The Gay Connection of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

I heard that Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) was a gay classic, the coming-out film of the pre-Stonewall Era, when gay men snipped "But ya are, Blanche!" at each other as gleefully as my generation said "Come up to the lab, and see what's on the slab!"

Legendary drag queen and dramatist Charles Busch, who recorded the DVD commentary, says that it's "one of those handful of movies you have to see to get your gay card."

Well, I got my gay card quite a few years ago, so I thought I'd better get around to seeing what all the fuss was about.

Previously I had seen Bette Davis only in All About Eve, Return from Witch Mountain, and Death on the Nile, and Joan Crawford in nothing (unless you count her portrayal by Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest), so I was coming in fresh.

There are 3 parts.

1917: Baby Jane Hudson is a 10-year old Vaudeville star whose signature song is the maudlin "I Wrote a Letter to Daddy."  Her older sister Blanche is jealous.

1934: The young adult Jane Hudson is a flop in Hollywood, but Blanche has become a big star.  Jealous, Jane runs into Blanche with her car, crippling her.  The director cleverly avoids showing Blanche, and shows Jane only in one of Bette Davis's old movies.

1962: Jane (Davis) and Blanche (Crawford) have spent their lives in seclusion in a decaying Hollywood mansion, seeing only their housekeeper and business manager.

When Blanche's old movies are broadcast on television, gaining her a new generation of fans, Jane gets jealous again, and starts torturing her.  During a two-day period, she kills Blanche's pet bird, tries to feed her the bird and a rat, rips the phone out of the wall, ties her up, and...well, that's about it.

Blanche tries to signal to various people that she's in trouble, but Jane always intercepts the message.

Finally Jane has a complete breakdown, dragging Blanche to the beach and reverting to her child self.

Then comes the stunning reveal: Jane wasn't trying to kill Blanche the night of her accident.  Blanche was trying to kill Jane!

Ok, so that makes no sense at all.  But really, nothing about this movie makes much sense.  Like, shouldn't a wheelchair bound person get a room on the first floor?

And I still can't figure out the gay connection.

1. Buddy-bonding male friendships?  No.  There aren't any significant male characters, except in a humorous subplot about the middle-aged Jane trying to revive her child star career.  Victor Buono plays Edwin Flagg, a layabout she hires to help with the musical arrangements, who gamely asserts that her idea is genius, and even flirts with her in the interest of getting his paycheck.

2. Lesbian bonds, then?  No.  Blanche and Jane hate each other.

3. Same-sex desire of any sort, even hinted at?  Not a bit.

4. Critiques of hetero-romance?  Maybe a little.  No one is involved with anyone.  The next-door neighbors consist of a mother and daughter.  Blanche's courting of Edwin Flagg comes across as creepy and unhinged, like her incest-tinged relationship with her father.

5. Gay symbolism?  When Blanche laments, "If only I weren't in a wheelchair!" Jane replies acidly, "But ya are, Blanche!"  Maybe the gay men of a certain age used to lament, "If only I weren't gay!", to which their witty friends replied acidly, "But ya are, Blanche!"

6. Gay author or director?  No.

7. Beefcake?  A little, maybe.  Victor Buono looks like he might have a nice hairy chest, and during the beach scene,  some hunks in swimsuits stare aghast at Jane's breakdown.

I guess you had to be a gay man in the pre-Stonewall era to get it.

The 1991 remake was, apparently, even more over-the-top. Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave play Blanche and Jane.  Instead of a housekeeper, there is massage therapist Dominick  (Bruce A. Young), who is probably gay, and instead of a drunken musician, Jane flirts with aspiring filmmaker, drag queen, and pedophile Billy (John Glover, top photo).

See also: All About Eve

Gay Fan Art 4: Cartoon Kids Grow Up

Fan artists enjoy depicting their favorite cartoon characters involved in same-sex romances or explicit sexual situations.

But there's a problem with many of the more popular characters.  Regardless of how much you may envision them as adults, Bart Simpson and Nelson the Bully are still children, and depicting them having a romantic encounter would look rather silly.  And, if you depict them in an erotic situation, you're facing a 10-year prison sentence in the U.S.

