Hazbin Hotel: Queer characters in a sex-negative hell. The songs are good, though. With nude Adam and Lucifer

 

I thought Hazbin Hotel, the new animated series on Amazon Prime, was from the Middle East, but showrunner Vivzie Pop is American: " Hazbin" means "Has Been," that is, dead.  According to Wikipedia, there are several queer characters, so let's take a look.

The premise: Hell is a run-down inner-city neighborhood, plagued by street crime, drugs, gangs, and prostitution.  There are casinos and sex clubs everywhere -- queer characters or not, this show portrays hookups as the Heart of Darkness.  Plus every year Heaven sends down an army to exterminate the damned souls.  I didn't sign up for genocide..  Charlie, do-gooder daughter of Lucifer and Lilith, opens a hotel for damned souls who want to work on their character flaws and get a second chance at Heaven. (The place where the leaders rain down genocide?  I'll pass.)

The characters are....problem: they all look like women, very thin, with long hair ,  china-doll faces with disturbing red circles on their cheeks, four arms or wings that fill the shot , and super-feminine mannerisms.  I'll have to go by the names of the actors.

1. Charlie, F. Far left.

2. Vaggie, F, who behaves like her sister, but is actually her girlfriend (no physical affection in the episodes I reviewed).  The one with the red x over her eye.

3. Angel Dust, M, a porn actor who hangs around, flirting with everyone and bragging about how good he is in bed.  Played by Blake Roman, top photo.

4.Nifty, F, the hotel's housekeeper.

5. Sir Pentious, a cobra demon.  Played by Alex Brightman, who also voices Adam, the first human, now the head of Heaven's genocide squad.

   

6. Alastor, the radio demon and one of the Overlords of Hell who can own the damned souls.  Played by Amir Talal, but don't get excited: the middle person is his wife, not his husband.  She just has a man's haircut. 

7. Husk, far right, a cat demon who works as a bartender at the hotel. Played by Keith David.

8. Lucifer, played by Jeremy Jackson

I reviewed Episode 4, "Masquerade," because it features Angel Dust.

Angel has to duck out on team-building exercises because he has to go to work: a scene involving him getting sexually assaulted by burglar-demons.

Charlie thinks he should get more time off, so she approaches his boss, Valentino.  But Angel is actually owned by the abusive porn director, and Charlie's intervention only makes the abuse worse.  He sings:

I shoulda' guessed that this would happen

I shoulda' known it when I looked in your red-hot eyes

Spewin' all your red-hot lies

What's the worst part of this hell?

I can only blame myself

Back at the hotel, he continues to flirt with everyone.  Husk the Bartender has finally had enough, and calls him out: he's using the annoying flirtation as a shield, so he won't have to be emotionally open to anyone.  Angel rushes out to get drunk and high in a dive bar.  Husk follows, pointing out that they're both losers, but maybe they could be losers together:

We're both losers, baby

We're losers, it's okay to be a coked up, dick-suckin' hoe?

 I'm a loser, honey, a schmoozer and a dummy

But at least I know I'm not alone

They become friends.  Aww.

My Grade:  I like the songs, but for all its queerness, the show seems rather sex-negative. Plus that genocide is disturbing, and the color palette hurts my eyes. C

March 24, 1975: Mitzi and a Hundred Guys

March 24, 1975.  The Monday before Easter.  I check the TV Guide and find a special, Mitzi and a Hundred Guys.  

I don't know who Mitzi is, but anything with a hundred guys is going on my DVR List.

Just kidding -- in those days you watched it in real time or not at all.  So I plop myself in front of the tv.  My parents are surprised that I want to see something with "singing and dancing" in it; usually I hate variety shows.

There's a lot of singing and dancing, interspliced with comedy skits like Carol Burnett.   But the hundred guys make up for the tedium.

They include  included practically every male tv star,  plus some movie and radio stars.  I divide them into:

 Hot guys that I know.

Hot guys that I don't (such as Rich Little, left).

 Ugly guys that I know.

Ugly guys that I don't.

But the highlight is Mitzi crooning the Irving Berlin torch song "Always" while bodybuilders in jock straps surround her.

At least, I remember jock straps.  But, thanks to the internet, I see that they were wearing white pants.  And I can identify them.

1, Don Peters (1931-2001), a five-time Mr. America winner who also posed for the gay-porn photos of Bruce of L.A.

