Funny ha ha and Funny queer

March 18, 2007 8:13 PM

The Open Secret. "They were a light in the dark ... This is who and what I am; this is my tribe — and, look, I’m famous and life is fun". Matthew Parris sings the praises of those old British poofs, the camp, safe, funny gays that your mum liked. All together now I'm Free! more more
posted by grahamwell (35 comments total)

That's a nice tribute but because they were the only public face of gay men for a century they did set us back. The recent Garrison Keilor thing shows how still-viable and pervasive that stereotype is even today. These actors enjoyed themselves but were typecast in asexual, mincing, comic relief roles (much like black actors could only play servants for decades). Actors who actually were gay and played those camp roles were explicitly closeted in public and were photographed or talked about or married women for publicity purposes only which made it even worse. Even butcher actors like Rock Hudson or Randolph Scott or Troy Donahue did that, let alone the likes of Liberace and Paul Lynde.

Edward Everett Horton was very famous in movies as the same type as Inman played too, decades and decades earlier (and he was just one of many)--they minced and camped it up with the best--by the time tv people did it it was already very old news, and a standard comic "type"--i believe it was standard even back in vaudeville days.

Also, Bugs Bunny and Milton Berle and many others were playing gay very often, along with most comedians of the early part of the century--the folks mentioned in the article weren't at all any kind of advance, nor were they brave. Brave would have been to have live as fearlessly and as flamboyantly as they played. Brave would have been like Wilde, or the many many many others before them.

Because they were on tv and beloved, they could have helped-- but didn't--Especially those who were famous post-Stonewall, like Inman.
posted by amberglow at 8:37 PM on March 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

I don't know about in the UK, but at the same time as AYBS in the 70s, here we had Soap, and Jody--who started out as a stereotype (who even wanted a sex change), but then got very real and human (and even had boyfriends on the show).
posted by amberglow at 8:45 PM on March 18, 2007

related: The 1930s: The Heyday of the Sissy (and The 1940s: The Sissy as Threat)
posted by amberglow at 8:52 PM on March 18, 2007

of course that type is still around--Jack in Will & Grace--but he was openly gay and had boyfriends--a giant change.
posted by amberglow at 8:56 PM on March 18, 2007

Amberglow, we had Soap and Jody too - then there was Stephen Carrington and the world changed for ever.

In my teens I met the great British literary lioness Rebecca West. I was intimidated, the conversation was awkward. Somehow we got on to 'Soap' and everything changed. She loved it, it was the only thing she watched on television. Bless her.
posted by grahamwell at 9:20 PM on March 18, 2007 [2 favorites]

In a perverse way I'm grateful for another reason. These old queens set a generation of homophobes off on the wrong track (as far as I'm concerned). A gay skinhead? Impossible. OK, if you say so.
posted by grahamwell at 9:27 PM on March 18, 2007

What about "mincing nancyboys" who are straight? By which I don't mean "closeted" or "in denial" or even "non-practicing bisexual" but "sexually attracted exclusively to women"? Why does "sissy" have to be seen as synonymous with "gay"? I've known a few sissies who were simply naturally "effeminate" but with no interest in our own sex (not only just no interest in me); should they have pretended to be gay so people could conceptualize them easier? Or maybe they should pretend to be transexual lesbians, eh?
posted by davy at 9:29 PM on March 18, 2007

Even butcher actors like Rock Hudson or Randolph Scott or Troy Donahue...

more butch, darling, ;)
posted by taosbat at 9:31 PM on March 18, 2007

"Plato was gay? Mickey Mouse's dog was gay?"
posted by davy at 9:32 PM on March 18, 2007

ok, taos--butcher than me? butch like a butcher? ; >

great thing about sissies at Counterpunch: A Sissy's Manifesto
...The heroic gift of the sissy-and I mean the real high swishing sissy-is that he can't pass. He's going to be a star or a drag queen or dead, but if he survives he's not going to be able to find safety in a lie. ...
posted by amberglow at 9:42 PM on March 18, 2007

davy, that's the John-Boy Walton syndrome--i don't know about them--maybe some if not most do come out one day?

graham, i would have loved to have been there--that Grey Lamb book is amazing.
posted by amberglow at 9:44 PM on March 18, 2007

butcher than thee? I hesitate.

butch like a butcher I cringe at the implied kink.

