Comment Policy
Offensive, harrassing or baiting comments will not be tolerated and will be deleted at my discretion.
Comment spam will be deleted.
Please leave a name and either a valid web-site or e-mail address with comments. Comments left without either a valid web-site or e-mail address may be deleted. Atom Feed LiveJournal SyndicationLOLcats feed
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Short Bits
So, you know this made me happy:
Though, after rewatching the episodes of Justice League Unlimited contained in this box set, my over-whelming emotion was annoyance at being reminded how terribly ham-fisted the whole Cadmus storyline was. Which was, really, a weakness in the show from beginning to end. Individual episodes are superlative; the "big picture" through-story for the season was terrible. Even the generally better final season suffers from a lame deus ex machina cop-out of an ending.
So, I find it frankly hilarious that one of the more contentious and angst inducing gay news stories to surface recently is the shock and dismay that has been uttered at the stunning realization that in the video-game Bully, boys can kiss boys. Now, it's not as if this is anything novel in games programming. Most of the "open ended" games that have come out, notably The Sims and Fable have included the option of having your character in the game be gay. Bully seems to have been specifically targeted by moralists, however, because the game's publisher also makes the "controversial" Grand Theft Auto series of games, so naturally this all must be part of a plot to corrupt America's holy and virginal youth. Reaction from people who have played the game is mixed, to say the least.
I must admit, I never thought of looking at the game twice until I heard about the boys kissing boys angle. And then, I realize that I don't like Rockstar's approach to games very much, and I move on. Besides, I still haven't finished Justice League: Heroes or Kingdom Hearts, and I'd like to finish at least one of those before the new Legend of Zelda game comes out.
Oh, Roy Thomas, Danette Thomas and Ernie Colon, you've made me very happy.
Hellbent is the film that's been popularly branded as the "first gay horror film." It's a bit of an exaggerated identification, as there have been lots and lots of very, very gay horror films over the years. What sets Hellbent apart from the pack is that it's the first openly gay horror film, by an out writer and director and featuring explicitly gay characters.
In terms of being a horror film, Hellbent follows a rather cliche and well-trod path. Eddie is a gay police tech who hears about the brutal decapitation murders of two gay men in a popular cruising spot. He's tasked to hand out flyers to the community, warning them to be on the lookout for suspicious persons. On Halloween night. In the gay part of town. Yeah, that's an easy task. In any case, Eddie meets the rough trade of his dreams and he and his friends go out to cruise the Halloween party. Where, one by one, they're dispatched by a muscular, bare-chested man in a devil mask, until only Eddie and his trick are left to save the day.
It really is a terribly pedestrian, and frankly, rather dull slasher film, with an over-reliance on gore for it's thrills and a frustrating lack of any kind of personality for any of the characters, least of all the killer, who remains a cipher throughout the movie. In a certain sense, the film is a great success, because it does exactly what it set out to do: make a gay themed horror film as predictable and stereotypical as any of the other straight-themed torture and gore films can be. The only thing that sets the film apart from the pack is that the pretty people getting cut up are handsome young men instead of pretty young women.
Viewed through that lens, however, the film is more interesting than it should be. Most gay movies are fairly horrible, and while the fact that they tend to be budgeted poorly can take some of the blame, most of the blame can be laid on the fact that they only exist to try and court the gay dollar. I'm as guilty of encouraging this as any gay man (I do like to see stories that passably resemble my life from time to time, and playing "where will the gratuitous nude scene pop up" is sort of fun), so it's somewhat encouraging to see a gay movie that's not very good because it doesn't strive to elevate itself above the least elements of it's genre, not because it's pandering to a gay audience. Hellbent is a not very good movie because it's not trying to be anything other than a cheapie slasher movie, and that's refreshing.
Since I'm never going to get another chance to link to it, here's After Elton's guide to gay horror films.
Today's post was going to be a follow-up to the last post, specifically looking at Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge and how it can be used to illustrate the frequently homophobic uses of gay codings and themes in horror films, but I realized two things while watching it.
One, the film hasn't aged very well, and probably wasn't good to begin with. This made sitting through the film and paying attention to it extremely tedious. I suddenly found myself paging through Previews during the "talky" bits of the movie.
The other thing I noticed is that it's kind of silly to talk about the homophobic subtext of the film, when in actual fact it's all "text." The film could have had big letters flashing across the screen at certain points "GAYS ARE EVIL!" and it would have been just as subtle in its message.