2. Kent Kuehn, a three-time Mr. America who appeared with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Stay Hungry (1975), the film that popularized bodybuilding.

3. Bob Birdsong (b. 1948), who appeared in two gay porn films, California Supermen (1972) and Loadstar (1973) before winning the 1975 Mr. Universe title. He later "found Jesus," got a "beautiful wife" and started a ministry.

4. Ric Drasin (b. 1944, recent photp), a bodybuilder, professional wrestler, and actor, with credits ranging from Ben (1972) and Sextette (1978) to The Shield (2004).  He is also a spokesman for Gold's Gym and a wrestling instructor.

Sean and the World of Gay Leathermen

During the 1960s and 1970s, gay men carved niches for themselves, separate neighborhoods where they could be free from homophobic harassment, separate social institutions to replace those they were excluded from in the "straight" world.  And one of the institutions they devised was Leather, aka S&M.

The look: muscles, hairy chests, and clothing based on the motorcycle gangs of the 1950s: chaps, vests, boots, jackets.  Black, sleek, rigid, gleaming.  No fluffy sweaters, no chinos, no designer shoes, no perfumes, nothing but raw masculinity

The acts: erotic "scenes" involving dominance and submission, power and pain.

Leathermen were excoriated by the heterosexual press, which kept squealing: "Look!  Look!  We told you that gays were all perverts!"

In Cruising (1980), the subculture was savagely derided as a bunch of masochists and murderers.

Even the mainstream gay movement was leery, thinking that they would scare the heterosexuals and forestall the quest for tolerance.

But they survived.  During the 1980s, even people not into the culture started experimenting, since S&M activities don't transmit HIV.

It became commonplace for men hitting their mid-30s to shift their allegiance from twink bars to leather bars like the Spike, the Eagle, the Gold Coast, the Faultline, and Bill's Filling Station.

There were motorcycle clubs, leather clubs, S&M clubs, bear clubs, fetish fairs like Dore Alley, contests like International Mr. Leather, magazines like Drummer, Mandate, and Bound and Gagged.

All illustrated by a cadre of gay artists: Tom of Finland, Etienne, the Hun, Cavello...and their undisputed leader, Sean.

Sean, aka John Klamik (1935-2005), who was a fixture in West Hollywood from the 1950s, painting murals for leather bars,  publishing cartoons in leather and mainstream gay magazines, illustrating the novels of leather greats such as Larry Townsend, and publishing his own graphic novels.

He and his partner, Jim Newberry, were also well-known in West Hollywood politics, instrumental in planning each of the Gay Pride Marches and Festivals from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Sean drew his inspiration from the impossibly buffed, impossibly endowed Tom of Finland men, but he put them into much more graphic situations.

So graphic that it's hard to find one to illustrate.

And his themes and situations veer far from the jubilant eroticism of Tom's men. There are acts of torture, punishment, and revenge.    

For instance, the famous Biff Bound (1982), which I found at the adult bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana, is a pantomime comic book about a super-muscular, super-endowed blond who hitch-hikes in search of willing partners.  But instead, he is grabbed, tied up, and sexually assaulted by three toughs, who then steal his clothes and his suitcase.

He is rescued by a group of gay leathermen, who give him a new leather outfit, then help him capture the toughs.  They tie them up, have sex with them, force them to have sex with each other, and finally retrieve Biff's suitcase.  

Heavy stuff.  Is it promoting sexual assault?

Certainly not, Sean said in an interview.  "It's a fantasy."

It was about empowerment.  Gay men in the mainstream press of the day were portrayed as perpetual victims, of homophobic assaults, of discrimination, of AIDS, of their own "uncontrollable urges."  But they didn't have to be. They could be strong, powerful, in charge of the situation.  They could save the day.  They could triumph.

See also: Tom of Finland;  The Mystery of Cavelo; and The Bear with the Sweeney Todd Fetish.

Johnnie Whittaker and David DeCoteau: A Match Made in Homoerotic Heaven

Johnny Whitaker, the star of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters in the 1970s, has appeared on screen occasionally since.  Perhaps his weirdest roles are in two direct-to-video movies directed by David DeCoteau, A Talking Cat (2013) and A Talking Pony (2013).

Wait -- David DeCoteau is that crazy director who churns out 38 homoerotic horror movies per yer: A serial killer stalks a fraternity during the guys-only underwear party!  Yet he swears up and down that he has no homoerotic intent, that he is not even aware of the existence of gay men. 

