465: AIDS 1 - Earliest Days

By the late 70s/early 80s, an accepted element of a healthy life on the gay scene was the regular trip to the VD clinic and then a few pills or shots to clear up the STD of the moment. A cartoon that appeared in the gay magazine “Christopher Street” in the summer of 1981 (and which I’m sure was reprinted in “Gay News”) showed two men at a bar with one saying to the other: “What do you say you and me pool our viruses”. If printed in a straight magazine, it would almost certainly be condemned for homophobically suggesting the diseased quality of gay life, but when printed in gay magazines it’s a twist on contemporary mores. Either way, it was a foreshadowing of what was to come.

---------------------------------------------------

“National Lampoon” 1982

(The headline alludes of this piece alludes to a famous "NY Daily News" headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead". This is a surprisingly early piece alert to one small blip in a small subset of the American population. On the one hand this can be read as satirising the casual bigotry and religious condemnation in the dismissal of the rising deaths in the gay community. On the other hand, it’s just as likely to provoke laughs in its unconcerned readers, for whom satire is breaking taboos, saying the unsayable, and joyously anaesthetising the heart so as to appreciate finer graduations of cruelty and vitriol. In retrospect, this piece is unfair to Dianne Fehrstein whose AIDS budget for the City of San Francisco was bigger than President Reagan's AIDS budget was for the entire nation for several years in the 80s)

----------------------------------------------

A little over a year later and AIDS is a word to conjure with in this glib concoction.

“Punch”, 18 May 1983

----------------------------------------------

Auberon Waugh’s Diary
Private Eye 26 August 1983

In fact, there are only 14 confirmed cases of AIDS in Britain, as I keep telling everybody. The disease is no less fatal than rabies, and the health authorities have managed to control rabies by a strict policy of quarantine. Would the Gay Community take it very badly if I suggested that American homosexuals visiting Britain should be required to spend six months in kennels before being allowed out to take their pleasure with the natives. My purpose is not to annoy English gays, many of whom are terrifically amusing, talented, artistic, etc, but to protect them. Scientists are working on an idea that a prophylactic against AIDS might be to eat huge numbers of cucumbers every day, but it would be foolish to rely on this.

Illustration by Brian Bagnall

(What is intended here in a sententiously high-toned and blithely semi-nonsensical opinion-proffering manner would later go on to be offered as serious advice by numerous media and political pundits. Where the cucumbers come into this I don’t know, other than the tendency for people to use them as demonstration models for the application of prophylactics.)

---------------------------------------------

Eddie Murphy, Delirious (recorded August 17, 1983)

http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2007/12/27-faggots-eddie-murphy.html (I’d already covered this piece of stand-up before, but mostly just looking at Murphy’s manner, rather than his extended piece on AIDS)

Ladies be hangin' out with gay people. Ladies be saying, "Gay men are the best friends to have. 'Cause they don't want anything from you and you don't want anything from them and he can just hang out and you can be with him and it's fun and you can talk to them" and all that bullshit and they be hangin' out with them.

You know what's real scary about that? That new AIDS shit. AIDS is scary 'cause it kills motherfuckers, AIDS. That ain't like the good old days when venereal disease was simple. In the good old days you'd get gonorrhea and your dick hurt, Go get a shot, clear it right up. Then they came out with herpes. You keep that shit forever like luggage. Now they got AIDS. That just kills motherfuckers. I say what's next? I guess you just put your dick in and it explode (mimes sex and an explosion) and the girl will be on the bed and go "Maybe I should see a doctor about this."

Kills people! And it petrifies me because girls be hangin' out with them. And one night they could be in the club havin' fun with their gay friend and give them a little kiss (lip-smacking sound) and go home with their AIDS on their lips. Get home with their husband and like five years later it's "Mr. Johnson, you have AIDS." He goes, "AIDS? But I'm not a homosexual." "Sure, you're not a homosexual."

(In an October 1990 interview with Spike Lee, Murphy apologised for making these jokes about AIDS. He explained that he had been only 21 at the time, and that AIDS was then a new disease that nobody knew enough about at the time., and that he wouldn’t joke about it now because it’s a much more sensitive issue.)

