"Kopitiam": A Coffee Shop in Homophobic Malaysia Serves Up a Gay Character

Since Malaysia is next door to Thailand, I always thought it was a primarily Buddhist, gay-friendly or at least gay-ok country.  No, it's only 20% Buddhist, and extremely homophobic.

Only 9% of the population surveyed stated that "homosexuality should be accepted" (in the U.S., it's slightly over 50%).  The sodomy law still exists, and is enforced; Parliament considered but abandoned a bill to push up the penalty from 20 years to death.  The Prime Minister has warned gay diplomats to stay out of the country.  An attempt to hold a gay rights march was suppressed.

So it came as a surprise to find a Malaysian sitcom with a gay character on Netflix.

Kopitiam, which ran in Malaysia from 1998 to 2003, starred Joanna Bessey as Marie Tan, who runs a coffee shop (kopitiam) full of wacky coworkers and customers:

1.-2. Uncle Chan and Uncle Kong  (Manu Maniam, Tan Jin Chor), who have been bickering best friends for 40 years and act like a gay couple, except for their frequent references to women.

3.Susan (Lynn Teoh), a lawyer from Singapore (the Singaporeans are stereotyped as uptight, humoroless, and mercenary).

4. Joe (Rashid Salieh), an aspiring actor who takes a lot of colorful part-time jobs while waiting to be discovered.  Also the only cast member I found a beefcake photo for.

More after the break

"Burn After Reading": or better still, burn before reading

Three days after watching the execrable O Brother, Where Art Thou, the song "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" is still in my head.  My friend suggests that we add to my woes with Burn After Reading.

"I saw part of it before," I tell him.  "I walked out of the theater when something inexcusably horrible happened, turning it from a comedy iinto a monstrosity!"

"Give it a try," he says.  "Watch it all the way through before making a decision."

If I watch with him, there will be cuddling.  If I don't, probably not.  So here goes.

If you want to skip there whole thing and go directly to the butts and dicks, here are some links to:

Nude photos of Brad Pitt

Nude photos of Dermot Mulroney

Burn After Reading (2008) is a Coen Brothers "comedy" about a lot of old, bald, ugly guys in suits who have offices in Washington, DC.  Most have  jobs dealing with government secrets, but there's also a divorce lawyer, a plastic surgeon, and a guy who used to be a Greek Orthodox priest but now runs a gym.  I can't tell them apart, but according to the IMDB, they're played by John Malkovich, Richard Jenkins, David Rasche, J. K. Simmons, Olek Krupa, Michael Countryman, J.R. Horne, Hamilton Clancy, and Armand Schultz. 

I'm going to use the actors' names.  It will be easier to keep track of who's who.

State Secrets agent John Malkovich, who resigns from the State Secrets agency  and writes his memoirs.  Will this be like "The Prisoner," where a secret agent resigns and is sent to the Island?  "We want in-formation."

Nope, his memoirs don't actually contain any classified information.  

Meanwhile his wife is having an affair with fellow State Secrets agent George Clooney

In preparation for asking for a divorce, she copies all of Malhovich's financial information, plus his memoirs, onto a computer disk.  She give it to her lawyer, whose secretary loses it at the gym.

Where it is found by two conniving gym employees, Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand, who I always confuse with Frances Sternhagen, Cliff's mother on Cheers.   They think it contains government secrets, and blackmail Malkovich for its safe return.  When he balks, they try to sell it to the Russians.

Aha, finally we get to the protagonists!  At least the two that are pushing the blackmail plot.

Why are they committing this act of treason, the only crime other than aggravated homicide that can get them the death penalty?  Well, Sternhagen wants money for liposuction for her saggy arm and belly fat.  Even though her doctor tells her that those areas will respond to exercise.  

And she works at a gym.

Pitt  is just an idiot.

Did I mention that Sternhagen also happens to be dating  Clooney, the guy having an affair with Malkovich, the man she's blackmailing?  Do all State Secrets agents go to the same gym?

Sneaking around the house looking for more government secrets,for some reason, Pitt accidentally encounters Clooney, who thinks he's the man that's been following him (in another plotline). 

Caution: horrible plot twist ahead::  Clooney kills him!  WTF?  You can't kill the protagonist, ever, and certainly not halfway through the way through the movie.  How can he have his complications, crisis, denoument, and conclusion?  There's nothing left for the movie to do!  

But it goes on. We switch protagonists -- now it's Clooney.   Sternhagen (who he is dating), complains about her missing friend.     Clooney doesn't realize that he killed the friend, so he agrees to help look for him.  Wait -- wasn't Brad Pitt wearing a gym uniform?  And Sternhagen works at the gym.  How hard is it to figure out?

Malkovich, meanwhile, believes that Sternhagen's boss is the blackmailer, and kills him.

We adjourn to some old, ugly guys sitting around talking about what happened next. It's complicated, but it ends up with with Malkovich  in a coma, Clooney in Venezuela, and Sternhagen agreeing to keep quiet if they pay for her liposuction.

Wait -- the first rule of moviemaking -- show, don't tell.  It's like watching The Wizard of Oz, all the way up to where Dorothy and her companions reach the Emerald City, then adjourning to Dorothy telling Aunt Em "So we went to the witch's castle, with lots of adventures on the way, and in the end we defeated her."

Terrible way to end a terrible movie.

Gay content:  

A tiny bit of beefcake, the rather muscular arms and shoulders of one of the guys Sternhagen has sex with.  Clooney and Pitt are fully clothed throughout.  Coming Up Daisy, the romantic comedy that Sternhagen brings her dates to, stars Dermot Mulroney, but he's fully clothed, too.

One homophobic slur.

One racist stereotype.

