5. Ben Lawson as Benjamin, an Australian director who becomes part of Chloe's Halloween scam: she always makes someone's worst fear's come true.  But Chloe doesn't realize that Ben is scamming her, too, making her worst fear come true: the fear that she will genuinely care for someone.

6. Kyle Howard as Daniel, a "regular guy" that Chloe and June compete over in a bizarre dating game orchestrated by James -- without telling Daniel.
















7. Hartley Sawyer as Charles, a dumb guy with amazing abs who June hooks up with to demonstrate that she's not a prude.  Unfortunately, she is then conned into becoming his girlfriend.

8. Ryan Windish as Beckett Everett, the owner of a shop where Chloe gets a job to enact her latest scam.

















More after the break.

Michael Copon: Power Ranger, Gay Ally

Born in 1982, Michael Copon got his start on the most recent of the Power Rangers series, Power Rangers: Time Force (2001-2002).  

He also starred on the evening teen soap One Tree Hill (2004-5) as Felix, a homophobe who writes an anti-gay slur on the locker of his sister's girlfriend.

And on Beyond the Break (2006-2009) as Vin Keahi, the boyfriend of two female professional surfers.

But it's in movies that the bonding -- and the beefcake -- really shines.  He specializes in movies about female bonding:
All You've Got (2006): volleyball players
Sideliners (2006): cheerleaders
Bring It On (2007): cheerleaders

But there's also some male bonding.  He also goes on a quest with Peter Butler in the Vin Diesel prequel, The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior (2008).

And he starts a BoyBand with Ryan Pinkston (2010).

No gay characters, but he's a gay ally, so maybe someday.

Little Lulu: The Perils of the Gay Child's World

During the 1960s, when Bill, Greg, and I zoomed into Schneider's Drug Store to blow our allowance on comic books, we zeroed in on the Gold Key jungle titles (Tarzan, Korak), Disneys (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge), or maybe Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig as swashbuckling adventurers.  I had to go back later to pick up Little Lulu, since my friends would rib me for liking a comic that was "just for girls."

But Little Lulu offered something that no other comic book or tv program or movie of the 1960s had: cute boys running around completely nude. Stylized, cartoon nudity, but still exciting for a preteen who had a vivid enough imagination to fill in the blanks.

I didn't know that I was reading reprints of comics written by John Stanley in the 1950s, and originally based on single-panel strips published in the Saturday Evening Post.  So, like Out Our Way, I was mesmerized by this kid world so different from my own.

1. At Denkmann Elementary School, boy-girl friendships were discouraged, but Lulu Moppet had friends of both sexes: the self-assured Tubby (left); timid Annie and her brother Iggy (right); spoiled rich kid Wilbur; the haughty Gloria.

2. Some of the plots involved Tubby wanting to kiss Gloria or Lulu getting valentines from boys, but not many; mostly boys and girls were completely oblivious to heterosexual desire, a pleasant surcease of the girl-crazy boys on tv during the 1960s.






3. There was little of the gender segregation of my grade school.  Boys had no qualms about appearing in girls' clothing.  Girls excelled at boy-only pursuits.

4. They had remarkable freedom to go wherever they liked without parental supervision.

5. They lived in a urban neighborhood, a short walk from downtown shops that were curiously specialized (meat, vegetables, bread, and candy all in different stores).  There were also woods, a lake, caves, and a swamp nearby; the beach was a short bus ride away.

6. There were many inexplicable dangers.  Spankings, often for things they didn't do.  Truant officers who wouldn't listen to reason. Goblins who stole your identity.  Parental abandonment ("I found a little boy I like better, so you'll have to leave").  A witch who would turn you into a stone or a lead pipe and leave you, immobile and helpless, forever.

These dangers mirrored those of gay kids who tried to negotiate the straight world, following  nonsensical rules, knowing that the slightest slip-up would mean disaster.

Nancy: Lesbian Panic in a 1950s Comic Book

The cheesecake comic strip Fritzi Ritz premiered in 1922, with gags involving the aspiring model and her series of boyfriends, notably the nerdish Phil Fumble.  And a lot of sex jokes.

In 1933, Fritzie took in her orphaned niece, Nancy, a mischievous and rather melodramatic child.  Soon Nancy became the star -- the titular character in 1938 -- and acquired a series of friends and antagonists, including poor boy Sluggo.  Fritzie became mostly-absent parental figure.

