The Big Men of American Tall Tales

In the mid-1980s, Shelly Duvall (fresh from playing Olive Oyl in the Popeye movie) hosted a Showtime series of Tall Tales & Legends, featuring live-action versions of Big Men (and Women) from American folklore: Pecos Bill (Steve Guttenberg), Johnny Appleseed (Martin Short), John Henry (Danny Glover), Davy Crockett (Mac Davis), Annie Oakley (Jamie Lee Curtis).

It was dreadful.  It brought back terrible memories of childhood, when those "colorful figures from our nation's past" were pounded into my brain through incessant classroom assignments and Wonderful World of Disney episodes.

Pecos Bill rode a mountain lion instead of a horse, used a snake for a lasso, and ate dynamite for a snack.

Davy Crockett was once swallowed by a bear, so he turned it inside out and escaped.

Paul Bunyan carved out the Grand Canyon by dragging his axe in the dirt.

Mike Fink (left) was half horse, half alligator, and half snapping turtle.

Who cared?  I much preferred Tarzan, Batman and Robin, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E.  For that matter, Li'l Abner and Alley Oop from the comics page.

For that matter, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge.

And some of the tales weren't even very tall:

Casey Jones ran a railroad engine fast.

John Henry...well, he drilled a million holes in rocks, and then died.

Johnny Appleseed...um, well, he walked around planting trees.

But, on the bright side, they weren't given many heterosexual exploits.

Pecos Bill had a girlfriend, and I just discovered that Paul Bunyan had one, but she doesn't appear in any stories that I recall.

The other Big Men were portrayed without Big Women.

And there was a a lot of beefcake.  Big Men were by definition as muscular as Superman.

You could ask your parents for a Davy Crockett action figure, and then strip him out of his clothes.

John Henry was portrayed as a hard-iron bodybuilder, as in this 8-foot tall statue in Talcott, West Virginia.

 And Paul Bunyan?  Just think about the possibilities.  If he is 30 feet tall, then he must have a three-foot long....

See also: G.I. Joe and Ken; Roadside Beefcake

Cinderella: Men in Tights

Let's face it -- 90% of the reason we go to the ballet is for the beefcake -- to look at the muscular male dancers in skin-tight leotards.  10% or less is for the bonding -- gay subtexts are scarce, even when the choreographer is gay.

And Cinderella is the most heterosexist of the lot.  It's based on the most iconic of Charles Perrault's fairy tales:

1. Cinderella escapes from her horrible childhood home to a fancy dress ball, with the help of a fairy godmother and a furry-animal makeover.
2. The Handsome Prince falls in love with her.
3. She flees at midnight, before she turns into a pumpkin.
4. The Handsome Prince tries her shoe out on every woman in the kingdom, but it only fits Cinderella.

Cinderella has no female friends, only bullying stepsisters.  The Handsome Prince has no male friends, just fawning courtiers.  It's male-female pas de deux, heterosexual love! love! love! from here to eternity.

There have been about 20 ballet versions, but the most commonly performed is the 1945 version with music composed by Sergei Prokofiev.

It adds some comedic touches, such as having the stepsisters performed by men in drag (as they are in the popular British pantomimes).  In 1948, it was re-choreographed as a full-blown comedic ballet.

Still entirely heterosexist, from stem to stern.

Fortunately, costumers usually compensate by dressing the Prince in the most tightly revealing leotards they can find.

So audiences who are bored by the heterosexual love! love! love! mantra can still find something to look at.

See also: The Midsummer Night's Dream Ballets.

I Was Betrayed by Keanu Reeves

For Boomers, Keanu Reeves is indelibly linked with Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), a comedy about two "dumb and dumber" teenagers (Keanu, Alex Winter) on a time-travel quest to bring back some "historical dudes" for their history project.  It was wildly popular, spinning off into a sequel and a cartoon series and giving teens of the early 1990s the catchphrase "Excellent!"

But Keanu was nor really cut out to be a comedic actor; his mumbling James Dean style was more suited to quirky indy dramas with gay subtexts, such as The Brotherhood of Justice (1986), about a group of shirtless teenagers becoming vigilantes to fight crime in their gritty urban neighborhood, and Dangerous Liaisons (1988), with 18th century French aristocrats play seduction games.

