Star Trek Beyond Homophobia

I don't usually post reviews of single episodes of tv series, but I'm being forced to work my way through Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005), the classic Trek prequel about smug, simpering Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and his best buddy Trip (Connor Trineer) leading the Earth's first baby-step exploratory mission into deep space.

It's awful.  No continuity at all.  Sometimes they're hundreds of light years from home, sometimes close enough so friends can visit.  Sometimes space is empty, and sometimes it's crowded with dozens of species.

Every species looks, dresses, acts, and eats exactly like us, with a few very minor differences.  The universe is depressingly monotonous.

And they all speak perfect colloquial English.  In the first season they at least tried to introduce some translation problems, but by Season 2, there was no question: aliens (or should I say humans with things on their foreheads) don't need a translator.  English is the universal language of the galaxy.

Oh, well, at least Connor Trinneer's physique is on display a lot.  He is  jaw-droppingly huge beneath the belt.

They should call the show "Star Trek: Trip in His Underwear."

But last night's episode was bad.  Really bad.

In "Cogenitor" (April 30, 2003), the Enterprise encounters the Vissians, exactly like us in every way except for some forehead bulges and the fact that they need three sexes to reproduce.

Members of the third sex are treated as slaves, or the handmaidens in Margaret Atwood's novel -- no, worse.  At least slaves have names.  At least the handmaidens got to do the shopping  Cogenitors, referred to only as "it," are passed around from couple to couple like shared property, not allowed to do anything but eat, sleep, and make babies.

After Trip overcomes his homophobic horror over the thought of sex between beings other than a man and a woman, he takes an interest in the Vissian cogenitor, teaching it -- "her" -- to read, giving her a tour of his ship, showing her some movies, encouraging her to rebel against her oppression.  The Vissians are furious.  So is Captain Archer!  Trip has no right to interfere with the "customs" of another species!

When the cogenitor realizes that her condition will not change, she asks for asylum aboard the Enterprise.  Archer refuses -- oppressing the "third sex" is part of their culture!  She is returned to the Vissian ship, where she promptly commits suicide.

Archer calls Trip into his office and chews him out.  This is your fault!  You introduced subversive ideas into her head, made her think that she wasn't inferior to the Vissians, encouraged her to rebel!   Now somebody is dead, just because you were stupid enough to promote social equality.  We should never lift a hand against oppression if it's part of their culture!

Trip, contrite, agrees.  He should never have interfered.

The episode was probably meant as a homophobic rant against gay rights: LGBT people should not try for social equality, because it's part of our culture to treat them like scum.

But it goes far beyond that, to condemn the abolitionist movement -- enslaving black people was part of their culture!  And women's suffrage -- denying women the right to vote was part of their culture.  And the Holocaust -- if genocide was part of Nazi culture, we have no right to criticize it.

 Wow.

The episode was written by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga.  I'm not going to do any research to determine how prejudiced they are.  It's rather obvious.


I don't think that a picture of Trip's chest is going to be able to fix this one. 

American Horror Story: Gay World

The anthology series American Horror Story is a hit in gay communities.  It's stylish, witty, adequately creepy -- and gay inclusive, a rarity in horror tv.   Here's my rating of the gay content of the first four seasons: beefcake, buddy-bonding, gay characters, and gay symbolism.  Scale of 1 (terrible) to 5 (excellent).

Season 1: Murder House (2011)

A family moves into a house overrun by the ghosts of previous residents.  Interesting twist: ghosts can become corporeal, with bodies indistinguishable from those of the living.
Beefcake: lots of muscular chests and backsides.  These ghosts get naked a lot.
Buddy Bonding: Troubled teen Tate (Evan Peters) seems to have a little thing for the troubled psychiatrist (Dylan McDermott).
Gay Characters: Zachary Quinto and Teddy Sears play a bickering gay couple who were planning to split up.  Then they were murdered in the house, and now they are stuck together for all eternity.  The other ghosts and humans are generally nonchalant about them.
Gay Symbolism: None.
Overall Rating: ****

Season 2: Asylum (2012)

An evil nun runs a creepy asylum for the criminally insane in the 1960s.  With demons, Anne Frank, and alien abductions.
Beefcake:  Not much.  Evan Peters as an alien abductee.
Buddy Bonding: None.  Again, all of the significant friendships are male-female.
Gay Characters: Sarah Paulson as Lana Winters, a lesbian reporter committed to the asylum and forced to undergo a homophobic "treatment" regiment.  In the present, she's a famous writer, out-and-proud.
Gay Symbolism: None.
Overall Rating: ****

Season 3: Coven (2013)

