How to Be a Man/Boys Keep Swinging

January 18, 2023 6:28 PM

In 1985, CBS aired a special program designed to help boys figure out How to Be a Man. Hosted by Captain Kangaroo's Bob Keeshan, it concluded with Broadway's Rex Smith performing a carefully choreographed rendition of David Bowie's Boys Keep Swinging.
posted by Pater Aletheias (54 comments total)

lol
posted by dobbs at 6:44 PM on January 18, 2023

Look, I’m not one to call things homoerotic just because they’re filled with dudes being homosocial but like… I mean… just look at that.

(tag yourself; I’m the butcher swinging a cleaver in time to the music behind a raft of hanging salami)
posted by uncleozzy at 6:44 PM on January 18, 2023 [15 favorites]

Incredible.

”It is a harmless one-hour music-cum-skit entertainment that is out to please and succeeds in carving for itself a niche between mildly amusing and silly.”

Amazing.
posted by rodlymight at 6:44 PM on January 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Everything I’ve read or heard about Bob Keeshan afffirms that he was a kind, generous, completely sincere and good person, but as a kid I did not buy his shtick for a minute.

Mr. Rogers, on the other hand, was believable though and through, though maybe not that interesting at times.
posted by jamjam at 6:53 PM on January 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

I wasn't gay before I watched that but...

That song in particular is a hilarious choice - I always read it as a playful critique of masculinity and a sort of bi man's anthem. But I'm also a little scandalized that they kept "pop of the cherry" in there!
posted by latkes at 6:56 PM on January 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

Oh my.
posted by evilmomlady at 6:56 PM on January 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am… mesmerized. Mensmerized???
posted by Mizu at 7:07 PM on January 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

Everything I’ve read or heard about Bob Keeshan afffirms that he was a kind, generous, completely sincere and good person, but as a kid I did not buy his shtick for a minute.

Late-period Captain Kangaroo was a pale shadow of his early-1960s character.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:15 PM on January 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

“other boys check you out”

*close-up of a guy’s butt in a tight football uniform*

Er…not leaving too much to subtext, are they…
posted by darkstar at 7:24 PM on January 18, 2023 [16 favorites]

yep *checks radar* that's pretty gay
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:24 PM on January 18, 2023 [6 favorites]

Took eight people to write it, whatever it was.
posted by Naberius at 8:55 PM on January 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Rex Smith performing a carefully choreographed rendition of David Bowie's Boys Keep Swinging .

"Siri, give me an auto-generated mashup of pre-condom era gay porn conceits."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:10 PM on January 18, 2023 [10 favorites]

Really missed an opportunity to have Hal Linden perform Suffragette City.
posted by credulous at 9:22 PM on January 18, 2023 [11 favorites]

Keeshan's shocked expression says it all.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 9:32 PM on January 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Took eight people to write it, whatever it was.

cocaine was a team sport in the 80s
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:08 PM on January 18, 2023 [13 favorites]

The bit where the butcher's got all the hanging sausages!! Crying
posted by potrzebie at 10:51 PM on January 18, 2023

Just the laugh I needed at 1 am... "Boys", indeed.

“other boys check you out”

*close-up of a guy’s butt in a tight football uniform*

Wait a minute, what did I miss? (goes back for more video)
posted by cybrcamper at 1:25 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

MANLAND
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 2:12 AM on January 19, 2023 [11 favorites]

Also, the attempt to clean up the lyrics by changing "life is a pop of the cherry" to "life is the top of the cherry" just made it gayer.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 2:14 AM on January 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

University of Michigan football!
posted by NoMich at 4:10 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

It would not be fair to talk about controversial performances of this song without a link to Bowie's own. The comments on this video, many from those who recall seeing it way back in 1979, are worth a read.
posted by rongorongo at 4:27 AM on January 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

Wow.

None. None more gay.

This is amazing, and if it is part of the sexual awakening of many young men during that time period, you know what? I get it. Rex Smith is batting a 1000 as a hottie.
posted by Kitteh at 4:30 AM on January 19, 2023

Everything I’ve read or heard about Bob Keeshan afffirms that he was a kind, generous, completely sincere and good person, but as a kid I did not buy his shtick for a minute.
Mr.Rogers, on the other hand, was believable though and through, though maybe not that interesting at times.

….and to little Canadian me, Mr. Rogers felt very off-brand, smarmy and foreign. Mr. Dressup and The Friendly Giant were my warm, fuzzy TV characters (though both were American and mentored by Rogers).
posted by brachiopod at 4:50 AM on January 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

I just went and watched the original, to compare.

It has Bowie as six different drag queens.

This is gayer.
posted by Xiphias Gladius at 5:34 AM on January 19, 2023 [15 favorites]

Took eight people to write it, whatever it was.

And sadly the director, Robert Nigro, died way, way too early in 1992.
posted by mikelieman at 5:44 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you enjoy this kind of homerotic machismo you'll for sure enjoy RRR (on netflix)
posted by srboisvert at 6:11 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, whose baby is that?
posted by dobbs at 6:15 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Fun fact, Rex Smith is married to a high school classmate of mine. I saw him at our reunion a few months ago. We talked books, as it happens. Nice fellow.

