"Monsters at Work": 20 Years after "Monsters, Inc.", Has LGBTQ Representation Increased?

 Monsters, Inc. (2001) suggested that monsters have an economic motive for crawling out from under your bed: the psychic energy of children's screams is the main source of power for their society.   But scream-harvesters Mike and Sully (John Goodman, Billy Crystal) discover that children's laughter is more powerful, so the monsters change their tactics.  The two monsters are presented as a classic straight man-buffoon comedy team, like Abbott and Costello, and one of them has a girlfriend, but they still have a strong gay subtext.

20 years later, the Disney Channel is streaming Monsters at Work, an animated comedy set in the same universe: Tylor graduates from Monster University with a degree in scaring, only to find his skill set obsolete.  So he takes a job as a mechanic while studying comedy.  

Tylor is voiced by Ben Feldman, the Scott Baio lookalike best known for Superstore, who did a PSA in favor of marriage equality in 2012.  Could there be more open LGBTQ representation in the sequel?

I watched Episode 2, "Meet MIFT," in which Tylor goes to work for the Monsters Inc. Facilities Team.

Scene 1:  Tylor's first day on the job (last episode) was a disaster, so today Mom insists on driving him to work.  He doesn't care: the MIFT job is just a "temporary nightmare" while he is awaiting his move to the Laugh Floor (I knew lots of people like that in West Hollywood). 

Dimwitted tapir-monster Fritz (Henry Winkler) arrives and flirts with Mom. Then the orange blob-monster Val (Mindy Kailing), "Tylor's classmate at college and now his bff."  

She tries to hug him, but he shrugs her off.  I could do without the "Your Mom is hot!" stuff, but rejecting a girl is a nice way to start the day.

Scene 2: Tylor arrives at the Maintenance Department in the basement, where the team is waiting for an initiation ceremony: "When a part breaks down, we fix it.  If a machine needs maintenance, we maintain it.  We're the monsters behind the monsters!"   He protests that this job is just temporary.  "That's what we all thought. "

His first ceremonial task: "Wrench that nut!"  It sounds dirty, especially when he protests: "I don't want to wrench any nuts  I want nothing to do with nuts." Speak for yourself, guy.

Next he has to pass through the Doorway of No Return to the land of Infinite Commitment.  "But...this job is just temporary?" "That's what we all thought."

Scene 3: Mike from the original movie returns from an 18-hour shift of refilling laugh canisters. His boyfriend Sully, now the CEO, tells him to take a break, but there's no time: somebody has to keep the kids laughing.  Plus he has a comedy class to teach at lunch.  Sully: "You can't keep going like this." 

Scene 4: The MIFT team pretends that a break room table is Tylor's new office.  

Troublemaker Duncan (Lucas Neff) gives him an assignment: a cannister that needs refurbishment, or it will explode in 20 seconds.  It explodes.  Duncan laughs evilly.

Lunch time: Tylor goes off to his comedy class.  The others are upset: what does he need  to learn comedy for?  It's almost as if he doesn't plan to stay here forever.

Scene 5: The comedy class.  While Mike goes through a powerpoint presentation, "10 Rules of Comedy,"  Tylor complains about the MIFT team.  Surprise!  They followed him.

Left: Lucas Neff

Scene 6:  Mike leaves the rest of the lecture to the stern HR director, Ms. Flint,  and runs to a door portal.  His girlfriend warns him that it's not safe, but he goes through anyway, and is trapped!  His girlfriend? Mike is more obvertly heterosexual than he was 20 years ago.  That's not progress!

The MIFT team rushes into action.  They restore power to the portal and get Mike back, but now he's trapped on a conveyor belt.  The "reverse" lever is rusted shut; no one has the strength to turn it -- except -- Tylor!  The newbie saves the day!

Scene 7:  While they are celebrating, Ms. Flint arrives to pick up  coworker Banana Bread's things.  She was so impressed by his "nuanced insight into comic theory" during the comedy class that she is promoting him to the Laugh Floor.  

