The Andy Warhol Museums: Erasing the Gay

You probably know that Andy Warhol, the gay-yet-homophobic pop artist, was the son of immigrants from Miková, a small town in Slovakia, near the Polish and Ukrainian borders.
 
You probably don't know that the nearby town of Medzilaborce features the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, established in 1991 to celebrate Andy's Slovak heritage.

It was a tough sell to the locals, who worried that the museum would glorify the "homosexual aspects of the drug parties." So it tried to make him a good Slovak communist (later, a good Slovak Catholic).  There are paintings of butterflies, flowers, and a Russian hammer and sickle.  His gayness is not mentioned.

To emphasize his loving (and presumably heterosexual) family connections, there are also works by his mother (a drawing of the Annunciation of our Lord), his brother Paul Warhol and nephew James Warhola.

But no beefcake.  Not even this cover that James drew for Robert Heinlein's sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

Still, locals stay away, and parents won't even allow their children to attend the art classes held on the site, for fear that the gayness will rub off on them.

There's another Andy Warhol museum in his native Pittsburgh, considerably larger, with 17 galleries and 900 paintings.  Is it any better at acknowledging Warhol's gayness?



They do a little better.

True, you can walk through the entire permanent exhibits of giant Campbell's Soup cans and silkscreens of Marilyn Monroe without ever suspecting.

And the biography page on the website discusses his college career, his Catholicism, the Factory, his celebrity interviews, his visits to Studio 54, but not his gayness.

But the gay-themed work is available for those willing to dig, like the short film, Tarzan and Jane Regained, Sort Of (1963), starring Davis Hopper and Taylor Mead (top photo).

And some of the special events are gay-inclusive. In 2012 there was a book signing and reception for Lance Out Loud, a biography of the gay icon by his mother, Pat Loud.

So, like the "outsiders" of Howard Becker's classic sociological study, it's invisible to most people, but you can find it if you're "in the know."

Alcestis: A God and his Boyfriend in Ancient Greece

During my freshman year at Augustana, I took a course in Greek Literature.  We had to read The Iliad, The Homeric Hymns, and plays by Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Of course, the professor tried his best to eliminate all traces of same-sex desire, presenting the ancient Greeks as rampaging heterosexuals.

He wasn't successful with Alcestis (438 BCE) by Euripides.

The plot synopsis makes it seem entirely heterosexist: Apollo offers to let King Admentus live past his allotted life span, if he can find someone to die in his place.  His devoted wife Alcestis offers to go.

But what actually happens is: Apollo offers Admentus immortality because he likes him. A lot.

In Greek mythology, Apollo lives with Admentus for several year before this story takes place. The lyric poet Callimachus says that they were lovers.  Thanatos (Death) even taunts Apollo about wasting his time on short-lived mortals.

Admentus has a human admirer in Hercules, who arrives without realizing that Alcestis is about to die.  Admentus is supposed to be in mourning, but he's so happy to see his friend that they spend the night carousing.

In the morning, apprised of the situation, Hercules rushes off and wrestles with Thanatos in order to bring Alcestis back to life (this is a rather a buffed Alcestis).

So it's not about hetero-romance spanning life and death after all.  It's about a man turning over Heaven and Hell to help his friend.

I never thought that Greek dramas could be staged well.  They're too alien to modern sentiments. But Alcestis has been staged several times recently, usually with Ted Hughes' 1999 translation that avoids the homoerotic subtext -- text, actually -- to concentrate on the romance between devoted husband and wife.

There's also an opera version, Alceste, by  Gluck (1767).


In 2013, a Cuban-American troupe performed Alcestis Ascending in New York, with script by University of Alabama professor Seth Panitch. It's in Spanish and English.

See also: Greek Mythology.

Loki: Beefcake and Gay Rivalry in Norse Myth

In Norse mythology, Loki was a trickster god with a dark side.  Jealous over the attention that the other gods were giving Baldur the Beautiful, Loki arranged for him to be assaulted by a spring of mistletoe .  Jealous over the attention that Baldur the Beautiful was receiving from the other gods received, he arranged for him to be assaulted by a sprig of mistletoe, the only thing that can kill the God of Beauty.

Lots of gay symbolism there:
1. Loki is upset over the attention that other men were giving a male god.
2. The male god can only be killed by a symbol of male virility,  Maybe a symbolic rape?

Outraged over the murder of thee most beautiful man in Asgard, the other gods tied Loki naked to a rock, where a serpent drooled venom all over him.  His wife Sif took pity on him, and captured the venom in a bowl.  But every now and then she has to be gone for a few moments to empty the bowl, and Loki's agonized thrashing is the reason we have earthquakes.

The story may have a heteronormative end, but it's inspired many male artists to emphasize masculine beauty by painting a  muscular, naked man next to a fully-clothed lady.

Such as Marten Eskil Winge (1863).

Or Christoffer Eckersberg (1810)

19th century writers often reformed Loki, making him a friend to humans and bringer of fire, like Prometheus.

But more recently, he has been demonized again, appearing in movies and comic books as a god of evil who wants to destroy the world. Some notable Lokis on film have been played by Tom Hiddleston, David Blair, and Jayson Sloan.

Guess Which New Teen Hunk on "Teen Wolf" is Gay

I heard that there will be three new characters on the gay-positive lacrosse team of  Teen Wolf this season:   One will be gay, and the others heterosexual.  Can you guess the actor playing the gay character?





1. Dylan Sprayberry was in Bedrooms (2010) and Man of Steel (2013).  He has been linked to Disney teen star Ryan Ochoa, either as a romantic partner or a best bud.





2. No shirtless pix of Khylin Rhambo, sorry.  There was one where he was wearing a muscle shirt, but it had a naked woman on it.

He has appeared on First Family (2012), a sitcom about the first African-American family in the White House (wait...didn't that already happen in 2008?).  And in Ender's Game, based on the novel by homophobe Orson Scott Card.

3. Mason Dye is famous for Flowers in the Attic (2014), based on the 1979 novel about kids who are trapped in an attic for years by their evil grandmother (she can't reveal their existence to the world, or she loses her inheritance).  The older boy and girl grow into teenagers and begin an incestuous heterosexual romance.

The 1987 version starring Jeb Stuart Adams omitted the incest angle, but the 2014 version didn't, throwing Mason into a storm of controversy.  

He takes off his shirt a lot, no matter what he's doing, and he has a lot of cute guy friends.

Answer after the break.