Sunday, 20 December 2009

341: Gay Wind in the Willows 2 - Sean Kelly



“The Wimps in the Pillows”
by Sean Kelly
in “National Lampoon” February 1974

A pretty good parody of “The Wind in the Pillows”, which makes explicit some of the undercurrents suggested by the all-chaps-together ethos of the original children’s story. As in the book the lower classes are only there to support the heroes’ comfortable lifestyle – in this instance offering cheap blow jobs. And the book’s attentiveness to children is repaid in paedophile orgies in the last paragraphs.

Mole as a little scene queen – camp, bitchy and crude
Ratty as the more Wildean aesthete
Toad Hall as a repository of all the high cultural camp kitsch (classical and high church) which outfits the typical mis-en-scene of such gay novelist stalwarts as Firbank and Rolfe.
Toad as depravity in all manners, and an incorrigible transvestite to boot
Badger as the embodiment of S&M

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