These movies seem a little out of his métier, but looking at his more recent movies, he seems to have expanded from the Haunted Fraternity and Voodoo Academy softcore-schlock to "family friendly" movies about fundamentalist Christians finding love..

Except DeCoteau seems to always sneak in his trademark "gay people don't exist" homoeroticism by depicting some teen hunks frolicking in the pool or buddy-bonding in their underwear.  In Talking Cat, Justin Cone and Daniel Dannas.

During the last seven years, Daniel Dannas has grown up -- aand bulked up -- into an actor/model/heartthrob (top photo).  I assume he's gay.  Why wouldn't he be?

In Pony, James Lastrovic (left) and Max Gray Wilbur (below).  I assume they're both gay, too.
























On the iconic Mr. Ed, the owner of the talking horse is named Wilbur.  Coincidence?   Or Cosmic Trigger?

I can't wait to fast forward through  some of his 2019-2020 works: The Wrong Stepmother, Stepfather, Boy Next Door, House Sitter, Wedding Planner, Real Estate Agent, Cheerleader, Tutor, and Mommy

The Nice Guys: Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, and Heterosexism

I was not in a good mood yesterday.  Two books arrived from Amazon.

1. The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami.  "A charming, surreal story."  "It had me enthralled."  "A wry metaphysical play."

It's  a 5000 word novella about a little boy held prisoner by an old man who intends to eat his brains.

And a beautiful girl.  Who kisses him. And helps him escape.

Same-sex relations are always destructive, heterosexual romance is salvation, got it.

2. A Brief History of Manga.   A tiny book, about 1/10th the size I expected, with a few words of text and a lot of photos on each page.  Altogether maybe 5,000 words.

And the photos:  naked women.  Bare breasts on nearly every page.  Leafing through it, I felt like I needed a shower.

I threw them both in the trash.

And a Netflix movie arrived in its red package:

3. The Nice Guys (2016) starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, a "stylish neo-noir mystery set in 1970s Los Angeles."  I like the 1970s, and I used to think Ryan Gosling was hot, so ok, let's give it a look.

A teenage boy named Bobby (Ty Simpkins) steals his parents' porn magazine in order to masturbate to photos of porn star Misty Mountains.  Suddenly a car crashes all the way through his house. He runs out to see the porn star in the flesh, dying.  Naked.  Bare boobs.   We never see Bobby again.

Meanwhile, failed cop-turned-private dick Holland March (Ryan Gosling) -- is that the name of a gay villain out of a 1960s thriller, or what?  -  is hired by Misty's aunt, who swears that she's still alive.  He begins searching.  One of his leads is a girl named Amelia.

Meanwhile hired muscle Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) beats up a guy who has been having an affair with a little girl.   Then another little girl, who I thought was the same one but turns out to be Amelia, hires him to beat up a guy who is stalking her.  Guess what?  It turns out to be Holland March!

Later on Healy is interrogated by two thugs (Beau Knapp, Keith David), who demand to know the whereabouts of Amelia. 

Healy approaches March, the guy he just beat up, and suggests that they work together to try to find Misty.

Wait -- what about Amelia?

Did I mention that they meet at Holland's daughter's birthday party?  13-year old girls everywhere, piling around, eating, bowling, grabbing at Holland to take photographs.

I'm getting weirded out.  What's with the young girls in every scene?

Holland and March go to a protest held by Misty or Amelia's anti-smog activist group, and convince a guy named Chet (Jack Kilmer, left, with boyfriend Dylan Sprouse) to take them to Misty or Amelia's boyfriend's house.

It's burnt out, so they convince a little boy on a bike (Lance Valentine Butler) to take them to see...I don't remember what.  I got distracted when the little boy offered to show them his dick for $20.

Out of nowhere.

That's even worse than the screensful of 13-year old girls.  I like looking at dicks, but...WTF?

Is it supposed to represent the decadence of 1970s L.A.?

Turns out that Amelia/Misty and Dean were making a half-porno, half-air pollution documentary financed by Sid Shattuck.

Meanwhile, Holland's daughter Holly (that's right, Holly Holland) starts investigating on her own, and gets into trouble with...

