"The Mummy": Imperialism, Orientalism, Bad History, Bad Archaeology, and Tom Cruise's Chest

 Since COVD put the kibosh on hookups and house parties in March 2020, every Friday is Movie Night: a special dinner, a special dessert (last night it was cake), and the DVD that arrived in a red Netflix envelope.  Always science fiction or horror. After 17 months, we're running a little low, and last night we hit the bottom of the barrel: The Mummy (2017), starring poster boy for homophobia Tom Cruise.

Oh well, he still had a respectable physique at age 55.  

Don't worry, I won't go through the whole movie. Just the first fifteen things that make no sense.

Scene 1: 1127 AD.  Some Medieval knights, decked out like the Knights Templars, are burying one of their own with a ruby on his chest.  

Scene 2: A news story tells us that construction workers uncovered "ancient tombs" under present-day London: Crusaders who must have visited Egypt, since there's a giant door with Egyptian hieroglypics buried next to them.  Ok, the crusades were in the Middle Ages; they weren't "ancient" (before 500 CE). 

There's some stuff about construction workers fighting with archaeologists.  Then an old guy who will later turn out to be Dr. Jekyll (yes, that Dr. Jekyll) gets all reverent and says "I've finally found HER."  He narrates HER story:

Scene 3: Flashback to ancient Egypt, during the New Kingdom (1550-1077 BCE).  We see the pyramids of Giza, but not the Sphinx for some reason.  Princess Ahmanet, heir to the throne, is practicing sword fighting while wearing a wispy white robe, with someone who I thought was her boyfriend, but might be her father.    She's all ready to become Pharoah, when her father has a boy baby (her mother isn't mentioned; we get the impression that Dad gives birth).  Now she will no longer rule!

So she goes into a crypt and summons Set, the God of Death (actually in charge of thunderstorms, earthquakes, the desert, violence, and foreigners).  This requires her to take off all her clothes and walk around naked a lot.  He gives her a ruby scepter, which allows her to assassinate her father and baby brother.  Gee, couldn't she do that without a lot of supernatural machinations?  

Now Ahmanet wants to "take revenge on the world."  What for?  She's Pharaoh.  This requires her to kill her boyfriend (Erol Ismail) during sex.  But then she is captured and "mummified alive."  That's impossible -- mummification requires the removal of the brain and internal organs.  She was buried alive. 

Scene 4: "Mesopotamia, Cradle of Civilization. Now known as Iraq."  Yeah, I'm sure audiences know that.  

Effervescent American soldier Nick (Tom Cruise) tries to talk his sidekick Chris (Jake Johnson) into a side caper: digging into a spot marked "Haram."  Ok, haram means "forbidden" in Arabic, but it refers to religious prohibitions, like eating pork.  Not "stay away."

He assumes that because it is forbidden, it contains valuable artifacts, which they will steal from the Iraqi people and sell on the black market.

They ride down to the village and get yelled at by their commanding officer (Courtney B. Vance, playing one of those authority figures cast with a black actor so they can say "Look!  We're inclusive!", even though they have only five seconds of air time).  He tells them: "No looting!  No tomb-raiding!  We're here to fight the insurrectionists or something!" 

Suddenly Jenny, a supermodel archaeologist, rushes up to yell at Nick: after a one-night stand, he stole her map of the Haram site, and left without giving her his phone number.  This is a novel version of the "broken up so you can get back together again" cliche.

Nick also performed poorly (he finished after only fifteen seconds).  Guess which of the accusations Nick is most concerned about?  Yep, the fifteen seconds. He tries to save face among the other guys by claiming that it actually took many hours, leaving Jenny exhausted.

Scene 5:  They explore the Haram hole, descending past a giant scary head to an artificial cave complex, where mercury has been dripping down for three thousand years.  Eventually they find a group of statues surrounding a sarcophagus suspended by ropes (that haven't rotted after three thousand years).  While Jenny examines the various artifacts, Nick and Jake steal them.  They also fight spiders.

Suddenly Nick has a vision of being in the Egyptian desert, where a scantily-clad Ahmanet says "You freed me, my Chosen One" and kisses him.  So she has been orchestrating all of these events just to get Nick into her tomb?

Their commanding officer calls: the insurrectionists are approaching, so we're leaving. Grab what you can and get out.  Wait -- he forbade them from looting.

Scene 5:  An army transport plane, with the sarcophagus they've stolen from the Iraqi people ludicrously suspended by ropes, but the tomb itself inside.  Jenny reads the story from the hieroglyphs.  The Egyptologist has never heard of Ahmanet.   

Later, Jake turns into a zombie and starts stabbing people.  He comes for Nick, who has to shoot him. 

The pilot announces that they're inexplicably gone several thousand miles off course, and now they're over England.  Then a pack of birds starts dive-bombing the plane, killing the pilots, plus causing massive holes and engine explosions.  The plane careens out of control.  Why would Ahmanet want to kill her Chosen One, and destroy her own body?  This makes no sense. 