Brad Pitt's character is probably gay, but nothing is ever said.  He just fails to express any interest in women.

But at least I got some cuddling out of the deal.

"Workaholics Episode 5.1": Blake stars in a porno, Ders is into kinky stuff, and Adam is a penis expert. With bonus penis pics

 I'm not posting about Workaholics too much, you're posting about Workaholics too much. But Episode 5.1 is amazing.  There are no gay characters, there's a homophobic slur,  two of the three guys express heterosexual interest, there's a straight porn movie in one scene and two straight people having sex in another.  And Adam leaves his shirt on.  How could all that be gay-positive?

Link to NSFW version

Scene 1: The guys are preparing to watch the "biggest night in Hollywood."  They hope it will be better than last year, when it consisted mostly of people "sucking each other off" on the red carpet.  Hey, it's not the Oscars -- it's the Adult Entertainment Awards!  Adam comes in with snacks -- breast-shaped cakes for the guys, and he gets a chocolate penis.

Scene 2: Discussing the results at work.  Adam guessed right in every category, even Best Dong-umentary (12 Inches a Slave won).  He explains that he has a "pornographic memory" -- he never forgets a dick.  What a coincidence, I like to look at dicks, too.  Do you also like s*king them?  

On to the episode's premise: Ders is being sent tothe North Rancho College Job Fair to recruit college grads (to be telemarketers?).  He can bring some assistants, but Adam and Blake are out -- they'll just bail, leaving him to do all of the work alone.  Of course, they talk him into it, and the moment they hit the campus, they bail.

Ders' Adventure: He starts attracting students by insulting the guys in the Coast Guard recruitment booth: "You're called the coast guard because you coast on the backs of the people who really guard our country."  He also makes a homophobic gesture, "accusing" the coast guard guys of sucking cock.  

Ok, one "gay sex is shameful" joke.  This is mild.  Have you seen anything with Seth Green lately?  He and his best friend reach for the popcorn at the same time, and accidentally touch hands: "I need to shower and cry for three hours!  I've never been so disgusted!   If anyone saw us, they might think that we're -- oh, I'm going to be sick!" 

Finally the coast guard guys, led by Brock (Pete Ploszek), have had enough of his jibes, pour Big Red soda into his butt hole, and have their dog mascot -- um --- you know.  But Anders likes it!

Later, he pretends that he wants to apologize, but he tells a dirty joke instead.  The coast guard guys chase him.  He climbs a ladder and escapes into a dorm room....

Adam's Adventure:  He suddenly realizes that this is the campus where they filmed his favorite porno, Dorm Daze.  He looks around until he finds Room 18, where they filmed the gang bang scene.  Wait -- the direction of the "semen sprays" isn't right.  He is creating a diagram, when the room's occupant, Danny (Peter Ngo), comes in with a girl and orders him out. 

When Adam sees a girl carrying a texbook on Female Sexuality, he thinks she's going to a class on porn, so he follows her into a giant lecture hall -- occupied entirely by women!  Score -- dozens of future porn actresses learning about the trade.   Maybe they'll even use him to demonstrate their techniques!

The professor calls him down.  He's thrilled!  He just wishes he wore his "big dick jeans" to show off his huge cock.   It's really a Women's Studies class about women's objectification by the patriarchy!  Run!   But he digs himself in deeper and deeper. talking about why he likes porn: "the gentle cupping of the balls....they caress the shaft....and then gag..."  Do you like getting them or giving them, Adam?

Time for the lambasting:  the women are being exploited. Many are confused actresses lured in with the offer of a legitimate movie role, given drugs and alcohol to lower their inhibitions, then forced to perform.  Many are single mothers. What if your mother was in that situation?   

"My Mom?"  Adam seethes.  Converted into an anti-porn advocate, he and the students rush to the dorm room used for filming pornos, and shut it down!  Except it's a  regular dorm room now, occupied by Dominic (Seth Ginsberg, top photo), having consensual sex with his girlfriend.  Wait -- Adam uses logical deducation to determine that the real porn room is....

Blake's Adventure:  He is pretending to be Australian, so when he sees a sign announcing open auditions for Hamlet, he auditions with a fight scene from Crocodile Dundee.  The director chastises him: "You're a very bad actor," but Crystal, a girl in the audience,  offers him a role in a short film.  

She leads him to a dorm room. He wants to know about the characters, the plot, and so on, but Landon, the director, gives him drugs and alcohol and tells him to whip it out. Blake catches on that it's a porno, and tries to leave, but Landon yells at him and threatens him.  "I just wanted to act," Blake whimpers. "So go in the closet and grease up your hog."    Notice the beat-by-beat reflection of what the professor told Adam.  Not understanding, he comes out with his body greased. Crying, humiliated, he can't bring himself to take out his dick.  

Tying the Plot Threads Together: Adam and the students burst in to save Blake and "this poor, innocent girl."  Crystal points out that she's a producer, she owns 40% of the company, and besides, she enjoys performing.  Whoops, there's another side to the story.  It's not all about exploitation. 

But they still need someone with a penis to do it on camera.  Not to worry -- Ders bursts in, chased by the coast guard guys, who are all interested.  We cut to them waiting in line to do a "Coast Guard Gang Bang" movie.  Wait -- twelve guys and one girl?  Some of those guys are going to be banging each other.  The end.

Beefcake: Blake and Dominic the Dorm Guy.

Heterosexism:  The coast guard guys complain that they've been chasing Ders all over campus. "We should be chasing chicks, not dudes."

The professor who describes porn as solely about women being exploited by men gets her comeuppance: sometimes male performers are being exploited, too.

Homophobia: One reference.  Interestingly, when Crystal tries to humiliate Ders into performing, she says "Don't you like sex?", not "Are you gay?"