He also tried his hand at action-adventure movies.  In Point Break (1991), he plays Johnny Utah, an FBI agent assigned to investigate crime in the world of professional surfers, where he bonds with surfer bum Bodhi (Patrick Swayze).  It's gay-subtext buddy-bonding at its best.

He even played a gay (sort of) character in My Own Private Idaho (1991), about hustler buddies ( the Hollywood "men who have sex with sexy women for pay" kind of hustler).  Mike (River Phoenix) is frail, sickly, and gay (does Hollywood have any other kind?)  He pines away with unrequited love for Scott (Keanu).

By this point, I assumed that Keanu was gay in real life, or at least a strong ally who would give us many open gay characters, or at least a series of gay-subtext buddy-bonds.  My friend Will claimed to have hooked up with him during the summer of 1986.

But then I was subjected to a decade of dreary "fade-out kiss" actioners and romances full of heterosexist statements like "every man is searching for the woman he was destined to be with": Speed, A Walk in the Clouds, Chain Reaction, The Matrix, The Replacements, Sweet November.

Where were the gay characters?  Where were the gay subtexts?  Where was the plain old inclusivity?

I felt betrayed, and gave up on Keanu altogether. I haven't seen any of his movies since 2001.

See also: River Phoenix: Running on Empty; Will and Scott's Wild Night with Keanu Reeves.

Jeff MacKay

The problem with meeting celebrities is that you usually don't recognize them, and then their feelings get hurt.

I never saw Black Sheep Squadron, Tales of the Gold Monkey, Magnum PI, or The Transformers, so how did I know that the guy I met was a celebrity.  I didn't even know that he was an actor, although it's a safe bet in West Hollywood

He was living in Hollywood, a few blocks from Mann's Chinese (and near where the Gay Community Center is today).

He told me that he was born in Dallas but grew up in Oklahoma City, and....

That's all I knew about him, except he had a nice smile, a husky, hirsute physique, and his name was "Jeff."

Later he revealed that he was Jeff MacKay, the actor.  I pretended to know who he was, but really I didn't.

After that night I never saw him again.

He died in 2008 after a long struggle with alcoholism, leaving many family members and friends with fond memories of his kindness and good humor.

I'm sorry I didn't get to know him better.

See also: Guess which celebrity I've dated.

The Gay Werewolf of Steppenwolf

When I was an undergraduate at Augustana College in the early 1980s, I took three German classes with tall, gray-haired, constantly-scowling Professor Weber, who was obsessed with demonstrating that homosexualitat did not exist in modern Germany.

Stefan George, Thomas Mann, the Physical Culture Movement, Robert Musil, Magnus Hirschfield, the Kit-Kat Club of Berlin between the Wars?

"Posh!  Nonsense!  About friendship and the nationalist ideal, not homosexualitat!"

He would allow no discussion of current campus favorite Steppenwolf  by Herman Hesse: "Posh!  Nonsense!  A book of monsters!  Fit only for the Late-Late Show!"

So of course, I had to read it.

The cover illustration of two nearly-naked women nearly turned me away.

As did the clueless school librarian who kept trying to point me to the music section, insisting that the book was about the rock band Steppenwolf.

But finally I managed to get a copy.

I saw immediately why Dr. Weber forbade the class from discussing it.

The protagonist, Henry Haller, feels depressed, friendless, and alienated from the world he no longer understands -- what adolescent hasn't felt like that?  Especially gay adolescents.

The source of his alienation: he is a werewolf, a man with two natures, one civilized and stable and heterosexual, the other wild.

Wild, savage, untamed, homoerotic.

While wandering aimlessly through the city, he sees an advertisement for "Magic Theater -- not for everybody." (Or, in this Spanish sign, "for lunatics only.").

 Maybe in the Magic Theater he will find a way to reconcile his two natures.  Or maybe it will lead him to oblivion.  He resolves to seek it out.

En route, he meets two people.  Hermine nurtures his "civilized" side, introducing him to the pleasures and constraints of heterosexual normalcy, including sex with women.

Seductive saxophonist Pablo offers him a "walk on the wild side."