453: The Fan’s Journal by Jean Genet

National Lampoon, May 1984
“The Fan’s Journal by Jean Genet” By Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones

A comic trick is to describe sports in the manner of something completely inapposite, such as football matches described in the language of a theatrical review – although that’s no longer so odd as the sports columns have been infiltrated by overly-educated humanities graduates who want to make some their high culture rub off on popular entertainment. Lookee me, lookeme, look at how cultivated my appreciation is. Match reports which come freighted with associations and similes more appropriate to a high church ceremony. In such a vein, here we get a parody of literary ne’er-do-well Jean Genet giving a baseball report. His usual orchids growing in a sewer metaphors are a unnatural occurrence on the baseball diamond. So in Genet’s florid scandalising poetic style of the bad streets, we get all his usual tricks (pun intended) such as Negroes, faggots, and sailor . Few sports reports will ever make so much of arseholes, semen, recreational drugs and homosexual attraction.

443: Gay Bert and Ernie 1

Christopher Street
National Lampoon’s White Album (1979/1980?)

http://www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=40329502&ac=now

Like Batman and Robin, another male duo in children’s entertainment subject to longstanding gay rumours is the opposites-attract pair of roommates Bert and Ernie from “Sesame Street”. The naïve portrayal of two men living together arouses speculations that this is really a gay relationship, although nobody ever makes these points about their inspiration from “The Odd Couple”.

This parody is the earliest instance I can find of gaying up Bert and Ernie. Of course in these democratic days of the internet when everybody has access to the means of production, the public is no longer restricted to consuming only those few comedy offerings which have been sanctioned by the media gatekeepers, so knock yourself out searching Youtube. Although in the specific matter of gay Sesame Street parodies, to be honest, they aren’t going to be much worse or much better than this offering on what was a rather poor late period National Lampoon LP by a load of unknowns. I can’t even find concrete confirmation as to whether this record was released in 1979 or 1980, and don’t know who wrote or performed this specific sketch. (LP Written by: Alice Playten, Tony Scheuren, Lynn Goldsmith, Marc Rubin, Ted Mann, Tony Scheuren, Lynn Goldsmith, Marc Rubin, Steve Goodman, Sean Kelly. Performers: Alice Playten, Michael Simmons, Rodger Bumpass, Tia Brelis, Tony Scheuren, Shelley Barre, James Widdoes, Sylvia Grant, Steve Collins, Garry Goodrow, Rhonda Coullet, Rory Dodd.)

The fun-loving, goofy Ernie and the uptight, easily-irritated Bert become emblematic of certain types of gay couples. Compare this relationship to the near contemporary portrayal of the two gay roommates played by Cheech and Chong. Ernie becomes the equally genial Eddie, and his muppet-voice easily acquires a distinct lisp. Bert’s frustrations with Ernie are transformed into the bitchy hissy-fits of a jealous lover. And again, again, again, again, and yet again, the sissy-name of choice “Bruce” is dragged out.

Some attempts are made to also include a few Sesame Street-format counting gags (Numbers: 2+1 equals 3, and Letters: KY). There’s one heavy-handed reference to a “closet” and a taste for Judy Garland and canapes, which could have been unthinkingly knocked out with no effort anytime in the previous decade, but otherwise it’s a view of the late 70s heavily-sexualised gay social scene (saunas, slave bracelets, threesome, getting reamed, and “meat racks”). Other than just gesturing at large capital cities in general, the Castro in San Francisco and Christopher Street in New York city were the gay ghettos that the general public might be able to identify. As a contrast to this sketch, there’s also the “To Think That I saw It on Christopher Street” in National Lampoon magazine. You get Big Blonde as a shrieking sissy with a “big basket of goodies”, and if Herman the Fag refers to anything in the original programme I don’t know. Given that it’s the late 70s I expected a Coke Monster joke, but instead it’s the Ka-Ka Monster, because scat is as freaky-gay as you can probably get sexually without explicitly making any fisting jokes, which as this is about puppets would have seemed like an open goal. But there you go, it’s not a great sketch, as I’m sure I’ve said somewhere in the preceding.

