Kamal Ellis

Kamil Ellis is the young Australian actor who starred in seasons 3-4 of Nowhere Boys.  This was the first time he played a generic role: previously his characters tended to embrace his aboriginal heritage.

Cleverman  (2016-17) sounds like a psycho-slasher, but he is actually the leader of the Dreamtime in a tv series about hairymen (sort of aboriginal Neanderthals) experiencing racism and discrimination in contemporary Australia.  Kamal plays Mungo, a boy who tries to escape capture and ends up being beaten to death.



















Deep Water (2016) is based on the real-life murders and disappearances of gay men near Bondi Beach, Sydney, in the 1980s.  Kamil plays Jason, a boy who hangs out on the beach.

The reality series Bushwacked (2014) sends Kamil and journalists Kayne Tremills and Jordan Walters into the outback in search of Australia's weirdest animals. 

Dance Academy (2010-13) traces the lives of mean girls and it-boys at Sidney's National Dance Academy (apparently they dance shirtless on occasion).  Kamil appears in 3 episodes as Jayden, a street kid with dancing cred.

In addition to his on-screen acting, Kamil has had a long career as an aboriginal dancer and singer.  His credits include:
Ganang Spirit Dancers
Secret River Sidney Theater
Bangarra Dancers
Koormurri Dreaming 

He's done so much of interest as a kid, I can't wait to see him as an adult.

The Top 10 Nowhere Boys

Nowhere Boys, on Amazon Prime and Vudu, is an Australian teen supernatural drama about four boys who get lost in the woods on a school field trip,  When they return, everything is different.  A disabled brother can walk.  A single mom is married.  One boy doesn't seem to exist at all.

With the help of various allies and love interests, they figure out that they have somehow become lost in a parallel world.  It sounds like a science fiction premise, but it is actually supernatural.  Getting home requires magical spells and fighting demons.

The four boys are:
1. Popular it-boy Sam (Rahart Adams).

2. Goth Felix (Dougie Baldwin)

3. Nerd Andy (Joel Lok).  I don't see any gay subtexts, but at least he doesn't get a girlfriend.

4. Jock Jake (Matt Testro)

In Season 2 (2013-14), the boys discover that they can now control the four elements (air, water, fire, earth).  Now they must travel between the two parallel worlds.

5. For instance, Jake's father Gary (Damian Richardson) is a cop in the alternate world.  Somehow the Mega-Demon arranges for them to encounter each other, but if they make physical contact, the world will explode.

In Seasons 3 and 4, at least five years has passed -- one of the students is now a teacher, and the four original boys are the subject of a stage play.

This time several kids and their principal are zapped into Empty World, where all of the people have vanished (along with most of the food).  The main group consists of:

6. Luke (Kamil Ellis), a science fiction nerd who keeps saying  "This is just like that episode of Next Generation where Dr. Crusher..."  He doesn't get a girlfriend.

By the way, Kamil belongs to the Wiradjuri, the largest Aboriginal tribe in New South Wales.











7. Popular Heath (Joe Klocek, left)


It-girl Nicco
















8. Drama queen Jesse (Jordie Race-Coldrey).   He gets a boyfriend.

9. Outsider Ben (William McKenna).

10. Principal Blake (Nicholas Coghlan) arrives in Empty World a year before the others, and the isolation has driven him daffy.  And maybe a bit evil.

Not a lot of beefcake photos available.  But everybody does't need to have their pecs and abs on display all the time.  There's nothing wrong with looking like the Boy Next Door instead of a 28-year old fitness model.  In fact, after a diet of Riverdale and its clones, it's a pleasant change of pace.

The Subtext in Casper the Friendly Ghost

When I was a kid in the 1960s  and 1970s, my favorite comic book title was Harvey, with its odd jack-in-the-box logo and its fantasy characters (Casper the Friendly Ghost, Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, Hot Stuff the Little Devil)

Harvey also produced comics about human kids, like Richie Rich, Little Dot, and Little Lotta.  Casper the Friendly Ghost was about a ghost boy who lives with three nameless adult guardians in the Enchanted Forest (Not to be confused with the inferior Charlton knockoff Timmy the Timid Ghost).

In Casper’s world, ghosts were not dead people, but beings in their own right, who are born, grow up, take jobs and houses, and eventually grow old and die.  Their main pastime and means to social prestige is scaring, but Casper refuses to scare. 

Gay-coded, but no sissy or milquetoast, Casper is a strong-willed nonconformist, a Vietnam-Era pacifist who refuses to follow the hawkish status quo of ghost society. So strong are his principles that even when his life is in danger, he refuses to “boo” his way to safety.

Casper has an ally and confidant in Wendy, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed witch girl in a red jumpsuit who lives with three guardians of her own. They are not romantically involved; they are merely friends and comrades, thrown together by their common disdain for the social institutions that tell them they must scare. Neither expresses any heterosexual interest. (The 1995 movie starring Devon Sawa turned Casper heterosexual.)

But occasionally Casper moves beyond a simple lack of heterosexual desire to offer a glimpse of that other world. His efforts to bond with other beings (almost always male) sometimes transcend the merely friendly, especially whe the objects of his attention are perfect strangers whose struggles may cost him his life.

He accompanies Oliver Ogre on a perilous journey to the moon (Casper 113, January 1968), and helps an ancient Egyptian pharaoh regain his throne from a villainous usurper in (Casper 117, August 1968).

 When his new friends are adult humans, pixies, or Greek gods, drawn with the hard tight chests and rippling biceps more commonly associated with the DC and Marvel lines, it is easy to locate romantic attraction among his motives.

We see similar gay subtexts in “The Evil Planet” (Casper in Space 6, June 1973): Casper dreams that he has joined the deep space expedition of Crash Hammerfist, a Buck Rogers-type adventurer drawn as a brawny muscleman. They land on The Evil Planet, where flying bird-men abduct Crash’s female companion, Gale. While Casper calmly evaluates their options, Crash goes to pieces:

Crash: This is a disaster! Look – my cape is ruined! I can’t explore this evil planet looking like this!

Casper: [Trying to keep him focused on the crisis.] Is Gale your girlfriend?

Crash: No. . .she’s my seamstress. She made this entire outfit. [Hand swishily on hip.] Do you like it?

Casper: [Looking decidedly suspicious.] Er. . .yes.

At Casper’s urging, they ignore the soiled cape and set out to rescue Gail. They discover that she is being forced to compete in a beauty contest; the winner will become the wife of Emperor Zinzang, a young, slim Castro Clone. 

 When Crash bursts in, flexing his muscles and issuing taunts, the Emperor seems quite impressed, if not downright attracted; he forgets all about the beauty contest and challenges the superhero to single combat. They spend several panels lunging, grabbing, and jumping on top of each other, in the process accidentally shredding their outfits so the interplay of their muscles becomes even more evident.

During a lull in the battle, the Emperor explains to Casper that he really likes Crash, and he’s not evil, he’s just crazed with power – he received a year’s worth of invulnerability for his 27th birthday, and he’s been behaving rudely ever since. But in a few minutes he’ll be 28, normal again, and Crash will annihilate him.

Casper suggests that he call a truce and apologize for abducting Gail, and then he and Crash could start over as friends. The Emperor agrees.

 Then, abruptly, Casper wakes up. We never find out if the Emperor selects a wife, or if Crash and Gail ever leave the Evil Planet. Should we attribute this sudden jerk into “reality” to the writer’ incompetence, to running out of space in the issue, or to the realization that the only logical conclusion to the story as portrayed involves Crash and the Emperor arm in arm, watching the sun set on the Evil Planet?