A school for teen witches, a voodoo queen, and the re-animated corpse of 19th century murderess Delphine LaLaurie.  What more could you ask for?  Maybe some gay characters?
Beefcake: Lots.  Madame LaLaurie had a thing for torturing hunky male slaves, and the teen witches build themselves a Frankenstein-monster boyfriend (Evan Peters again).
Buddy Bonding: Some female bonding going on.
Gay Characters: None, except for a fruity Truman Capote-esque member of the Witches Council, who appears briefly in two episodes.
Gay Symbolism:  Witches hiding in the shadows, afraid to let anyone know their true identity, etc., etc.
Overall Rating: ***

Season 4: Freak Show (2014)
A financially-strapped freak show in 1950s Florida, with a murderous clown and his dapper young apprentice wandering around.
Beefcake:  Evan Peters again, the bare buns of a Viking Hustler, a circus strongman, and an amazing bodybuilding little person (his name is Kyle Pacek).
Buddy Bonding: Men are mostly competitors.
Gay Characters: Several.  But for a change, Dandy, the ultra-feminine murderer, is not.
Gay Symbolism: Freaks hiding in the shadows, et., etc.
Overall Rating: *****

Big River: Come Back to the Raft, Huck Honey

The homoerotic import of Huckleberry Finn and Jim the escaped slave rafting down the Mississippi has been well-known for many years.  Even homophobes notice.

 In 1961, Leslie Fiedler wrote "Come Back to the Raft Again, Huck Honey," bemoaning that Huck and Jim, like many men and boys in classic American literature, are afraid to grow up and establish "mature" heterosexual relationships, so they fall in love with men.

When both you and your intended audience are fully aware of the gay subtext, how will you build a stage musical out of Huckleberry Finn that adequately avoids it?

Especially when you know that the actors will be much closer in age than the 14-year old Huck and adult Jim of the novel?




That was the problem that Roger Miller and William Hauptman faced when they wrote Big River, which premiered on Broadway in 1985, at the height of the 1980s homophobic backlash.  In that political climate, no way could they allow the slightest hint of Jim and Huck liking each other!

So they had Huck and Jim explicitly reject the idea that they could have any kind of romantic bond:

I see the friendship in you eyes that you see in mine
But we're worlds apart, worlds apart
Together, but worlds apart

Then they gave Jim s a quest: to go to the North, make some money, and buy his family out of slavery.

And the newly heterosexual Huck gets a girlfriend, Mary Jane Wilkes, who asks him to stay in Arkansas with her:

Did the morning come too early
Was the night not long enough
Does a tear of hesitation
Fall on everything you touch

He decides to move on, not because he isn't interested, but because he made a vow to help Jim escape to the North.

Finally,  they defer the homoeroticism onto the Duke and the King, two gay-vague villains of the old, simpering school.  The "Royal Nonesuch" show, which they advertise to grift the townsfolk,  purports to be a horror of gender indeterminancy:




Well, it ain't no woman and it ain't no man
And it don't wear very many clothes
So says I, if you look her in the eye
You're better off looking up her nose

It's actually the Duke and the King mooning the audience.

Does it work?  Does Big River adequately erase the gay potential?

Not really.  This scene could just as easily be from Romeo and Juliet.

It takes a lot more than that to keep gay subtexts away.

See also: Huck and Jim on the Raft

Benito Cereno: Master and Slave Become Lovers

Speaking of beefcake covers on classic novels, check out this cover to the new edition of Benito Cereno (1855), by Herman Melville, the gay author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd.

Plus there's a nice gay subtext:

Captain Delano of the ship Bachelor's Delight is approached by a mysterious semi-derelict ship, with both white sailors and slaves begging for supplies.  The captain, Benito Cereno, has an oddly physical relationship with his slave, Babo.    Gradually Delano comes to realize that the slaves have rebelled, killed most of the crew, and ordered Cereno to sail them back to Africa.  Babo, the leader of the rebellion, is tried and executed.

But it's not just a matter of a master becoming a slave.  After Babo's death, Cereno is disconsolate.  He falls into a deep depression and dies soon thereafter.  Their bond had become not only physical but emotional.  They were lovers.

The story was made into a French movie in 1969, with Ruy Guerra as Benito Cereno and Tamour Diop as Babo.

Another, The Enigma of Benito Cereno, is due in 2014; it makes Babo bisexual, with a female lover.

In 1964, Robert Lowell staged a one-act adaptation with four speaking parts: Captain Delano, his mate John Perkins, Benito Cereno and Babo.

It has been performed often, most recently with Rafael de Mussa as Benito Cereno and Jaymes Jorsling as Babo.