Christopher Street
Where all kind of people meet;
To love one another
Get into your brother
By the back door”

429: A Choice of Viewing on Television

ABC. 10.30 P.M. (1)
NOT TONIGHT, CLYDE
Two FBI agents decide to move in together. Edgar has a headache and Clyde burns the roast.
Edgar: Paul Lynde. Clyde: Charles Nelson Reilly

SARKY AND BITCH (2)
Amalgamated Megalomaniacs in association with B.E.N.T. Television presents the week-by-week story of those tough-talking, go-getting bum-kissing boys on the Nancy-Squad: It’s “Sarky and Bitch!” Starring Michael Double-Glazing and David Arsehole as Lieutenants Sarky and Bitch. This week’s story: “Cum in San Francisco”. Sorry, “Come In, San Francisco!”

TUESDAY RTV2 9.30 (3)
Andy Warhol's GARBAGE
Trevor and Kevin, two gay garage attendants near Doncaster, learn that they have been refused admission into the WRAC. 'Heady' Bob ,a transvestite AA man, who is saving up to have the Operation and join the RAC, stops by to tell them his tests at the Special Clinic are positive. They spend the afternoon in desultory conversation, ringing up the Speaking Clock.
"Superb. Masterful. Yummy." The Lancet
Rating: Odd

SATURDAY RTV2 3.00
BLOOD ON CAMP ISLAND (Frog-Rank)
Close male friendship between chaps and Japs in raw tale of eye-scratching and savage bitchery. By the director who made “Horseguards in Love”.
Rating: Gayish

SUNDAY RTVI 8.30
CAMPARET
Liza Minelli ("the toast of kings, the delight of queens") plays Christopher Isherwood, a character created by W. H. Auden. Also starring Joel Gay as the naughty man in the funny make-up. Set in the bitchy days of Berlin in the early thirties, this is a treat for everybody in their early thirties.
Rating: Fab

LITTLE HOMO ON THE PRAIRIE (4)
Little Homo is kidnapped by a band of Cherokee Indians. Homo seduces the Cherokee chief and they plan a marriage. But the nuptials are spoiled by Little Homo’s dad, who steals the boy back. In the ensuing action, Dad falls in love with Chief as well. Little Homo: Tatum O’Neal. Dad: Roman Gabriel. Chief: Merv Griffin.

RECTUMA
Japanese-made sci-fi epic about an atomic mutation, a gigantic walking rectum the size of the World Trade Center who gases and besmirches the country before being subdued by an army of homosexuals.

MEIN CAMP (5)
Ken Russell's story of how Hitler's homosexual love affair with Rommel loses him the war. Rommel is played by Rudolph Nureyev, and Montgomery by Peter Pears

-------------------------------

A round-up of gay-related gags from various TV guide parodies

(1) National Lampoon, February 1978
Edgar and Clyde at the FBI are of course J. Edgar Hoover and his close associate Clyde Tolson, and this plays off the long-standing rumours about the actual nature of their relationship, recently raised in 1978’s “The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly are two rather camp American light entertainment actors

(2) “The Outer Limits” (written and performed by Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson), at The Comedy Store, 1979
“The Outer Limits” was the “Firesign Theatre”-inspired duo instrumental in the creation of alternative comedy, “The Comic Strip Presents” and “The Young Ones”. The bit above is actually the intro to a parody of close cop duo “Starsky and Hutch” (if you hadn’t guessed). For all that alternative comedy was about not indulging in the prejudices of old-fashioned comedy, this skit uses an awful lot of the milder slurs at the expense of the sensitive masculinity of the leads. The rest of it is just a parody of the shortcomings of Starsky and Hutch: the show’s senseless hyperkineticism, the character’s enthusiastic stupidity and emphatic stating of just how disgusted they are by crime to show how sensitive and intelligent they genuinely are. (Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fans may remember Shooty and Bang-Bang). The characters are just played as stereotypical brash Americans, but without any apparent gay mannerisms or camping it up.

(3) “The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book”, Eric Idle, 1976
A parody of Andy Warhol films, long renowned for their gay subject matter, here transferred to the banality of Enlish life rather than New York bohemia. Then a parody inspired by a rearrangement of the title of classic British WWII POW film “Camp on Blood Island” with some jokes about bitchy gays, Ken Russell films ("Women in Love"'s naked male wrestling), and the long-standing rumours about the sexual availability of the Horseguards.