The other crew members and soldiers are swept out of various holes in the plane.  Nick and Jenny wait for the crash.  He asks her again about the fifteen seconds.  This is ridiculous.  Who would be concerned about that at the end of their life?  At the last minute, he straps a parachute onto Jenny and pushes her out of the plane (you know, two people can descend on one parachute).  Then he dies.

Scene 6:  At a hospital in England, Jenny is asked to identify the bodies. Wait -- she didn't know most of the people on the plane.  Shouldn't their families be contacted?

In the morgue, all of the bodies are draped in white sheets, except for Nick, who is in a clear plastic body bag.  Suddenly he comes back to life.  He struggles to open the bag before he suffocates. Bummer -- get resurrected, and then die right away.

He gets out and looks down at the corpse tag attached to his toe: "Unknown."  

At that point, the DVD froze.  But at least it froze at a shot of Nick's muscular chest.  I'd rather watch that for an hour than the rest of this mess.

Beefcake: That one Tom body scene, the bare chest of Ahmanet's boyfriend.

Gratuitous Female Nudity: Lots.

Aggravating ignorance of what archaeology is all about: Lots. Did anyone associated with this movie actually consult an archaeologist?  Or pick up a book?

Annoyingly blatant American imperialism: Lots.

Toxic masculinity: A man is worth only as much as the length of time he can last during heterosexual intercourse.

Mummies: None.  

Gay subtext: I understand that at the end of the movie, Nick resurrects his sidekick so they can ride off into the sunset together.  That counts, I guess.

"Chip n Dale: Park Life": Is the Gay Subtext Embraced or Erased?

 Chip and Dale were an iconic gay-subtext couple who appeared in 24 Disney cartoons (1943-56).  They mostly spoke in chipmunk-gibberish, with maybe a word or two of English per cartoon, which was appropriate for the simple, simple, slapstick-prone plotlines: generally they bedeviled Donald Duck (and occasionally Mickey Mouse or Pluto) in their attempts to get food or protect their tree-home.   They were not often  differentiated, but sometimes they were divided into intellectual/sensible Chip (with a black nose) and foolhardy/dopey Dale (with a red nose). 

Comedy partners were often displayed living together and sleeping in the same bed in those days, so doubtless no one noticed the gay subtext apparent in the domesticity and permanence.  The two even compete over a girl named Clarice in the 1952 short "Two Chips and a Miss."

In the comic books that appeared under the Dell and Gold Key imprints during the 1950s and 1960s, the two were more obviously a couple.  Their hole-in-a-tree is drawn as a modern home, with chipmunk-sized furniture, even a television set.  They speak,  Chip in grammatically correct, complex sentences, Dale in baby-talk. 

This allows for more complex plots than "trying to find nuts."  They embark on Western, secret-agent, and science-fiction adventures. Here they are interacting with Gilbert, Goofy's genius nephew.

This time someone noticed, or maybe it was just part of the 1980s rush to heterosexualize everyone, but the tv series Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers (1989-1990)  adds a girl-chipmunk named Gadget to the team for them to crush on and compete over. (They also get Magnum P.I. and Indiana Jones outfits befitting their new roles as adventure heroes).

In July 2021, the Disney Channel began airing a French-American co-production, Chip n Dale: Park Life (Les aventures au parc de Tic et Tac).  No way will major Disney characters ever be a canonical gay couple, but maybe the writers would embrace the gay subtext.  Or maybe they would erase it altogether.  I watched the two episodes that have appeared to date (six cartoons):

The boys have reverted to nonverbal chatterers, although they have voice artists listed, Kaycie Chase and Matthew Géczy, and they can communicate with other animals.  They live in a bare hole in a tree in a walled city park.  The only "humans" who have appeared to date are a pack of babies, but Donald Duck and the Beagle Boys are in the character lists of future episodes.

The gay subtext clues, in the order that they aired:

1. When Chip rides a baby like a horse, looking masculine and "tall in the saddle," Dale swoons with romantic ecstasy.  

2. Their romantic affection, riding in a boat together, licking the same acorn (like an ice cream cone), and hugging, makes three male-female animal pairs (frogs, dogs, and rabbits) say "aww."   When they break up, everyone is heartbroken; when they reconcile, everyone cheers.  Here they are portrayed as the exact equivalent of male-female couples.

3. They don't actually kiss, but they press noses.

4.  They don't compete for the affection of any lady chipmunks (although I see the name "Clarice" in a future episode).

5. They have a romantic candlelit dinner.

6. When everyone thinks that Chip has murdered their god, a giant peacock, he is banished from the park.  Dale goes with him.   