(Also I just discovered he follows me on Twitter, SWEET)
posted by jscalzi at 7:03 AM on January 19, 2023 [15 favorites]

I ... I ... I have so many thoughts. I'm sending this to a friend who's both a Bowie fan and a counselor. Analyze This, Patti.

That dark war segment? Yuck. Well, it was the Raygun years. (Tho before "Don't Ask...")

University of Michigan football!

As a person who's spent my life around people who take UM football too seriously, thank you, I'll just think of this video every time it's mentioned.
posted by NorthernLite at 9:03 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I dug into this show a little. Keeshan called it quits on Captain Kangaroo when CBS started to cut back on his airtime and shove him out of the way for more morning news programming. He cut a deal to stick around in some limited fashion like doing spots during saturday morning cartoons and to also do a few specials when he felt like it. This was the first one of those specials.

This 1985 Sun Sentinel article (paywalled, sorry) talks about Keeshan's goal here:

Keeshan said How to Be a Man is designed to show kids that "you don't have to be John Wayne or Clint Eastwood -- those macho images impressed on us. There are many different ways to be mature and strong. It's very tough and life places a lot of pressures on young people. We deal with those (in the special) humorously, but the point is made nonetheless.

"Sometimes it's not the macho man approach that works, as Susan [Anton] demonstrates to John Denver in a 'singles scene' sketch. Burning Angry, a video with Rick Derringer, shows what happens to some of us when we get behind the wheel of a car -- the changes that take place. It says, 'Is this you, buddy? Wise up a little.' And Hal Linden and Scott Baio have an effective sketch about communication between father and son.

So it looks like he was going for a production similar to Marlo Thomas' Free to Be You and Me, in his own way. It's hard to find any other clips from the show other than this grand finale number which, when viewed alone, looks like it's really out of context.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:39 AM on January 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

….and to little Canadian me, Mr. Rogers felt very off-brand, smarmy and foreign.

I'll point you to the classic clip, Rogers' testimony to the US Congress, pleading to them to save the funding for American public broadcasting. Watch him turn over a skeptical politician in 6 minutes with no script.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:44 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

you don't have to be John Wayne

Certainly! You can be John Inman instead.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:32 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

So I found the John Denver / Susan Anton skit and, unfortunately, it's as cheesy as the production number. I'm not sure it even conveys the idea Keeshan wanted.
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:16 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

a perfect distillation of 'gay'

strip the negative toxic baggage, focus on the "man attracted to other men" and add a blast of truly gay.. high spirited, lovely, happy good times.. and this is indeed perfectly gay
posted by elkevelvet at 11:22 AM on January 19, 2023

I'm sad about how the humor in this we're all enjoying is so deeply steeped in toxic masculinity. Not calling anyone out; I think watching this super gay video about "how to be a man" is hilariously ironic too. But I wish it weren't.

My version of being a man includes having sex with other men, and butchers with cleavers standing behind suggestive sausages, and the confident aspiration that "nothing stands in your way when you're a boy". These things are masculinity for me. It's a little bleak seeing all that reduced to a joke about the irony of it.
posted by Nelson at 11:27 AM on January 19, 2023 [9 favorites]

This thing is so obscure, it’s not even in Bob Keeshan’s llist of credits on IMDB.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 11:47 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thanks this is just the right amount of rando weirdness I needed for a Thursday
The YouTube comments are racking up too they’re pretty golden
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:07 PM on January 19, 2023

These things are masculinity for me. It's a little bleak seeing all that reduced to a joke about the irony of it.

Yeah, I want to be clear that like, I'm having fun with this, but for me the disconnect is that these things are masculinity, but also probably not the sort of masculinity that they were trying to portray here? I really did mean what I said above about it still being masculine to be John Inman.

The whole concept of this TV special really is boggling to my 2023 brain. I was a kid when it aired, but obviously didn't see it (or it didn't make an impression). The comparison above to Free to Be You and Me makes it make a little bit of sense, but it's still pretty out-there, in terms of something to put on TV.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:14 PM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm sad about how the humor

I think the needle has moved since I was a kid, I think we just keep doing our best

meanwhile, I take joy in things and try to find the best.. the awful is like the ocean we swim in, if you really want to find that
posted by elkevelvet at 12:34 PM on January 19, 2023

I wasn’t born yet when this aired, but I read it as making fun of toxic masculinity rather than indulging in it. Something like: “Gays have always been here, doing manly man things you think of as Definitely Not Gay.” Am I giving this too much credit? I realize that straight people of the time would mostly just laugh at what they saw as incongruity.
posted by Comet Bug at 12:50 PM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

There is no way in 1985 an American TV show for children would be making fun of traditional masculinity or sharing a gay positive message. It's possible some of the cast or writers were having a laugh at the irony but nothing "fruity" would have been tolerated officially. I think most straight people of the era wouldn't have even seen the gay context here. Or not articulated it explicitly.
posted by Nelson at 1:20 PM on January 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

*close-up of a guy’s butt in a tight football uniform*

They're called tight ends for a reason.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:20 PM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

None. None more gay.