That was enough.  I went to bed, leaving Bob up to watch the rest, and Wikipedia to summarize the plot:  There's a big porno racket going on, and Amelia, as the daughter of a high-ranking government official, was threatening to blow the whistle on it, so Shattuck has hired a hit man (Matt Bomer) to kill her.  Detroit car companies are involved, and Chet plays some role.  I don't know what Misty's mountains had to do with it.

To the film's credit, neither Healy nor Holland get girlfriends.  I'm not even sure if they display any heterosexual interest.  They walk off into the sunset together, one of the main criteria of a gay subtext.

 But you have to wade through a lot of scenes involving little girls to get there.

See also: Michael in the Boys' Room with Cole or Dylan Sprouse; Beefcake and Heterosexism in my Netflix Recommendations

The Gay Content of "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"

The View Askew peeps, Kevin Smith, Scott Mosier, and their friends, tend to make movies with a lot of subtle or not-so-subtle homophobia.  I try to avoid them whenever possible, and when I can't, I go in bracing myself for the onslaught.

In Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), the slacker buds(Seth Rogan, Elizabeth Banks) go to their 10-year high school reunion, where Miri aggressively propositions her old crush Bobby (Brandon Routh), without realizing that he is "gay now." Has he just, like, switched teams or something?

Bobby gets into an argument with his boyfriend, porn actor Brandon St. Randy (Justin Long).  Zack looks on in amusement, commenting "They fight just like real people."

After that brief scene, the gay people disappear, but they give Zack the idea of making some money by producing a straight porn movie.



His friend Delaney (View Askew regular Craig Robinson) agrees to bankroll it, and Zack and Miri hire a ragtag band of amateurs to perform.

Such as Lester (Jason Mewes, the perennial Jay to Silent Bob), whose talent is getting aroused very quickly.

Yes, we do see his butt, his rather impressive penis, and his rather scrawny body.

The dimwitted Lester mistakenly believes that there will be gay sex in the film, and remarks "I'll make it with a guy if I have to, but I'd rather make it with a girl."

Delaney exclaims "What the hell is wrong with you?" in homophobic contempt.  Obviously any guy who would do something as disgusting as engage in same-sex activity must have something wrong with them.

So according to Kevin Smith, gay people are mentally ill? Not a big revelation.  Most of his movies make similar statements.

Later Lester demonstrates a way for two guys to have sex without doing anything gay.

They also hire Barry (Ricky Mabe), a chubby actor in young-adult theater.  He doesn't mind being an anal bottom, as long as the top is a woman.  In one scene his testicles are on display, probably (they could be a prop).

Deacon (View Askew regular Jeff Anderson) agrees to direct.

Naturally the group becomes a family, and work together to help Zack and Miri in their hour of need.

The porno is started but never finished.  Instead, Zack and Miri fall in love.

I'll bet you didn't see that plot twist coming.

So, to sum up, the gay content consists of: two gay characters who vanish after the first ten minutes, three homophobic statements, Ricky Mabe's testicles, and Jason Mewes' penis.

Not a bad way to spend 90 minutes.

Tom of Finland

When I was in grad school in Bloomington, Indiana in the early 1980s, I used to buy a gay porn magazine at College Avenue Books:  In Touch for Men, which featured not only pictures of naked men, but articles on gay history and culture, dating tips, movie reviews, and even comics.

I was particularly drawn to a series of non-verbal, single-panel comics featuring macho icons like bikers, cops, lumberjacks, and cowboys, impossibly muscular and impossibly well endowed, interacting with each other.  Aggressive, athletic, and masculine, they were a sharp contrast to the contemporary mass media depictions of gay men as soft, willowy sissies.

They all had the same "look": they had wavy hair, Castro Clone moustaches, long faces, and square jaws.  They were always smiling, enjoying every moment of their lives.

There were occasional romantic or humorous moments, but mostly the comics were about sex.  Not the furtive, guilty sex of the 1960s tea rooms -- this was bold, aggressive, joyful, in public, in full view of passersby, who, more often than not, would ask to join in.

There was no homophobia in this world, but not much gay culture, either. Not many gay rights marches or meetings of the Gay Activists Alliance, not a lot of scenes set on Christopher Street.  Impossibly muscular, impossibly well endowed men interacted in police stations, gas stations, army barracks, tattoo parlors, in the woods.  It was a raw, primal world of same-sex desire.  I had never seen anything like it.