So, forget that. It was a lousy film, it bored me, it was too stupid and clumsy to be offensive, and I'm not going to bore all of you by talking about it.
Instead, here's a random odd thing from a Disney comic:
And, to keep you all occupied, another one of Gold Key's "do the work for us" activity pages where you fill in your own allegedly funny caption:
This one brings up all kinds of unpleasant thoughts that are not fit for public airing.
One of the interesting things about horror movies is how very gay they frequently are. At first it may seem surprising, but it really makes a kind of sense. At their heart, most horror films are about ordinary people trying to survive the warped reality they've been introduced into by something that, in some way, violates the natural order and the way the world is supposed to be. This is not significantly different from the bulk of anti-gay rhetoric you hear from political and religious leaders. There's a certain kinship, in that sense, to gay people and the monstrous denizens of horror films, and not just in the sense that they're both preying on nice, normal heterosexual teenagers. In the bulk of horror films, these connections are unintentional or so deeply subtextual and coded as to be easily missed. But every once in a while a film comes along that plays with the themes and connections in interesting ways.
Charlie Brewster is a typical American teenager. He's a mediocre student, he likes cheesy horror films, he's got a girlfriend reluctant to go all the way with him, and he's got a vaguely queer sidekick he can push around. He's also got a mysterious new neighbor who only seems to come out at night. That neighbor, Jerry Dandridge has attracted some conversation amongst the neighborhood women. He's handsome, an agent of suburban gentrification (he fixes old houses for a living), dresses in an affected style with long coats and scarves, and has a "live-in carpenter." Charlie's mother, for one, is quite curious about the nice gay couple who have moved into the neighborhood. Charlie's a little more suspicious. He's heard strange sounds, and seen women go in who later turn up dead. Oh, and there's the fact that Jerry has fangs. In short, Charlie's convinced that the nice homosexual next door is, in fact, a vampire. And he can't get anyone to believe him.
Charlie's efforts to expose Jerry lead him into increased conflict with Jerry. As Dandrige plays a sadistic game of cat and mouse with Charlie, Charlie only succeeds in alienating his friends. In desperation, Charlie turns to horror movie host Peter Vincent. Vincent is more concerned with the fact that he's just been fired because vampire movies are old fashioned, kids today want "demented madman running around in ski masks, hacking up young virgins," to take Charlie seriously. And when he realizes Charlie is serious he hightails it out of there, only to be roped into helping Charlie's girl-friend Amy and side-kick "Evil" Ed prove that Dandridge is only human. The experiment back-fires, however, as Vincent instead realizes that Dandridge is truly undead, and he flees the scene, leaving Charlie and his still skeptical friends to their fate.
The monster literally emerges from the closet of a teenage boy. No, no subtext here.
The film largely rushes towards it's climax at this point. Jerry seduces Ed and sends Ed to kill Peter Vincent, while Jerry comes for Amy, who just happens to be the spitting image of his long-dead love. Charlie and Peter are compelled to act together to rescue Amy and stop Dandridge. And at the end, heteronormativity is successfully restored, as Charlie and Amy get back together, all the challenges to the "normal" world are dispatched and Peter Vincent gets his job back and decides to stop showing vampire films. But there are still a few interesting twists to get there. The seduction into vampiredom of Evil Ed is just that. Ed is differentiated from the rest of the cast by his dark and sarcastic demeanor, his interest in horror and the occult, and his proto-punk/goth attire. He's marked out as an outsider amongst his peers. Jerry's speech, however, hints at even more of a reason why Ed is an outsider. "I know what it's like being different. Only they won't pick on you anymore. Or beat you up. I'll see to that." It's that suggestion of bullying violence that finally triggers the gaydar on Ed. Ed's a weird kid. A more conventional narrative would have him largely ignored in school. And Jerry doesn't attack Ed to transform him, rather Ed comes to him and, in fact, hugs him. It's very much like a "coming out" scene.
The post-transformation scenes with Ed and Peter Vincent are remarkable as well, and only accentuate these queer tones. For one, Peter Vincent is played as a slightly fey but dignified aging queen by Roddy McDowall. You don't cast McDowall if you want any implications of heterosexuality in a character. It's simply not the "type" that he plays. And the vampire Ed adopts an even more outrageous and campy persona than he ever had before. If human Ed was a closeted teen, vampire Ed is a flamboyantly out queer. At one point he even adopts a strange, rag-doll drag to trick Vincent.