I've always thought the Pet Shop Boys' video for "Go West" was Peak Gay.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:29 PM on January 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

Hey Nelson, thanks for sharing how this is landing for you. I am a lifelong gay and of the right age to have seen this contemporaneously but.. afab so totally different set of life experiences.

For me if there is a 'joke' its on the stupidity of a project aimed at reinforcing heteronormative masculinity while in reality reflecting norms that would have been opposed by such a project. But my opinion doesn't matter so much here...

One thing I thought about watching this, having lived through the 80s, is how during that time of intense homophobia, there was a space available for more gender play by virtue of queerness' submerged state at the time. I used to love the frequent tomboy narratives in popular culture at the time (and felt betrayed when they inevitably ended in some kind of feminizing makeover). They felt like they reflected me in my queerness, but they existed in a mythical world supposedly free from queerness, so were not labeled as such. I imagine if this TV special was made today they would specifically name gayness as one way of being as a 'boy', or perhaps just couldn't' make the special at all, due to the need to include gay identity and the pushback that would receive in programming designed for kids. But if they did name gayness, it might actually reinforce a rigidity around straight masculinity as somehow supposedly different that gay masculinity.
posted by latkes at 1:32 PM on January 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

it’s not even in Bob Keeshan’s llist of credits on IMDB.

"How to be a Man" doesn't show up in IMDB at all from what I can find.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2023

This reminds me of nothing so much as the seconds-long scene in Pee Wee's Christmas Special (1988) of shirtless, sweaty construction workers building a room entirely out of fruitcake.
posted by obloquy at 5:46 PM on January 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

I've always thought the Pet Shop Boys' video for "Go West" was Peak Gay.

That song fills me with a certain kind of longing that is entirely about being a queer midwestern kid in the 80s. Even though it came out, IIRC, in the early 90s.
posted by Well I never at 6:32 PM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I love everything about this. This comment from the YT page had me in stitches:

“I’ve never seen anything so “ambiguously” gay that wasn’t a comedy sketch. The “what the F is happening” look on the nameless, voiceless “wife” straight from central casting as she watches Rex Smith skip off to Bob Fosse’s Porkchop Hill sums it all up.”

I mean, the video starts out with a dude bumping and grinding on a creosote pole and only gets more unintentionally campy from there.

It’s as if Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly were hired to do a serious insurance commercial, but the director then gave them free rein to “just ad lib the dialogue.”
posted by darkstar at 7:27 PM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

(To clarify: I mean I love everything about this as an experience in ironic humor. The content, if taken as serious — as evidently it was intended to be back when it was originally broadcast — is quite bad. Even without the benefit of the past ~40 years of developing social awareness of toxic masculinity, a lot of this video would have been considered quite sexist even in the ‘80s.)
posted by darkstar at 7:48 PM on January 19, 2023

5/28/1985 CBS Show Promos "How to be a Man" "Magnum" "Aftermash" + more

The show "featured Hal Linden, Scott Baio, Gary Sandy, Howard Hesseman, Susan Anton, John Denver, Mary Cadorette and NFL great Phil Simms."
posted by kirkaracha at 12:22 PM on January 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

OK, we've got a construction worker, biker, and soldier, so we're well on the way to a Village People homage. Let's add swinging sausage man, pumping iron man, and a soda jerk.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:27 PM on January 20, 2023

5/28/1985 CBS Show Promos "How to be a Man" "Magnum" "Aftermash" + more

Man, that old-timey 80s network promo announcer voice. I sort of miss it.

Part of that sound is a particular microphone -- the Sennheiser MKH416. It's absolutely not a microphone designed for up-close work -- it's a shotgun mic designed to be used as a boom for film, several feet from the sound source.

There's a (possibly apocryphal) story about how that became the standard for this kind of work in LA (and still is, to this day). Ernie Anderson, father of Paul Thomas Anderson, was a network promo guy in LA who was known for being ... difficult to work with. And paranoid ... possibly for exogenous chemical reasons. One day he decided he didn't want to work in the booth anymore, he wanted to work in the control room, where the engineers and producers couldn't talk about him behind his back.

So they had to find a highly-directional microphone that wouldn't pick up everything else in the room, and landed on the MKH416 since it was everywhere in LA. Ernie sat in the control room reading into it super-close, which imparts a very particular tone on the voice, and history was born.

Here's Ernie reading promos for ABC in 1989.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:54 PM on January 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

I was expecting something more like Manlyology, to be honest. I mean, that video was only three years after Real Men Don't Eat Quiche.
posted by bbrown at 2:36 PM on January 20, 2023

> I mean, the video starts out with a dude bumping and grinding on a creosote pole and only gets more unintentionally campy from there

There's no way it's unintentional.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:22 PM on January 27, 2023