"The Bicycle Man": A Very Special Episode of "Diff'rent Strokes"

Diff'rent Strokes (1978-86) is one of those iconic 1980s tv series that everyone knew about but no one watched (at least no one I knew watched).  Everybody could quote Gary Coleman's incredulous catchphrase, "What you talkin' bout?"

The plot was standard "fish out of water": old, rich white guy, Mr. Drummond (Conrad Bain) adpots the two poor African-American kids of his recently deceased housekeeper (hey, Rich White Guy, if you had paid her a living wage, or offered life insurance, maybe her kids wouldn't be poor).

The teenage Willis (Todd Bridges) is suspicious and surely, but the chipmunk-cheeked preteen Arnold (Gary Coleman) is adorable.

The cast was filled out by Drummond's teenage daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato) and current housekeeper Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae).  Later there were other housekeepers, Willis's role was minimized, Kimberly was written out altogether, and Drummond married a woman with a cute preteen son (Danny Cooksey) to bond with Arnold.

 Early episodes involved various friends, relatives, classmates, and social service personnel being shocked by the arrangement.

I didn't watch many later episodes.  Not enough beefcake, not enough gay subtexts, and it aired either opposite my favorite programs, Taxi and Barney Miller, or during the date-and-outing time of  Saturday night.

But I heard about its string of Very Special (that is, very depressing) episodes, apparently meant to impress upon kids the dangers of life in the 1980s:

First Lady Nancy Reagan stops by to give her famous advice on drug prevention: "Just say no."

While hitchhiking, Kimberly and Arnold are kidnapped.  Arnold escapes and rushes to fetch the police, arriving just in time to save Kimberly from being raped.

Danny (shown here with the Dukes of Hazzard) is kidnapped, too, by a grieving mother and father who want him to replace their own dead son.  Arnold rushes to the rescue.

The only Very Special Episode I watched was "The Bicycle Man," which aired on February 5th and 12th, 1983.

Arnold and his friend Dudley (Shavar Ross) befriend bicycle shop owner Mr. Horton (Gordon Jump) who cagily flirts with them:

Horton [Giving Arnold a radio for his bike]:  I scratch your back, you scratch mine.
Arnold: You give me this present, you can scratch me all over.

After advising him to keep their relationship a secret, Horton plies them with wine and X-rated cartoons, and talks Dudley into posing for shirtless photos.  Arnold finally gets uncomfortable and bails, but Dudley stays.

Mr. Drummond and Dudley's Dad finally figure out that something is wrong, and rush to get the police.  They arrive just in time to rescue the dazed, "goofy" Dudley, who says that Horton gave him a pill and tried to "touch him."

They then sit around for five minutes discussing what parents should do in such a situation: don't blame the child, call the police rather than confronting the guy yourself, etc.

Willis says:  "I never would have guessed that Mr. Horton was...you know...gay."  The word is so distasteful to him that he has a hard time saying it.

Detective Simpson corrects him:  "He's not, Willis.  That's the common fallacy about child molesters.  They're not gay, they're only interested in little boys or little girls, not adults."

Arnold: "Look, I'm only eleven years old!  Should I be hearing all of this?"

Arnold has kept quiet or cracked jokes through the conversation about child molesting, but when it turns to gay people, he objects.

That's the only time gay people were mentioned in eight seasons.  I'm guessing the theme song was talking about something else:

Now the world don't move to the beat of just one drum.
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.

Grease Live: Still No Gay People at Rydell High

Grease (1978) was my coming-out movie, mostly because of the theme song, with lines I misheard::

The adults are lying, only real is real.
We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel. 

The movie itself was unremittingly hetero-horny heterosexist: boys and girls circle each other, preen, posture, try to hook up, and finally succeed, with some uncomfortable gender politics.

No gay content except for a couple of homophobic jokes.

I just saw Grease Live (2016), a live version that aired on Fox.  Nostalgia about nostalgia, a 2016 broadcast adapting a 1978 movie which was itself an adaption of a 1971 musical set in the year 1959.

Got all that?

The plot stays the same: at Rydell High in 1959, Danny, leader of the T-Birds, and Sandy, member of the Pink Ladies, play a game of desire and rejection, "cool" greaser vs. "good girl" amid such nostalgic settings as a malt shop,a sleepover, and a drag race.  In the end, Sandy abandons the good girl act and pretends to be sexually voracious, thus driving Danny wild and winning his heart.

Meanwhile, each of the other T-Birds hooks up with one of the Pink Ladies.

The T-Birds are:

Danny: Aaron Tveit (top photo)
Kenicke: Carlos Pena Vega (left)

Doody: Jordan Fisher (left)
Putzie: David Del Rio (below)
Sonny: Andrew Call

How did they update the 1970's classic?

1. The cast is multi-ethnic, with plenty of interracial couples.
2. Sandy is from Salt Lake City, Utah, not Australia.
3. Danny defends Eugene the Nerd, and eventually invites him to join the gang.  Eugene also gets a girlfriend, a female nerd, and shows killer moves at the dance contest.
4. Pink Lady Jan, previously ridiculed for being fat, is now ridiculed for being weird.
5. There are male and female cheerleaders, but the dialogue, oddly, assumes that they're all female.
6. They changed some of the dirty lyrics, but they kept the rape-promoting "Did she put up a fight?" from "Summer Nights"

Gay Changes
1. During the dance contest, the coach reads the rules: in 1978, "male-female couples only," followed by a homophobic joke against Eugene.  In 2016, the line was changed to "couples only, no singles, no triples."  Which would have been great if there were same-sex couples, but there were none.  As the scene stands, it completely erases even the awareness that gay people exist.