The heavy gay implications in Peter Vincent are hard to ignore as well. McDowall plays the character as a kind of cross between Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. He's got the faded dignity of Cushing, but the fey archness of Price as well. You have, in effect, a man known for playing gay-coded characters aping the mannerisms of two other actors who play gay-coded characters. It's a fascinating ororobous of affected mannerisms and mincing caricatures.
The relationship between Jerry Dandridge and his assistant/servant/lover Billy Cole is noteworthy as well. There are other hints of Dandridge's homosexuality, particularly a telling exchange with Charlie in which Jerry says he doesn't have a choice about his nature, but this relationship is the most prominent. The film does explicitly posit their posing as a gay couple as a cover for vampirism, but there are these incidental moments of tenderness and affectation between the two that implies more to their relationship than the standard Master/Renfield relationship in vampire narratives. It's why the introduction late to the film of Dandrige's obsession with Amy feels like a false note. She happens to look like an ex-lover, so he takes her from Charlie and transforms her into a vampire. It feels off, despite Dandridge's previously established habit of feeding off prostitutes (a brief implication is made via off-screen newscasts that Dandridge feeds on men as well, but we only see him feed off women). It's a peculiar statement of heterosexuality in a film steeped in gay characters and imagery, almost seeming like an attempt to deny the queer implications of the narrative. And, given the realities of film-making then and now, not an implausible explanation for it.
Which is why the casting of Amanda Bearse in the role of Amy is so brilliant. Seen now, years after she has come out, it only furthers the gay text of the film. But even ignoring that, Bearse's Amy is a very tomboyish character. She keeps her hair short and wears bulky, mannish clothing for most of the film. Her vampiric transformation, in contrast to Ed's enhanced sense of camp, transforms her into a slinky, long-haired seductress, the stereotypical "sexy female vamp" of so many films. It's a ludicrously oversexed and overdone vision of heterosexuality, in contrast to the relatively normative homosexual relationship of Jerry and Billy.
However, since this is a commercial film, and since this is a horror film, the monstrous queers must be dispatched. Peter Vincent successfully defeats Ed, in a scene ending with a protracted transformation sequence in which Vincent is overcome with sympathy for the boy he has just killed, and together Peter and Charlie dispatch first Billy and then Jerry, who never, it seemed, had the good sense to simply brick up the two dozen windows in his basement, rather than simply paint them black or put heavy curtains in front of them. No, it simply wouldn't be a vampire film at all if one of the more stupid and contrived plot devices of the genre wasn't present. But, not only are the queers killed and heteronormativity restored, but Charlie finally gets to go all the way with his handsomely boyish girlfriend. So heteronormativity is really restored. Though, tellingly, a hint does exist of at least one gay survivor, still in the shadows.
Of course she rides a scooter...
Fright Night is an interesting film for me, not just because of this playing with gay themes that it does so thoroughly. It also represents a kind of response to what were prevalent themes in horror at the time. Supernatural horror, especially of the "classic monsters" kind was, as it largely is now, out of fashion. Vincent's line about "demented madmen in ski masks" was as true then about the audience's taste in horror as it is today. The rise of the "gore and torture" films in recent years was mirrored in the early eighties by the masked slasher films. Fright Night was an attempt to return the supernatural elements to the horror genre, in an entertaining way, updated for contemporary sensibilities. As opposed to the peculiarly anti-sex and anti-pleasure themes of the slasher movie, writer/director Tom Holland makes a case for the sensual pleasure of the supernatural, as well as emphasizing the sense of fun and humor that those films had, as opposed to the grim seriousness of the gore genres.
"Welcome to Fright Night. For real."
In contrast to your typical tired and schlocky vampire, Chris Sarandon as Dandridge manages to make him appealing and sinister. He plays up the camp and queer undertones without ever allowing them to degenerate into a fag joke or an explicit condemnation of Dandridge for homosexuality. While largely dismissed at the time of it's release, the playing that Holland and his cast do with the conflict between "classic" monster themes and modern sensibilities and the coded gay subtext of the horror genre are still remarkable, and have not really been duplicated, or rarely even attempted to this day.
I'm a bit lethargic the last couple of days. I plan on having some...uniquely appropriate to this site Halloween entries up in the next day or two. But, in the meantime...
Sometime I post just for the cheap joke:
Sometimes I post to feed your sick and dirty fetishes:
It's been awhile since I picked on comic's biggest Batman wannabee (outside Moon Knight), Green Arrow.
