353: Gay Cowboys - 1970s and 1980s

Charles Rodrigues
In “National Lampoon”, May 1970
I’ll confess this one is a bit of a guess. But hey, he’s riding side-saddle (see poem below) and is lisping. So it’s not much of a leap to assume that some sort of weird effeminate thing is going on. Although Rodrigues slightly eggs his gag by having another character laughing at him, as though to prove that his ridiculousness is irrefutable.

("O cowboy so lean,
O cowboy so tall,
You sit there straight as an arrow.
But side-saddle you ride,
Instead of astride.
Are you perhaps a gay ranchero?"
- Ernie Kovacs as "Percy Dovetonsils", a joke that tends to be remembered better as "Show me a cowboy who rides sidesaddle, and I'll show you a gay ranchero")


Arnold Roth
In “Punch” 15 October 1980
From a collection of cartoons about “The Drinking Public”
This is exactly the same joke from “Laugh-In” about 10 years earlier. Not that Roth needs to crib. A little thought and this gag writes itself. The Cowboy at western saloon demanding a whisky is a cliché. The sissiest drink for a man to request is a daiquiri. Et Voila! An effeminate cowboy drinking a daiquiri. It then just comes down to how you want to depict effeminacy or homosexuality. Okay, yes, the pursed lips, yes, the effeminate eyes, yes, the hand on hip. But really, a watering can in his holster?


Illustration in “Playboy” January 1982
Oh look. It’s a cowboy all in pink, hand on hip, lowered eyelids, with a hairdryer for a gun. Cause a gay cowboy would be a hairdresser.


Banx
in “Punch” 18 May 1983
The cowboys holding hands is one joke (and note, yes, the one has got his hand on his bloody hip). The caption puts an ambivalent spin on it. Either he’s angrily refuting the insinuation anything gay could be going on. Or he’s threatening retaliation in response to a gay slur.

“Brokeback Mountain” is another phenomenon altogether. The cowboy aspect was the original hook, but now it’s almost spread independently. There is the tendency to slap the tag “Brokeback” on anything with homosexual or homosocial potential, with the same liberty that scandals are awarded the suffix “-gate”. And there’s there currency of “I wish I knew how to quit you”.

Wholly useless is this lame joke by David Brenner about “L.A.’s first gay western bar: it’s got a mechanical sheep”. Anything else, to say? Nothing further you might comedically extricate via the juxtaposition of ideas about homosexuality and cowboys? No. Then fuck off, David. We’re just a byword for perversion and bestiality, thanks.

Last, and honestly I don’t know whether it would be least, is the 1975 British film, “Eskimo Nell”. One of the plot threads in this satire of the tawdry end of the British film industry and sexploitation is about the filming of a gay western. I know no more than that. This is a film whose most repeated clip is of a naked porn actor getting his cock caught in the clapperboard, followed by an extend shot of him being taken out on a stretcher with his cock extravagantly bandaged up. Just because I know about a film doesn’t mean I’m going to bloody watch it. There are better things in life.

255: Classical Attitudes 2

There are really only two significant observations I have to make about the following pieces in the next couple of instalments”.

Observation the first:
Most of them cut straight to the sexual chase. In each instance the gag works by addressing sodomy in a surprisingly direct or even explicit fashion. Most of the pieces here have nothing to do with effeminate stereotypes. The sudden shift to a completely different historical period with sexual norms (which is what suggests the jokes in the first places) seems to mean the writers and cartoonists are able to dispense with homosexuality’s usual sissy associations.

While Woody Allen’s routine in “Love and Death” undermines logical philosophical discourse by following a befuddled byway about classical philosopher’s private lives and what possible bearing that has on the Woody Allen character's private actions and his larger task of assassinating Napoleon, the Plato parody in "National Lampoon" is about the unnecessary insertion of pornography into classical literature. And if you're going to do it with ancient Greeks then what other choice is there?

In the Roth comic, note the two figures in the far bottom tight corner, one of whom clasping his sore arse. About which I have harbour rather dubious feelings about Mr Roth's intentions. However, it is a sexualised development on the usual lisping, bitching sissies with pursed lips and fluttery eyelashes in the last panel. Dildo swords for mannish lesbians is a new one.

Observation the second:
These pieces are are all largely American. Nice young English humorists and satirists educated at public schools are quite familiar with classical culture and “Romantic Friendships” (vide Cyril Connolly, Simon Raven, Stephen Fry, et al) and therefore don’t seem to have a need to draw on the homosexual import of classical culture. Americans do. Possibly because it is such an alien set of cultural references. The respect for the intellectual ideals of classical antiquity played off against an acceptance of sexual perversity.


"Greek Culture Insert" from “National Lampoon”, February 1974

by Guerrier in “Evergreen Review” May 1971

from “Illustrated History of Sex” by Arnold Roth, in “Playboy” January 1975


from “Obligatory Sex Scenes” in “National Lampoon”, August 1976
THE REPUBLIC
by Plato

I do not understand how that can be so," replied Thrasymachus.
"Perhaps we should take an example," said Socrates, "to see if what I maintain is true in common nature."
"Very well."
"We have said that Love cannot be purely physical, and therefore mortal, for it is eternal and cannot die. Look at those birds over there. Their parents are doubtless dead, and yet they themselves, the embodiment of their parents' love, live on, and fly beautifully against the sunset, do they not?"
"They do, I agree," answered Thrasymachus.
"Just so. Then we must also agree that Love itself is Eternal, Beautiful, and True, must we not?"
"We must," agreed the chastened boy.
"Fine," continued Socrates, gathering his robes up before him. "Now bend over, and I'll drive you home."

181: Gay Baseball

by Arnold Roth, from “Keep Your Hands Off My Machismo” in Punch” 19 March 1975

from “Mad” October 1978

America’s sports are integral to America’s ideas and expression of its masculinity. Unlike most European sports, baseball and American football are about sheer grunty muscle mass.
American football consists of massive specimens of meaty neanderthalism crashing into each other for short periods of time, with game-play interrupted by lengthy intervals allowing for the alternating distractions of jiggly pom-pom girls or beer adverts.
Baseball is all about the necessary resources of intense upper body strength to facilitate hitting a ball with a stick.
If your average Ameri-gay is often bigger than his Euro-poove counterpart then it is because the body-ideal exemplified by their national sports are so different. Ideals of attractiveness are often moulded during adolescence, and just compare the difference in builds between an athletic American high-schooler and his continental equal.
It doesn’t necessarily have all that much to do with what’s above, but it’s an observation from last spring when I was in Los Angeles, and I was struck by how positively anorexic I seemed in comparison to everyone else.

151: Arnold Roth

in “Punch” 26 September 1979

Arnold Roth contributed double-page cartoon reports on many contemporary American events and trends to “Punch” from the late 60s to the mid-80s. Roth has always revelled in a profligacy and inventiveness. Having found a particular topic he would then work out as many variations as possible to fill the allotted space. On a few rare occasions, there is one gay gag amongst many. In this instance, homosexuality is the main theme. However, as on the few other occasions he turned his attention to homosexuals, the results are rather underwhelming. High heels, limp wrists, lipstick, transvestism. Prancing fashion sissies, basically. Which is all hung on a tag about angry gays (well petulant really) which is little more advanced then Private Eye’s “Poove Power” from a decade previous. A shame because I really like Arnold Roth and I was looking forward to finding this. Harvey Kurtzman had already used the "fairy godfather" gag as part of this "Little Annie Fanny" installament. Although the placing of the hands in the Godfather's pockets looks a tad suggestive if not outright obscene - and what is fascinating the guy looking at the fountain?