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).

219: P.J. O’Rourke and John Hughes: How to Tell a Homo

from “National Lampoon” February 1980

Ah, the trends of yesteryear. Side parting in the hair, moustache, plaid shirt, straight leg jean, web belt - no, I don't think we shall ever see that look come back. Of course the jeans really ought to be tight Levis, but this particular illustration makes it look much more like a standard fashion plate and less conspicuously sexual. The joke behind all this is that at the end of the ‘70s male sexual identity is all screwed up. That homosexuals are now appropriating the fashions natural to a rugged manly lifestyle is even more ridiculous when the typical manly men of the 1970s have become more sensitive and therefore almost indistinguishable from “homos”. And yes, again, P.J. O'Rourke and John Hughes are still quite happy to throw around the word "homo".

182: Gay American Football

from “National Lampoon’s Sunday Newspaper Parody”, 1978

A reasonable parody of the sort of buddy movies that the late 70s sprouted like mushrooms. They did indeed all seem to star either Burt Reynolds or Kris Kristofferson. David Kopay was an American football player who came out in 1975. Gore Vidal and Isherwood as screenwriters for this aren’t very plausible, but this largely indicates that the authors can’t think of anyone else who might reasonably be expected to write this gay buddy film. Vidal and Isherwood are just the only names available – we’re just lucky they didn’t rely on Liberace or Tiny Tim.