Nancy has remained in print ever since. In contemporary strips, written by Guy Gilchrist, Fritzie is in her 50s and works as a music reviewer.

Nancy appeared in several issues of Dell Four Color and Dell Giants, and got her own title in 1957 (numbered #146 for some reason).

When John Stanley retired from the Little Lulu comic book,, he went to work on Nancy, writing all of the stories in issues #162  through #173, and then the renamed Nancy and Sluggo through #185 (1961).

Stanley specialized in the terrors and anxieties of childhood, and in Nancy's world  he goes unbrindled. The result is disturbing, sometimes painful to read.

Fritzie is at best neglectful, and sometimes downright abusive.

Nancy is jealous, spiteful, vindictive, petty, and vain.

Sluggo lives alone in an abandoned house and often goes hungry, unless Nancy agrees to feed him.

They are not friends, like Lulu and Tubby; they are dating, adding dark humor to their interactions as Stanley hints about just how physical they have become.

Neither has other friends, just antagonists and enemies who ridicule, criticize, manipulate, and harass them.

Sluggo has an adult nemesis who literally intends to kill him.

And the weird physical manipulations that, in Little Lulu, happened in stories, here happen in real interactions with the yoyos, who will transform you permanently unless you trick them into letting you go.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the yoyos are the adults who fall into their trap, and spend their entire lives transformed, until, in old age, Nancy rescues them.

To top it off, there's Oona Goosepimple, who looks like Wednesday Addams from the Addams Family comics, an orphan (that's three of the regular cast).  She lives in a spooky old house with her usually absent grandmother.  Other relatives usually appear, as threats.

One uncle is a giant, lying asleep in the basement.  If he ever awakens, his movements will bring down the house.  So Grandma keeps him drugged.

Nancy dislikes the "creepy" Oona, and rejects all of her overtures of friendship -- but finds herself drawn unwillingly to the house anyway.

She is invited to a party, but arrives to discover that she is the only guest.

Oona pushes Nancy to eat cookies, play games, and spend the night.

Nancy tries to refuse, but can't help herself.

A weird compulsion to spend the night with a creepy girl, or eat the forbidden fruit.

During the 1950s, gay men and lesbians were portrayed as expert seducers, pulling innocents unwillingly into their "deviance."

Just another of the horrors of Nancy's world.

See also: Little Lulu

Absolutely Fabulous

Absolutely Fabulous (1992-1995, and many specials afterwards) was Thelma and Louise on steroids.  And lots of stoli.  It starred Jennifer Saunders as "Eddy" Edina Monsoon, a self-centered, celebrity-obsessed, fad-chasing glamorista who wasn't nearly as hip, chic, or well-connected as she thought she was ("Names, darling!  I need names!").

And Joanna Lumley as her best friend Patsy, a boozing, promiscuous fashion photographer or editor ("He wanted to show me his..er...portfolio").

Reigning the two in were Edina's daughter Saffron, or Saffy (Julia Sawalha, left), a level-headed college student with a dark side of her own, and her mother (June Whitfield), dotty and conniving at the same time.  Patsy and Saffy were each jealous of the other's place in Edina's life, and sniped at each other constantly.

Episodes could go off the deep end, as when Patsy sold Saffron into slavery in Morocco or Edina adopted a child to make Saffron jealous, but mostly they involved relationship issues: Eddy's 40th birthday; a visit by Patsy's older, crueller sister Jackie; Patsy takes a job in New York, thus threatening to break up the duo.

In spite of the occasional mention of heterosexual exploits, Patsy and Edina were most obviously life partners.  They may exploit others, but they never waivered in their commitment to each other.

There were also many quirky supporting characters, such as the butch-femme straight couple, Bo (Mo Gaffney) and Marshall (Christopher Ryan)

But it was the over-the-top camp that made Ab Fab a gay classic.  On Halloween in 1993, half of the drag queens in West Hollywood were dressed as Patsy.

Everyone was casually bisexual.  Patsy revealed that she had undergone a sex-change operation, but "it fell off."