The artist was Tom of Finland, aka Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), who began publishing drawings in the early Physique Pictorial in the 1950s.  By 1973, he had become so famous that he was able to quit his job in advertising and devoted himself full-time to his art.  He published in In Touch, Mandate, the Meatmen series of gay comic anthologies, and eventually in comic-book length (but wordless) tales of Kake, a gay man on the prowl.

By the time I discovered him, in the 1980s, Tom was falling out of favor.  His work was not political enough, ignored homophobia and AIDS, and portrayed gay men as obsessed with sex.  Besides, it set the bar for male beauty impossibly high, ruining the self-esteem of those who didn't fit his rigid standards of age, size, and body type.  

Ok, but sometimes you just want to look at hot guys.

Today Tom has been rediscovered.  There are retrospectives of his work in museums in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berlin, and Helsinki.   You can buy Tom of Finland books, dolls, and a cologne.  In September 2014, Finland released a series of postage stamps featuring iconic Tom's men.

See also: Sean and the World of Gay Leathermen; The Mystery of Cavelo; and Gay Comics of the 1980s.

That Boy: My First Porn Film

It may be a little strange to mention a porn film in a G-rated blog, but That Boy (1974) is special.  It was a defining moment in my life, the first gay erotic film I ever saw, in the spring of 1984, during my second year at Indiana University.  My friend Viju and I drove into Indianapolis to go to the bars, and someone invited us to see it with him.  There was a midnight showing in a sleazy theater near Monument Circle.

The star, 32-year old Peter Berlin, moved from Germany to San Francisco in the early 1970s and quickly became a gay icon, appearing in magazines and films, acting as his own cinematographer.  He was renowned for his gleaming, muscular physique and gigantic bulge, but more importantly for his utter lack of guilt, hesitation, and fear.

There was no such thing as a closet in Peter Berlin's world, no such thing as homophobia.  Only endless nights of cruising -- but not the meaningless, destructive tricks that later generations condemned us for.  A glorious sexual freedom that was, in itself, fulfilling enough to be the sole purpose of life.

That Boy has more of a plot than the usual porn film: An unnamed sexual Everyman (Peter) wanders through a bucolic San Francisco, looking at men, and being looked at.  That gaze, being an object of adoration, is even more glorious than the sexual acts themselves.  But then he looks at a boy who does not look back.

Could this be the one person on Earth who does not desire him?  No, the boy is blind, so Peter must try new, different tactics to draw him into the world of sexual freedom.

During his heyday, Peter Berlin was filmed, drawn, photographed, and painted by such greats as Tom of Finland and Andy Warhol, and had several exhibitions of his own work.  Then in the 1980s, AIDS, neoconservative retrenchment, and changing sexual mores made him seem quaintly naive, even dangerous.  He disappeared from the public eye.

Today he is over 70 years old, still living quietly in San Francisco, still happily recalling how he gave a  generation of gay men a glimpse of what it was like to experience sexual desire without apology or regret.

His films Nights in Black Leather and That Boy have been released on DVD, and a documentary, That Man, appeared in 2005.

The Mystery of Cavelo

When I was in grad school at Indiana University, the only place you could get gay books and magazines was in the adult bookstore.  Of course, they had porn, too.

I was particularly drawn to two albums from Zeus Studios featuring wordless comics drawn by someone named Cavelo:

The Cavelo Portfolio (1979).
Hercules (1981).

He drew buffed, fully nude men in mild bondage and S&M situations, usually in the historic past: ancient Rome, the old West, the French foreign legion.

The models had amazingly ripped physiques, drawn darker and with much more contrast than the characters around them.

There was no sex, no activity of any sort.  Cavelo always depicted the men in the moment before.

He published three albums, plus cartoons and illustrations in six issues of Drummer magazine, all between 1978 and 1985.  A limited repertoire, compared to his contemporaries, Sean and Tom of Finland.

Then his work ended, leaving fans to wonder: where did this spectacular beefcake artist come from?  Where did he go?

Thirty years later, they are still wondering.

Recently many of the great gay artists who published anonymously during the 1970s and 1980s have been identified, their stories told, their contributions lauded.  But Cavelo remains a mystery.

We know only that he lived in Los Angeles, and his real name was Leon Carvalho.

There's a Leon Carvalho living in Los Angeles today, a marine recruiter.  Probably not the same one.

See also: Tom of Finland; Sean and the World of Gay Leathermen