Oh, so that's not very good at flattery at all, then? Also, "morale builder"? Easy there, Ollie. Blatant sexual harassment is Hal's job on this team!
Yes, but what does the public at large think of Black Canary's ability to boost "morale?" Why, yes, of course...every time I see a pretty girl, my first thought is "I bet she's some sort of agent here to overthrow the government" as well.
Anyway, this is the real gem of Justice League of America #77 (the issue where Snapper Carr sells out the team). It's something, in these days of over-sensitive fans, nerd rage, and fan entitlement you'd never see. A letter demanding the death of a character. Such fury! Granted, given that it's Green Arrow, it's not like any of the points cited are incorrect.
And what does Ollie have to say in regards to all this vitriol being directed at him? What a tool.
This was always a popular one with Mike and I back in the old "working together" days, and I'm glad to know that the unfaithful creep fellow keeps up the tradition with the new guys.
Well, at least in this neck of the woods, anyway. But what would a beefcake/cheesecake week be without some gratuitous shots of Ted Grant, aka Wildcat.
Here we see Ted wearing a unitard and grappling with another man.
Here we see Ted, wearing a tank-top, tight jeans and a leather jacket, preparing to enter an alley late at night.
Here we see Ted emerging from that alley, now well acquainted with an older man, while exhausted men lie all about the pair.
And people have tried to argue when I said he was once rough trade...
Elephantmen #3 by Richard Starkings, Tom Scioli, Nick Filardi and Moritat The series of short sci-fi tales tying into Starkings and Ladronn's Hip Flask series continues, with two stories showcasing the characters of Hip Flask and Ebony Hide. The lead story is a gory morality tale about the black market demand for Elephantmen illustrated in Scioli's Kirby-inspired art-style. It's a short but compelling piece that makes the book worthwhile, as the back-up story, though nicely illustrated, serves essentially as an extended introduction to the character of Miki, without actually revealing too much about her.
What Were They Thinking Monster Mashup by Giffen, Casey, Church, Stokes and several artists not in a posistion to complain
Read this review if your name is Kevin Church: This is vile, unfunny, disgusting work that pissed on the contributions of men whose boots a shiftless dilettante like Church is not fit to lick. Read this review if your name is NOT Kevin Church: The torrid psycho-sexual subtext of this Silver Age monster tales is brought to the surface by a group of talented and funny writers. Boom's various remix projects are the best of the recent trend, and the stories work precisely because they revel in the goofiness of the source material. Church aquits himself well in his published comics debut, and I'm not just saying that because he's a friend, because I would never tell him that because his head is swelled enough as it is.
Lots of manga releases that appealed to me came out this last week. I feel a large manga review post coming up. I was particularly struck by the release of both Densha Otoko and Welcome to the NHK, as both deal with somewhat similar subject matter, but one goes off in an ultimately hopeful and optimistic direction while the other delights in tearing up its subject.
My Random Gripe of the Day
Let me sum up this commercial for you all: "Hey, isn't the threat of prison rape funny? Buy our jeans!"
Kalinara has declared it Cheesecake/Beefcake week. This is a cause I can fully support. I'll have to go and dig through my comics that aren't in storage to find some choice examples, but, in the meantime, here's a nice real life example of the principle.
This photo of Paul Rudd was in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone, and it's been making the rounds online since then. It's a very nice photo of a very attractive man.
First of all, there's the face. It's pleasingly masculine without becoming cartoonishly so. It's also a face full of personality. The expression betrays a sense of humor and a strong sense of self-deprecations.
The chest has a good mane of hair on it, but not too much. There's also some definition to the musculature, but without too much bulk.
And then there's this. The part of the body where the leg joins the torso, just above the pubic region. There's an actual word for this part of the body which I can never remember. But I'm totally a that part of the body man.
So, in Justice League of America #87, I come across this completely out of character moment: Batman being nice to Green Lantern? The hell?
This panel shortly follows that up: Ah, Bats being a pushy, anal retentive crank...that's the Batman we know and love.
This being the Silver Age, of course, it's the second panel that's taken as a clue that Batman is being mind-controlled.
Fortunately, there's somethings that never change, be it Silver, "Bronze" or Modern age. And that's inappropriate touching. She really doesn't look like she enjoys being in the middle of all that, does she?
Hey, don't blame this one on me, Evilbeard put the idea in my head in the first place. And no, I still don't plan on watching the show again any time soon.
Atom Feed