7.  They sleep in the same bed.

8. When Chip becomes possessed by a magical, glowing acorn, Dale sacrifices himself to save him.  

My verdict: The gay subtext is about as obvious as it can get, and maintain deniability.  If anyone inquires, the producers can still say  "We had no intention of portraying Chip n Dale as gay."

Prince Valiant

During the 1960s, the Rock Island Argus printed mostly depressing 50-year old comic strips with jokes about husbands hating their wives or friends betraying each other, with little bonding (Out Our Way was an exception) and very little beefcake. Alley Oop and Prince Valiant were exceptions -- 50 years old, but muscle-heavy.

Prince Valiant was a color strip that appeared only on weekends.  Like Gasoline Alley, it featured characters aging in real life, but it was unique in having no speech balloons; text appeared at the bottom of each panel, making the strip seem more like an illustrated novel than a comic.

When it first appeared in 1938, Val was a young prince from Thule (modern day Norway) who traveled to Britain to become one of King Arthur's knights. Later he returned to Thule to help his father regain his throne, then traveled across Europe and Asia, fighting Goths and Huns, visiting the Holy Land (long before the Crusades).  By the 1960s, the middle-aged Val had settled in North America.

Generally Medieval fantasies (and real epics like The Song of Roland) offer little beefcake; knights wear shining armor, and their northern climate doesn't permit much skinny-dipping.

Sigfried in The Nibelungenlied gets naked, and Sir George in The Magic Sword (1962),  and Lancelot (Nicholas Clay) in Excalibur (1981) take their shirts off, and that's about it.  But in Prince Valiant,  Val was shirtless more often than not.  His muscular physique was drawn in full color and in loving detail.

Unfortunately, through the 1960s, Val retained a 1930s page boy haircut, red lips, rosy cheeks, and long lashes, giving him a rather feminine appearance that didn't lend itself to romantic fantasies.  The name "Val" didn't help much.

And there was little buddy-bonding.  During the 1930s, Val sparred with rival prince Arn of Ord, but they became little more than grudging friends.  In fact, the main plotlines involved the fade out kiss.  First Val and Arn competed for the hand of the fair maid Ilene.  Then she died in a shipwreck, Arn was dropped from the strip, and Val turned his attentions to the fair maid Aleta.

They married, and in 1947 their son Arn was born (the first European baby born in North America).   Eventually they had three more children. When I started reading the strip in the 1960s, Arn was a mischievous teenager, but soon he, too, married.

 Hal Foster, the original cartoonist, also drew Tarzan for many years.   He died in 1982, but the strip is still going strong.

Perfect Strangers: Gay Couple Turns Straight

For many years, tv has disguised gay couples as heterosexuals with some other reason for being together -- they work in the same office, or share an apartment, or are brothers.  So censors, skittish network executives, and shrieking homophobic audiences remain clueless, but if you're "in the know," the gay subtext is obvious.

Bronson Pinchot was well known for playing Tom Cruise's buddy in Risky Business (1983) and several swishy gay guys when he was cast in the gay-vague buddy sitcom Perfect Strangers (1986-1993).  He played Balki Bartokomous, an exuberant free-spirit from the faux-Greek country of Mypos, who descends upon his distant cousin Larry (Mark Linn-Baker) in Chicago.

It's supposed to be a brief visit, but the two end up falling in love, and Balki stays on.  He gets a job in the department store where Larry works, and decides to become an American citizen.  Eventually Larry becomes a photojournalist, and Balki a cartoonist.

I watched sometimes during the first and second seasons, when Perfect Strangers led into Head of the Class and Night Court, and the plotlines involved Larry negotiating his relationship with Balki: how do you handle being in love with someone who doesn't understand the details of modern American life, like how to open a checking account or go to the supermarket?

And Balki negotiating his relationship out with Larry: he's cute, and good in bed, but so shy and reserved.  How can I draw him out of his shell?

Apparently the network had a problem: the guys were too obviously a gay couple.  So during the second season plotlines increasingly involved dating girls, culminating in steady girlfriends Jennifer and Mary Anne (Melanie Wilson, Rebeca Arthur).

Or maybe it was a screen.  Could they be sitting farther apart on that couch?

I remember the exact episode when I stopped watching: during the third season, February 3rd, 1988: Balki serves a Myposian dish, "bibi babkas," to Larry and their girlfriends.

"This is the end.  The show is doomed."

It actually continued through eight seasons, with the pair becoming more and more obviously heterosexual every day.  Larry eventually married Jennifer, and Balki married Mary Anne, although they continued to live together.

And they still couldn't keep their hands off each other.  Even off stage.

In the series finale, on August 6, 1993, both became fathers.  The heterosexist mandate was triumphant.  Sort of.

Bronson Pinchot, who apparently had a respectable physique, has since retired from acting.  Now he renovates Victorian houses in small-town Harford, Pennsylvania.

Mark Linn-Baker continues to act.  His tweets mostly involve his workout routine.