(In the 1974 film version, Henry is played by Max von Sydow, and Pablo by Pierre Clementi).

Eventually Henry kills his "civilized side," and Pablo announces that he is ready for the Magic Theater. He walks inside, through a narrow corridor into the future.

For the gay men of my generation, it sounds precisely like your first visit to a gay bar.  You circle the block a few times, then park, and walk slowly, terrified, to that door marked "Magic Theater: Not for Everybody."  Your future lies behind it.

Hesse envisioned several other close male "walks on the wild side," in Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) and Magister Ludi (1943).  

See also: Death in Venice; and Male Nudity in German Class;

Bring on the Spider-Men

I'm not a big fan of superheroes in general, and Spider-Man is at the bottom of my list.  I walked out on the first movie (2002) starring Tobey Maguire, and I've never seen The Ultimate Spider-Man, in spite of its 10 Ultimate Hunks.

So the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Night (2011-2014) was not high on my must-see list.

It was one of the most expensive musicals in history, riddled with production accidents (Spidey has a lot of web-swinging to do).

It was panned by critics, who complained that it combined the worst set-pieces of the 2002  with pretentious Greek-chorus stuff, and ignores Spidey's comic book origins.

It was certainly heterosexist, with Mary Jane being captured and melting into Spidey's arms every five minutes.

But it has something that the comic book never had:  multiple Spider-Men.

You need a lot for all the stunts, and because they keep getting injured.

Spider-Men include man-mountains like Matthew Wilkas (top photo), Reed Kelly (left), Adam Ray Dyer (below).










Jake Odmark, Justin Matthew Sargent, Matthew James Thomas, Marcus Bellamy, and on and on and on....






And the Spider-Men's costumes seem particularly bulge-worthy.  Apparently being bitten by a radioactive spider adds considerable bulk beneath the belt.  How many can you count in this curtain call of four Spidermen sans mask?

How about now, with nine Spidermen strutting their stuff on Times Square?

New productions are being planned for major cities in America and Europe, so you may yet have a chance to gawk at your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Men.

Henry Danger: A Nickelodeon Gay-Subtext Classic?

The Disney Channel loves teencoms about kids who are training to become singers.

Nickelodeon puts them into bizarre, unexpected situations.

Which would you rather watch?

In Henry Danger, the Nickelodeon teencom, average kid Henry (Jace Norman) lands his dream job: Danger Boy, teen sidekick to superhero Captain Man (Cooper Barnes).

He gets to wear a superhero costume, hang out in a cool futuristic hideout, and fight colorful Batman-like villains.

Did I mention that the job pays $9 per hour?

Of course, Henry can't tell anyone, but that's part of the fun.  What kid doesn't want to live a secret life?

Especially a gay kid.

Jace Norman is exceptionally androgynous -- with a change of outfit, he could easily be a girl -- so the gay symbolism seems almost deliberate.

He has two best friends, the sarcastic, sassy Charlotte (Riele Downs) and the rather dimwitted Jasper (Sean Ryan Fox).  No doubt a heterosexual romance is in the offing with one, and a gay-subtext romance with the other.









Captain Man (Cooper Barnes) was heterosexualized in the first episode with a set-piece of his alter ego romancing a woman, but he's probably going to be up for some gay symbolism, too.

Cooper Barnes, seen here as Hawkman, is no stranger to gay subtexts.  He starred in a short video about football fans engaging in unconscious homoerotic behavior,

And Nickelodeon seems dedicated to filling supporting roles with musclemen.

Like Ben Giroux, seen here flexing in a commercial, as the villainous Toddler.

Beefcake, Bonding, and a Movie Called "She"

H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925) wrote adventure novels about swashbuckling, devil-may-care heroes exploring lost civilizations in Africa, precursors of both the Tarzan books and the Indiana Jones movie series.

The Rock Island Bookmobile had three of them.  I rather liked King Solomon's Mines (1885), but couldn't slog through Alan Quartermain (1887), and I wouldn't touch the novel called simply She (1886).

For obvious heteronormative reasons, it's his most popular novel, a "classic of imaginative literature" according to wikipedia.