How tough does one gotta' be to make it as a star on the mean streets?
posted by taosbat at 9:48 PM on March 18, 2007

She was great. I remember a huge, bright beautiful flat in Kensington, with a genuine Lowry on the wall. She had servants, but it was a curse, she couldn't manage them and was convinced they were plotting against her - which after a while they were. If I remember correctly the television set was hidden in a sort of box. The servant would elaborately unpack it and set it up for 'Soap'. Once the show was over, he would dissassemble it and put it all away again. Television was not quite OK.

Oh, and the flat was full of Ketchup bottles turned upside down. For some reason that seemed very strange to me.

She had a great interest in Science and quizzed me about electronics and radio (which was my obsession). Then she coughed and I knew it was time to leave, apparently Bernard Levin was waiting outside.
posted by grahamwell at 9:53 PM on March 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well grahamwell, once in 1979 in a leather bar in Baltimore John Waters told me to get off his lap. So THERE.
posted by davy at 9:59 PM on March 18, 2007

davy : >

Oh, and the flat was full of Ketchup bottles turned upside down. For some reason that seemed very strange to me.
A Depression thrift remnant? Or decor? (i still do it because my grandma always did and brought up my mother to do it too. It lets you get every drop, pretty much.)
posted by amberglow at 10:04 PM on March 18, 2007

oh, davy, that reminds me--imagine if Waters spent his life pretending to be straight--it'd be laughable nowadays and often is. or Harvey Fierstein talking about dating women in interviews? Absurd.
posted by amberglow at 10:07 PM on March 18, 2007

Davy, did you get off?

For those too young for 'Soap', here's a taster.
Part 1
Part 2

It's survived pretty well.
The only thing Jessica would change about life is that she would set it all to music.
posted by grahamwell at 10:17 PM on March 18, 2007

i was recently asked for 5 tv characters as dinner party guests--I picked Jessica Tate as my #1 : >
posted by amberglow at 11:03 PM on March 18, 2007

Hey amberglow, who were the others? Do tell.
Jessica talks about Sex.
'I like it in the light, it's nice to see a person's face'
'Face?'
posted by grahamwell at 11:18 PM on March 18, 2007

I love that one, graham : >

Jessica Tate
Uncle Arthur from Bewitched ; >
Hogan from Hogan's Heroes
Rhoda
Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap (i've had a crush on Bakula for years)
posted by amberglow at 11:34 PM on March 18, 2007

Jody and his football player ex-boyfriend
posted by amberglow at 11:38 PM on March 18, 2007

The laugh track in that clip is disconcerting though. I love you and I want you back ... Oh!, (Yuk!). It was an uphill struggle even then. How things have changed. Thank you 'Soap'.

I'd want Michael Scofield from Prison Break. Man, that show is too Gay even for me. An open secret?
posted by grahamwell at 12:05 AM on March 19, 2007

I read this a few days ago just after Inman died.
Growing up gay in working class Cowley it did not seem that they were brave pioneers, believe me.

Watching AYBS or Larry Grayson or Dick Emery or all the other pooves on 1970s telly was an exercise in mortification: remember, we all had one telly per home and 3 channels - tops! - to select from. We had to experience these stereotypes in the company of our straight brethren, who laughed at the character, and implicitly, at us, too. They helped internalise the hatred, because we laughed or we left the room.

I hated the whole lot of them and longed for the handsome gay footballer, or news reporter, or chef to come out and help normalise me.
posted by dash_slot- at 1:17 AM on March 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Strangely, as a straight-but-weird middle-class boy in Witney at the same time, I found a lot of inspiration in Mr Humphries and Julian and Sandy - they were not only not of their society, but they didn't care and obviously profited from it. Charles Hawtrey in the Carry Ons, too. Actually, the more I think of it, most of my early heroes were as camp as Christmas. At Liberace's house. With added poodles.

Of course a lot of that got (figuratively) beaten out of me before I left school, but it was a great comfort in its time. When it came to the crunch I always identified more with Molesworth than Fotherington-Thomas, though.

I reckon if I'd ever been interested in the whole shagging blokes thing, my life would have been a lot more simpler.