(4) “This Week’s TV Programs”, by Gerald Sussman, with Danny Abelson, Tony Hendra, and Ted Mann - National Lampoon, December 1978
A parody at the expense of “Little House on the Prairie”. Tatum O’Neal was actually a girl, but the Macauley Culkin child star of the day. Merv Griffin was an American talk show host about whom there long-standing (how many times have I written that now?) gay rumours.

(5) "After Star Wars, What?”, Barry Took - Punch, 4 January 1978
A throwaway gag from a whole selection of silly future movies. Not much done with the idea of gay Nazis, and instead says more about perceptions of Ken Russell's pictures during the 1970s. Took demonstrates the same paucity of possible names who would be recognised as gay. Really, I mean, Peter Pears.

424: Killjoy Was Here 3

“National Lampoon”, March 1979
from “Letters from the Editors”

Sirs:

We’ve had just about enough of your childish “homo” jokes. You sneer and giggle and hurl your little barbs at us. We’re a part of this society. Medical science says we’re normal; the law says we’re entitled to every right and privilege that you are. We’re human, we’re American, we have feelings, and if you don’t leave us alone, we’re going to come over and fuck your dad.

The Queers,
All Over Everywhere, Even Iowa

419: Culture Clash 2

National Lampoon, November 1977

from “The Beautiful People in Middle America: A menopausal Change of Lifestyle”
written by Robert L. Green
artist unknown

As with the “Mad” magazine cartoons, here’s another culture clash. Real life gay fashion designers Roy Halston and Yves St Laurent (not a couple in reality but here two blithely grinning sissies holding hands and flowers) meet depraved “Deliverance” style rednecks. What violence, murder or raping will result? Is there more to be made of “camping”? Really though, it’s of a piece with other National Lampoon posters such as the one of middle-of-the-road patriotic singer John Denver being horribly savaged by an eagle.

417: Queer Bashing 2

National Lampoon, April 1971
from “Real Balls Adventure Magazine” by Doug Kenney, Michael O’Donoghue, John Boni and Terry Catchpole

This is a just a little excerpt from this issue’s “Real Balls Adventure Magazine”, a parody of both the “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” brand of lurid adventure story pulp magazine and also the extreme anti-commie, far right-wing attitudes of their audience.

So here “fag casting” and “queer trolling” as treated as sports with tips from the “Volunteer Vigilantes against Homos”. Already Judy Garland allusions are de rigeur. My speculations about peacenik = faggot in Colin Wheeler's cartoon are made explicit here.

392: Anita Bryant 8 - Mad Magazine 1

While from the hindsight of 35 years we can note approvingly all the stand-ups, columnists, talk-show hosts, comedians and sitcoms that criticise Anita Bryant, it can’t be overlooked that Bryant’s short-term goals were successful in overturning the ordinance and that many people supported her campaign and attitudes toward homosexuals. Where then are the humourists sympathetic to Bryant?

Where are they? They’re writing for “Mad Magazine”, that’s where they are. In 1971 “National Lampoon” had run an incisive parody of the older magazine criticising “Mad Magazine” as stale, clichéd and the prisoner of its own limited viewpoint. Seven years later and it had not got any better. Many of the writers and artists had been at the magazine since the mid-50s, and now they had become men in their mid-50s with the attitudes to prove it. Film, TV, and advertising spoofs and gags were still okay. Stuff about the petty banalities of daily life, and clichés about teenage life were still just about tolerable. But anything touching current youth culture or anything that was actually new and you could easily expect the same “Get off my lawn, kids” attitude from your aging uncle. The staff had set opinions on what constituted social hypocrisy and they were going to stick to it.

If “National Lampoon”’s pieces about homosexuality in the late 70s can be harsh at least they were informed about the issues of homosexuality and the lifestyles of modern homosexuals. “Mad” wanted to remain ignorant about homosexuals and didn’t wanted to be troubled by them either.

“National Lampoon”’s parody had included a brief piece about the social topics the magazine was largely ignoring back then. Ironically, this cartoon proves to be a fairly accurate prediction of “Mad”’s portrayal of homosexuals throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s.

“National Lampoon”, October 1971

“Mad” July 1978
Writer: Tom Koch
Artist: Jack Davis

It’s 1978, but Davis’s illustration of demonstrating homosexuals, their hats, their jerkins and jewelry would be more suitable to 1971 or 1972 – even by the mid-70s it’s rather dated.

