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Outlaws: "Breakfast Club," But with Grown-Ups, Four Times as Long, and Twice...
Outlaws, on Amazon Prime: A disparate group of convicts is assigned to restore an old building for their community service, and becomes friends. I'm sure it will be full of procedural mistakes, but a...
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"Luna Park": Rich and Poor, Gay and Straight Intermingling in a 1960s Carnival
Luna Park (2022) is set in Italy in the 1960s. The era of Antonini and Fellini, the sword-and-sandal epics, the spaghetti Westerns! I'm in.Scene 1: An outdoor cafe. Close up of a girl's body, with...
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"The Lodge": British Teencom with Lots of Songs about Becoming a Star. And a...
A British teencom called The Lodge has just dropped on the Disney Channel. I'm watching all of the Disney teencoms for gay references, characters, or subtexts, so I'll give it a try. Except I'm not...
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"The Boy Behind the Door": Classic Gay Subtext Couple Kidnapped
Two boys roam a desolate forest. Tight close-ups of their faces as they discuss going somewhere else, somewhere where "the sun is always shining," like California. Living in the Straight World,...
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The Gay Adventures of Billy and Mandy
One of my favorite gay-subtext series of all time was The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2003-2008) on the Cartoon Network, about the friendship between two kids, the sinister Mandy (voiced by...
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Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
The Cartoon Network has substantially less beefcake than The Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, of course; it's mostly cartoons. Live action series, like Tower Prep, with Drew Van Acker (left) and Ryan...
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"How to Survive Being Single": If You're Rich, Famous, and Straight
The icon for Amazon Prime's How to Survive Being Single depicts three couples trying to strangle each other, two boy-girl and one boy-boy. It says "Second Season," although I've never seen it on...
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"Heartstopper": My Heart Didn't Stop During this Sweet, Innocent, Dull Tale...
Heartstopper, on Netflix, is a British teen drama based on a graphic novel by Alice Oseman, about two high school boys in love. I hope it won't be like the "boys in love" movies of my generation, all...
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"Jellystone!": Closeting, Transphobia, and Yogi Bear
The early Hanna Barbara cartoon stars -- Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Huckleberry Hound, the Flintstones, Jonny Quest (and Race Bannon --sigh) -- were ubiquitous in my childhood in the 1960s. I don't...
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"The Family Law": Chinese-Australian Boy Struggles to Come Out
The Family Law, on Hulu, is a sitcom about a Chinese-Australian family in Queensland: wildly inappropriate Mom, harried Dad (Anthony Brandon Wong), jock older brother (George Zhou, left), two sisters,...
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"Blade Runner 2049" : Girls! Girls! Girls!
Watching Blade Runner 2049 last night:Me (eyes on cell phone): Is the naked lady scene over yet?Bob: No.Me: (eyes on cell phone): What about now?Bob: No.Me: I'm going to the bathroomFive minutes...
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Is Every Movie About Men and Women Kissing?
An April morning. The last week of class, with the dreary, boring summer coming up. The highlights will be a colonoscopy and a trip crosscountry to visit relatives. I don't know which I'm looking...
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"Momma Named Me Sheriff": Making Fun of the Intellectually Disabled, Gay...
The Adult Swim cartoons I watched in the 2000s were quite homophobic, but there were a few gems, such as The Venture Brothers. So I went into the Adult Swim series Momma Named Me Sheriff" with some...
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Let's Hear it for the Boy
In the early 1980s, I listened mostly to classical music. I was too old for teen idols, and adult music was dreadful, all about hetero-romance, hetero-sex, or large breasts. Especially when MTV...
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"Under the Banner of Heaven": Which is the Worse Crime, Committing Murder or...
Under the Banner of Heaven, a Hulu series about corruption in the LDS Church, was written and produced by Dustin Lance Black, who is gay, so there's bound to be some gay characters or subtexts....
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"Southbound": Five Interlocking Stories Set in the Purgatory of the American...
Southbound (2015): This is the highway where your sins catch up with you. Five interlocking stories about "sin, punishment, retribution, atonement." Let's hope some of the people seeking atonement...
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"The 7 Lives of Lea": Beefcake, Gay Characters, Time Travel, and Body...
The 7 Lives of Lea, on Netflix, is the best tv series I've seen in ages, witty and intriguing, with minimal cliches and maximum beefcake, and a main character who is probably gay. I reviewed the first...
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The Top 10 Beefcake Murals of U.S. Post Offices
The people who deliver your Netflix envelopes and Amazon boxes were once responsible for a lot more. They brought paper copies of your bills, magazines, and even messages from friends, written on...
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"In the Flesh": Recovered Zombies, Anti-Immigrant Prejudice, and Two...
British series In the Flesh stars teen dream Luke Newberry as Kieren Walker, who died four years ago and returned, snarling, brain-eating zombie. Now cured, he tries to re-integrate into human...
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Searching for Beefcake in Shakespeare's Hamlet
Hamlet (1603) is one of my favorite Shakespearean plays. It's heavy-laden with gay subtexts, from the tortured Hamlet's buddy-bond with Horatio to the backstage chumminess of Rosencrantz and...
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