Ouch!  But at least now there's a vacant desk, so Tylor gets one of his own. And a wrench with his name on it. The end.

There's also a segment called Mike's Comedy Class, where Mike sings about the dangers of comedy: the kid could "bust a gut," shatter into little pieces, fall out of bed and hit their head, or have their butts fall off.

Mike and Sully:  The increased time given to the girlfriend reduce the gay subtext, although there is a glimmer  when Sully affectionately feeds Mike a cup of coffee.

Tylor and ?:  Tylor doesn't display any heterosexual interest, but I didn't see anyone for him to have a gay subtext with.  Maybe Fritz, who is very, very interested in welcoming him to the team?  But Tylor finds his attention annoying

LGBTQ Representation:  Still no open representation, just some tentative subtexts.

Jozin z Bazin: The Czech Swamp Monster and His Boyfriend

The Czechs and the Slovaks were joined into Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1993 because they have similar histories, cultures, and religions.  Their languages are mutually intelligible:

English: My penis is as big as a baseball bat
Czech:  Můj penis je stejně velká jako baseballovou pálkou
Slovak: Môj penis je rovnako veľká ako baseballovou pálkou

They have the same pop culture icons, like model Jozef Mikovčák (left).

Pop singer Miroslav Šmajda (aka Max Jason Mai), a contestant in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest.

And Ivan Mládek, the Weird Al Yankovich of Eastern Europe, whose novelty song Jožin z bažin (Joey of the Swamp) has been popular since its tv premiere in 1978.

Like the American Monster Mash parodies monster movies, Jožin z bažin  parodies Czech heroic sagas, in which a swordsman kills a dragon and thereby win "half of my kingdom and my daughter's hand in marriage."

Except instead of a dragon, it's a swamp monster named Jožin (Joey), who lives in Moravia (near Brno) but mostly eats people from Prague.  The mayor of the village of Vizovice  offers the narrator half of the collective farm and his daughter's hand in marriage for capturing the beast.  So he drops sleeping powder from a crop duster, putsJoey to sleep, and sells him to a zoo.

Sounds heterosexist, except it's typically acted out with men playing all the parts.

Sometimes the daughter is never mentioned again.

And sometimes the narrator marries the monster.

You can see versions in Czech, Lithuanian, Polish, German, and Hungarian on youtube. With the proper tweaking of the lyrics, it can be turned into a political satire.

By the way, the older guy who pops up out of nowhere and makes frenetic dance moves is Ivo Pešák (1944-2011), who performed in Mládek's Banjo Band in the 1970s, and was a familiar face on Czech tv.  Want to see him with his shirt off?

The Gay Adventures of Jerry Lewis

When I was growing up, every summer and sometimes at Christmastime, we drove 300 miles from Rock Island, Illinois to Garrett, Indiana, to visit my parents' family.  We usually stayed with my Aunt Nora, whose kids were nearly grown-up: when I was 10, Cousin Ed was 21, Cousin Eva 19, and Cousin Joe, the only one still living at home, 17 .

It was fun staying with Aunt Nora.  Their house was only two blocks from the Limberlost Library, where Cousin Joe let us check out books on his card.  It was three blocks from Sylvan Lake, where we could go swimming and fishing in the summer.

And in the winter, there was another treasure: an attic full of comic books from the 1950s!

Donald Ducks! Ancient chubby Caspers!  Archie going to sock hops! Pre-code horror!


And Jerry Lewis.

At the time I didn't know that Jerry Lewis was a real person, a comedian whose shtick involved blatant gay subtexts.

I just thought that he was a comic book character, a big-jawed, rather dopey, but cute young man who was not interested in women, as many cover gags demonstrated (here a woman is amazed because he took her through a Tunnel of Love without attempting a kiss.)

 However, he had a long-term partner named Dean Martin.

The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis title (1952-1957) had the pair traveling around the world, to China, the Middle East, Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa, or Ruritanian countries of Europe, where they became immeshed in intrigues involving spies, bandits, evil cultists, or cannibals, allowing the easily-frightened Jerry to leap into Dean's arms.