“Mad” July 1978
“Mad’s College Concert Comic of the Year”
Writer: Lou Silverstone
Artist: George Woodbridge

This piece is far more telling. It’s a wholly clueless attack on George Carlin, trying to paint him as a hypocrite and also attacking his audiences as equally hypocritical. Carlin’s 1974 routine on homosexuality is quite positive and thoughtful. Here in this strip though the underlying attitude is that it’s impossible that anybody could be pro-homosexuality, everyone really agrees Bryant, and they’re all just a load of phonies.

380: Golden Chestnuts II

Oh please, Dr Freud, I enquire in a faux-naif fashion as a perfectly normal macho man, please tell me what my incessant dreams of phallic objects can mean?


From “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (Aren't You Sorry You Asked?)” by John Boni
in “National Lampoon”, July 1971


from “Not 1983” calendar

The latter one I include merely because over three years since the Jeremy Thorpe case and people are still making Liberal Party = Gay jokes (Clement Freud was a prominent Liberal MP, and need I explain Jeremy T?). This is what life was like before 24 hour constant media bombardment.

378: Father Riley's a what?

And what opinion did American humorists who’d grown up Catholic have of the servants of Holy Mother church? Well, once you discount all of the sentimental, acceptable sitcom-style guff, then it was that the Catholic brotherhood was a haven of predatory perverts.


from “The Seven Sacraments: A ‘Milstone’ Pamphlet for Little Catholics” by Bro. “Al” Andrien
In “National Lampoon, December 1974


from “An Irish Market Place” by Ted Mann
in “National Lampoon, January 1976

From a general grab-bag of jokes about Irish culture: the I.R.A, G.B. Shaw’s collected works, the ghost of W.B. Yeats, and alcoholism. And then there’s this. “Alternate Birth Control”, indeed, with altar boys. And this some thirty years before revelations were made public about what was going on when it come to Brotherly Care in Ireland. Although there were scandals in the early ‘80s, too, if I remember correctly.

And of course there’s Frank Zappa’s throwaway line in his 1979 song, “Catholic Girls” that “Father Riley's a fairy / But that don’t bother Mary”.

355: Gay Cowboys - The Last Roundup

“At Last the 1948 Show”, 1967
Marty Feldman as 1st Cowboy
Tim Brooke Taylor as 2nd Cowboy

(Two typical cowboys ride on, with the sound of bullets in the distance. While Marty Feldman speaks, Tim Brooke-Taylor is chewing gum and listening with determined and mean expression)


1st Cowboy: C'mon! Posses on our tail! Let's hightail outta here. Iffen we quick, we can cut across dead man's belly over there, (points with gun to emphasise each destination) through cold corpse canyon, cross broken bone mountain, through gallow creek gorge, over there to slaughter rock


2nd Cowboy: (in sissy tones, bursting into big cheerful grin) No! Let’s go the pretty way!
(makes limp wrist gesture with hand holding gun. Then Cowboys ride off)

The heightened grimness of the listed locales of course sets it up for the sissy deflation by Tim Brooke-Taylor. By now Tim Brooke Taylor was regularly playing pansies on Tv and radio.

---------------

“Cowboys Love Cowboys Best of All” by Sean Kelly and Peter Elbling

from “National Lampoon’s Disco Beaver” 1978
(Peter Elbling running around as a vampire is part of “Disco Beaver”’s running joke about Dragula, a gay vampire who converts his victim to homosexuality with a bite)

This wistful, rather sweet Country and Western song spins off the lonely situational homosexuality premise.
The last line alludes to Tom Robbins’ 1976 novel “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, and there was a spate of songs with same title from 1978-80)

Some cowboys they love rhinestones
Or whips, or guns, or ropes
Some cowboys love a drunken barroom brawl
But when it comes to sitting round the campfire on the prairie
That's when cowboys love cowboys best of all.