Straight Subtext:  Except for one or two statements indicating an interest in girls, Adam presents as gay.  His favorite porn scene involves guys doing it without girls.  When he describes what he likes about porn, it's all about giving oral sex.  

I could hardly post on Adam's penis expertise without some penis pics, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.  Caution: some arousal

"The F***k It List": How Many Times Can You Say WTF? Before Turning It Off?

I started watching The F**k It List because it starred Jerry O'Connell -- sigh -- the epitome of masculine perfection in the 1990s, with a trifecta of face, physique and bulge that made us feel like junior high kids writing his name amid little hearts in our chemistry notebooks

But I turned it off quickly after yelling "WTF!" a dozen times.

1. High schooler Brett Blackmore (Eli Brown)  gets responses from all of the colleges he applied to at the same moment.  WTF?  That can't happen!  The responses trickle in during the spring semester.

2. He gets admitted to seven of the eight, all ultra-exclusive Ivy League, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Brown -- except he got wait-listed at Harvard.  WTF?  That can't happen!  It's not just a matter of high grades and rich parents.  Admissions committees are highly subjective, so what one likes, another will hate.

3. Brett's rich, driven parents (Jerry O'Connell, Natalie Zen) have been schmoozing, donating, and bribing like crazy.  Dad even tries to bribe the holdout Harvard admissions officer by letting him have sex with his wife -- and the horndog agrees!  WTF?  Hey, morally bankrupt jerk, how about letting a kid who deserves it have Brett's spot?

4. A prank goes wrong and blows up the school, so Brett is expelled, and seven of the eight colleges withdraw their offers.  WTF?  That would never happen.  First, it was an accident, and second, once you're admitted, you're admitted.  It would take a lot more than an accidentally explosion to get an admission revoked.

5. So Brett says "F...k it."  He never liked school anyway, he hates the clarinet, and he hates books. He's going to do what he loikes to do So he burns a pile.  WTF?  Did anyone do any research into book burning?  It symbolizes extreme hatred, Nazis burning books by Jewish writers, that sort of thing.

6. What he likes to do: kiss the Girl of His Dreams,  convincing his gay best friend to come out, and spend his parents' money.  He documents all of this online, making him an internet sensation and social media influencer.  So millions of high school kids are going to say "f...k it," cancel their college plans, burn their books, and start spending their parents' money for a living?  WTF?  90% of the parents in the world can't afford that, and the other 10% won't want to.  

College is starting in about a month, online or on-site or both, and millions of students have to decide whether to go back (or enroll as freshmen) or say "f...k it" and keep their jobs doing curb delivery for Door Dash.  This movie won't help convince them that Learning is Cool.

I almost forgot: Brett's best friend (Marcus Scribner, not pictured) is gay, and apparently learns to say "f**k it," or as we said in a kinder, gentler era, "The adults are lying -- we got to be who we are."  But I didn't stick around for his subplot.

Little Lulu: The Perils of the Gay Child's World

During the 1960s, when Bill, Greg, and I zoomed into Schneider's Drug Store to blow our allowance on comic books, we zeroed in on the Gold Key jungle titles (Tarzan, Korak), Disneys (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge), or maybe Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig as swashbuckling adventurers.  I had to go back later to pick up Little Lulu, since my friends would rib me for liking a comic that was "just for girls."

But Little Lulu offered something that no other comic book or tv program or movie of the 1960s had: cute boys running around completely nude. Stylized, cartoon nudity, but still exciting for a preteen who had a vivid enough imagination to fill in the blanks.

I didn't know that I was reading reprints of comics written by John Stanley in the 1950s, and originally based on single-panel strips published in the Saturday Evening Post.  So, like Out Our Way, I was mesmerized by this kid world so different from my own.

1. At Denkmann Elementary School, boy-girl friendships were discouraged, but Lulu Moppet had friends of both sexes: the self-assured Tubby (left); timid Annie and her brother Iggy (right); spoiled rich kid Wilbur; the haughty Gloria.

2. Some of the plots involved Tubby wanting to kiss Gloria or Lulu getting valentines from boys, but not many; mostly boys and girls were completely oblivious to heterosexual desire, a pleasant surcease of the girl-crazy boys on tv during the 1960s.

3. There was little of the gender segregation of my grade school.  Boys had no qualms about appearing in girls' clothing.  Girls excelled at boy-only pursuits.

4. They had remarkable freedom to go wherever they liked without parental supervision.

5. They lived in a urban neighborhood, a short walk from downtown shops that were curiously specialized (meat, vegetables, bread, and candy all in different stores).  There were also woods, a lake, caves, and a swamp nearby; the beach was a short bus ride away.

6. There were many inexplicable dangers.  Spankings, often for things they didn't do.  Truant officers who wouldn't listen to reason. Goblins who stole your identity.  Parental abandonment ("I found a little boy I like better, so you'll have to leave").  A witch who would turn you into a stone or a lead pipe and leave you, immobile and helpless, forever.

These dangers mirrored those of gay kids who tried to negotiate the straight world, following  nonsensical rules, knowing that the slightest slip-up would mean disaster.

"Teenage Bounty Hunters": Two girls at a high-power Christian Academy get a side gig. Plus Mackenzie Astin and the guys sans pants

 

Teenage Bounty Hunters. on Netflix, gets 4.6 out of 5 stars on Rotten Tomatoes.  Sure, I could use something mindless and trashy, as long as the girls keep their clothes on.  So I'll review Episode 1.1.

Link to the NSFW version

Scene 1: In a parked car, a teenage girl convinces a highly religious "But it's a sin!" boy, Luke (Spencer House), to do it with her by quoting scripture. She quotes John 3:16 and the Shepherd Psalm while mounting him.

