Spring 1981: Gay-Free Great Books: The Modern British Novel

Even after my dreary experience with Modern Literature during a freshman course in Fiction Writing, I had to take courses in Modern American Literature and The Modern British Novel.  Both assigned works that were deadly dull, all about heterosexual courtship and marriage, with same-sex relationships, even friendships, absent (the same might be said for my upper-division French, Spanish, and German classes).

Sons and Lovers, by D. H. Lawrence (1913), is about a man attempting to choose between a farm girl, a feminist, and his mother, with no men in sight.

My professor claimed that, if civilization ever ended, we could reconstruct it with nothing more than Ulysses (1918), by James Joyce.  But such a world would be gay free.  The day in the life of Stephen Dedalus includes a visit to a prostitute and lots of descriptions of ladies, but only one mention gay people once, when Buck Mulligan warns Stephen Dedalus that the guy ogling nude statues at the British Museum might be a "sodomite."

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931), sex is the chief recreation in a near-future dystopia, yet no one considers anything but straight sex.




One novel  did evoke same-sex practice, as a symbol of debauchery and moral decay, but so subtly that at the time I didn't even notice.

In I, Claudius (1934), Robert Graves assigns the decadent, insane Emperor Caligula a laundry-list of sexual practices, including bestiality and incest, but only hints at his interest in men, as if it is by far the most disgusting of the lot. (And it's not mentioned at all in the 1976 miniseries).




No wonder I stuck to the Victorians, where same-sex relationships were portrayed with depth and poignancy, if only in subtext.

The Karate Kid

Although Ralph Macchio's earlier movies (Up the Academy, High Powder, The Outsiders) featured significant buddy bonding, The Karate Kid (1984) based its success on a demonstration of straightness.  The first scene is a tease: New Jersey transplant Daniel (Ralph) meets boy-next-door Freddy (Israel Juarbe), who looks embarrassingly love-struck and can't stop inviting Daniel to do things, first karate lessons and then a beach party.

But just when we think this will be a teenage romance, the rich-kid bully who runs the town (William Zabka) forces Freddy to break up with Daniel, and he disappears until the final scene, where he is in the crowd of well-wishers at the big karate tournament.

The rest of the movie effectively eliminates moments that might mean something by depictng every teenage boy, without exception, as cruel, violent, vicious, and seething with unexplained anti-Daniel hate. Every word  boys say is a boast, an insult, or a threat.  They wear skeleton costumes to the Halloween party to demonstrate their evil, and their karate uniforms are black to contrast with Daniel's Luke Skywalker white.  In contrast, every girl Daniel encounters is an angel, nurturing, supportive, tolerant, and kind.  This is heterosexism run rampant, proof positive that same-sex love, friendship, or even polite co-existence is utterly impossible.  Love, friendship, and even the freedom to walk across the cafeteria without harassment can occur only in the company of girls.

Sports underdogs are always tutored by outsiders who lack jobs and wives and are therefore sexually suspect, so Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), the apartment complex janitor who teaches Daniel karate, might have added a homoerotic subtext.  The two become best friends; Miyagi gives Daniel a birthday cake, and Daniel helps Miyagi into bed after a drinking binge.

The DVD box shows them face to face, mouth to mouth, gazing at each other as if moving in for a kiss.  But Miyagi is elderly and Asian, movie code for "asexual."  And, so no one worries that a stray look might mean something, Miyagi is shown drinking to the memory of his dead wife, thus "proving" that he is heterosexual.

After The Karate Kid, Ralph's baby face and soulful puppy-dog eyes allowed him to play teenagers well past his thirtieth birthday.

Usually he was thrown into worlds so heavily polarized into vicious boys and nice girls that same-sex intimacy seemed absurd.  In Karate Kid II (1986), both Daniel and Mr. Miyagi  both fight cruel, violent boys and get girls.  

In Crossroads (1986), the guitar substitutes for karate, and an elderly black man for the elderly Asian man, but still, nothing but cruel, violent boys and kind, loving girls.

In Distant Thunder (1988), en route to a reunion with his elderly father, Ralph and a kind, loving girl are kidnapped by her cruel, violent boyfriend (Reb Brown).

Not until My Cousin Vinny (1992) did Ralph bond with a boy, a fellow college student waylaid by a murder charge in Alabama.  By that time, an entire genre of Ninja kids had evoked their own worlds of cruel, violent boys and kind, loving girls, rejecting the possibility of same-sex love over and over.

Menudo: Latin American Boy Band

When I was in high school, studying French got you Tintin, Alix, and Spirou et Fantasio, but studying Spanish got you Papa Soltero, Que Pasa USA and  Menudo.  The boy band (Spanish slang for "young, untried, uncooked") was formed in 1977 by Puerto Rican promoter Edgardo Diaz.  They were a "revolving group": members retired on their sixteenth birthday, and were replaced.  To date, there have been 33 members, including future superstars Ricky Martin and Robi Rossa.

To date, Menudo has released over 40 albums, and a number of their singles have charted in Latin America.  They became popular in the United States in 1983, when they appeared on Saturday morning tv, singing and acting in brief sketches in English and Spanish.

Their cuteness was an obvious draw for gay kids and teenagers, especially when teen magazines began to display endless shirtless, swimsuit, and speedo shots.

But their music was a draw, too.  It was good, evocative, literate, and expertly arranged.  Not to mention accessible to both male and female fans.  At least in Spanish.

It's hard to make Spanish songs non-gender specific, but they often managed it.  For instance,  "Mas Que Amor" (More than Love):


Cuando estoy contigo, no se ni quien soy
no se ni como hacer, me quedo sin palabras
(When I'm with you, I don't know who I am, I don't know what to do, I'm left without words).

But in the heart of the homophobic 1980s, the English translation made sure that boys could sing only to girls::
When I'm next to her, I'm a mess.
The words just don't come out right.

Or "Perdido Sin Ti" (Lost without You):

Perdido sin ti, perdido en el mar
Como un laberinto en la oscuridad
(Lost without you, lost in the sea, like a labyrinth in the darkness.)

The English lyrics aren't nearly as evocative, and give the "ti" a gender:

I'm losing control of myself this time, she's got me losing my head.

Both Ricky Martin and Angelo Garcia (left) are publicly gay, and many other current and former members are gay-friendly.