Yes, cowboys love cowboys
More than boots or beans or booze
And you all know that's the reason
Even cowgirls get the blues…

It employs none of the swishy, sissy, femme, or perverse stereotypes to be found in these parody gay cowboy songs:
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2008/05/115-goodies-cactus-in-my-y-fronts.html
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2008/05/116-ballad-of-ben-gay.html
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2008/05/117-big-bad-bruce.html

-------------------------

National Lampoon June 1978
“The Preacher Boys’ First Roundup (or, The Preacher Boys Last Roundup) featuring The Appearance, for the First Time Ever in Polite Fiction, of the Honorable Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde, Esq., on His Famed Tour of the American West” by Ted Mann
Illustration by Bob Larkin



The appearance of Wilde in this parody of western fiction is actually very straight. Mann largely presents him as Wilde, the lecturer on interior decoration, who has charmed all the local cowboys – which was indeed the historical case. There’s nothing faggy about Mann’s set-up at all. The illustration by Bob Larkin is another matter. That strange overgrown Little Lord Fauntleroy has no correlation to the eminently caricaturable Wilde. Larkin does see fit to grace us with a whole row of very effetely waving cowboys.

-----------------------

“South Park”, August 19, 1998
“Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls”
Written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone & Nancy Pimental

This is part of a larger satire on Hollywood. Earlier in the episode Cartman comprehensively denounces all independent films as being about “Gay cowboys eating pudding”
The others say this, is stupid, but when they go to see an independent film, lo it proves to be true that it is indeed about “Gay cowboys eating pudding” (and read your own innuendo into what “eating pudding” can mean).



Cowboy in Pink: Say, Tom. Do you have any pudding left?

TOM: (slightly fey) I ate all mine up, silly.

Cowboy in Pink: Well then, now what do we do?

Cowboy in Pink: Well, why don't we just explore our sexuality?

Tom: Oh good idea, lets.

(They throw their pudding bowls down, and grab each other)





The first cowboy is of course in pink – whether you want to read more into his facial hair is of course intentionally ambivalent. The second cowboy employs the word “silly”, which has effete/gay connotations in America, and is therefore regularly used by South Park’s stereotypes.
Being a cartoon means that they can get away with pretty much depicting a blowjob

Curiously, pretty much every gay cowboy joke I’ve found has been independent of any Village people allusions or inspiration. Which I suppose is a good thing.

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.

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

337: Fairy Tales 2 - John Boni

"Yes, Delicia, There is a Punchline"
by John Boni
in "National Lampoon" June 1970

This is probably the next step along in jokes about fairies.
Bitch bar banter that wouldn't be out of place in "the Boys in the Band". Which is probably the idea that people have at the time. Camp aggressive jokes at each other's expense
Brucie, Lance are both very America of the period. While a fairy called Pansy? Reach for those comedic stars, Mr Boni.
The gay comic gestures are just part of the general padding out of crappy puns and smutty jokes which is the point of the piece.
If you're going to have fairies in a "Dirty Bedtime Story" then they're going to have be THAT sort of fairy:
Lavender, primping, pursing a lip, sillies, miffed, and sashaying perversion freak.

326: You Can't Lick Dick 1

from "Letters to the Editor"
in "National Lampoon" August 1971

click - be with you in a second, Bebe, as soon as I figure out how to work this new Dictaphone and record a letter for my idiot secretary to send out. There, I think it's on now. Ah, Miss Conklin, when you play this tape tomorrow, please transcribe it as a letter and send it to the National Lampoon, and let me make it perfectly clear that there are to be no accidental omissions this time, or your services will no longer be needed here in the White House.

Sirs:
A trusted advisor of mine had brought to my attention that your recent Pornography issue does not meet the minimum standards for decency as outlined by recent Supreme Court rulings. Because of this - ha, Miss Conklin, change that to "For this reason" - an injunction against your magazine is being prepared by the Attorney General specifically citing your obscene assertions that Mr. Rebozo and I habitually engage in - Bebe, cut that out - unnatural practices. These libelous and false assertions - c'mon Bebe, at least let me finish this letter - will also be brought to the attention of the postal authorities - Hey! You'll simply ruin my new pants. Now I mean it! - for proper disposition.