Dean often got girls along the way, but Jerry did not.

In the few issues that displayed him shirtless, he had a pleasantly solid physique.

(Yes, that's Batman and Robin as guest superheroes.)

In 1957, shortly after the real-life comedy duo split up, Dean Martin vanished from the comic books, and The Adventures of Jerry Lewis continued for another 84 issues, finally folding in 1971.

Now Jerry was a single parent raising his sarcastic preteen nephew, Renfrew, and still not interested in women, though often they tried to seduce him.  The duo had humorous paranormal adventures with ghosts, witches, werewolves, monsters, mad scientists, and so on.

Eventually Jerry became the headmaster of a school for kids who are "different."

Some nice gay symbolism in my Aunt Nora's attic during the long, dull days after Christmas.

The Dreamy Boys and Teen-Nerd Girl of "A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting"

 A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting (2020) is part of Netflix's "Representation Matters" collection, so I figured there were gay characters.   Besides I erroneously believed that it was a Halloween-themed sequel to  the LGBT-inclusive  Babysitter's Club.  So I went through the whole movie on fast-forward, looking for the representation.

The plot: Kelly (Tamara Smart) discovers that her charge has been kidnapped by a monster named Grand Guignol (played by Tom Felton), who intends to gather his nightmares for a nefarious purpose.  A secret society of monster-fighting babysitters led by the kick-ass Liz Lerue (Oona Laurence) rushes to the rescue.

Liz has a score to settle with the Grand Guignol: years ago he kidnapped her brother.

Meanwhile Kelly has a problem torn straight from the teen-nerd movies of the 1980s: a crush on Victor (Alessio Scalzoto), who is dating a girl so mean, bullying, and downright cruel that you can't imagine anyone wanting to spend more than five seconds with her.  Obviously the only reason they are together is so Kelly can "win" him.

Curtis (Ty Consiglio) is the only boy babysitter in the league, so could he be gay?  Nope -- upon meeting Kelly, he immediately hits on her.  "Cool it, Casanova," Liz tells him.  Apparently he flirts with girls all the time.

Well, maybe Liz is a lesbian?  

In search of a monster, Liz and Kelly go to a teenage party -- but Kelly's crush Victor is there!  She's afraid to go in looking all scuzzy from monster-fighting.  "It's just a dude," Liz says dismissively.

Then "He's eye candy.  I get it.  But whe have more important things to worry about."

Eye candy?  Maybe Liz is straight.

But Kelly and Liz seem to buddy-bond extensively.  They have to rescue each other a few times.  

The movie ends with Kelly joining the Babysitter's Guild (naturally) and promising to help Liz rescue her brother (in the sequel, naturally).  

Wait -- not exactly the last scene.  Kelly goes up to her room, and her crush face-times her and asks her out on a date -- the middle school equivalent of a fade-out kiss!  Heterosexist!

I guess "representation matters" means that the cast is multi-ethnic.

But at least there are some "dreamy boys" for the gay kids in the audience to crush on.

Like Ashton Arbab.

Ben Cockell

And Ricky He.

See: The Babysitter Club

Jaws and Gay Romance

In 1975, I was too young to see Jaws. I saw it anyway.  All of my friends told me that it was terrifying -- and it was -- but no one mentioned the sizzling intensity of the attraction between police chief Martin Brody (43-year old Roy Scheider, veteran of many two-fisted shirtless roles):

And grad student shark expert Matt Hooper (27 year old Richard Dreyfuss, fresh from playing a high schooler in American Graffiti). 

Gruff Brody hates his small town by the ocean, and citified Hooper doesn't fit in among his intellectual grad student peers.  At their first meeting, Brody and Hooper feel an instant affinity: both are using the sea to escape from themselves. Later, Brody returns to his house, feeling guilty because he has not warned people adequately about the shark attacks. His wife tries to console him, but then Hooper arrives with bottles of wine in hand and asks, with compassion, “How was your day?” The wife, increasingly ignored as they seek solace with each other, butts out. 

