"Baby Reindeer": Comedian is turned gay by a sexual predator, but manages to turn straight again. No baby reindeer.

 Baby Reindeer -- why do British tv series often have titles that sound memorable, but you actually forget instantly because they are just nonsense words?  Remember Drop the Dead Donkey?  Anyhow, it's a thriller about a male comedian being stalked by a deranged female fan, which causes problems with his girlfriend.  So far it's heterosexuals all the way down, but listen to the Episode 4 blurb: "As Donny reports Martha (his stalker) to the police, it triggers the memory of a traumatic experience he had with a man he met at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival years before."

Ulp, surely we're not going to learn that all gay men are sexual predators out to seduce or assault hapless straight guys.  I thought that myth faded into oblivion back in the 1970s.  I'd better review the episode.

Scene 1: Looking very haggard, wild-eyed, sleazy, like a drug addict in search of a fix, Donny (Richard Gad) bursts into the police station to report his stalker. He wonders why he can't tell the cop about Martha groping him and attacking his girlfriend, or about her history of arrests?  He's suddenly reliving a traumatic event that happened at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2011.

Scene 2: Nice establishing shots of Edinburgh and the Fringe Festival, "one of the greatest celebrations of art and culture on the planet."   Donny has to perform comedy at a pub with no stage, just standing in front of three or four people who didn't know he was coming.  And his act is dreadful: he prances around in a dress and fright wig, then announces "My mother died today."  Then he explains that it's incongruous, so it's funny.  

Ok, so "I got circumcized today" -- pulling out gigantic scissors.  "See, I'm saying I have a big penis. It's funny."  Did this guy even workshop his material?

Scene 3: The pubkeeper gives him an admission card to the Luna Bar -- fell out of someone's wallet.  He goes, hoping to schmooze with the Fringe Festival elites. Still looking haggard, wild-eyed, and sleazy. Maybe he could, like, wear a nice shirt?   He latches onto a guy who was on the writing staff of the fringe movie Cottonmouth, and invites him to his show, "LOL on Cancer".  Nope, not interested.

A bearded bear, Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill), approaches.  They diss the Cottonmouth guy and wish they could slip poison in this drink. Turns out that Darrien actually wrote the script -- the Cottonmouth snob was his assistant!  They're standing very close together.  Is this a hookup? Was Donny bi, back before he found true hetero-love?  

Scene 4: Darrien comes to his show, listens to his ridiculous jokes and performance bits, and offers to give him some pointers. 

Montage of Darrien's tips, like "Make eye contact," and the pub gradually fills up as people like the performance.  Donny tells us that he went out with Darrien every night to a private club (not gay). So, are we supposed to conclude that they're dating?  Why not just say so, or have them kiss?  

We do learn that Darrien is a "polyamorous pansexual."  Um...polyamorous means that you have more than one permanent romantic partner.

Scene 5: Darrien pushes Donny into the pub bathroom, stands kissing-close, and asks "Are you ready?" Donny: "Ready for anything." Sounds like he's up for some snogging. But it's not sex, it's cocaine.

Then Darrien returns to London, and stops contacting Donny.  "It felt strange."

Scene 6:  When the festival ends, Donny goes to acting class at Oxford. We see some of their ridiculous exercises: be a flame; mimic an ape. He gets a girlfriend, but he misses Darrien. So are you interested in him, or not?  Then out of nowhere Darrien calls and asks him to collaborate on a project.

Scene 7: Donny arrives at Darrien's elite flat, gets a tour, and shows his script: about a lawyer who decides to become a pro wrestler at age 50, and is torn between two worlds. Darrien is not impressed, but humors him. I'm guessing we're supposed to be reading them as straight buddies.  

Darrien asks if he wants to get really high, and gives him MDMA and GHB.  Hey GHB is a date rape drug!  But if you want to have sex with him, why not just ask?

More homophobia after the break

Barney Hill: Alien Abduction or Sexual Assault?

There haven't been a lot of alien abduction stories recently, but for about ten years, they were all the rage.

