Wreck-It Ralph and the Loss of Gay History

I read an article written by a gay guy who was totally traumatized by the homophobia of Wreck-It Ralph (2012).  

The limp-wristed, lisping Candy King, who lives in a hot-pink castle (("it's salmon!", is beat up by the macho, all-man hero, and  called a "nelly wafer."

So of course I had to watch the movie.

The premise: Wreck-It Ralph is the bad guy in an antiquated video game, wrecking an apartment building so Fix-It Felix Junior can "fix it." He wants to become a good guy, so he leaves his game, and eventually ends up in a candy themed video game.  He helps a young girl win a candy-themed race, while the sinister Candy King tries to thwart them.  There are a lot of plot twists, some scary scenes, and a bit of Disney treacle.

It wasn't great.  I would have preferred a grand tour of other video games (we see three), and some greater exploration of the video-game characters' world. But...I kept waiting and waiting for the "nelly wafer."

Sigh.

1. The Candy King is not a gay stereotype.  He looks and talks like famous comedian Ed Wynn, specifically his performance as the Mad Hatter in the Disney Alice in Wonderland.  Wynn's distinctive delivery was endlessly imitated; anybody over age 40 will recognize it instantly.

2. Ralph is no macho he-man.  He is a dimwitted ogre, an anti-hero, a bad guy who wants to be good.

3. The Candy King's palace is pink for a very important plot point that has nothing to do with him being effeminate: it's not his palace!  He's a usurper.  The true ruler of the Candy Kingdom is...well, watch the movie.

4. Ralph does not best the Candy King in a fight until the end of the movie, when he has transformed into a giant spider-creature, and even then, it takes a lot of people working together,

5. Among many other candy-themed insults, Ralph calls Candy King " a vanilly wafer."  It is conceivable that Ralph said "vanilly" instead of "vanilla" to make it sound like "nelly," an old term for gay men, but rather a stretch.  He doesn't say anything else to imply that Candy King is gay.

Earlier, Ralph appears to call Pac Man a "cock gobbler," but actually in the video game Pac Man eats dots, so the slur is probably "dot gobbler."

Sheesh.

Has the author seen any other Disney movie?  They're loaded down with sleeky,sophisticated, gay-stereotype villains.  How about Jabar? Shere Khan?  Captain Hook?

Or any movie from the 1980s?  "Fags" and "homos" litter the dialogue. Just a sample:

Teen Wolf: "I'm not a fag, I'm a werewolf."
Adventures in Babysitting; "Thor is a homo."
An American Werewolf in London:"Prince Charles is a fag."
The Breakfast Club: "Stay out of my locker, fag."

 A single misheard line that could be a gay slur is nothing.  Grow a pair!

By the way, Ralph displays no heterosexual interest, ever.  He hangs out with other male villains, changes clothes with an army guy in a patently homoerotic scene, and buddy-bonds with Fix-It Felix.  Gay subtext is rather obvious.

When you don't remember your own history, you are doomed to repeat it.

The History of Peter Pan Nightmares

Peter Pan has a long, sinister, and disturbing history.  He began in the grieving imagination of 8-year old J.M. Barrie, when his brother David died in a skating accident the day before his 14th birthday -- tragic, but at least a dead boy would stay a boy forever.  

He took shape in Barrie's early novels about dead and dying boys, Better Dead (1888) and Sentimental Tommy (1896), and in stories Barrie told to the five Llewelyn-Davies boys, whom he met while walking his St.Bernard in Kensington Gardens in 1897.  

And when his wife, actress Mary Ansell, left him for a mere boy, 24 year old Gilbert Cannan, in 1908 (by the way, Cannan published a novel called Peter Homunculus in 1909).

There is no indication that Barrie had any pederastic intentions with the Llewelyn boys.  Boys and men mingled without suspicion in those days.  In the stories, however, Captain Hook has an arguably homoerotic love-hate relationship with the Dead Boy Peter.  When one considers that Barrie's Captain Hook and Daddy were played by the same actor, one wonders about the elder Barrie, a strict,conservative Calvinist.

The baby who leapt from his tram in Kensington Gardens and lived in trees like a bird (that is, died) first appeared as a named character in J.M. Barrie's very Victorian childhood-equals-death novel The Little White Bird (1902).  

Next came a stage play, Peter Pan, Or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1904), based on the pantomime tradition, which is why Peter Pan and the Lost Boys were all played by women, and there was a dying fairy (the Edwardians loved long, slow, sentimental death scenes as much as we love things blowing up).  

George du Marier, uncle to the Llewelyn Davies boys, played both Captain Hook and the Darling kids' father.  Hints of child abuse, anyone?

Next Barrie adapted the stage play into a novel,  Peter Pan and Wendy(1911).   Both play and novel became sensations, especially during World War I, with so  many boys dying in the trenches of Europe -- but they were forever young.

And adaptations began: news plays, movies, novels, cartoons, stories, songs, statues, with the dead boy becoming more playful, less sinister to keep up with the changing times.  

My favorite is Malcolm, the evil Peter Pan of Once Upon a Time (Robbie Kay, shown with some of his Lost Boys in the top photo).  

My least favorite is the 2003 movie version,  with a barely-pubescent Jeremy Sumpter in a pedo-dream costume, and a hetero-romance "girls are the meaning of life" conclusion.