"Newly Rich, Newly Poor": A Gay Tease Turns Out to be the Grinch

 The intro to the Colombian telenovela Newly Rich, Newly Poor: a nurse mixes up babies at the hospital; rich guy in a bathrobe ignores his frustrated girlfriend (so far, so good); he dumps a pile of file folders on the desk of his overworked secretary; who goes home to her auto-mechanic husband; who yells at his coworkers at the auto shop.  It goes on like that for another 10 scenes; wait -- in one of them, the rich guy hugs another guy?  A same-sex couple?  I'm in.

Scene 1: Many years before. Rico Bernardo, his wife Antonia, and their chauffeur are driving through the countryside, looking for a hospital: she's about to give birth.  Meanwhile, pobre Leonidas (Hugo Gomez) and his wife Esperanza are also...well, you know.  They arrive at a small-town health center simultaneously; boozing nurse Lucero assists with the births, then mixes up the babies.

Montage of the boys growing up, one rico, the other pobre.

Scene 2:  Today. Rico Andres (Martin Karpan, left) wakes up in his palatial bedroom, works out, checks the stock market;  pobre Brayan wakes up on a rollaway bed in his parents' bedroom, worries about the rent being three months overdue, and showers (the water cuts off halfway through).  Some nice beefcake shots of both men.

Scene 3: Rico Andres points to what he wants on the breakfast buffet so the maids can fill his plate, then yells at them for preparing his eggs with yolks.  He reads a magazine with a cover story about him, then grabs his assistant or boyfriend Hugo (Herbert King, left) and leaves for the office.

 Meanwhile, pobre Brayan (Jhon Alex Toro, below) has a happy, loving breakfast with his family: his father, his brother, and two women whom he kisses on the lips and calls "sexy."  Mother, wife, sister, daughter?  Who knows?

Scene 4: Andres drives to work, being interviewed on the radio.  His company made a profit of 100,000,000 last year (American dollars, not Colombian pesos).  To what does he attribute his success?  "Hard work."  "But many people work hard." "Nonsense!  Poor people are just lazy or stupid.  Anyone can be rich if they want to be."  This is the Horatio Alger myth, ignoring the institutional inequalities that have a profound effect on your life chances.  Of course, Andres will find out about them soon enough. 

Brayan, his brother, and one of the women he kissed ride the bus to work -- they work for Andres! They listen to the radio interview.  "It's all nonsense," they say. "Hard work has nothing to do with it. The key to success is being born into a rich family!"

Scene 5: The nurse Lucero, in a dimly lit bedroom surrounded by crucifixes and rosaries.  Now that she is dying, she wants to tell the secret about the babies.  How could she know?  Did she make the switch on purpose?  And why tell them now?  The two families have been raising the boys as their own for about 30 years.  It's like being adopted.

Scene 6:  While brother and the kissed woman rush to work at Andres' company,  Brayan is still on the bus.  He and his new seatmate comment on the sexiness of a woman on a poster, Fernanda Sanmiguel. Brayan prays that "someday that body will be mine."  I think he means he wants to own her, not have a body like hers.  

Whoops, turns out that Fernanda is Andres' girlfriend, but he's not interested in having sex with her, so she's having an affair with his cousin Mateo (Andres Toro) -- right in the office.  She has to hide under a desk when Andres comes in. She overhears that Andres is planning to propose at the party next week.  Fernanda is in her underwear throughout!  Yuck!

When Andres leaves, Fernanda and Mateo discuss their plan: she will marry him, then divorce him and get half of his fortune.  Then they will move to Aruba together.

Scene 7:   Down in the secretarial pool.  This is a very sexist company!   The kissed woman is passing out invitations to her own party, a Christmas Rumba.  One of the secretaries makes fun of Andres "the robot" just as he is walking by, and gets fired.  The kissed woman fumes.

Scene 8: Pobre Brayan finally makes it to his janitorial job -- late for the ninth time in ten days.  His boss fires him. "That's ok.  I'm destined for greater things." Foreshadowing.

Meanwhile, the kissed woman -- who finally gets a name, Rosmery or Rochi -- is praying to her patron saint that the abrasive, overbearing Andres doesn't select her as his new secretary.  But she speaks English, and she's taking a course in international finance, so she's the most qualified!  Gulp!  Andres selects her, and then wonders why she is so obviously disgusted, but she can't admit that she hates him, or she'll be fired.  He stares in hetero-horniness as she leaves; she must be Brayan's wife or girlfriend, so they will be competing to see who gets to "own" her after the switch.  

Wives and girlfriends as property: very retro sexism.  

Scene 9:  Pobre Brayan goes home to yell at his dad for losing money on another crazy get-rich scheme: selling thongs to men in Finland.  Why is that crazy? Sounds homoerotic.  

The landlady, who looks like a drag queen but is played by a woman (Rosemary Borhorquez), suggests that Brayan cover the back rent he owes by having sex with her.   He rejects her and goes to bed.

