308: Gay Frankenstein 1

Any homosexual subtexts in the Frankenstein story have been made quite explicit already in the “Rocky Horror Show” (stage show 1973, film in 1975).

I've been making a man
With blond hair and a tan
And he's good for relieving my tension
(Sweet Transvestite)

WILL: I'm intimidated, okay? It's like I've-- I've created a guy that's too hot for me to date. It's the same reason Dr. Frankenstein didn't date his monster.
GRACE: What? Dr. Frankenstein wasn't a homo.
WILL: Oh, really? He sewed together a bunch of guys to create the perfect man? Wrapped him in linen. Give him a flat head, so you can set a drink on it. Dr. Frank was a 'mo, my friend. [CHUCKLING] He was a 'mo.

- Will & Grace 20 February 2003 (an episode I only happened to watch because it featured Dan Futterman. Mmmm, Dan Futterman)

Of course we have to discount the two above, because they are jokes intended for a gay audience from gay writers, which isn’t what this never-ending farrago is all about. Incidentally, the idea that Dr Frankenstein might be the gay one in the story is the interpretation less usually employed by humorists, unless they’re gay. The more typical gay gag plays off the idea of the experiment going wrong. That rather than creating the perfect new human life, the good doctor accidentally creates a homosexual. And so it’s a revelation of what the cartoonist thinks constitutes a funny gay stereotype.


From “Help” July 1965
Not terribly enlightened this one. But they’ve certainly gone to town, trying to cram as much in as possible. Hand on his hip, kicked-up heel, a limp wrist holding a flower, a handkerchief draped in his pocket, hair done in a wave, and more than a hint of make-up on the eyelids and cheeks. Every sissy cliché known to man. Frankenstein’s monster overlaid by every remembered stereotype of the Widean aesthete.
No idea who Jim Jones is. This was from a section in “Help” giving new cartoonists a try-out. I suspect that this was probably passed because it met Terry Gilliam’s expectations. Harvey Kurtzman was the main editor of “Help” but gay stereotypes are absent from all the magazines he’d edited up to this date, he doesn’t seem tos how any interest in gay stereotypes in his own cartoons until a few years later.


by Edward McLachlan
in “Private Eye” 25 February 1972

I like McLachlan’s cartoons in general. Silly thingsa b out giant hedgehods, and a particularly suburban style of surrealism. Even if I hadn't got the original issue, "Hello Sweetie" would unmistakeably date this cartoon to some time in the earlier '70s. When McLachlan draws a homosexual, there’s usually a hint of lipstick/pursed lip and slightly effeminate eyes. (Examples 1 and 2)

A few humorists play off the idea, that in creating the perfect man, the doctor takes every aspect of the human form into account, and so we have a few cartoons obsessed by a particular aspect of the monster’s anatomy.
Looks size-queeny to you, looks gay to me. Of course, that both these specimens originate in the pages of “Playboy” may have other implications.


by Howard Shoemaker
in “Playboy” May 1977


by Sam Harris
in “Playboy” October 1980

293: Terry Gilliam - Quick Henry, the Flit!

By Terry Gilliam
In “Fang” 1962 (the humour magazine of Occidental College, California)
reprinted in "Help", February 1963

“The National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook” was written in 1974 at a remove of some 10 years, and was attempting to remember all the jokes of that period, while also layering everything with a retrospective irony.
This cartoon is a contemporary instance of someone having the same idea for a joke. Gilliam uses the most famous version of the insect spray slogan, “Quick, Henry, the flit!”. Attending university in the early 1960s means Gilliam would have been the right age to remember “flit” used as a slang term for a homosexual or effeminate boy.

In the National Lampoon Yearbook the “Flit” joke is used as an insinuation about the "artistic" Forrest Swisher. Here the joke is in the reveal of panel 6. Not merely a sissy, but an out and out homo. One hand is limp and the other clutches a flower, bouffant styled hair, tight trousers (which in another cartoon of the same period Gilliam calls “fag pants”, as did many other people), unmanly crossed leg stance, heavily lidded eyes, and pursed (possibly lipsticked) mouth. The jumper and shirt combination probably meant something at the time too, I suspect (UPDATE: A lengthy piece on homosexuals in "Life" 26 June, 1964, goes on and on about how tight trousers and sweaters are the urban homosexual uniform). Such a homosexual caricature being unexpected (a) in the context of the insect ad, (b) in such a grotty little hovel and (c) in general.

I feel slight discomfort about reprinting something from university days, to give it a pass as sophomore work. This cartoon has been reprinted several times, not just in Monty Python retrospectives, but also in a 1971 collection, “A Century of College Humor”, before Gilliam was famous. Gilliam was aiming at putting out a nearly profession humour magazine in “Fang”, and was trying to establish connections with Harvey Kurtzman as his mentor. So it’s not merely a throwaway item. And it does reflect the attitudes of the time. Gilliam admits to being a very conformist frat-boy type in his early university days. The attitude expressed in this cartoon also possibly explains a few faggy jokes in later issues of Harvey Kurtzman’s “Help!” when Gilliam was assistant editing, as Kurtzman had not shown any interest in jokes in that area previously.