I should have tried that when I was a Nazarene!

In the next car over, another teenage girl finishes doing it with Stoner Dude Jennings (Nicholas Cirillo), and then  interrogates him on her technique.

Scene 2: The two girls turn out to be twins, Sterling (religious) and Blair (stoner), who discuss their sexcapades on the way home.  Suddenly they hit a car.  "Jesus, Mother of God!" Religious Sterling cries. Well, she's not Catholic, so how could she know that it's "Mary, Mother of God"?

The guy they hit brandishes a gun, but they quickly subdue him.  He thinks they're bounty hunters (hired to track down people who skip bail).  

The real bounty hunter shows up: Bowser (Kadeem Hardison, who you might remember from A Different World).  Dude runs, and Bowser is too fat to give chase, so the girls grab him.    Believing that they are professional bounty hunters, Bowser agrees to share the fee with them.

Scene 3: "What I did for my summer vacation" at a Christian Academy.  An entitled girl says: "I was so blessed that my Daddy let us use his helicopter to fly to his lake house for a discipleship week."  Gak!

Religious Sterling is chosen to be this year's Christian Discipleship Student Fellowship Leader.  But she doesn't want to do it because she's...um...as pure as the driven slush? 

Scene 4: Outside the scary Gothic-castle school, Religious Sterling is fake-congratulated by a Mean Girl: "But I'm glad I didn't get it, because I'll be so busy this year with the Young Republicans, Latin Club, the Straight-Straight Alliance..." Har-har

Studdenly Stoner Dude bumps into Religious Sterling.  She drops her purse, and a condom falls out.  Everyone is shocked!  Sin!  Abomination!

Sceene 5: The girls go home to their mansion, where Supermodel Mom has made brownies.  Dad comes in (Mackenzie Astin, bisexual brother of Sean).

Scene 6: I'm not sure what the point of Scene 5 was.  They call Dad "sir," but otherwise he seems perfectly nice, interested in their activities, not authoritarian or abusive.

They walk through the grounds to the garage to pick up a car, so they can meet with Bowser the Bounty Hunter to collect their $2,500 (don't they get that much allowance every week?)

Scene 7: Yogurtopia, where Bowser the Bounty Hunter has his day job.  He gives the girls their money, but it will take a lot more to fix their Dad's best huntin' truck that got wrecked in Scene 2.   So he offers them a new job: a richster named John Stevens was arrested for solicitation and assault (he beat up a hooker), and skipped bail.  Now he's hanging out in the Men's Parlour, a super-exclusive section of the super-exclusive (that is, white only) country club.  Bowser is black, so he can't get in; could the girls do it?

The girls discuss:  They know John Stevens -  he's Mean Girl's Dad!  He's made  inappropriate comments about their' bods, so he's a creep.  But why would a bajillionaire be a bail jumper?  Couldn't he just hire a famous attorney and bribe the jury to be found not guilty?

Scene 8: They arrive at the Jim Crow-era club, where all the patrons are white but the staff is all black, and leave Bowser waiting in the car while they cross the mile of elegantly sculpted grounds.  Stoner Blair flirts valet Miles (Myles Evans) into escorting them through about fifty elegantly appointed rooms to the Men's Parlour.

John Stevens is in the walk-in humidor, smoking cigars, drinking bourbon, and revealing that he didn't actually beat up the hooker -- his business partner did. The girls have a moral crisis -- they can't bring in an innocent guy, creep or not.  Isn't that for the court to decide?  They return to Bowser empty-handed.

Scene 9:  Back at school, Religious Sterling and "It's a Sin"  Guy are doing it in the broom closet.  Later, he feels guilty and leaves, and Sterling discusses the details with Stoner Blair. 

 Suddenly they get a text: "U2 are dead. Come home immediately. Love, Mom."  Oh, no, Dad discovered the damaged truck!

Scene 10: Mom and Dad yell at the girls about the truck.  Their punishment: get jobs to pay for the damage, or go to public school, "where the classrooms are just one long bench and a chalkboard on wheels."  Gasp!

Scene 11: Bowser eating yogurt.  Well, he is roundish.  The girls ask for more bounty hunter assignments, and again he says, John Stevens:  Solicitation and battery.  

But Stevens is innocent!   Bowser tries to explain that guilt/innocence are for the court to decide, not the bounty hunter.  I just said that! Plus he shows them security footage from the crime scene -- Stevens is guilty after all!  The caper is back on!

Scene 12: Mean Girl is hanging out with her friends, including the fey, gay-coded Ezekial.  Played by Eric Graise, a double amputee dancer.  He also plays Logan on Locke and Key, so his instagram logo is "God is King, God is Key."

The girls ask Mean Girl to arrange a meeting with her father.  She refuses.  

Maybe by sleuthing through the geo-tags of her instagram photos, they can find the location of the house where he's hiding out? Nope.  

How about setting up a fake social media account with sexy photos and sending a "follow" request to Mr. Stevens.  Ta-da!

Scene 13:  The girls arrive at Stevens' lake house -- um, I mean lake mansion. They yell at him for beating up the hooker, punch him, knock him out, tie him up, and load him into the car.  Case closed.  That's it?  I expected  a lot more complications.

Scene 14: The girls are working at Yogurtopia.  Their parents beam with pride. But they're also working as Bowser's assistant bounty hunters!  Camera closes in on one of the fugitive photos tacked onto the bulletin board.  Gasp -- it's Mom!

Beefcake: Lots of cute guys, but no shirts come off.  But no half-naked babes, either.

Other Scenery: Everyone lives in a mansion.  The school is a Gothic monstrosity.

Gay Characters: None specified, but I'm guessing that Ezekial is coming out.Update: Ezekial doesn't, but Sterling does, and starts dating Mean Girl!