For the next few days, Brody and Hooper are inseparable. They dissect a shark; they take a moonlit cruise in search of a lost ship; and they hire a sailor named Quint to help them seek out the killer shark. Hooper’s expertise is superfluous once Quint is on the case; but he stays at Brody’s side anyway, even though it means skipping a glorious eighteen-month long shark-study expedition that he has long desired. 

They sail out into the ocean and find the mad super-shark, and Hooper decides to descend in a shark-proof cage and shoot it. He gives Brody his glasses to hold, and since his hands are occupied, Brody puts them in his mouth. The gesture is amazingly intimate. 

The shark bites through the cage and attacks Hooper, who floats to the sea bottom, apparently dead. Then it eats Quint, and almost eats Brody, but he manages to fire his gun at an air canister it is chomping, exploding it. 

The original Peter Benchley novel is over, but the movie isn’t. As Brody floats, alone and heartbroken, clinging to the wreckage of the ship, Hooper reappears, unharmed. He swims over and places his arm atop Brody’s and smiles. It is their first deliberate touch, aching with joy and desire.

When the credits started to roll, I knew that the story was just beginning. Brody had found his redemption in Hooper’s smile, and Hooper had found a home in Brody’s arms. 

 

Top 10 Beefcake Horror Movies: the 1950s

My brother and I spent many Saturday nights in the 1970s in our attic room, watching old horror and sci-fi movies on Chuck Acri's Creature Feature on our portable black & white tv set (it was past our bedtime, so we kept the sound low, so our parents wouldn't hear).

Although nearly all of them had a heterosexist "fade-out kiss" ending, there were plenty of buddy-bonding scenes as two guys compete over a girl, and then work together when the monster kidnaps her.

And everyone knew that you didn't watch a monster movie just for the plot.  The guys took their clothes off.  A lot.

Here are the most beefcake-heavy horror movies of the 1950s.  Most of them have been parodied on MST3K, but try to get the originals, so Joel and the Bots don't interfere with your view of the biceps.

1. Robot Monster (1952).  An alien that looks like a gorilla in a space helmet destroys the world, then terrorizes the survivors, including gay actor George Nader, who forgot to pack a shirt.

2. Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Richard Carlson displaying his beefy, hirsute chest in a swimsuit, chasing the monster and buddy-bonding with fellow ichythologist Richard Denning.  (See also Richard Carlson;s chest in Tormented.)

3. Revenge of the Creature (1955).  In the sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon, John Bromfield, right (who was apparently gay) provides the revealing swimsuit and boyfriend John Agar, left, provides the muscles.

4. The Creature Walks Among Us (1956). Yet another sequel, with Western hunk Boomer Morrow, left providing the muscles and boyfriend Rex Reason, right, the revealing swimsuit.  How did that get past the censors?

5. I was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957).  Body of a boy! Mind of a monster! Soul of an unearthly thing!  Under the monster mask (left) was bisexual bodybuilder Gary Conway, the object of Dr. Frankenstein's unabashed homoerotic fantasy. Not to worry, he eventually gets a new face.

6. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). Grant Williams shrinks right out of his clothes.  Unfortunately, he quickly finds something to cover his impressive physique.

7. The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). Glenn Langdon has the opposite problem, growing right out of his clothes (except for his underwear).  He immediately goes on a rampage.

 8. She-Gods of Shark Reef (1958). Don Durant and Bill Cord are shipwrecked on an island full of flirtatious women, and immediately lose their clothes.

9. Teenage Cave Man (1958).  A young Robert Vaughn, the future Man from U.N.C.L.E., as the nameless Cave Boy, who displays his chest while discovering the Big Secret.

10. War of the Colossal Beast (1958).  Glenn Langdon refused to do this sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man, so muscular Dean Parker was cast, and given a small eye problem so audiences wouldn't know the difference.

Dean Parker appeared in only one other movie: The Cyclops (1957), where he also flexed his muscles in a monster mask. Apparently that was enough.

11. Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). Bodybuilder Ken Clark strips down to fight them.  He also displayed his body and bulge in South Pacific and several modern-day dramas.

Richard Denning: The Hunk from the Black Lagoon

I stumbled across this photo on the internet -- a blond hunk in a leopard skin loincloth, carrying a phallic knife.  I thought I knew all of the Tarzans and Tarzan clones who swung from the trees during the 1930s and 1940s.  But it appears that the 28-year old Richard Denning was playing a Tarzan parody, Jackra the Magnificent, in Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942).  It was really an excuse to get current it-girl Dorothy Lamour into a leopard skin of her own.

According to the indispensable Brian's Drive-in Theater, the hunky actor took his shirt off several times during his long career, notably to fight with Buster Crabbe in Caged Fury  (1948) and a web-foot monster in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), #2 on my list of the Top Horror Movies of the 1950s.  He starred with the equally hunky Richard Carlson, and even got a few bulge shots.

I've only seen him in Black Lagoon, which has a strong gay subtext, in spite of the ubiquitous posters showing  swimsuit-clad girl being carried off by the monster. Ichythologists David (Richard Carlson) and Mark (Richard Denning), The Girl, Kay (Julie Adams), and some scientists head up the Amazon in search of a strange living fossil from the Devonian period.

While David and Mark go...um...skindiving... alone together, The Girl goes off swimming by herself and encounters the Creature, who is so entranced by her beauty that it follows her.

It is captured but escapes and kills half of the crew, including Mark.  Then it captures the Girl.  David is overcome with grief, but rallies enough for a last-minute rescue and a heterosexist ending.

Richard Denning had 114 movie and tv appearances, including both actioners and comedies, from 1937 to 1980.  Boomers may recognize him as the governor of Hawaii on 71 episodes of Hawaii Five-0, or as the star of the radio series My Favorite Husband, with Lucille Ball.  No word on any gay connection in real life.

"Kong: Skull Island: Cute Guys, Gay Subtexts, and Ludicrous Monsters

I have seen Kong: Skull Island (2017), a reboot of the King Kong mythos that takes place in an alternate world 1973: Nixon has just announced the end of the Vietnam War. Two scientists get permission to co-opt some returning soldiers to help them map a previously uncharted island in the South Pacific.

Well, "scientists."  One (Corey Hawkins) did his thesis on the Hollow Earth, and the other (John Goodman) is a bubbling cauldron of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

Also going along on the expedition to the Heart of Darkness:

1. Conrad (Tom or Tim Hiddleston, top photo)< a surly wilderness expert.
2. The Girl (Brie Larson)< a photojournalist.
3. Another Girl, who doesn't really do anything.

And the soldiers:
1. Packard (Samuel L. Jackson< the hard-driven, "let's kill the sucker" commander.
2.-4. The Three Guys (Jason Mitchell, Shea Wigham, left, Thomas Mann), who provide comic relief with their jokes and weird non-sequieters ("Key West isn't an island, it's an atoll.")

I expected a small military attache to the scientific expedition, but there are dozens more soldiers: they go in with an aircraft carrier and about a million helicopters.

They immediately encounter the 100-foot tall gorilla,and instead of backing off (save the ecosystem), they zoom in like pesky wasps.  Kong bats them away like pesky wasps.  When the smoke clears, all of the helicopters are down, and everyone is dead except for the main cast and a few redshirts who will be picked off later.   Still too many for any character development.

Especially since they need to make their way to the north side of the island, where they will be resuced in three days, and there are lots of ludicrous monsters to run from, including a giant spider, a giant ox masquerading as an island, and the things Kong is protecting the islanders fom, giant reptiles with skull heads (Kong's final battle with their leader seems to go on forever; that thing can't be killed0.

Someone please explain to me what these giant monsters eat?  There are herds of wild cattle, but a 100-foot gorilla would swallow them all in a few days.