Scene 10: Andres' Mom calls.  She wants to know why he is still in the office in the middle of the night: he's working, of course.  "But tomorrow is Christmas.  Everyone takes the day off." "Not here, Mom.  No one gets off for Christmas at my company."  Is the Ghost of Christmas Past about to appear, Mr. Scrooge?

Scene 11: Morning.  Kissed-woman Rochi talks to the other kissed woman, Ingrid, who is her younger sister.  Finally, they clarify the relationship.  Now I just need to know if Rochi is Brayan's mother, wife, or sister, and I'll have the family figured out.

Rochi prays to her patron saint to let her marry Brayan, so she's his girlfriend.   Finally!  But wait...is Brayan living with Rochi's family, or is Rochi's sister living with them?  Plus the brother (Mauricio Velez) has the same last name as Ingrid.  So is he her husband or brother?  And if so...I'm completely lost.

Scene 12:  Andres' Mom is worried: "he's become so strict, so rigid, so passionless about the good things of life. He's nothing like my late husband, who loved the holidays."

Suddenly she gets a fax from Lucero, the nurse who delivered her son.  "I have a secret that I need to share with you before I die...."  The end.

What happens next:  They switch everything: houses, jobs, families, and girlfriends.  That makes no sense.  In this situation, Mom might decide to give Brayan some of his biological father's money, and maybe a sinecure job at the company, but Andres is the one trained in finance.  And the girlfriends?

The newly poor Andres struggles to survive, the newly rich Brayan struggles to "keep it real," everyone gets new relationships (Rachi starts dating Daniel Arenas, top photo).  And there are various other soap opera plotlines to fill in 190 episodes to date. 

Gay characters:  None.  Andres rejects his girlfriend because his heart is "three sizes too small."  He warms up.  

The same-sex couple in the intro: Newly rich Brayan goes into his new family's living room, kisses his mother, and then puts his arm around Hugo, his new assistant.  

"Raven's Home": Lesbian Couple, Gay Son, Both, or Neither?

 That's So Raven (2003-2007) was a Disney Channel sitcom about a teenage girl, Raven (played by Raven-Symoné), who gets into humorous scrapes, sometimes by using her mild psychic abilities.  As an adult, the actress stated that she does not identify as gay, but her relationships have all been same-sex, and now she is married to a woman.  

In 2017, 10 years after Raven ended, the Disney Channel premiered Raven's House: Raven, now divorced with two kids, shares an apartment in Chicago with Chelsea (her best friend on the old series), divorced with one kid.  

The entire cast recorded a "Happy Pride Month" message.

So, have they come out as a lesbian couple?  

I've read through the plot synopses of every episode, and find neither of them getting a boyfriend, but no references to them being a same-sex couple, either.  In 2017, a writer on the lesbian blog Lipstick Alley thought that they were a gay-subtext couple, "testing the waters" to see how audiences would respond.  

Well, maybe there are other open gay characters?  Maybe Chelsea's son Levi, an aspiring thespian?

The plot synopses don't specify any romantic relationships for anyone except daughter Nia, who is heterosexual.

I watched the Season 4 Episode "Play of Our Lives": Raven's son Booker, who inherited her psychic powers, has a vision of Levi's first starring role.

Scene 1: While the family sings and dances to make washing the dishes fun, Levi (13-year old Jason Maybaum) is in a dour mood: he's been cast as Mercutio in the school production of Romeo and Juliet, and his understudy, Griffin, keeps trying to undermine him.

So far so good. Mercutio can be played with a strong gay subtext.  

Introduction: The blended family dancing and getting psychic visions on an animated set.  It really should be updated.  The kids are now teenagers.  

Scene 2: School.  Dimwitted hunk Ramon (Max Torina, left) and his girlfriend painting a set, when the stage manager, Raven's daughter Nia, rushes up to tell them they're doing it wrong.  Plus she's anxiety-ridden because Wyatt (Paul-Mikel Williams, below), the "arrogant" (that is, sexy) captain of the rival debate team, has transferred to their school, so she'll have to look at his infuriating, perfect face all the time.

Scene 3:  Levi practicing his lines while Griffin glares at him.  Booker, his blended-family brother (middle), approaches to help him practice.  They are both freaked out by Griffin's stare.

Scene 4: Raven knocks on the door of wacky downstairs neighbor Clark.  He invites her to perform stand-up comedy at the Neighborhood Watch Committee's open mic night. 

Scene 5: Levi and Booker practicing the sword fight between Tybalt and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, which ends with Mercutio's death.  Booker: "I don't know what you're so stressed about.  You die like a pro."  Levi: "Don't tell Mom I'm stressed.  She used to be an actress, and she is putting the pressure on me to live up to her legacy.  She'll be disappointed."