Heterosexism:  Not really.  Some sex is going on, but it's not essential to anyone's story.

My Grade:  I friggin' love this show.  It's like a Nickelodeon teencom with snappier dialogue and sex.  Now we just need a gay character. A

Mackenzie Astin and the guys get nekkid on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

"Blue Beetle": "Girls are the meaning of life" for the 3,000th time. Plus a cute guy and a sarcastic scarab.

 

For movie night Friday, we saw Blue Beetle (2023), a superhero movie based on the Disney comics character.  Here are the top 10 out of 300 things that I hated about it.

1. Recent college graduate Jaime (Xolo Maridueña) has a large. loud, very annoying family, consisting of an overly-optimistic Dad, mousy Mom, sarcastic younger sister, telenovela-addict grandmother, and conspiracy theorist uncle. All of whom are way over-enthusiastic about everything.   Who comes with you to a job interview, and stands outside the building chanting your name?  Or cheers loudly when you kiss The Girl?

2. In this world  of absolute good vs. absolute evil, the racist, classist, money-grubbing Wicked Witch (Susan Sarandon) will do anything to get what she wants, including trying to kill her own family members. She has absolutely no redeeming qualities, not even a tragedy in her back story.  She is pure evil.

3. She is developing a special suit that will turn a single soldier into an army. That is impossible; how could one person, however power, get to all of the places they need to be to fight a war all alone?

4. But those special suits have nothing to do with Jaime.  For some confusing reason, he gets another suit, origin unknown (or explained through gibberish), activated by a face-hugging scarab that is sentient, makes ironic comments, and rarely does what it's told.  When it turns off, he's naked, even if he was wearing clothes before (actually, I liked that part).

5. The movie is 3/4ths loud fights between people wearing flickering, glowing monster suits.

6. Jaime is assisted by the nice, good, kind, non-racist, environmentally-aware Absolute Good niece of Absolute Evil. Yep, a girl.  You know, about 50% of the people born are boys.  It could easily have been a boy.  But in movies, IT IS ALWAYS A GIRL. 

7. Do Jaime and the girl become platonic pals?  Of course not.  Screenwriters, producers, actors, and crew make movies for one reason, and one reason only: to brainwash you into believing that heterosexual romance is the meaning of life.  Every boy, without exception, will meet a girl, fall in love with her, and marry her. This is his sole reason for existing.  This is his destiny.

8. In the comics Blue Beetle is gay.  Here, of course, same-sex desire does not exist.

9. Harvey Guillen, Guillermo in What We Do in the Shadows, plays the Big Bad's assistant, who finally refuses to kill Jaime, even though it means that she will kill him.  He's gay in real life, and often plays gay characters, but here there is not a single hint that he is gay. Oh, we can't have gay characters; this is 1956!

10. Why does every superhero have the same origin story?  

"Unstable": Father and son Lowes grieve over their dead wife/mother, with a gay sycophant and sex parties

 

The nice thing about Rob Lowe is that everyone in the world has seen him aroused, so there's no mystery.  It changes the dynamic of beefcake-watching when you know exactly what an actor has in his pants.  Still, I haven't watched many of his recent tv shows or movies; even though my friend Mario claimed to have hooked up with him, I had the impression that Mr. Lowe wasn't entirely gay-friendly.  So I went into his 8-episode Netflix sitcom, Unstable, a bit wary.  I reviewed Episode 4, "Pilgrims and Sex Parties," since sex parties are a gay community thing.  

Link to NSFW version

Premise: "Unstable genius" Ellis (Rob), who owns a biotech company, spirals out of control after the death of his wife (red flag!), so he brings his son Jackson (real-life son Johnny Lowe, below) aboard to smooth things out.  Except Jackson is a flautist.  How would that even work?

Scene 1: The biotech company.  A lady in a business suit complains that a photo of Ellis with a hawk on his head has gone viral, creating a meme where he's called the Wizard of Odd.  Ellis doesn't care: he's busy channeling his inner child and monkeys. 

Meanwhile, the obsessive Smithers to Ellis' Mr. Burns, Malcolm (Aaron Branch, left), has a meet-cute with the new HR Guy, but is too flustered about HR regulations to flirt.  A gay character in the first scene!  I stand corrected.

Scene 2: Ana, Ellis's main ally on the board of directors, asks how he's handling the grief over his Dead Wife.  Not well , he says: after losing the most wonderful person in the world, life is meaningless. After four episodes?  Usually Dead Wives are mentioned once to establish that the guy is heterosexual, then dropped.  Is this a show about grief?  

"So," Ana says, changing the subject, "About the hawk-on-your-head story, that reporter screwed you in the ass with a King Kong dick?"   Sounds like a fun date, but I think it's just a homophobic reference to the hawk-on-the-head story.

Scene 3:  Ana the Board Member runs into Ellis's son Jackson, the flautist-biotech scientist, and asks how he's handling the grief over his Dead Mother.  Not well;, he says; the grief comes in waves.   She notes that she's still playing the harp, so why doesn't he stop by with his flute for some "pluck and toots."   That sounds dirty.

Scene 4:  In the lab, scientists Luna and Ruby are looking through microscopes, trying to shame some cells into dividing.  They discuss Luna's never-seen "loser" boyfriend Brian and Ruby's ex-boyfriend - Jackson!  A heterosexual flautist?  How odd!

Sycophant Malcolm comes in all flustered over his meet-cute, so the scientists offer to create a litmus test to determine if HR Guy is actually interested. 

Ellis enters the lab, announcing that he's ready to go back to work: "If we can get some reductive oxidant on the anode..."   Uh-oh, he peers into a microscope and starts crying.  Too soon.  Strange -- usually working helps you deal with the grief.  Maybe the Dead Wife was a scientist.  