The heteronormative, racist, imperialist plot:  Professor Horace Holly, his young ward Leo, and their servant are shipwrecked in East Africa, and journey to the interior, where they run afoul of a lost civilization ruled by Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed (or "She" for short).   

She is immortal, and so beautiful, naturally, that any man who sees her is driven mad with desire.

She becomes convinced that Leo is the reincarnation of her long-dead lover, Kallikrates.  He is in love with someone else, but Ayesha kills his girlfriend, hypnotizes him with her beauty and takes him to a volcano, where he will bathe in hot lava and thereby become immortal.  But at the last minute he refuses.  She reverts to her true age and dies.

See any gay subtexts yet?

Holly is hypnotized by Ayesha's beauty, like everyone else, but otherwise he displays no heterosexual interest. He has an avuncular interest in Leo that can often pass over into the homoerotic.

Leo is not really interested in Ayesha.  In the end he chooses Holly over her.

There is no heterosexist boy-girl fade-out ending.

It has been filmed about a dozen times, including a silent version (1925) with the buffed Carlyle Blackwell as an Egyptian-clad Leo.

The most famous version (1965) starred Peter Cushing as Holly, John Richardson (top photo) as Leo, and Ursula Andress as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.

A homophobic 1982 version was set in a Road Warrior post-apocalyptic world, with Man-Mountain brothers (David Goss, Harrison Muller) and She (Sandahl Bergman) questing to rescue their kidnapped sister.

En route they run afoul of a giant transvestite, effeminate Pretty Boy, who hosts a party for dancing werewolves, a gay-vague mad scientist, and a chair made of loincloth-clad men.

In the 2001 version, the clueless Leo (Ian Duncan) brings his girlfriend Roxanne along, and she and She fight it out to win his affection.

Charlie's Angels

You've got to be kidding.  What interest would gay boys or men have in the 1976-81 drama about three women (originally Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith) who graduated from the police academy, found their talents underutilized by a patriarchal system, and went to work as private detectives?

Who use their brains to solve the murders and their brawn to knock out the bad guy?

Who go undercover in health clubs, spas, cruise ships, and other places crowded with men wearing only towels and swimsuits?

That's why.

1. There was quite a lot of jiggling, of course, but there was also an immense amount of beefcake.

Where else could you see game show host Bert Convy in a speedo?

Or Dirk Benedict take off his Battlestar Galactica uniform?

Nearly every hunk in Hollywood guest starred, and usually took off his shirt: Timothy Dalton, Bo Hopkins, Tab Hunter, Randolph Mantooth, Vic Morrow, Dack Rambo, Tom Selleck, Robert Ulrich, and Lyle Waggoner.

Even Norman Fell, Mr. Roper of Three's Company.

2. Several episodes featured predatory lesbians, swishy-queen gay men, or demented transvestites.  But that was the way LGBT people were nearly universally portrayed in 1970s detective and cop shows.  And the homophobia was diluted by the gay-vague Bosley (David Doyle), the Angels' longsuffering assistant.

3. In the end Charlie's Angels was about empowerment, saving the day in spite of people assuming that you were weak, flamboyant, feminine.

4. And, like The Golden Girls,  it was about the friendship.

Most of the Angels are gay allies. Kate Jackson starred in Making Love (1982), which featured the first positive portrayal of gay men in a Hollywood film.

Farrah Fawcett, who died in 2009, was unfailingly gracious to her gay fans.

Jaclyn Smith played the mother of a gay son in Family Album (1994).  Incidentally, her husband was played by Michael Ontkean, Kate Jackson's husband in Making Love. 

Gotham, 2014: Can We Expect Gay Subtexts?

On the treadmill at the gym, I've been seeing commercials about Gotham (2014-), the upcoming Fox series about a young cop named James Gordon (Ben McKenzie).

He encounters a young boy named Bruce Wayne (child star David Mazouz of Touch), living with his butler, Alfred (Sean Pertwee, left) after his parents were murdered.  Man and boy form an unwilling alliance.

Of course, Bruce will grow up to become Batman, and James into Commissioner Gordon.

As a prototypical Batman and Robin, they run afoul of many of the future villains of Gotham City, such as the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and the Riddler (Cory Michael Smith) in their pre-costume days.

