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Being John Malkovich: I'd Rather Be Anyone Else
In one of the most iconic heterosexist moments of the 1980s, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) holds a boombox over his head to win the Girl of His Dreams (Ione Skye) in Say Anything (1989).Ten years later,...
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The Disney Channel's Gay Programming Blocks
Like Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel airs its teencoms in programming blocks interspliced with short segments: reviews of Disney movies (always thumbs up!), interviews with Disney Channel stars,...
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Uncle Tom Award #2: So You Think You Can Dance
So You Think You Can Dance (2005-) is a dance-competition series that is too heterosexist for words: men and women paired together to replicate the myth of universal heterosexual desire and the erasure...
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What Kind of Flower are You: Queer Boys of the 1920s
Before World War II, teenage boys were not expected to like girls. At Everett High School in Washington, most of the boys in the graduating class in 1925 are memorialized in their yearbook with manly...
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Prince Charles is Gay, And Other Things I Learned in College
In the fall of 1982, I moved to Indiana University to work on my M.A. in English. One night -- Saturday, September 25th, to be exact -- I bolstered my courage enough to walk the mile or so into...
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My Date with the King of Sweden
Prince Charles isn't the only royal that I've been associated with. Rock Island, my home town, has strong Swedish roots, so on a visit to the U.S. on a hot day in the spring of 1976, King Carl Gustaf...
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Kyle Bornheimer: Bear Bares It All
Kyle Bornheimer has been in the business for less than 10 years, but he is already getting a reputation for failed sitcoms: Worst Week, Perfect Couples, Romantically Challenged, and most recently...
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Alice's Restaurant: Gay Subtexts in a Hippie Classic
On Thanksgiving Day 1965, Arlo Guthrie, the 18-year old son of folksinger Woody Guthrie, offered to haul a load of garbage to the dump for his friends, Ray and Alice Brock, who ran a restaurant/hippie...
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Richard Arlen: First Gay Kiss in the Movies
I just saw The Island of Lost Souls (1932), an adaption of the H.G. Wells science fiction novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, about a mad scientist who turns animals into humans through vivisection....
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The Top Ten Nature Show Hunks
When I was little, the only nature program we had was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (1963-1985), with a grandfatherly host, Marlin Perkins, who didn't actually go into the field; he just narrated, and...
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Geraldo Rivera Bares It All
The blogosphere is going wild over Geraldo Rivera's semi-nude photo that got tweeted to all his followers earlier this week. Mostly with outrage: "how dare a 70 year old display his body, and disgust...
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Ant Farm: Disney Channel Fail
The Disney Channel is usually good at providing gay subtexts in its teencoms, but A.N.T. Farm (2011-), about students in a school for the gifted, leaves me cold. Maybe it's because I've only been able...
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The Spanish Hour: Opera in Underwear
I don't usually like opera, but I like Maurice Ravel's L'heure espagnole, or The Spanish Hour (1904). It's short, I can understand the language, and it has a strong gay subtext.Like a lot of Spanish...
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Desi Arnaz, Jr.
Desi Arnaz, Jr. was born on January 19th, 1953, in the middle of a whirlwind of publicity, the child of most famous couple on television, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and also the first baby ever...
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Jackass: The Gayest Show on TV
The MTV reality series Jackass (2000-2002) and spin-off movies (2002, 2006, 2009, 2011) were about guys engaging in crazy stunts: Bam Margera uses Steve-O as bait to fish for sharks.Steve-O stuffs raw...
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Bolero: Not for Heterosexuals Only
Classical music is usually a relief from heterosexism -- you can't hear a refrain of "Girl! Girl! Girl!" if no one is singing. But Maurice Ravel's Bolero has been definitively associated with...
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The Meaning of Life: Meetings with Remarkable Men
In the fall of 1979, during my sophomore year of college, the Cineplex had a poster advertising Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979). It showed a man walking through a parched rocky landscape, like the...
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Crash & Bernstein: a Boy, His Puppet, and His Boyfriend
12-year old Wyatt (Cole Jensen) lives in a house full of girls, and longs for some masculine companionship. Then Crash, the puppet he created at the "Build-a-Bestie" store, comes to life. Apparently...
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My Last Wrestling Match
When I was in junior high in the early 1970s, I hated sports, but my parents wouldn't believe me. They demanded, "Boys like sports. You must sign up for a sport." Anything involving projectiles...
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Dark Shadows: David Collins, the Gay Heir to the Throne
I loved the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-71), though in retrospect I didn't see it very much. It came on just as the school day was ending, so if I ran fast I could catch the last 10-15...
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