Suddenly he gets a vision of the director saying "After that performance, I'll have to rethink my casting decision,"  while Griffin grins evilly.  I assume that the visions depict a potential future, so it can be changed?

Scene 6: Booker in the hallway trying to decide whether to tell Levi's Mom, "Aunt Chelsea,"  about his vision.  What could she do to help?  When she arrives, he stutters and stammers and finally uses charades to tell her.  I don't understand this at all.  

Chelsea wants to coach Levi so he'll perform better, but Booker doesn't want him to know about the vision.  "Why don't you coach me, and then I'll coach him?"

Scene 7:  Backstage: more drama with Nia and her enemy-crush Wyatt.  "What's he doing here?" "He's big and important, so he joined the stage crew."  Growl, growl: "I can't work with him!  He's too sexy...I mean, arrogant!"

Scene 8: Booker coaches Levi while his Mom mouths instructions from a hiding place. 

Scene 9:  Everyone watches a video of Raven's stand-up routine.  Mostly she makes fun of Booker and Nia.  They become upset. When she arrives, they insist: "No more jokes about us."

Scene 10: Back stage during Act 1.  The director yells at Levi for performing badly: "What happened to the kid I cast?  Where's that raw talent?"   Booker tries to help: "You can do this.  You just have be emotionally available." He reveals that he told Levi's Mom about his nervousness, and Levi gets angry and runs away. (I still don't see why.)

Scene 11:  Levi runs through the auditorium -- everyone is sitting at little tables instead of in stadium seats.  There's only a few minutes of intermission left.  Aunt Chelsea and Booker search for him, while Raven stalls by performing her stand-up routine.  Some people are wearing pandemic masks.  Nice that they normalized it.

Scene 12: Chelsea and Booker find Levi hiding among the costumes.  Levi: "I can't live up to your legacy.  I'm no good."  Chelsea: "I'm proud of you, no matter what."  

Thus reassured, Levi and Booker go onto the stage (behind the curtain) and dance.

Meanwhile, Nia and her frenemy Wyatt are so distracted by their fighting-flirting that they open the curtain prematurely, so everyone sees the boys dancing.  They immediately rush into the sword fight scene (hey, what about the actor cast as Tybalt?).  They perform beautifully.  The curtain drops.  

Scene 13:  More about Nia and Wyatt.

Scene 14: Backstage, Booker and Levi are whooping and hugging, when the director comes in: "After that performance, I'll have to rethink my casting decision."  Say what?  Levi was great!  "You skipped several lines and died an act too early, but you showed raw talent!  Perform like that, and I'm casting you as the lead in our next play." Ok, I see: the visions always come true, but not the way you expect them to.

Scene 15: Dinnertime sharing and joking.

Beefcake: Some high school hunks.

Heterosexual Characters:  Nia-Wyatt and Ramon-his girlfriend.

Gay Characters:  Levi is rather feminine.  He never states that he wants to be an actor in order to meet girls.  He's cast as Mercutio, not Romeo.  And Mom's "I'm proud of you, no matter what" sounds very much like a "if you are gay" reference. But he's only into drama in that one episode, and I find no evidence that the character is canonically gay.

I went through three other episodes on fast-forward.  Neither of the boys expresses any heterosexual interest.  

What about Raven and Chelsea: They barely interact, and then only through their kids. Maybe they have scenes together in other episodes.

My Verdict: Subtext only, therefore fragile and easily denied. 

The Top 11 Heterosexual Hunks of "Superman & Lois"

 When I saw that the tv series Superman and Lois had dropped on Vudu, naturally I assumed that it was the old series with Dean Cain.  But that was Lois and Clark:
The New Adventures of Superman (1993-97).  Granted, there are only a finite number of titles that will tell you what the series is about, but is it really smart to go with something so similar? Unless you assume that your intended audience was born after 1997 and has never heard of Dean Cain.

This is a Hallmark Channel Man of Steel, with small-town "people care about each other here" and "family is everything!" interspliced with saving the world.  

I just needed to watch half of an episode to get turned off by the heteronormativity.  But at least there are plenty of hunks around: 

1. A middle-aged heterosexual Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) moves back to his hometown of Smallville along with his wife Lois Lane (who goes to work for the ultra-retro Smallville Gazette) and teenage sons:

2. The athletic, heterosexual Jonathan (19-year old Jordan Elsass), who inherited his father's physique.  

3. The neurodivergent, androgynous, heterosexual Jordan, who inherited his father's superpowers, proving that you don't need to be buffed to fly.

4. They reunite with Clark's old girlfriend, Lana Lang (he is only into girls with L.L. initials).  Lana is now married to the alcoholic, abusive, superhero-hating, heterosexual Kyle (Erik Valdez).  They have a teenage daughter, Sophie, who starts dating Jordan, to the consternation of both feuding paterfamilias.