Don't expect retro camp; this is the grim, noirish Dark Knight Batman.

Or gay characters, although the villains will probably be standard feminine/sophisticated/gay-vague.

But you might expect some gay subtexts.  The Batman franchise has been deliberately minimizing gay content by getting rid of the teen sidekick, or making him a preteen.  But Ben McKenzie played a gay cop in Southland, so maybe he'll add some glimmers of homoerotic interest to his relationship with coworkers.  

And the young Bruce Wayne might have an occasional male friend.

See also: Batman and the Boy Wonder.

Kieron Richardson: Questioning His Sexuality

Kieron Richardson was starring as the teenage bad boy Steven Hays on the long-running British soap Hollyoaks.  His character was involved in domestic violence, drugs, and various scandalous behaviors, so the producers thought, "Let's really up the ante and get super-scandalous,  and have him 'question his sexuality'!"

So they made Steven wonder if he might be gay.  While he was wondering, he got involved in a violent same-sex relationship, and later got a new boyfriend and married him.  Apparently while still wondering.

During all of this, Kieron announced that he was gay in real life.

He's been out for several years now, and claims that he never experienced any homophobic bias, slurs, statements, or discrimination.  He reasons, "We're in the 21st century and actually homophobia's more or less been stamped out."

Um...Kieron, have you being paying attention to your own storyline?  The phrase "question your sexuality" is in itself homophobic, asserting that being heterosexual is the default, a universal category, and you turn gay when you become "confused."

That's a Hollywood myth.  I have never once met any gay person who was ever "confused."  They knew exactly who they were attracted to.  It was the heterosexuals who were confused, constantly chiming "What girl do you like?" to gay boys and "What boy do you like?" to gay girls.

Apparently Kieron has never been to a gay event where the bigots are screaming and waving signs.  Or heard politicians make their "gay marriage leads to incest" spiel?  Or lost a job, or never got the interview, because someone in the office thinks he has no right to exist.  Or read the comments at the end of every internet article on a gay topic.

In July 2014, a footballer named Kieran Richardson signed on to the Aston Villa team, thus making headlines in Britain.  Fans confused the two, and thought the footballer was gay.

Suddenly Kieron started receiving homophobic tweets.  He was shocked.

I wasn't.

Here's Johnny: The Gay Snark of the Tonight Show

One night when I was 10 or 11 years old, I woke up to the sound of the tv in the other room.  I looked at the clock by my bedside -- 11:30!  What could my parents be watching?  There was nothing on tv that late but an emptiness of test patterns and static snow.

I walked out into the living room.  On the tv set, I saw a guy sitting behind a little desk, talking to a row of people in chairs.

"What are you doing up?  Did you have a bad dream?" Mom asked.

"I heard noise.  What are you watching?"

"The Tonight Show."

The people were just sitting around.

"But what is it? What's it about?"  TV shows were always about something: detectives, witches, spies, seven stranded castaways.

"It's not about anything.  It's a talk show."

"You mean....people just sit around talking?  That's dumb!"

"That's why it's on late at night," Dad said. "It's not for kids. Now get back to bed."

A few years later, when I was a teenager, I could stay up until midnight if I wanted to, but I was always in bed or had other things to do.

A few years after that, when I lived in West Hollywood, I could stay up until 1:00 am if I wanted, but I was always in bed or had other things to do.

So to this day I have seen only one episode of  The Tonight Show.  Johnny Carson was supposed to be interviewing a literature scholar who believed that Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him, so I waited through an hour and twenty minutes of boring interviews to hear his five-minute spiel.

To be fair, it wasn't all boring interviews.  There were musical guests, and sometimes Johnny performed in comedic sketches like "Carnak the Magnificent."

Gay content was minimal.  Johnny Carson (1925-2005) had a trim physique and a bulge (always hidden behind that desk).  But he displayed a rather snarky twist on the rampant homophobia of the 1960s and 1970s.

His ongoing "sissy jokes" against singer Wayne Newton ended only when Newton burst into his office and asked "Which of your children have I killed..to deserve such treatment"?  (Equating being gay to killing a child?  Really?).

But in real life Carson had gay friends, including gay icon Truman Capote.

In those days gay people often put up with snark.