The Gay Arab World

During the famous summer of 1981, when I was working in the college library, taking classes in Chaucer and Modern German Culture, going to see Clash of the Titans, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Wolfen, Arthur, American Werewolf in London, Hell Night, and The Chosen, and finding subtext songs on the radio, the Film Club took a field trip to Madison Wisconsin for an Italian Film Festival, and I saw Pasolini's Arabian Nights.  

Somebody told me there was gay content.  Maybe a little.  But only as an aside in the main plot, where he searches for his lost girlfriend Zumurrud (Ines Pellegrini). In the final scene, Zumurrud, disguised as a man, buys Nur-e-Din as "his" slave.  "He" orders the boy to strip and lie face down on the bed.  Preparing for a sexual assault, Nur-e-Din complies.  Then Zumurrud reveals her true identity.  Heterosexual love wins out over a threat of homoerotic assault.  I left the theater sick to my stomach.  My complete review is here.

I was amazed to discover, years later, that Pasolini was gay.  Homophobic, but gay nonetheless.

Throughout my childhood, movies about the Arab world provided few hints of a "good place." They were mostly adaptations of the Arabian Nights, replete with Sinbads and Aladdins and Ali Babas who get girls, even when they were played by gay actors like Kerwin Mathews (I hadn't yet seen Sabu's homoromantic Arabian adventures.)

TV offered only I Dream of Jeannie, a heterosexist fable, and Shazzan, about a boy and a girl trapped in an Arabian Nights world.  

I was not yet aware of the homoeroticism of Medieval Arab, Turkish, and Persian poets, such as Abu Nuwas: 


I die of love for him, perfect in every way,
Lost in the strains of wafting music.
My eyes are fixed upon his delightful body
And I do not wonder at his beauty.

Or of the Orientalist fervor that sent hundreds of gay Europeans, including Oscar Wilde, W.H. Auden, and Andre Gide, to North Africa in search of Arab lovers.

But there were tantalizing hints in books.  Sonia and Tim Gidal's Sons of the Desert was about two Bedouin boys. 

The Stone of Peace, by Karah Feder Tal, has a Jewish teenager running away from his kibbutz in the Negev and befriending the Bedouin Ahmad. 

James Forman's My Enemy, My Brother had another Jewish-Arab friendship.

And Passing Brave was a real-life adventure about two Americans, William Polk and William Mares, armed only with a knowledge of Classical Arabic, crossing the desert in search of a "good place." 

See also: The Egyptian Professor of Political Science

Jamie Croft, the Australian Tom Sawyer

Speaking of Jeremy Lelliott, his costar in Disappearance, Jamie Croft, had several buddy-bonding projects as a child star in Australia.

In That Eye, the Sky (1994), the oddball outsider Ort (13-year old Jamie) lives in the Australian outback with his mother, his sister, his paralyzed father, and his frail, elderly grandmother. He's getting weird premonitions and questioning his belief in God.  Then the hunky American Henry (Peter Coyote) arrives and teaches Ort about the magic of everyday life. Meanwhile Ort gets his first crush.

The miniseries The Valley Between (1996) follows the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn-like adventures of German immigrant Bruno (15-year old Jamie) in South Australia.

He has a crush on an older teenager, Eddie (Josh Picker).

No heterosexual interest in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1996).

In his guest spot on The Lost World  (1999-2002), about various people trapped in a sort of Land of the Lost in the Amazon, teenage Rob Dillon (Jamie) is kidnapped by a savage tribe and requires a daring rescue.  But he grins at a girl.

Then came Disappearance (2002), the gender-bending comedy Blurred (2002), and the teenage muscle hunk Hercules (2005; played as an adult by Paul Telfer). There is minimal girl-craziness in these projects, but unfortunately no shirtless or semi-nude shots, not even as Hercules.

More recently Jamie has moved into voice work, playing the 12-year old barbarian in The Legend of Enyo (2010) and Pablo in The Davincibles (2011).

In real life he is married with children; no word on whether he's a gay ally.

On the Town: Three Sailors on Leave in a Gay City

Long before I ever visited New York City, I learned all about the Battery, the Bronx, the Empire State Building, Central Park, subways, seltzer, and delis.  Like Los Angeles, it was a magical place, gleaming with steel and glass, where you could escape the constant "what girl do you like?" litany of the adults.

I learned all that through tv programs like That Girl and The Odd Couple, and through movies like On the Town (1949).

Based on a 1944 Broadway musical scored by gay composer Leonard Bernstein, On the Town follows the adventures of three sailors on leave in New York City before they ship out: the naive Gabey (dance master Gene Kelly), the fast-talking Chip (future Rat Pack singer Frank Sinatra), and the dopey Ozzie (comic relief Jules Munshin). They just have 24 hours, and they want to see and do everything, especially meet girls.

Then Gabey falls in love with a girl on a poster, Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), mistakenly thinking she's a famous actress.

So his friends obligingly give up their plans to help Gabey track her down.

They give up their plans to help a buddy?  Anytime a same-sex friendship trumps the quest for hetero-romance, you have some significant gay symbolism.

During the madcap scavenger hunt, female cabbie  Hildy (Betty Garrett) aggressively courts Chip ("Come back to my place!").

Ozzie is courted by anthropologist Claire (Ann Miller), whose mentor thinks she's a lesbian, uninterested in men; actually, she just prefers the big, brawny type ("Give me a prehistoric man!").

And Gabey catches the eye of  the gawky Lucy Schmeeler (Alice Pearce).

Butch, aggressive women chasing unwilling, feminine-coded men: the gender atypicality gives the musical even more gay symbolism.

And even more: all of them become friends, boys and girls both -- when was the last time you saw a platonic male-female friendship in a musical?

They all help Gabey search.  When he becomes despondent, they all invite him to "Count on me."  

Gabey eventually meets the Girl, and the "three couples" share a final song and a kiss.  But there's no marriage and children: when the 24 hours ends, the three sailors head back to their ship.  Hildy, Claire, and Iris wave goodbye.

But they're not alone.  Strangers yesterday, the three women have found each other.

This movie is not about hetero-romance at all.  It's about friendship.  That's what makes it a gay classic.

Plus the energetic dance numbers, the gay connections of actresses Betty Garrett and Alice Pearce, and New York City, the most important character, brimming with light and color.  No wonder the posters call it "Twice as gay as Anchors Aweigh."

The original musical is a favorite of high school and college drama departments.  Not a lot of beefcake, but Tony Yazbeck dances shirtless in the Broadway revival.