Scene 5:  Business-Suit Lady approaches the mansion of JT and Chas (JT Parr, Tom Allen, left), who are trying to destroy Ellis.  Boyfriends? No, brothers: they mention their father.  She orders them to back off, or she will post an embarrassing video. 

 "The sex parties?  We don't care -- everybody in tech goes to sex parties."  

No, actually she has a film of the two pretending to be Pilgrims.  If it gets out, no girls will come to their sex parties, so they'll have to have sex with guys.  "Ugh!  Gross!  Ok, we'll back off."  So these are heterosexual sex parties?  I've never heard of such a thing.

Scene 6:  Board Member Ana and Jackson playing their harp and flute and discussing how Ellis is still too grief-stricken to work.  She suggests that since father and son are both struggling with grief, they could help each other: "Oh, Dad never wants my help.  He just likes to criticize and patronize me."

Meanwhile, Ellis drinks cocoa with his father or father-figure.  He complains that the lab was always a safe place, but because his Dead Wife worked there, he'll never be able to work again, and the company will tank. 

Father Figure suggests that he overcome his grief with a trip: "To Ibiza, the cradle of civilization!  They invented DJs there!"  Have you ever noticed that if you say a word over and over, it loses its meaning?  That's about to happen on this show, where the word "grief" is used every 10-15 seconds.

Flautist son Jackson enters to try out the "help each other" strategy: He warns Ellis: "But if I try to help you, you can't get all condescending and patronizing, ok?"  His strategy when you're feeling overwhelmed by grief: pinch your butt hard.  The pain will ground you.  That might actually work, but why not pinch your arm?  Why the butt?  Unless you're setting up a joke for later.

Scene 7: Business Suit Lady brags to Ellis about her success in getting the Sex Party-Pilgrim Brothers to back down. Whoops, they're standing in her office!  They want Business Suit Lady to back down, or they'll reveal her "super-cringey fan fiction" about how everyone in the office worships her and gives her credit for everything.

Meanwhile, the scientists have developed a test to determine if HR Guy is into Sycophant Malcolm: put a piece of lint on his shirt.  If HR Guy picks it off, he's interested!

Ellis and Jackson enter the lab, ready to try working again: "I'm excited to try the butt stuff you showed me, Ellis says.    The scientists stare in horror, assuming that he means gay sex. To be fair, they may be more disgusted by the incest than by the gay sex itself.  

Jackson clarifies; "It's not butt stuff in the classic sense."  Ellis sits in front of a microscope, begins talking about oxides, pinches his butt -- and runs sobbing from the lab! It didn't work!

Jackson follows, sorry that the butt-pinching strategy was a bust.  They discuss why, when Dead Wife was everywhere in the building, only the lab causes uncontrollable grief.  Jackson figures it out: the carbon project was important to her, and whenever Ellis goes into the lab, he worries that he'll be immobilized by grief and unable to work, thus disappointing her, and he spirals.  Breakthrough!

Scene 8:  Out in the hallway, Jackson complains to one of the Scientists that he solved Dad's lab-grief problem, but Dad took credit for it.  Harsh!  Suddenly he picks a piece of lint from the Scientist's lab coat -- he's interested!  She rushes into the bathroom to douse herself with water.

The lint-picking strategy worked for Sycophant Malcolm, too: HR Guy invites him to go out for a drink after work.  But when HR Guy complains that Ellis is "difficult," Sycophant Malcolm storms out in a rage.  "Too many red flags!"  So, is the gay sycophant secretly in love with the boss a cliche now?

Scene 9:  Business Suit Lady tells Ellis about her super-cringey fan-fiction, in case the Pilgrim Twins release it. He suggests payback.  Exposing them to smallpox?  No, TP-ing their house.  Except on the way to the house, they accidentally hit one of the twins!  The end.

Beefcake: None, although Jackson and the Pilgrim Twins are nice to look at.

Gay Characters, Malcolm and HR Guy, of course.  In the next episode, they reconnect at a birthday party, but after that HR Guy never appears again.

Homophobia: A few references to how gay sex is disgusting. 

Will I Keep Watching: Probably not.

Bonus Rob Lowe, JT Parr, and Tom Allen bulgesa and butts on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Nude Photos of Rob Lowe: Brat Pack prettboy, bad guy with a dick, cowboy cop

Rob Lowe got his start as an androgynous prettyboy in Brat Pack classics like The Outsiders (1983), The Hotel New  Hampshire  (1984), and St. Elmo's Fire (1985).   

He played a teenage operator who buddy-bonds with the naive Andrew McCarthy in Class (1983).

He did the "Yank skewers the pretentions of stuffy Brits" thing in Oxford Blues (1984).

In Youngblood (1986), he gave us not only a butt shot, but a revealing near-frontal.

  Link to NSFW version

We all figured that Rob was gay.  Why else would he infuse his movies with  so much buddy-bonding amid the 1980s homophobic slurs?  Why else would half the guys in West Hollywood, including my friend Mario, claim to have dated him?  

Why else would he show his butt so often?  

Millions of heterosexual girls and gay boys had this poster on their bedroom walls. Corey Haim's Sam had it in The Lost Boys (1987), leading to widespread speculation that Sam was gay.

Then something happened that changed Rob Lowe's life and career forever.  During the Democratic National Convention in 1988, Rob and his friend Justin Morrow filmed themselves having sex with two women. It was blurry and grainy, but you could see Rob fully aroused.

The scandal marked him as  dangerous, deviant, and overtly sexual.  You knew things about him that you didn't about any other celebrity.