You are hereby directed to cease publication of such - oh, please stop - ridiculous and -oh oh- offensive material or face the legal consequences. Look, Bebe, will you stop fooling around? At least wait until we're in the car. Somebody might walk in. Now where was I? Ah, yes I must add that I, personally, find your publication - mmmmm - disgusting and degrading to American youth and a sign to our enemies that our moral fibre is in serious - faster, Bebe, oh faster! - question. I can, promise that if you keep up this sort of -oh oh oh oh - filth, none of you will even be able to write home for money - ooooh God! - oops! Who's there? Oh, heh heh, hello Pat. Funny I didn't hear you come in. I seem to have, heh heh, dropped one of my contacts in my lap and Bebe was kindly, ah, helping me find - er, Miss Conklin, please type this up and sign it for me. Why, Pat, I've always worn contacts, didn't you - click.

Richard M. Nixon
President of the United States
Washington, D.C.

310: Tales from the Tombs: Behind Gay Bars

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

309: Gay Frankenstein 2

“Doctor Colon’s Monster”
By Charles Rodrigues


from “National Lampoon” January 1972


from “National Lampoon” March 1972


from “National Lampoon” April 1972


from “National Lampoon” May 1972


from “National Lampoon” June 1972


from “National Lampoon” July 1972

Oh how I do love the worlds that Charles Rodrigues conjures up in his cartoons. Unending fantasias of bad taste. “Doctor Colon’s Monster” was one of the first strips that Rodrigues drew for “National Lampoon”. “The Aesop Twins” is probably better remembered if simply because it went on for years and years. “Doctor Colon’s Monster” only ran for half of 1972. Evidently something was in the air in 1972. Ed McLachlan’s gay Frankenstein was from a little later in 1972.
As with all of these gay Frankenstein cartoons, half the joke lies in the discrepancy between the murderous immensity of the monster and the cartoon version’s sissiness. In the same way there is the discrepancy between the panels and their details to get pay-offs about assorted gay stereotypes. Yet they never seem particularly belaboured. It’d almost be an insult if gay men didn’t elicit a “Queer” from the pen of Rodrigues. If a couple of the jokes seem slightly groanworthy then I like Rodrigues is inviting you to groan along with him, rather than simply laugh at the fags. Of course it’s caught in an act of hairdressing. Half a page of inarticulate mumbling and groaning to get a joke about similarly indecipherable lisping is pleasantly ingenious. Topped by a monster who after his frustrated lumbering is suddenly arranged like the cover photo on a Liza Minnelli album.
Rodrigues does expand his array of gay references since at least half of these strips end with a joke explicitly reliant upon homosexual rapacity. Cartoons of handjobs are relatively thin on the ground. While the final panel of March with the Doctor urging his monster to “SUCK!!!” as though it has the meaning of “Kill!” cracks me up, with its connotations of a terminal draining different from the typical vampire’s.

303: Cocksuckers & Bloodsuckers - Gay Vampires 3

"Disco Beaver From Outer Space", National Lampoon HBO Special, 1978

You should go to http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2007/12/39-dragula.html first, since much of this sketch is adapted from Tony Hendra’s original “Dragula” comic in "National Lampoon", November 1971. That’s the first case of the bloodsucker / cocksucker joke, though its not reused in this version. Indeed, for all that I’m not a great fan of that piece, it’s certainly better than this sketch. This material is cannabilised here since this special was partly produced by Hendra.



Part 1


Part 2

Peter Elbing as Dragula
Lynn Redgrave as Professor van Helsing
James Widdoes as Lou Murray

First off, it really doesn’t help that this looks really cheap, and shoddily shot. The bits in the first half which are adapted from the comic are not handled well. The second half, which is new material, and tries to spin off the more familiar Dracula material looks as though it’s been filmed during the first run-through.
The only credit I will give it is that Peter Elbling puts some effort into his performance as Dragula. Of course, Elbling has always been a somewhat arch and mannered performer, but not unenjoyable with it, which doesn’t hurt if you’re playing a gay version of Dracula.
His performance makes something of the common idea of the cultured, elegant vampire, ideas about louche Europeans, and then showing how these overlap common assumptions about stereotyped gay attitudes. He at least manages to put some spin on some clunking lines. Honestly the second half frankly falls below the standards of a Bowery Boys film, with poor puns, and the lame shtick attempting to bite the editor.
How on earth Lynn Redgrave ended up in this as Professor Van Helsing? Maybe community service?
The additions in the first section aren’t gold either. To give it its due, when the hardhat is vampirised it’s hard to think how any gay signifier wouldn’t seem crass in context. Although whimpering “I feel pretty” is quite lame. The audience is supposed to recall that the rest of the verse goes “I feel pretty and witty and GAY”. And the gay version of the vampirised hardhat isn’t very au courrant. When you think about what gay men were getting up to at the time, a sissy making limp-wristed primping gesture and feyly saying “I’ll go get the other girls” is a few years behind the times.
The homoerotism of old hockey footage is a new addition. Though “Monty Python” got there first with its celebrating footballers.