People having weird "missing time" experiences or strange screen memories, going to a therapist, and uncovering years of abductions, painful medical procedures, and forced sexual acts orchestrated by groups of greys, praying-mantis beings, and humans.

Contrary to popular myth, the average abductee is a well-educated, wealthy young woman trying to deal with a history of traumatic abuse.

Unfortunately, the accounts try to heterosexualize the abductees whenever possible, reducing gay hints to "two women on a camping trip" or "two men sitting in their car."

The first well-publicized alien abduction case involved Betty and Barney Hill (left: James Earl Jones, who played Barney in a tv movie. Or at least, when I searched for "James Earl Jones" on google images, this is what it showed me).

  They were a middle-aged, middle-class couple, well educated, and active in politics: the local civil rights committee, the Unitarian Church and the NAACP.  They were interracial in the racist 1960s, but if you were careful, you could avoid most of the prejudice.  They got occasional stares, and some of their relatives wouldn't talk to them, but they had never been assaulted, yelled at, or turned away from a hotel.

On the night of September 19, 1961, they were driving home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire after a delayed honeymoon trip to Niagara Falls and Montreal.  Around 10:30 pm, they saw a bright light on the road ahead.  It got closer and closer, until they saw that it was a gigantic flying object about 60 feet across.  They could see beings through a row of windows: short humanoids wearing shiny black suits with matching caps and weird snake insignias.

One gave Barney a coquettish, over-the-shoulder smile, so intense that it frightened him.

A suggestion of sexual desire?

The next thing they remembered was arriving at home, two hours later than expected.  They showered extensively, feeling unclean.  Their clothes were ruined, as if they had been torn off.

Later Betty began having vivid dreams, and under hypnosis she and Barney both recalled stopping for a road block, being taken from their car and brought aboard the spaceship, and being subjected to medical procedures.

 Betty had extensive conversations with her captors, one of whom spoke English (or used telepathy). They showed her a star map, and offered to give her a book (but the offer was rescinded later).

Barney didn't interact with them, and mostly kept his eyes closed, but he said that the aliens moved "with the cold precision of German soldiers."  In another session, he elaborated: "He looks like a German Nazi.  He's a Nazi."

The alien who smiled at him looked like "a redheaded Irishman," which made Barney nervous, due to his past experiences with racist Irishmen.

 Barney had a long tube inserted up his rectum, and a device placed over his penis to extract semen (but, he said, he experienced no arousal).

(Left: Barney's bulge).

The case was written up in Look magazine, then in a bestselling book, The Interrupted Journey (1966).  Barney died in 1969, but Betty became a lifelong advocate of the alien abduction phenomenon, dismissing other explanations, insisting that they encountered beings from another world that night.


What other explanations have been suggested of the Hills' experience?  Other than fatigue and leading questions by the hypotherapist, the most cogent is an encounter with a motorcycle gang -- the bright lights, the uniforms -- who stopped them, questioned them, and subjected Barney but not Betty to a sexual assault: something over his penis, something inserted into his butt.

They both felt unclean afterwards, and showered and wanted to burn their clothes, but Barney seemed more traumatized.

But why would your mind transform a sexual assault into an alien abduction which was just as traumatic, but would subject you to scorn and derision for the rest of your life? 

Maybe, for some guys in 1961, an alien abduction was easier to accept than being anally entered and having "semen extracted" by men.

I read The Interrupted Journey around the end of grade school or the beginning of junior high, and I was fascinated.  Not only by the abduction:

1. You never saw black men and white women together on tv, in movies, or in real life.  I didn't know that interracial relationships existed.  If they were possible, what other desires were erased, hidden from view?

2. This was the first time I read the word "penis," anywhere.  It felt liberating and rather naughty to be thinking of Barney's penis.

3. Barney's experience, however much he denied it, was obviously sexual.  And it occurred at the hands of men, or male beings.  If same sex acts could occur in an alien abduction, certainly they could occur in real life!