Hollywood insiders figured that his career was over, but Rob managed to capitalize on his new aura of danger in Bad Influence (1990),  luring a yuppie (James Spader) onto the Dark Side while showing us his butt again.  And in 

The Dark Backward (1991), a dark comedy about a pair of garbage collectors who want to become standup comics.  

He starred in a BBC adaption of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, about a decadent gay guy whose "perversion" leads to a gruesome and ridiculous death.

By 1994, Rob had bounced back enough to play Nick Andros, one of the "good guy" survivors of a plague that destroys the world, in an adaption of Stephen King's The Stand  (1994).  He appeared in comedies like Wayne's World and Austin Powers, murder mysteries (often as the murderer), and tragedies. But he kept his infamous penis under wraps, except for a nude scene in I Melt with You (2011).

Today Rob is a fixture on television, for audiences who never heard of his sex tape, or don't care.  He has starred in The Grinder, Code Black, Wild Bill, and 911 Lone Star.  No gay characters, but we still can see an occasional butt.

The infamous dick photos, plus about a dozen Rob Lowe butt shots, are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

A Wrinkle in Time

When I read Madeleine L'Engel's A Wrinkle in Time in grade school, I identified with Charles Wallace Murry, a shy, intelligent boy who  sees things other kids can't.  He seems to have a crush on misunderstood high schooler Calvin (played by David Dorfman and Gregory Smith in the 2003 movie).


Charles Wallace, his older sister Meg, and Calvin are drawn into a cosmic battle against the Black Thing, which is devouring entire solar systems and transforming them into suburbs, "houses made of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same."

The Black Thing brings conventionality, constraint, and heterosexism.  I found it a powerful critique of the mind-control chants of "What girl do you like?  What girl...what girl...what girl."

I thought it was a self-contained story.  Years later, when I was living in California, I stumbled across a sequel, Many Waters. Charles Wallace and Meg are minor characters.  Their brothers, twins Sandy and Denys, are swept away into the world of Noah just before the Flood.

They are fifteen years old in the novel, but the cover illustration pictures them as much older.

Here's another edition that shows them at the proper age, with feminine teen-idol faces, but with their muscles and phallic symbols still emphasized.

More digging revealed that Madeleine L'Engel wrote four science fiction- young adult novels with Calvin and Meg falling in love as a major plot arc..  Then they marry and have seven kids.  Their eldest daughter Polly stars in four novels of her own, mostly involving falling in love with a rich college boy named Zachary.

Meanwhile, Vicky Austin is featured in eight novels, sometimes with crossovers with the Calvin-Meg brood.  She has a troubled, on-off romance with marine biologist Adam Eddington (played by Ryan Merriman in the 2002 Ring of Endless Light).  

You get the idea: heterosexism rules.  You can be as unconventional as you want, as long as you obey the "fade out kiss" mandate.

The beefcake covers were apparently designed only for heterosexual girls.

And that's not all.  L'Engel doesn't mention gay people often, but when she does, homophobia oozes from every pore.

In A House Like a Lotus, Polly fights off a predatory lesbian.  Her parents, Calvin and Meg, are jubilant to discover that she isn't a pervert.

In A Severed Wasp, there are evil, predatory gays (not to mention casual antisemitism).

In The Small Rain, Katherine is an intelligent, sophisticated woman who has been raised in an unconventional household.  Nevertheless, when she see a lesbian:

Katherine stared at the creature again and realized that it was indeed a woman, or perhaps once had been a woman. Now it wore a man's suit, shirt,and tie; its hair was cut short; out of a dead-white face glared a pair of despairing eyes. Feeling Katherine's gaze, the creature turned and looked at her, and that look was branded into Katherine's body; it was as though it left a physical mark.

Wow.

Can I still read A Wrinkle in Time as offering hope to kids who are struggling with being different?  Critiquing the iron cage of heterosexism?

Of course.  Authorial intent is irrelevant. In the words of Alice Walker, "You are your own best hope." 

 Find belonging wherever you can, even in words intended to exclude you.
Find love wherever you can, even in words intended to express hate.
Find hope wherever you can, even in words intended to make you despair.

"Partner Track": A high-powered female lawyer keeps getting dissed by people with penises. Yes, we see a few.

 

Partner Track , on Netflix, is about a high-powered Manhattan lawyer.  Are there lawyers in any other city?   But I couldn't find any gay characters or subtexts, so here goes. Maybe there will be some grey-suit hunks in steam rooms.

Link to the NSFW version

Scene 1: We're in NYC!  You can tell because of the shots of Central Park and the Empire State Building.  Close-up of pink high-heeled shoes, eventually are revealed to be Ingrid, a lawyer  in a pink business outfit, standing out amid the throngs of grey-suit men.  She gives some coin to a homeless guy, gets jostled by a grey-suit man, and tells us that this city is tough on a girl who wants to get ahead.

Inside the glass-and-steel building, she meets her friend, a woman in a blue business outfit.  They discuss Ingrid's obsessive drive to be made junior partner at her law firm (ok, partner track, I get it).   It's down to her, Dan , and Todd, but they have penises, so she has to do something spectacular to tip the balance, like land a major account.  

When they arrive upstairs, Dan and Todd, and a third guy, Hunter, can't wait to start their hetero-horny hostile-workplace sexism: "she's got a wide margin on the face-body quotient.  She looks like you from the back, and Dan from the front.  Ugh!"  So the epitome of ugliness is...a man.  Got it! 

The three grey suits don't have any distinguishing characteristics: they are all fratboy-style hunks, they mention sports every 10 seconds, and they think of women as sex toys..  But in case you are interested, they are played by Zane Philips (top photo), Nolan Gerald Funk (left), who often plays gay roles, and Will Stout ("actor, West Virginian, Dad", but no beefcake).

