The Iceland Fisherman: Gay Romance in Collier's Encyclopedia

When I was little, there weren't many books in the house except for the Bible and the thick, black, ponderous volumes of the 1955 edition of Collier's Encyclopedia.  I used to leaf through it, looking for muscular semi-nude men (try "African Tribes," "The Circus," and "Egypt").   The last volume contained the Reading Guide, a list of the best books ever written, and among them was The Iceland Fisherman (1886), by French novelist Pierre Loti (1850-1923).

Why was a Frenchman writing about Iceland, I wondered.  Because of the Northern Thing, the Viking ships and horned helmets and "Baldur the Beautiful"?  Because it was a place of wild freedom, where men could hug, kiss, and marry?

The mystery of the French Icelander stayed with me for years.  When I took French in high school and then college, I was surprised that no professor ever mentioned Pierre Loti or The Iceland Fisherman-- wasn't it the "best book ever written"?  It wasn't in our library.  But one day I ordered a copy from interlibrary loan.

No professor mentioned it because it was a symbolist novel, no longer in style.  And gay-themed.

A group of Breton fishermen sail to Iceland each summer in search of cod. Sylvestre, "a girlish boy," befrieds the big, muscular Yann, who disapproves of women and says he'll "marry the sea."

Back in France, Sylvestre courts women, in darkness, "dreaming of death," but in the summer he goes out to sea again, and leans against Yann, and they go on "gaily with their fishing in the everlasting daylight."

When Sylvestre dies in Indochina, Yann is heartbroken, and finally marries his sister, so at least some part of him will remain.  But that is not enough, so in the end Yann surrenders to the sea.  But even in death they cannot be together, for Sylvestre had "gone to sleep in the enchanted gardens, far, far, away, on the other side of the earth."

The novel is famous in France.  Pecheur d'Islande has been filmed several times, notably in 1959 (with Jean-Claude Pascal, left, and Georges Poujouly) and in 1996 (with Antony Delon, top photo, and Marius Colucci).  The film versions apparently emphasize The Girl.

Pierre Loti was himself bisexual, sleeping with women but longing for the wild homoerotic freedom of Turkey and the Middle East.  He filled his home with mementos of his journeys, including many paintings of semi-nude men, such as these Easter Islanders, as well as semi-nude photos of his own muscular physique (most destroyed after his death).

The Shield: TV From the 2000s, Homophobia from the 1960s

You already know the most homophobic contemporary movie -- Chuck and Buck, the savagely homophobic "comedy" by Mike White.

Outside of Fox's animated sitcoms, TV series tend to go for erasing gay people from existence rather than excoriating them, but I found an exception.  Excoriations of gay people week after week for six years.

It's The Shield (2002-2008), a police drama set in contemporary Los Angeles.

Contemporary?

In the real L.A. in the 2000s, there were gay police offices.  The LAPD advertised for recruits at gay pride festivals.  Police cadets got  training in LGBT issues.

But on The Shield, all of the cops are intensely homophobic.  "Queers" and "fags" drop from their lips every five seconds, along with the usual heterosexism that we find everywhere on tv.

The key character, Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis)  is a blustering homophobe -- but so is everybody, so not a problem.  But he is also boorish, stupid, vulgar, racist, sexist, violent, corrupt, and unfamiliar with the concept of "due process."

Oh, he loves his wife and kids -- so much so that when they leave him and go into hiding, fearing for their safety, he pays private investigators $20,000 to track them down.  Then he bursts in and starts yelling.

I guess that's supposed to be positive?

One of his nemeses is detective "Dutch" Wagenbach (Jay Karnes), who's actually intelligent and therefore the butt of constant jokes.  He grinds my gears by offering far-out psychoanalytic interpretations of every suspect, proclaiming that he "studied criminology."

Um...criminology doesn't teach you that nonsense.

But even Dutch is a first rate homophobe.  He asks, "What do they think causes people to be queer?  Is it biological, so they can't help themselves.  And if so, should we condemn them?"

Who's condemning them, Dutch?  I suppose the writers' perception of the intended audience as homophobic.

Criminals are homophobic too -- way homophobic.

There are occasional gay characters -- swishy queens who all have AIDS.
"Are you sure he has AIDS?"
 "Just look at him."

One of the cops, Julian Lowe (Michael Jace), happens to be gay.  Completely angst-ridden, overcome by guilt: it's a terrible urge inside him that he hates and can't get rid of.

He participates in a brutal gay-bashing with his fellow cops, tries to commit suicide, then tries to become "ex gay" through prayer and sex with a woman.

Oh, and he's also being blackmailed -- Vic is threatening to reveal his gayness to the precinct, where he will certainly be fired in disgrace.

Um...anti-discrimination laws for police officers have been in place in L.A. for 30 years.

By the way, the cops are uniformly racist, too.  When a Muslim asks why he is a suspect when he hasn't done anything, he is told: "Because a group of men who look like your twin brothers killed 3,000 Americans."

Um...there are Muslim Americans....

Even though I can't find shirtless shots of the regulars, there is a lot of beefcake on the show.  Criminals -- mostly drug dealers and gang bangers, with an occasional serial killer thrown in -- are often shown lounging around shirtless or in their underwear.  Danny Pino, a drug dealer that Vic extorts and then kills, always finds a way to cover up the bulge in his black briefs.