I like this piece, and I would recommend Against the Law, too, though the last time I read it was about twenty-five years ago.
posted by Grangousier at 3:10 AM on March 19, 2007

Because they were on tv and beloved, they could have helped-- but didn't

Weren't homosexual acts actually illegal at the time? (They certainly were during Inman's AYBS portrayal in the UK). There's an argument to be made that, with the potential for public vilification if it went awry, Inman and his ilk were rather brave in presenting some form of homosexuality (stereotypical though it was) on a nationwide medium as a part of the workaday environment. You might object to the presentation, and I completely take Dash_slot's point, but there's a world of Grannies out there who phase shifted just slightly from 'abominations against nature' towards 'just like that nice Mr Humphreys'.
posted by Sparx at 5:47 AM on March 19, 2007

If you read the article, most of what people have written here in ‘reaction’ has been adressed within. Matthew Parris is one smart and insightful cookie.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 6:06 AM on March 19, 2007

Someone here ought to tip a nod to Dirk Bogarde, who was playing gay men in the early 60s (notably Victim, 1961, the first film in the English language to actually use the word 'homosexual' in dialogue)--a time when homosexuality was still very definitely illegal in the UK--a decision that could have destroyed not just his status as a leading man but his entire acting career.

Bogarde never admitted he was gay, but spent much of his later life living with a male companion.
posted by Hogshead at 6:24 AM on March 19, 2007

Aidan Kehoe: God - it's true, it's all there - right down to the 'grandmothers'/'nanas' example. That'll teach me to read the comments first. Mea culpa.
posted by Sparx at 6:54 AM on March 19, 2007

I think you're mistaken, Sparx - homosexual acts between consenting adults in private were legalised in England in 1967 (though not until 1980 in Scotland), whereas AYBS didn't start until 1972.

I remember when AYBS started thinking what a startlingly old-fashioned show it was, and assuming it was deliberately evoking a world 20 or 30 years behind the times. It would, I think, have seemed absurd at the time to suggest John Inman was at the cutting edge of gay liberation - people in 1972 considered themselves pretty advanced about these things already, having had the idealist rebellion of the sixties and then enough time to start taking the results for granted.

I don't think it's reasonable to say camp comedians set the cause back, either, though: any more than AYBS caused the decline of the department store.
posted by Phanx at 9:51 AM on March 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

From an Audience With Kenneth Williams, on talking to Edith Evans:

EE: You're quite a charming young man. There's no reason why the right lady shouldn't come along.

KW: I said "I'm 46. You get set in your ways."
posted by Summer at 10:09 AM on March 19, 2007

What Phanx said about legality, and AYBS being way behind the times (and sodomy was illegal here until just very recently in some states, but that never stopped me or millions of us)

I think when those are the only visible examples of gay men around, the cause is set back, especially for those of us growing up at the time. I'm so glad that Soap was around, even if they jerked that character around--it wasn't til i was an adult that things like Thirtysomething and Dynasty and Making Love, etc, came out.

The power of tv here, especially in the days before cable, was immeasurable in determining many social attitudes. I think that must have been true in the UK as well, no?
posted by amberglow at 11:28 AM on March 19, 2007

I think when those are the only visible examples of gay men around, the cause is set back, especially for those of us growing up at the time.

Would we have been better served with no visible examples of gay men? Because realistically, at the time, those were the two choices available.
posted by me & my monkey at 1:18 PM on March 19, 2007

I think we would have--we were only either sissies or haunted/mentally ill/criminals in movies and tv for ages and ages. It has an effect on us--and on those who see us that way--that we're still living with.

It's because of these negative depictions that GLAAD and other orgs were born--to fight them (altho i guess that means we needed them to spur us on to fighting against them?)
posted by amberglow at 1:42 PM on March 19, 2007

homosexual acts between consenting adults in private were legalised in England in 1967


Dammit, you are right - it's really not my thread. I was getting my decades confused (it was late, there was wine). It was really only a partial decriminalisation, though. The '67 law reform so narrowly described what was permissible (over 21, in private, only two people) that convictions for 'Gross Indecency' under the '56 anti-homosexuality laws had trebled between '66 and 71, and also involved raising the penalty for incidents involving 16-21 year olds. The media also played a role in increasing public disdain post '67 in a way they previously hadn't - so there were still very 'acceptable' negative views to counter-act - possibly even more than previously.

Full disclosure: The footnote links are all facts found on the internet and should be given the appropriate level of scepticism. I don't live in the UK (and was an 18 month old on a flight out of there when AYBS premiered).
posted by Sparx at 3:04 PM on March 19, 2007

davy, John Waters has a tv show now--he's the Groom Reaper
posted by amberglow at 5:07 PM on March 19, 2007