Everyone drools over Ultra-Richster, who will decide on the next junior partner.  They have to really butter him up!  

Ingrid rushes to her office, ignores a phone call from her mother, and tells her assistant to gather all the intel needed to wow Ultra-Richster.  

She also meets her new paralegal Justin (Roby Attal, left), a white dudebro who has his feet on his desk and is busily texting and ignoring his duties.

Ingrid's friend asks why she was assigned such a terrible paralegal. The answer: since Ingrid is Korean-American, HR thought that assigning her only paralegals of color might be construed as racist, so they got her a white one. Problem: they couldn't find any competent white paralegals.

Friend shoves his feet off the desk and yells: "Ingrid graduated #2 in her class at Harvard Law.  You will show her some respect!"  Oh, please, every lawyer on tv graduated at the top of their class at Harvard Law.

Scene 2:  Out of nowhere, Friend asks "What happened to the Brit you hooked up with long time ago?  You said he was like Bogart from Casablanca?"  Ingrid shrugs.  "It was just a hookup."  "Well, he was just hired by this firm.  A chance for you to get laid, and take your mind off your obsession with becoming partner!"  Why do you care so much?  Are you a standard romcom friend who exists only to goad the big city girl into accepting the small-town hunk? Or, in this case, hunky Brit?

Scene 3:  Ingrid runs into Tyler (Bradley Gibson, left).  He is wearing a blue suit, so he's a nice guy.  This series is as color-coordinated as an old Western.  He is bragging to someone on his cellphone that he has landed a bunch of accounts, plus he started reading Vogue, Teen Vogue, and Women's Wear Daily when he was 11.  The guy on the phone is impressed, and gives him the account. 

I thought he would be a standard romcom gay bff,  but he asks Ingrid to "come say hi to the kids at the reception tonight."   Was that thrown in to identify him as heterosexual?  About 20% of gay men have kids, you know.  There are several ways to get the job done that dont require sex with a lady.

Scene 4:  Not looking where she is going, Ingrid has a splat! meet-cute encounter with...you guessed it, the Brit, she used to date, Jeff Murphy (Dominic Sherwood).  He stares in cliched teencom Girl-of-my-dreams lust, but unfortunately he doesn't remember Ingrid from their long-ago hookup.  He was way drunk that night.  Ingrid is way pissed.

Whoops, Brit Jeff was hired at level five, whatever that means, so he's in the running for junior partner, too.  Romance between competitors, a cliched...um, I mean classic romcom trope.

Scene 5: All of the contenders -- Dan, Todd, Brit Jeff, and Ingrid -- watch in amusement as the Richster demolishes fawning acolyte Sanders: "Don't ask if you can ask a fucking question, just ask the fucking question! And don't laugh.  Laughter is a coward's expression of fear."  

They bet on which cliched business phrase Richster will use first.

More microaggressions after the break

Superhero Sidekicks in Bondage

Pulp magazine covers often featured a woman drawn in the style collectors called GGA or Good Girl Art, tied to something and about to be murdered or violated by a drooling villain, while the hero rushes to the rescue.  But in superhero comics of the 1940s, the teenage sidekick was either tied next to the GGA woman, or else tied up all alone, and while GBA is not an official comic book term, his muscles were displayed quite as prominently as her breasts, providing hours of fun and excitement for gay kids of the pre-Boomer generation.


The Human Torch’s sidekick Toro, nearly-naked, muscles straining, chest heaving, is tied spread-eagle in the path of a tank , tied to the barrel of a cannon, or being lowered into a buzz-saw machine.

 3 of the first 10 covers of Detective Comics after the introduction of Robin, and nine of the first thirty, feature a surprisingly fit Boy Wonder tied up and about to stabbed, shot, drowned, or otherwise violated, while Batman rushes to the rescue.

As World War II progressed, many other superhero comics followed suit. The magazine racks of every drugstore were overflowing with images of superheroes rushing to the rescue of bound-and-threatened GBA sidekicks.

Captain America rescues Bucky in eight of the first ten covers of his comic book, and fully half of the first thirty.  Bucky is often (but not always) drawn as a muscular teenager, and his green-skinned, fairy-tale ogre captors have devised much more creative methods of execution than Robin’s.  He is strapped to an operating table next to a monster, while a leering Nazi doctor prepares an injection; mummified and threatened with an Iron Maiden.

He is hanging from his wrists and threatened by hot coals; in a cemetery, about to be buried alive; thrown overboard with a 500-pound weight around his neck; strapped to a table while a bed of spikes lowers onto him.

Roy the Super Boy, his massive chest jutting out of his red-and-white striped shirt, is tied to a rocket about to be launched into space, or about to be doused with nitroglycerin and ignited, while his superhero, the Wizard, rushes to the rescue.

Dusty the Boy Detective, in a skin-tight blue costume, is about to be stabbed, or tied to a runaway jeep.

The Black Terror's sidekick Tim is tied up, muscles straining in GBA form, about to be run over by a jeep, castrated by a buzzsaw, executed by a Nazi firing squad, or used for archery practice by a weird cult.

Comic books and pulps were not alone in featuring attractive people tied to things and about to be violated in sexually symbolic ways. Men were rescuing women everywhere, in order to create suspense and clarify the emotional investment of rescuer and rescued, who finally realize how much they care for each other.  The woman generally reacts to the narrow escape by melting into the man’s arms for a fade-out kiss.

But superhero comics presented boy instead of girl bondage threats, identifying the teen sidekick as an alternative to the spunky girl-reporter as an object of desire. The comic book superhero and sidekick walked into the sunset together through the War and for several years afterwards, but by the 1950s, Robin, Buddy, and Bucky had surrendered to girl-craziness or retired.