Indeed all the vampirised gays are coy mimsy performances. This reaches its nadir when James Widdoes as the magazine editor is turned gay. The office decor, and his costume with the sunglasses, and his over-emotionalism all look looks as though they’ve been cribbed from “La Cage aux Folles” (1978)
Dragula being repelled by meatloaf, brut, and tasteless crass Americana is a sort of joke about finicky design queens.

292: Artistic Boys

from “The National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook” (1974)
by Doug Kenney and P.J. O’Rourke

National Lampoon’s Yearbook is a pitch perfect parody of High School Yearbooks, the way they capture the low grade awfulness of High School life, and also a plunge into early 1960s nostalgia.
As part of the preparation for the project, every National Lampoon member brought in their school yearbook. The editors discovered that every high school featured the same characters, and so one of the reasons why the Yearbook is so impressive is because it is a gallery of American high school archetypes.
Forrest Swisher is one of those archetypes. Besides the jock, the greaser, the make-out artist, the preppy, the class clown, the maths nerd, and so on, we also get the “artistic” one. So there are the obvious interests in theatrical pursuits and speech, and the school arts and literary magazine. Given the period, an attraction to hip artistic outsiders is expressed in the tail-end of the beatnik movement and the emergent Bob Dylan.
And from various hints, it’s obvious that “artistic” is sometimes also a polite way of deferring saying “queer”. “Crosses legs in class” is a certain type of refined or effeminate behaviour. Each of the profiles ends with a slightly sarcastic tagline, and “Quick ma the flit!” is a coded gay slam.
“Quick ma, the flit” was a long-running slogan for a series of insect killer spray ads. “Flit” was 40s/50s slang for a sissy or effeminate boy - it’s in “Catcher in the Rye”. So what could be seen as a silly nonsensical statement, is more of a mean in-joke.
Is Swisher gay? There’s nothing in the yearbook to go much further, and realistically there wouldn’t be. But it nicely encapsulates the belief that boys with artistic inclinations also have other inclinations. Besides, the boy’s bloody surname is Swisher. How obvious do you want it?
The writers returned to the 1964 graduating class on several occasions. In a 1976 reunion, they didn’t quite know what to do with him, and had Swisher as a local theatre director, married to the liberal Jewish university graduate. A 2003 update, now has Swisher as a Catholic priest who takes a lot of interest in young boys groups (there’s a long standing tradition in “National Lampoon” of sexually suspect priests).

290: Gorey Goes Gay 5

“Happy Endings” by Edward Gorey in “National Lampoon” March 1973

The “National Lampoon” issue for March 1973 had the theme of “Sweetness and Light”. This was partly playing against type as the magazine that prided itself on its propensity to shock and offend with scabrous satire or sheer bad taste. Gorey was an occasional contributor to “National Lampoon”, and so offered several pages of “Happy Endings”. Part of the joke being that Gorey’s work are renowned for their endings which are either morbid or indecipherable in a “L’Avventura” manner. So each of the panels is the conclusion to some unknown story, but now an Edward Gorey-style happy ending. Curiously, Gorey’s “Happy Endings” has never been collected.


This is sort of sweet I suppose. Although there I have an underlying suspicion that part of the joke is that the public would think that the idea of marriage between two men in the early 1970s was a silly thing.


This is surprisingly un-Gorey-like. It’s explicit for a start. You don’t expect Gorey to offer a take on “Midnight Cowboy” and male hustlers. And you really don’t expect Edward Gorey to use phrases like “biggest basket”. And that this should be a happy ending is unusual. But then Gorey’s works rarely encompass the contemporary. The chap on the left has overly beringed, fluttery hands, and is also shouldering a man-purse. What the hell the object is in front of the young hustler I don’t know though.