Fortunately, they have help:  Marlow (yet another Heart of Darkness reference), who crash landed on the island during World War II, and has been living with the islanders (a scruffy bunch in Malay costumes, who are apparently telepathic and immortal).  He had a partner, Ikari, a Japanese pilot who crashed with him (played by Japanese pop star Miyagi), but Ikari has recently died (the grave is in Marlow's living room!).

Obvious gay-subtext.  They were partners for over 20 years.  .  There's lots of women among the islanders, so if they were so inclined, wouldn't they have married?  Marlow had a wife back home, but she thought he was dead and would certainly have moved on.  Maybe that's why Ikari doesn't appear: don't want the subtext to be too obvious.

And why there's a heteronormative epilogue in which Marlowe goes back to Chicago and reunites with his wife and son, who have apparently been sitting around waiting for him for 30 years)  The son  (Will Brittain) looks like a teenager, but he has to be pushing 40.

Plus:  Nobody falls in love. There are some glimmers of interest,  but nothing goes anywhere, which is a plus -- no fade-out kiss (except for Marlow and hisw wife).

Plus:  You know soldiers in movies talk about incessantly?  The Three Guys don't.  They have lengthy conversations about what they will do when they get home, but not a word about girls.  That's extremely rare, a breath of fresh air in both the military and the monster-movie genres..

Now, if only the movie weren't so darn boring.

My grade: B

"The Shape of Water": The Things We Do For Love

"I've been dying to watch The Shape of Water," Doug says.  This is our first date, so I'm inclined to agree to anything, but really, what a dumb title!

"Water has no shape; it fills whatever vessel it is in."

"That's the point, silly!"

I see on the blue-ray cover that the thing was directed by Guillermo Del Toro.   His movies alway trick you with a bait-and-switch: you think you're getting a cute fantasy, but instead it's about people dying.

"So what's it about?  Elves being killed during the Spanish Civil War?"

"Close.  You'll see.  Anyway, there's a gay character."

I see that I have no choice.  Doug the film buff wants to see it, so it's either watch or not get invited to see him naked later.

Well, he's cute...

We sit cuddling on the couch.  He lowers the lights so I can't even escape by reading a magazine.

Openng: a gratuitous full-frontal nude shot of a woman taking a bath.  Disgusting!  Decreasing my interest in my date's bedroom.  And completely irrelevant to the plot.

The gratuitous nude girl, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), is mute, so she uses sign language. Not important to the plot.

Every day she she gets gratuitously nude, then boils three eggs and makes egg salad sandwiches, which she shares with her elderly invalid neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), who keeps a tv on at all times.  It shows only movie musicals from the 1930s.  No importance to the plot.

Everything is so washed out and drab and unpleasant to look at that I think we're in an awful dystopia like 1984, but  it's actually some apartments over a movie theater in Baltimore in 1962 or 1963*.  They can actually look down at the movies playing.  Not that any of them are important to the plot.

They got the dates all wrong: We see Mr. Ed (1961-66), The Story of Ruth (1960), and Mardi Gras (1958).

Every night she goes to work amid a crew of cleaning ladies in a top secret government installation run by incredible jerk scientists. Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon) keeps trying to have sex with the women.  This is before sexual harassment laws.

One day they bring in the Creature from the Black Lagoon (Doug Jones).  Elisa feeds it eggs and plays it some dance music, and soon discovers that it is sentient, male, and hot.

A Soviet spy (Michael Stuhlbarg) helps Elisa break the Creature out (who knew that the Soviets were the good guys during the Cold War).

Wait -- this should be the end of the movie.  The plot is resolved, right?  I ask Doug to put it on pause so I can go to the bathroom.  It's only half over!

In the last half of this endless 123 minutes, Elisa takes the Creature home and plunks him into the bathtub where she takes her gratuitous nudity,  planning to release him to the ocean on the day that the canal opens.  Um...there aren't any beaches in Baltimore?  

Meanwhile both the Americans and the Soviets are trying to find the Creature, so there's some Spy vs. Spy shenanigans.  And Elisa has fallen in love with the Creature.  They have sex twice (full female nudity, no Creature penis).

Not to worry, it all ends happily when Elisa develops gills and goes to live in the ocean with her beloved Creature.

