1980-81: My junior year at Augustana. I'm working in the Student Union Snack Bar, changing my major from English to Modern Languages after some kerfuffles in Writers' Club, and taking classes in every language that Augustana College offers (Spanish, French, German, Latin, and Greek the same quarter!). I travel to Indiana twice, Iceland once, and spend the summer in Des Moines, where I go to my first Gay Rights March (back when they were really about gay rights). Not much dating -- no out gay men at Augustana, that I could find --but I still went to movies quite often, making up for the anti-movie Nazarene Church of my childhood: 17 in theaters, not counting classics at Film Club and two-three year old blockbusters in the Student Union.
August: Xanadu. They thought disco would last forever, but it was already over, so there's already a nostalgic tint to this movie. Michael Beck opens a roller-disco nightclub with help of legendary dancer Gene Kelly! Plus he falls in love with Kira, the Muse of Dance (Olivia Newton-John). Just skip the movie and listen to the soundtrack, and think of a college boy who had never been to a place where gay people can live openly, without fear:
A place where nobody dared to go, the love that we came to know. They call it Xanadu
September: The Gods Must Be Crazy. A Coke bottle tossed from an airplane causes havoc in an isolated Bushman (now San) community, so the leader, Xi (Nǃxau ǂToma), sets out to find the gods and return their "gift." He's never seen white people before, so obviously they are the gods. And crazy! Xi has to dress in drag to escape an enemy army, and if you look closely, in one scene you can see some penis.
October: Times Square: Tim Curry, who played Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was reputedly the star, so I assumed it would have some gay content. Not. Two teen girls break out of a mental hospital, hang out in Time Square, and start a punk band. Radio dj Tim Curry dates one of them. No one does drag.
November: None
December: Flash Gordon: an evocation of the old comic strip and movie-serial series, with Sam Jones as the football star-turned-space-hero, who rescues the Girl from "Yellow Peril" stereotype Ming the Merciless.
December: Popeye. Audiences expected the Popeye-vs-Bluto cartoons, but instead got an evocation of the 1930s comic strip, with Olive Oyl's brother Caster, suitor Ham Gravy, and "fly in my soup" Geezil. No King Blozo or Oscar? I loved the quirky, doomed town of Sweethaven: "God must love us. Why else would he have stranded us here?" Granted, the story falls apart toward the end.
December: 9 to 5. Three secretaries accidentally get revenge on their sexist-jerk boss. Check out the vast office space: no cubicles, just rows of desks, and not a computer in sight.
January: None
February: Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen: the Chinese-proverb-spouting detective was always played by a white guy in inscrutable makeup, although a Chinese-American actor, Victor Sen Yung, played the modern (and hunky) Number #1 Son. True to form, this homage stars Peter Ustinov as the detective and Richard Hatch as his grandson and sleuthing partner.
March: None
April: Atlantic City stars Susan Sarandon, who played Janet in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, so naturally I assumed that there would be gay content. Nope. It's a crime drama with gangsters, cocaine, and a flight to Paris.
April: Excalibur. The 10-minute long trailer played excessively that spring, giving you every detail of the plot, plus a famous exchange between Merlin and Morgana Le Fay about love, sex, and power.
May: Polyester. John Waters' iconic gross-out movie starring drag queen Divine. I know I saw it, but the plot doesn't sound familiar at all. Maybe I'm mixing it up with Pink Flamingos.
June: Clash of the Titans. Harry Hamlin (top photo) as Perseus, who must slay a sea monster and Medusa to win the Princess. A heterosexist fable that squishes Greek mythology, but who cared? Harry Hamlin was hot.
June: Dragonslayer: En route to slay a dragon, Peter MacNichol falls in love with a boy! Psych -- she's actually a girl in male drag, as in a Shakespearean play. So no one is actually gay, and the audience doesn't have to run screaming from the theater.
July: Arthur: A critically-acclaimed, rave-reviewed movie about a rich, drunk guy (Dudley Moore) who falls in love with the working-class Liza Minelli. I couldn't see the point, although I did like the theme song, "When you get caught between the Moon and New York City."
July: Zorro, the Gay Blade. In 1981, you took gay representation where you could find it, even in Colonial California. Zorro's twin brother, Bunny Wigglesworth (George Hamilton), was certainly a swishy stereotype, but no one recoiled in horror and disgust. In fact, he saved the day. I could relate to the scenes in which Swishy Brother had to pretend to be Zorro (also George Hamilton) and romance a woman: "We could...go shopping. There's a new shipment of silk..."
Xanadu, and disco's already dead.
ReplyDeleteThe Gods must be Crazy has penis? Whar?
Flash Gordon, I have seen. I have to say, chest hair on old (pre-Wolverine) comic book characters is weird. Then in the Dark Age, it was everywhere, even on characters who don't really evoke the hairy type.
9 to 5 is funny, offices back then had computers. They just took up a floor or two. And pneumatic tubes everywhere.
Polyester is, John Waters movies we the Divine run together for me.
Clash of the Titans, be glad they didn't include Ovid's spin on Medusa.
Dragonslayer is, holy Sheik! (For those who don't get it, Ocarina of Time. So as an adult, you're guided through the future by a mysterious man, who is Zelda in drag. Fangirls ignore that part. But you know? With how much I have to explain Zelda continuity AFTER this, this is the least of my concerns.)
Oh, fun fact: In Joker, the Waynes see Zorro: The Gay Blade. Insert joke about how two of Batman's sons have enough gay subtext with multiple guys, or how Batman has so much gay subtext with the Joker, Superman, and increasingly, Hal Jordan? (Strangely DC seems to have avoided giving Dick Grayson and Kyle Rayner more than like, three meetings.)
I think for the Bushman penis I was remembering another movie in which two English kids, a preteen and a teen, have to cross Africa by themselves, and a local offers to guide them or something. When they're all stripping down to bathe in the river, we see his butt, and briefly his penis.
DeleteThat's Walkabout. In Australia.
Delete"Walkabout" (1971), with 16-year old David Gulpilil as the Aboriginal youth who helps the kids cross the outback. I'm surprised you managed to find it with the few clues I gave, especially since most of them were wrong.
DeleteArthur: Weren't the critics mostly surprised: "Comedy-fool Dudley Moore can act!"? To me, he was played off the screen by John Gielgud... And his death was more important for Arthur to grow up and stay sober than The Girl (or is that just wishful dreaming?).
ReplyDelete"Xanadu" is very very gay from the hunky dancers to relationship between Michael Beck and Gene Kelly had plenty of subtext.
ReplyDelete