And there were ample gay men and lesbians among the duo's friends and clients.   In the 2003 special "Gay," we discover that Eddy's son Serge (Josh Hamilton, left) ran away to New York because Eddy couldn't accept him as gay-and-boring; he wasn't flamboyant enough to be a chic shopping accessory.

Not a lot of beefcake in this female-oriented show -- just an occasional male model or shirtless boyfriend.  But who cares? Patsy and Edina were absolutely fabulous all by themselves.

Lesbian Subtexts in the Harvey Girls: Little Audrey, Little Lotta, and Little Dot

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I loved Harvey supernatural comics: Casper the Friendly Ghost, with his brave nonconformity to ghost society; Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, who had a homoromantic back story; and Hot Stuff the Little Devil, who had homoerotic potential.

I didn't care much for Richie Rich, until he began bulking up in the mid-1970s, and I never bothered with the "girl only" titles: Little Dot, Little Lotta, and Little Audrey.

But I recently bought an anthology of Harvey Girl comics in the interest of completeness (I already had the other volumes), and in retrospect, those girls had a lot to offer.

No quiet, sweet, well-behaved "little ladies,"  they were intelligent, resourceful, and daring.  They gleefully surpassed the boys in every masculine-coded activity, from playing football to catching crooks, and their adventures usually had a satiric edge.

1. Little Audrey was named after a series of 1930s jokes about a girl who got into a terrible, morbid, or dirty situation, then "laughed and laughed" before delivering the punchline.

She had an African-American friend, Tiny, a first in 1960s comics, and a working-class boyfriend:  Melvin, who wore a spiked fedora and spoke Brooklynese.  Middle-lower class friendships were often forbidden, lending their bond a queer subtext.

2. Little Lotta was fat, a compulsive eater, yet very strong and athletic.  She had a small, eyeglass-wearing, feminine-coded boyfriend, Gerald, reminding one of the old blues song "Masculine Women, Feminine Men."

Some stories involved Lotta saving the day from bullies, but mostly they were extended gags with the gay symbolism that must have appealed to preteen lesbians:  Lotta's parents, teachers, or friends complain that she is inadequately ladylike so she unsuccessfully tries to "femme" it up.  In the end they decide that she's just fine the way she is.

3. Little Dot had two claims to fame: an obsession with dots, and an endless proliferation of uncles and aunts, who took her on secret-agent and science-fiction style adventures.

 In the 1950s stories, she had a boyfriend named Red, but by the 1960s, Red was forgotten, leaving Dot the only Harvey Girl who doesn't display any heterosexual interest.  She is the most feminine-coded of the trio, however, interested in "girly" fashion.

Dot and Lotta were best friends; the two often shared a story as well as a bed, giving them a nice butch-femme lesbian subtext.

Popeye: The First Gay Superhero

During the 1960s, 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 in 1979, 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.

See also: My review of the 1980 Popeye movie.

The Princess: Sometimes Boys are Girls

Sometimes boys are girls.

Eight-year old Sarah may have male physiology, but who cares?  She has been telling her family that she is a girl since she learned to talk.

Her father and aunt are ok with the dresses, the female pronouns, and the name "Sarah."  Her mother, not so much; she insists on boy-clothes and the name "Seth," hoping desperately that "it's just a phase."

Nope, not a phase.  Sarah is a girl, and every girl has a right to be a Princess.

While Mom is busy fretting over her child's future of bullying, transphobia, loneliness, and angst, Sarah is negotiating grade school admirably.

She has a coterie of friends:
1.  Irma, a cisgirl who likes superheroes, monster movies, and wearing boys' clothes (cis means that your physiology and gender identity match).
2.  Jordan, a teenage transboy who sometimes babysits (Mom doesn't realize that he's trans)
3. Chuck, a cisboy with a crush on Sarah.

Actually, it's the non-trans-related situtions that make the strip.  It's no big deal: Sarah is a girl.  Any questions?  Ok, then let's get on with the story.  In this case, Sarah and her friends playing restaurant.

This is one of the funniest child-oriented comic strips out there, on a par with Soup to Nutz and Frazz.  

And, with its G-rated humor, perfect for gender-atypical kids of any age (and gender-typical kids, too).

Christine Smith has been publishing the webcomic The Princess twice a week since 2009 (older strips are archived on The Duck).  There's a collection available through Prism Comics.

See also: Dykes to Watch Out For.