A 1954 Broadway musical Peter Pan stayed true to its pantomime roots by casting a woman as the Dead Boy, and an older woman at that: 40-year old Mary Martin, who had previously starred in Annie Get Your Gun and South Pacific.  Cyrill Richard played both Captain Hook and George Darling  for more Freudian nightmares.  Although it was the exuberant 1950s, some other disturbing elements were retained:

1. The family is called "Darling," which is ridiculous.

2. The nanny is a dog in a nanny's cap played by a man.

3. Wendy sews Peter's shadow onto his feet. Imagine how painful that would be!

4. Blackmailing the audience to clap in order to keep a fairy from dying.

5. Amputation, mutilation, bombing, death, and near-death everywhere you turn.  Fun!
6. Growing up means dying.

Nevertheless, Neverland returned to Broadway in 1979, 1990, 1991, and 1998 (with Peter Pan played by Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby). 

The entire cast except for the children reprised their roles for a 1960 tv version -- restaged, so you were actually watching and hearing a stage show. This version was rebroadcast in 1963, 1966, 1973, 1989, and 1991. 

Photo: Kent Fletcher, who played Michael in 1960, forever a child in his only other film role, The Lord of the Flies (1963).

I think I saw part of 1966 rebroadcast.  I would have been 5 or 5 1/2 years old, too young for bizarre dog-human hybrids, shadows sewn onto bare flesh, murderous pirate-fathers, dying fairies, and growing up as the equivalent of death.  Since then Peter Pan has often appeared in my nightmares.

See also: Jeremy Sumpter's half-n*ked Peter Pan gave a generation of boys their gay awakening. But has he done anything gay lately? Or n*ked?

The Famous Five Have Plenty of Fun

The Famous Five were Britain's answer to the Boxcar Children or the Hardy Boys, five youthful detectives who appearing in 21 volumes by Enid Blyton from 1942 to 1962.

There have also been original Famous Five novels in French and German, films in English, Danish, and German,  comic books, a video game, and even a stage musical.
The Famous Five are really the Famous Three:

1. Julian Bannard, age 13 (right), described in boys' adventure novel terms as tall, strong, and muscular.  He was played by Marcus Harris in 1978 and Marco Williamson in 1995.

2. His brother Dick, age 12 (far left), a practical jokester and standard boys' adventure novel sidekick, played by Gary Russell in 1978 and Paul Child in 1995.

3. Their cousin George, age 12 (center), a girl who "wants to be a boy."

The other members are:
4. Their young sister Anne, who doesn't do much except get scared and "stay here where it's safe."
5. The dog Timmy (a regular dog, not talking).

Perpetually 12-13 years old but acting several years older, the Five solve their mysteries during school holidays, usually while on vacation on Kirrin Island.  There are kidnappers, smugglers, secret rooms, gypsies, decadent circuses, ghosts that really aren't, and lots of scenes set on the beach, giving Blyton the opportunity to describe the boys' physiques in swimsuits.

One might suspect that the family dynamic and the presence of both boys and girls would eliminate buddy-bonding, but in fact Julian and Dick behave rather like the Hardys, going off alone with each other to investigate the mystery, and there are lots of other kids to interact with.

The gay-vague George is most likely to seek outside friends, mostly other girls "who want to be boys," such as Berte and  Jo, but Julian does his share of bonding with older boys as he tries to establish his own adolescent identity.

The gender-transgressive girls are not the result of gay-friendliness, but of sexism: Blyton thought that adventuring was a masculine preserve, so any girl with an interest in danger and excitement must "want to be a boy."

There have been three incarnations on British tv.  The 1978-79 series was never shown in the U.S.

The 1995-97 series was a period piece, set in 1940s Wales.

In 2008, an animated series featured the children of the original Famous Five.  Even George has a daughter (but her partner is never mentioned; maybe she had a wife).

It's Your Move

Before Married with Children demolished the myth of the euphoric nuclear family, It's Your Move (1984-85) did the same for the teencom.  Matt Burton (Jason Bateman, who would go on to star on The Hogan Family) seems to be a perfect teenage boy, but he's actually an unscrupulous, amoral operator, running a variety of scams and illegal businesses with the assistance of his best friend Eli (Adam Sadowski).  His only soft spot is for his mother, Eileen (Caren Kaye), so some of his schemes involve doing things for her, like getting her a raise at work.

Then struggling writer Norman Lamb (David Garrison, who would go on to star on Married...with Children) moves into the apartment across the hall and starts dating Matt's mom.  It turns out that there is also an unscrupulous, amoral operator lurking under his "nice guy" facade.  But not to worry, he has only honorable intentions.

Matt and Norman begin a battle of wits, cons, and blackmail, as each tries to gain power and demonstrate the other's true nature to an oblivious Eileen.

It was a welcome surcease from the TGIF sitcom jungle. Plus beefcake (David Garrison in extremely tight jeans), gay symbolism (hiding a secret life), and a decided lack of girl-craziness in Matt. Though his relationship with Eli didn't quite make the intensity of a homoromance.

The producers had high hopes for It's Your Move.  A tie-in novel was authorized, and up-and-coming star River Phoenix had a guest shot in the pilot.

Teen magazines began nonstop gushing over freckle-faced Jason Bateman..

Unfortunately, the network shoved the series into a Wednesday night timeslot opposite the blockbuster Dynasty, with the sixth season of The Facts of Life as a lead-in.  I watched, but apparently nobody else did.  Only 18 episodes aired.  You can see them on youtube.