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

Max & Shred: Nickelodeon's New Drake and Josh

Nickelodeon has always been very good at gay-subtext teencoms, from Salute Your Shorts in the 1990s to Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide in the 2000s to the contemporary Henry Danger.   

Max & Shred, which premiered a few days ago, is a reprise of Drake and Josh, which in turn was a reprise of The Odd Couple: two guys with opposing personalities are forced to live together.

 Here it's celebrity snowboarder Max (Jonny Gray, right), cool, athletic, a teen operator in the mold of Drake, who moves to Blizzard Springs, Colorado to train for a snowboarding event, and must room with science nerd Shred (Jake Goodman, left), Josh without the extra weight.

There's also a mad scientist girl-next-door who climbs in through the window, a sister who is older and popular, a couple of parents, and the usual friends, jocks, bullies, and science nerds at school.

Max and Shred have the same physicality as Drake and Josh -- their hands are all over each other all the time.  And Shred draws has a pleasant non-gendered transgression.  But the show seems to be trying to avoid the gay-subtext-filled Drake and Josh.  Their hetero-mania is established through drools and double-takes, and in the second episode, they both fall in love with the same girl.

Jonny Gray is a relative newcomer, with only a few credits on the Imdb, but Jake Goodman has appeared in 18 projects, including a starring role in the Canadian teencom Life with Boys (left, with "brothers" Nathan McLeod and Michael Murphy).

Homophobic Moments in Music: It's a Man's World

From the moment I turned 13 to the moment I moved to Texas at age 24, my life consisted of a nonstop interrogation of girls! girls! girls!

From parents, teachers, Sunday school teachers, bosses, neighbors, and friends:
"Is there any girl in school that you like?"
"That girl is cute -- why don't you ask her out?"
"You'd have a girlfriend if you weren't so picky!"

From friends, classmates, bullies, jocks, and strangers on the street:
"Doesn't that girl have large breasts - why don't you ask her out?"
"Which actress on tv would you like to have sex with?"
"How many girls did you have sex with last night?"

So the last thing I needed during my senior year in high school was the most uber-heterosexist song on Earth.

During Homecoming, the orchestra had to play for the Gong Show, an adaption of the popular game show where singers could perform for a panel of judges until they were "gonged" off.  The one who made it through the entire performance without a "gong" was the winner.

There were 20 songs, mostly pop hits of the era: "Convoy," "I Write the Songs," "Stand Tall," "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing."

Some dinosaur numbers that got quickly gonged: "Blue Suede Shoes," "My Boyfriend's Back," "Luck be a Lady Tonight."

A duet, "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," from last spring's musical, Annie Get Your Gun.

"Voi che sapete," an aria from The Marriage of Figaro, got gonged after just a few bars.

The song that won: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," originally recorded by James Brown, the flamboyantly feminine but apparently heterosexual "Godfather of Soul" (1933-2006).  It's a heavy-beated, immensely sexist number about how men are in charge of everything:

This is a man's world, this is a man's world, this is a man's world.
Men make cars and trains, electric lights, toys, well, just about everything.
If you're a man, you're in charge.
But you're nothing without a woman or a girl.
Yeah...you're nothing, nothing at all, without a woman or a girl.
You're lost in the wilderness
You're lost in bitterness

Great, just what I needed to hear.

Things haven't changed much since the 1970s.  Recently the song was played over a gay male couple who appeared on So You Think You Could Dance, to emphasize the producers' belief that same-sex relationships were worthless, "lost in bitterness."  The judge suggested that they try being with women: "Who knows, you might like it."

See also: So You Think You Can Dance; and 12 Songs I Hate.

Fall 1972: How M*A*S*H Saved My Life

I hated my childhood church.  Everything was a sin: movies, comic books, rock music, books beside the Bible, games with cards, games with dice, restaurants that served alcohol, stores that sold alcohol, dancing, mixed swimming, carnivals, circuses, theaters, curse words, premarital sex, extramarital sex, nonmarital sex, thinking about sex....

Plus we had to sit through three services per week, on Wednesday evening and twice on Sunday, and they were all the same: tedious hymns from Victorian times, 45 minutes of the Preacher pacing and screaming and literally pounding his Bible, and then an endless exhortation to come down to the altar and "get raht with God."

We usually skipped the Wednesday service, and I didn't mind Sunday morning so much; the service ended at 12:00 sharp, and there was nothing good on tv anyway.  But Sunday night services had no limits -- they could go on for two hours or more, with a tv paradise back home: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, It's About Time, Flipper, Land of the Giants, The Young Rebels, Hogan's Heroes...

How to get out of going to church on Sunday night?  When I was in grade school, I tried four tactics:

1.  "I don't want to go!!!! I hate it!!!!"

That didn't work.

2. "I have a lot of homework to do."

No.  Nazarenes were forbidden from working on Sunday, including homework.

3. "I have a stomach ache."

Stomach aches were foolproof...there was no way to prove that you didn't have one, and you weren't necessarily sick. Maybe you just ate something that disagreed with you.

That worked once.  But my parents picked up pie and ice cream on the way home, and some jello for me.  Nazarenes weren't supposed to buy things on Sunday, but...

4. "Bill invited me over for a sleepover.  I can go to his church."

Nope.  Bill was a Presbyterian, and Nazarenes couldn't set foot in a "liberal so-called church."



When I started seventh grade at Washington Junior High, my parents began to watch me carefully, searching for any sign that I had "discovered" girls and thereby become a man.  Did I hang out with girls?  Did I mention any girls, even in passing?  Did I sign up for a mostly-girl club?  Did I notice an actress on tv?

Notice an actress on tv!

The biggest buzz in the 1972-73 tv season was M*A*S*H, a comedy-drama about doctors sexually harassing nurses and getting drunk during the Korean War.  TV Guide was particularly ecstatic over the sexually promiscuous Hot Lips Houlihan, played by Loretta Swit (right).

5. "I want to stay home and watch M*A*S*H.  It sounds good...."

I didn't even have to mention Hot Lips Houlihan.  My parents nudged each other, beaming with pride, and joyfully gave me permission to stay home.


Turns out that I hated M*A*S*H (except for Gary Burghoff as the cute Radar O'Reilly), and there was nothing else good on Sunday nights anymore.

But anything was better than being screamed at for 45 minutes.

And I learned a valuable lesson: my parents were so anxious for me to be heterosexual that they would give me permission to do anything, if there was even a hint of a girl involved.

See also: Slow Dancing at the Canteen