But, really, a precinct full of racist, sexist, homophobic jerks -- who writes this stuff?

Ok, it was created by Shawn Ryan, who was born in 1966 and grew up in Chicago, and was a staff writer on Nash Bridges and Angel.   In an interview, he said that the "Boys in the Bar" episode of Cheers, in which the bargoers recoil in homophobic horror from two guys that they think are gay, influenced how he "thought about homosexuals."

Homosexuals?  Is this, like, 1973?

On The Shield, it is.

See also: Chuck and Buck.

The Homophobic Gay Ally of "The War at Home"

All in the Family hit the heights of television glory in the 1970s with bigot Archie Bunker.  He hated blacks, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, Poles, women's libbers, gays, and just about everyone else, to the consternation of his easygoing wife and radical-hippie daughter and son-in-law.

Everybody loved him, right?  So why not try it again 30 years later?

Enter The War at Home (2005-2007), starring Michael Rappaport as obnoxious jerk Dave Gold, who hates blacks, Puerto Ricans, Muslims, women's libbers, liberals, and gays (not Jews because he's Jewish).

He has an easygoing wife and three teenage kids: horny Hillary (Kaylee DeFer), obviously not named after Hillary Clinton; feminine Larry (Kyle Sullivan); and teen operator Mike (Dean Collins, left).

Most storylines involved Dave's obnoxious prejudices, his hatred of sex (no matter who has it), or a combination of the two:
Hillary dates a black man!
Hillary has sex with a black man!
Mike has sex!
Larry starts to masturbate!
Larry wears women's clothes!
Larry kisses a boy!  (Actually, a girl in men's clothes).

It was impossible to watch, vulgar, obnoxious, horrible.

The problem is: you felt sorry for Archie Bunker.  He was a product of the 1930s, when white heterosexual male supremacy was practically unquestioned.  (Remember the theme song, "Goils were goils and men were men").  He was a relic of the past, lost in a rapidly-changing world.

Dave Gold is a product of the 1970s, when Civil Rights, Gay Rights, and Women's Rights were already underway.  He lives in an ultra-liberal Long Island milieu.  There is no reason for his prejudices.  They exist just so the character can say outrageous things, like Peter Griffin on Family Guy (which aired immediately afterwards).

After a year of groaning critics and bad ratings, it became obvious that Dave Gold had to clean up his act, become kinder, gentler, less obnoxious.  So Larry's school friend Kenny (Rami Malek) comes out, gets kicked out of the house by his conservative Muslim father, and moves in with the Golds.

 Dave dives head-first into the problem of gay kids being rejected by their families, even serving up a PSA for the Trevor Project at the end of some episodes.  He also dives into Kenny's love life, buying the embarrassed kid a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex and quizzing him on lubricants and dildos.

Wait -- was this the guy who hated Muslims, gays, and sex last year?  It was completely out of character -- and Dave looked positively aghast during the Trevor Project PSAs.  After winning a GLAAD Award for a portrayal of the only gay Muslim on tv, The War at Home was cancelled.

See also: Dean Collins.

Chrononauts: Sometimes Buddy-Bonding Is Not Enough

This is why I don't read science fiction anymore.

Amazon was aggressively pushing the graphic novel Chrononauts at me.   It's about a big, buffed, square-jawed scientist named Corbin Quinn, who gets lost in time, and his big, buffed buddy, Danny Reilly, goes out looking for him.  Sort of a Time Tunnel thing.

I read the reviews very carefully.  "Jaw-dropping!" "Magnificent!" "Breaktaking!" "Big and fun!"

"A bromance for the ages!"

I searched for the authors, Mark Millar and Sean Gordon Murphy, with the keyword "gay."  Mark Millar included gay characters in his comic books The Authority and Jupiter's Circle, and celebrated the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality by offering fans free downloads.

Ok.  I clicked on "buy."  Chrononauts arrived yesterday.

Quinn and Reilly are indeed bromantic partners.  They are constantly hugging and putting their arms around each other's waists and shoulders.  They rescue each other from danger.  When one exclaims "Leave me and escape while you can!" the other refuses.  "I won't go without you!"  They call each other "companions,"

But they are also heterosexual.  Boy oh boy, are they heterosexual!

Why do they want to go on the time travel mission?  Scientific curiosity?  Adventure?  No - girls: "You'll be banging every co-ed from here to Timbuktu."

Meanwhile Reilly is in love with a woman, and Quinn has an estranged wife.  He wants to stay unstuck in time because he has nothing to live for in the present: "No wife, no family."  But to assuage his pain, he's been dating women from a dozen time periods, including Marilyn Monroe.  He needs a chart to keep track of them all.

At the end of the story, Quinn uses his time travel ability to go back and be a better husband, so when he returns to the present, she and their child are waiting for them:   Unfortunately, when Reilly proposes to his girlfriend, she is already married due to time distortion.

Girls, girls, girls, as the goal of every journey!

Heterosexual romance as the meaning of life!

I did all the research I could, and still got caught in a firestorm of frenzied heterosexism.

I don't read science fiction anymore.

See also: Time Tunnel.