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Enough about "Birdy," Already! Who Cares about Matthew Modine's Butt?
I'm getting tired of the pressure to "See Birdy! Watch it! Watch it! Watch it now! DO IT!" The exhortations are anonymous, so I don't know if it's one True Believer or a whole army of...
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"Tales of an American Hoodrat": Buddies and Gay Subtexts in South Dakota
Aberdeen, South Dakota is the home of Northern State University. Although it has a population of only 28,000, it boasts its own "what's happening in town" magazine, where we find an interview with...
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Shock Treatment: Romance is Not a Children's Game
In the summer of 1981, just after my junior year at Augustana College, I went to see Shock Treatment, which was widely advertised as "the sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show!" Ok, so it starred...
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Sam on "Mythomaniac": Butch Lesbian, Femme Gay Boy, Transgender, Non-Binary,...
The French drama Mythomaniac just dropped amid my Netflix recommendations: a woman tries to get attention from her family by faking a cancer diagnosis. Ordinarly I would run from such a depressing...
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"Hollywood Steps Out": Queer Looney Tunes in 1941
When I was a kid in Rock Island, Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat on weekday afternoons displayed a lot of old Looney Tunes cartoons. No matter that they were originally for adults, and full of...
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"Tear Along the Dotted Line": Crippling Anxiety, Lots of Penises, and a Giant...
Zerocalcare (Michele Reich, below) is, according to Europe Comics, "Italy's best selling graphic novel artist for the last 20 years." His iconic character, a depressed cartoonist with a giant...
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The Incredible Disappearing Gays of "Riverdale""
Once upon a time, the camp teen angst drama Riverdale had an abundance of gay/lesbian characters: Kevin Keller (Casey Cott), who is gay in the comic books, was dating the closeted Moose Mason (Cody...
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Hellbound: Bad Criminology, Korean Hunks, and Monster-Angels Descend Upon Seoul
About 30% of the population of Korea identifies as Christian. There are many distinctly Korean sects, such as the Victory Altar and the Unification Church, which combine Christianity with shamanic...
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"The Awesomes": How Is Outing the Gay Guy in Season 3 Awesome?
An animated superhero parody called The Awesomes appeared on my Hulu feed. It's from 2013. I never heard of it, pr series creator Seth Meyers, but apparently it was popular enough to last for three...
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78 Minutes of Research into "The Bagnold Summer"
Last year I managed to get through the entire Christmas season without hearing the soul-crushing, despair-inducing "Have Yourself" song. This year I popped into the Mall the Sunday before...
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The 10 Most Depressing Christmas Songs
November is my favorite month. The air is brisk and cool but not too cold for jogging, it gets dark at a normal hour, tv and the theater are going strong. Even though there's my birthday and...
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My 10 Favorite Christmas Movies
Every Holiday Season, we are inundated by movies about big-city women who give up their careers for a small-town boyfriend (at Christmas), grinches who are punished for being insufficiently jolly, and...
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Hometown Holiday: A Gay Subtext Where You Least Expect It
Hometown Holiday (2018) is advertised on Netflix with two guys gazing shyly at each other. The plot synopsis tells me that it's based on a Harlequin romance, and a turnaround of the usual Christmas...
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"The Librarians": "The X Files" Meets "Once Upon a Time"
The Librarians (2013-2018) sends paranormal investigators out into the field to track down and neutralize powerful magical objects or beings: Excalibur, the Apple of Discord, the Minotaur. I watched...
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"100% Wolf: Legend of the Moonstone": Australian Werewolves Buddy-Bond
100% Wolf: Legend of the Moonstone (2020) spins off from the Australian animated comedy about a teenage werewolf, Freddy Lupin (Ilai Swindells), who has to prove that he is "100% Wolf" in spite of...
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"All The Young Men": A Homophobic Gay Subtext in 1970s Ireland
Here are the Young Men: sounds like an ad for a gay bar. The icon shows a woman and four young men, two of whom seem to be hugging. I don't have much patience for local indie productions, and I've...
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Researching Milo Campanale
I'm not much interested in Elves (2021), the Netflix series about a Danish family vacationing on an island infested by bloodthirsty semi-sentient nisser: it's heterosexual couples all the way down....
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"Snatch": Caper Movie With Two Unintentional Gay Subtexts
Snatch (2000) has a complicated plot with lots of unlikely coincidences, people surviving multiple lethal injuries, and impenetrable dialogue, even with subtitles.I gathered that there are two...
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Captain Underpants and the Perpetual Problem of Presenting Prepubescent...
I had no interest in The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, with an icon of an oval-shaped being in his underwear, until I discovered that one of the main characters is gay.The tv series is based on a...
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Sadanont Durongkaweroj's Two Gay Movies
Although he has only two credits on IMDB, Thai actor Sadanont Durongkaweroj (aka Nont) rates his own English-language wikipedia page: He's 21 years old, a student at Bangkok University, with a resume...
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