Really?  I would think that to live in the ocean, you'd need more than gills.  It's cold down there, you can't swim around very well, and won't she eventually want to hang out with some other sentients?

Besides, the Creature is from the Amazon.  How is he going to handle the ecosystem of the North Atlantic?

Beefcake: None.

Interesting sets:  None.  Everything is washed out and drab.

I wasted two hours on this garbage, just to get invited into a guy's bed?

Gay characters:  Oh, I forgot.  Giles isn't an elderly invalid after all, he just acts like one.  He's actually a graphic artist who gets fired from a lot of jobs.  He makes a series of strange fumbling come-ons at the counter man (Morgan Kelly) at the local pie restaurant, who finally catches on and recoils in homophobic horror (not to worry, he's also racist, an all-around bigot).

Ok, an elderly gay man in the early 1960s should know how to determine if someone is gay before grabbing.

So Giles is one of these depressed, lonely gay guys who knows nothing about gay culture but happily facilitates the True Love of the heterosexuals.

My grade: F-.

All this for a penis?  Next time I'm just going on Grindr.

Swamp Thing's Teen Sidekick

In 1990, the newly founded USA Network was looking for series ideas, and they latched onto the DC comic book character Swamp Thing, a human-looking mass of vegetation who wreaks vengeance on people who try to invade his swamp home.  Seeing environmental relevance, they softened Swamp Thing (Dave Durock in a latex costume), gave him a new back story -- he was an environmental scientist disfigured by the evil Dr. Arcane (Mark Lindsay Chapman) -- and gave him a human chum, 11-year old Jim (Jesse Zieglar).  

A monster and a kid didn't bring in the viewers, so after 13 episodes Jim's 17-year old half-brother Will (Scott Garrison) showed up.   Will spends a lot of time being captured by Dr. Arcane, evil cultists, monsters, and sundry baddies, forcing the Swamp Thing to enact a daring rescue.  He also helps a series of stray kids, both boys and girls, but doesn't develop much romantic interest in anyone.  Oddly, it is Dr. Arcane, the villain, who is always meeting girls and falling in love.  

So a heterosexual villain, and a hero who is not interested in women.  And did I mention the beefcake?  The extremely buffed Garrison is shirtless or nearly nude in nearly every scene (this is a humid swamp, after all).  

Scott Garrison had a few movies and tv appearances before Swamp Thing, and a few afterwards, notably two episodes as the beefy Perdicas on Xena: Warrior Princess in 1996, before retiring from acting.  But he left gay fans with three years of memories.

Yokai: The Gay Goblins of Japan

Japanese movies and tv series often depict the hero fighting off a weird gibbering monster called a yokai.

The humans of Japan share their islands with hundreds of species of yokai, paranormal beings variously described as goblins, demons, and monsters.

Most yokai are indifferent to humans.

Like the gigantic terai oni, who stands upside down to wash his hands in rivers, and is only dangerous if he happens to step on you, or if you're caught in the stream when he takes out his giant penis to urinate.

But a few yokai hunt humans with nefarious, often erotic intent.

Multiple-tentacled yokai are eager to invade every orifice of any woman or man who falls into their grasp.

Every orifice.

There's a whole genre of pornography, shokushu goukan, dedicated to depicting the disgust, pain, and pleasure of the victim.

Turtle-shelled kappa lurk by the riverside to grab swimmers and invade orifices of their own, in the process pulling their victims to their deaths.

They probably believe that humans can breathe underwater.

Shiri me look like people bent over, except for the gigantic eye in their buttocks.  You think they're running away, but they're actually running toward you.

Some Japanese authors even make up their own yokai.  GeGeGe no Kitaro, a manga and anime series by Shigeru Mizuki, stars Kitaro, a yokai boy, son of a living eyeball, who is working for peace between the yokai and human tribes.

A 2007 film adaptation starred Eiji Wentz, who is the subject of gay rumors.

See also: Gay Manga of Japan; Japanese Tentacle Porn