2.  In 1978, Kenicke asks Danny to be his "second" in the drag race at Thunder Road; they hug, then jump apart in homophobic panic.  In 2016, they see the other guys staring before jumping apart. Kenicke asks "What are you looking at?"  Seems more homophobic.

3. In "We Belong Together" in 1978, each T-Bird is paired with his respective Pink Lady, except for Sonny, who looks shocked when he is paired with a dog instead of Marty.  This shot was cut in 2016.

I looked carefully, and couldn't see anyone who looked like a same-sex couple in any of the crowd scenes, at all.  In "We Belong Together," everyone pairs off into male-female couples.  Even the curtain calls are male -female couples.

If director Thomas Kail could introduce interracial pairings as unremarkable and commonplace in the 1950s, when they were anything but, then surely he could have introduced a gay couple or two into the dance contest or the final carnival scene.

But he didn't.  38 years later, gay people are still not welcome in the world of Rydell High.

See also: Grease 2: The Gay Connection; I Lost It at the Movies.

Cain and Abel: The Homoeroticism of the Biblical Brothers

When I was growing up, one of my favorite stories in my Children's Bible was of Cain and Abel.

They are the children of Adam and Eve, the first two brothers in the world.  They both offer food to God, Abel animal meat and Cain fruit.

God, being a carnivore, prefers Abel.  Cain gets jealous, and in a fit of rage, kills his brother.

He is then forced to wander, but he worries that everyone he meets will want to kill him (the world has filled up quickly).  So God gives him "The Mark of Cain" so he will be safe.

Rather thoughtful. I would have gone with life in prison for murder, but...

The story has a number of plot holes and inconsistencies.  But look at those sculpted abs and enormous biceps!

Throughout history, artists who wanted to depict the homoeroticism of two muscular men together, without women around, have drawn on Cain and Abel.  They struggle, strain, press together so tightly that you can almost forget that they're trying to kill each other.

And, in the modern era, you can comment on warfare, bigotry, and homophobic hate crimes.

Abel is the quiet, gentle, gay-coded shepherd.  Cain is depicted as a big bully, a rough-and-tumble farmer.

Adolph Bougereau, The First Mourning (1888), emphasizes Adam and Eve's despair over losing their boy, who is depicted as feminine, almost pre-Raphaelite.

In his 1899 depiction, Danish painter Laszlo Hegedus gives Abel (facing us) a self-righteous sneer, while Cain (the one with the bare backside) has red hair, symbolising anger.

Fellow Danish artist Svend Rathsack (1885-1941), primarily a sculptor, was interested in both male and female nudes.  His Cain (1910) emphasizes the muscles and buttocks of the brothers, as Cain strikes Abel with what looks like an animal bone.

John P. Reilly (1928-2010) was a Catholic artist who drew inspiration from the Byzantine world.  There's no nudity in his Cain (1958), but I thought it was interesting that Abel, the good guy, is tall, thin, and handsome, while Cain is a short, squat, grunting Morlock.  He's also trapped; maybe his genes have already doomed him to be a murderer.

Marc Chagal, the French-Jewish primitivist, gives us a penis in his 1960 version.

The Bible doesn't say how old Cain and Abel were, but most artists make Cain middle-aged and Abel a sallow youth.  Eric de Saussure's 1968 version makes them both boys. Oddly, Cain is dark-skinned and Abel light-skinned.

Maurice Heerdink makes them both teenage in his ultra-realistic, brightly-lit, homoerotic version (2001).

I have to include this version by Bill Hoope (2001), if only because I want to know where they got the globe, and why they're attacking it with animal bones.

Zagor, the Italian Tarzan, Batman, Robin, Phantom, and Cisco Kid

Zagor is a comic book series first published in Italy in 1961, with later versions in the former Yugoslavia, Austria, Greece, Israel, and Turkey.

It is set in early 19th century Pennsylvania, a pristine wilderness where young Patrick Wilding becomes Batman: he sees his parents murdered, and grows up lusting for vengeance.

Or maybe he becomes Robin: he trains with a group of acrobats, like Dick Grayson.

Or maybe he's Tarzan: he moves into the wilderness, where the natives call him the Lord of the Darkwood.  He travels by jumping from tree branches, like Tarzan swinging from vines.  He fights monsters, poachers, desperados, and jungle beasts...um, I mean coniferous forest beasts...like bears, cougars, and alligators.

Or maybe he's the Phantom: "Zagor" is short for the Indian name Za-Gor-Te-Nah, the Ghost with the Hatchet (his preferred weapon).  Like the Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks.

Note that he always wears a red sleveless shirt with a yellow bird emblem.

Or maybe he's the Cisco Kid: he has a bumbling sidekick, Chico, who looks and acts like Pancho from the tv series.

There have been three movie versions in Turkey:

Zagor (1970), starring Cihangir Gaffari (who appeared in American films as John Gaffari and John Foster).

Zagor kara bela (Zagor and the Land of Trouble, 1971) and Zagor kara korsan'in hazineleri (Zagor and the Black Pirate's Treasure, 1971) starring Levent Çakir.

Levent Çakir is rather inadequately muscular, even though he also starred as the Turkish Superman.

There are two English-language translations: Zagor: Terror from the Sea (2015) and Zagor: The Red Sand (2016).