5. Also to the consternation of Sean Smith (Fritzy Klevans-Destine), the obnoxious, abusive, superhero-hating, heterosexual jock dating Sophie before she dropped him for Jordan.  She was looking for a man like Daddy, but decided on a man who could fly.

You got an actor named Fritzy Klevans-Destine, and decided to name his character Sean Smith?  

6. But Smallville is not all jocks and superheroes whipping it out to see who is bigger.  Clark goes to work for Lana's father, General Lang (Dylan Walsh), a gung-ho heterosexual army guy who tracks down threats to national security so Clark can eradicate them. Truth, justice, and the American way.

7. First threat: A superhero-hating Mysterious Stranger, later revealed to be the evil, heterosexual John-Henry Irons (Wole Parks), who had a relationship with Lois Lane on a parallel Earth.

The actor is gay in real life.

8. Next: Subject 11 (Daniel Cudmore), a heterosexual human who acquires superpowers in a nefarious experiment and goes on a rampage.

9. And Lois has problems of her own, investigating the heterosexual CEO Morgan Edge (Adam Rayner), who turns out to be Superman's half-brother, an evil Kryptonian bent on destruction.

10. The boys have problems of their own, too.  Mos involve girls,but they do try to help heterosexual classmate Tag (Wern Lee) when he accidently develops superpowers that he can't control, and turns evil.

Apparently in Smallville, superpowers are as easy to catch as a cold.

11. But usually they are just dealing with hetero-romance and the endless supply of superhero-hating bullies at Smallville High, like heterosexual Timmy Ryan (Zane Clifford)

You may have noticed that this series is very retro: bullies everywhere, no people of color except for villains, and no gay characters even hinted at.  Writer Nadia Tucker states that she was fired for trying to introduce some storylines with positive black and Asian characters and women who were more than damsels in distress.

There are LGBTQ characters in other series in the DC universe, but they are set in big cities.  As we all know, small towns are gay-free.

Is Freddie Highmore's Character Gay in "The Vault"?

 

I always had the impression that Freddie Highmore was gay.  I don't know why -- I've never actually seen him in anything, and apparently he has only played a non-straight character once, on Bates Motel: after being presented as a horny straight teenager for five seasons, psycho-in-training Norman Bates hooks up with a guy.  He states that he has been hooking up with men a lot, but only when being controlled by his dead mother.  Because, you know, he's psychotic.  So there's no such thing as same-sex desire, just psychotic transgender people.  I can't even think of the words.

But I conducted the research after going through the bank-heist movie The Vault, to see if Freddie's character, boy-genius Thom, would be gay.    The trailer shows no boy-girl kiss, plus lingering stare between Thom and James (Sam Riley).

Of course, directors use lingering stares to represent both romantic attraction and threat.  So which is it?

There are two lingering stares.

1. Thom is introduced to the team.  James stares because he is overcome by growling, snarling hatred: "You expect me to work with this arrogant, impertinent, ignorant, impudent, self-righteous jerk?  It's all I can do to keep from bashing his face in."  Sounds bad, but movies and tv shows use "arrogant" as code for "sexy."  Maybe James is overreacting to his attraction.

2. James can't go in to do the engineering job, because he was in interpol, so face recognition systems will catch him.  They need an unknown.  Thom volunteers to do it.

James snarls.  "You impudent, arrogant, insufferable bitch!  You think you can just walk in and do a job that takes 20 years of training and immense talent?  There are only three or four people in the world besides me who can do it, and you think you're good enough?  Maybe tomorrow you can write a sonata for us, Mr. Mozart!  And the day after that, perform heart surgery!  You're not even qualified to shine my shoes.  It's all I can do to keep from bashing your face in!"

But to be fair, Sam Riley seems to have dropped out of acting school after the "displaying raw hatred" class.  He doesn't know how to express any other emotion; everyone else gets the same treatment.  He smiles briefly at minute 55, when Thom notes that he's having trouble with the assignment.

Thom and James  can't do the heist together, because of that face recognition thing (and because James would bash his face in the minute they were alone).  So it has to be Freddie and a girl.  They haven't had any scenes alone together, but he saves her from something or other, and they kiss.  Boo! 

 Is it physically impossible for screenwriters to avoid a boy-girl kiss? "Let's see, this movie is about a bank heist, so what should happen next?  Help, my keyboard is clicking on its own! It's putting in a boy-girl kiss!  But the two haven't expressed any romantic interest at all.  It makes no sense!  Stop, keyboard, stop!"

"Max Cloud": Video Game Parody Spoiled by the Final Scene

 

I had to find something to watch before my cereal got soggy, so I went to Amazon Prime and clicked on the first movie I hadn't seen there before: Max Cloud.  I knew nothing about it except that there was a cute guy on the icon.

Scene 1:  A model spaceship.  They don't even try to make it look realistic.  A disembodied voice warns that they've lost power and they are going in hot.  Prepare for a crash landing.