Better to age them into teenagers into adults.

Ben Tennyson (Ben 10), who found a device that allows him to shapeshift into aliens, has appeared in four tv series (2005-2014) and several movies. But he never shapeshifted into this super-bodybuilder before fan artists discovered him.

T. J. Detweiler of the Disney Channel's Recess (2000-2003) was the leader of a band of 3rd grade buddies.  Here he's grown up and beefed up so much that he's unrecognizeable except for the signature red hat.  I don't know why he's tied to a tree in his underwear.

Sometimes fan artists choose rather obscure subjects.  The Backyardigans (2003-2006), for preschoolers on CBS, featured a group of toddler anthropomorphic animals: a penguin, a hippopotamus, a kangaroo, and so on.  This is Tyrone, the red-headed moose, turned into a buffed, morose human teenager.

Timmy Turner of Fairly Oddparents (2001-2014) is "an average kid," ten years old and drawn in a stylized, nondescript fashion.  But here a grown up, buffed up version towels himself off after a shower.

 More after the break.

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: *****

The Walking Dead: Gay People Unwelcome at the End of the World

I saw an episode or so of The Walking Dead on Netflix a couple of years ago.  I wasn't impressed.

It begins, like 28 Days Later, with Georgia cop Rick (Andrew Lincoln) awakening from a coma to discover that most of the population has turned into zombies, leaving only scattered bands of survivors.  He goes off in search of his wife and son.  The first survivor he meets is heartbroken because his wife has become a zombie.

That was more than enough heterosexism at the end of the world, thank you.

Recently I've begun watching again. We're in the middle of Season 3.  So far there have been innumerable other men who have lost their wives, plus a few women who have lost their husbands.  Apparently the zombies target only one half of each heterosexual couple. 

And there's been exactly one reference to the existence of LGBT people: when former prison inmate Axel (Lew Temple) joins the group, he complains that it doesn't have any eligible women: they're either too young, or already involved, and Carol (Melissa McBride) is a lesbian. She protests that she's not a lesbian -- she lost her husband to the zombies --she just happens to have short hair.

That's it.

The comic book series apparently introduces a gay couple in Issue 67: Andrew and Eric, "the only two gay guys left in the world," who live in the Alexandria, Virginia Safe Zone.  Eric is eventually killed, but Andrew survives and becomes a regular character.

The tv series hasn't gotten out of Atlanta yet, so there has been no opportunity to introduce Andrew and Eric.  You could invent gay characters of your own, of course, but every time a fan board suggests that this or that character might be gay, the producers summarily deny it. 

Norman Reedus (left), who plays Daryl Dixon, the redneck hunter (and the only one in the group who hasn't found a way to stay perfectly coiffed) states that his character is "prison gay," open to same-sex relationships if there aren't any women available.  But this apparently was his own decision in fleshing out the character, unknown to the producers.

There are no gay people in their series to date.

Are they making a homophobic statement about the survival chances of limp-wristed, fashion-obsessed swishes in a zombie attack?  

Or are they proclaiming, like Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that with so many important survival issues, there is no room at the end of the world for discussions of "orientations"?  Except heterosexual orientations, of course.

Or are they just following tradition: except for a few low-budget indie pictures and Stephen King's Cell, gay people are always unwelcome at the end of the world.

But not to worry: there's plenty of beefcake, such as Shane (Jon Bernthal (top photo, Rick's cop buddy who slept with his wife while he was in a coma), and Glenn (Steven Yeun, left), a former pizza delivery boy who becomes the group's most skillful scout.

And there's plenty of same-sex buddy-bonding going on, sometimes between men who don't express any heterosexual interest (presumably they are still grieving over wives lost to the zombies).

So we can go back to what we did in the dark ages before Stonewall: find glimmers of meaning even when we are being told over and over again that we do not exist.

Or we can stop watching.

See also: Two Zombie Movies with Gay Characters; Jose Pablo Cantilo; and The Postapocalyptic Fade-Out Kiss.