Scene 2:  Ship cook Jake (Elliot James Langridge, below) is hanging upside down in the ship's bridge.  The hull has a gigantic hole in it, but not to worry, the atmosphere is breathable.  As he extricates himself, the square-jawed, gung-ho, rather self-possessed Captain Max Power...um, I mean Max Cloud (Scott Adkins) arrives.    Headquarters tells them that they have crashed onto the planet Heinous, a prison for the most evil, violent, and immoral villains in the galaxy.  But a rescue ship will arrive in six hours.

Scene 3: On Mount Doom, some Skeletor-like villains.., wait, this is a video game!  A cheesy old-fashioned one.  Setting: Brooklyn, 1990.  The rather butch, overall-clad teenager Sarah stops the game to take a call from her bff, Cowboy (Franz Drameh).  Then overbearing Dad comes in to criticize her for everything, especially her video games."Your dead mother disliked video games."  Harsh!   

She continues to play.  On the ship, Max Cloud is searching for crash survivors, when he comes across a secret room, and inside the Space Witch, a glittery drag queen, who offers to help.  But Max dismisses him: "A man can't be a witch, just like a woman can't be a spaceship captain."  

Back in Brooklyn, Dad comes in and bans Sarah from using video games.  She pouts: "I wish I could play video games all day, and no one could stop me."  I know where this is going: somewhere over the rainbow.

Scene 4: In the morning, Cowboy, who is dressed like the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, stops by, but Sarah isn't in her room.  He notices that she left the video game on, so he starts to play while waiting for her.  Why is she playing as Jake the Cook, the worst character?  

Back on the Ship. Max and Jake...wait, Sarah is actually living in the Jake character!  "You're...you're Max Cloud! You're real...can I touch you?"  I'd like to touch Max, too...  Max slaps him; it hurts!  He looks down at his crotch and starts to cry (because he has a penis now?) 

Back in Brooklyn, Sarah tells Cowboy that she got zapped into the game, and can't get out.  They've both seen "Tron," so they know it's possible. 

Cowboy discovers that while he is outside, he can "play" Jake and control Jake/Sarah's movements.  But he can't pause the game, and if he turns it off, Sarah might vanish forever.  He has no choice but to play.

Scene 5:  Fortunately, Cowboy has played the game before, so knows how to avoid getting the characters killed, like don't go into the room full of ninja assassins.  Max goes in anyway, and fights them off.  Meanwhile, Jake/Sarah is embarrassed by his constant arousal, a problem that teenage boys have a lot in the presence of hot guys.

Next they find another survivor, the no-nonsense Commander Rexy, who happens to be Max's superior officer.  Wait -- Max just said that a woman can't be a starship captain.

More ninja assassins are coming, but instead of fighting them, Jake/Sarah suggests that they go to Max's bedroom (a three-way coming up?  But this had the feel of a G-rated movie).  "If we just sit here and do nothing, we'll be safe." But Max won't hear of it: "We have to rush headlong into battle, even if we are sure to be killed."

Ulp: this is the part where Cowboy always dies, no matter which character he's playing.  But with Sarah's help, he maneuvers the characters into beating the ninjas.

Scene 6: Next up: Brock Donnelly, intergalactic bounty hunter.  Jake/Sarah swoons in barely contained homoerotic/heteroerotic horniness.  Brock asks "Is he always like this?" Commander Rexy: "No, not normally."  Brock: "Works for me." Commander Rexy grimaces in disgust.  Because of the implication of same-sex desire?

Brock explains that he came here looking for an intergalactic criminal named Shee, but he's willing to let her go and help them get off the planet.  They have to hurry, because every 24 hours the two stars that orbit the planet burn as hot as the Earth's sun and turn everything into "space liquid."  That makes no sense, but it's a video game from 1990, so go with it. 

I'll stop the scene-by-scene there.

 

Beefcake: Martyn Ford plays a villain named Musculator. Max shows muscular arms.

Other Sights: No. This is very low-budget.

Gay Characters:  Max and Jake don't express any heterosexual interest.  Cowboy doesn't either, until the last scene.  

When Sarah's Dad takes over the game play, Cowboy rubs his shoulders to keep him relaxed, and tells him: "I hope this doesn't come across as weird, but you are magnificent."  Weird because he's expressing same-sex attraction, or because it's his friend's Dad?  Dad, by the way, is fine with it.

 Sarah getting hetero-horny while inhabiting the body of Jake leads to a lot of homoerotic moments.

The Space Witch is a drag queen.

Max Cloud's back story: he wanted to become a pastry chef, but his father found that career goal too feminine, and sent him to Space Academy to "straighten him out."

Heterosexism:  A heterosexist ending in which Cowboy and Sarah inexplicably kiss, after never expressing any interest in each other before.  Meanwhile, Dad hooks up with Sofia (an adult player freed from the video game). 

My Grade: A until the last scene, then D.