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.

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“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

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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.

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“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.

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

266: Fag Rock 1 - Rim Shot

They tried to change the world with their shiny trousers, rouged nipples and space alieny androgynous antics

I’m far from erudite about rock music, so the following is probably even less accurate than my usual guff-spumes.
Anyway, the early/mid 1970s saw the arrival of assorted brands of rock music stigmatised by traditional rock fans as “fag rock”.
“Fag rock” performers tended to dress in extravagant styles, suggestive of drag sometimes, they tended to camp about on stage, and when they weren’t singing the table of contents from “The Best Science Fiction 1972”, they were hinting at sexual ambiguity. If they were feeling particularly brave, they might even claim to be a little bit bisexual.
In England there was “glam rock”. In America there was The New York Dolls. And there was the transatlantic success of David “Laughing Gnome” Bowie and Elton John. And Jobriath for the special bonus points section of this quiz.
Gender-bending had been addressed in songs like The Beatles “Get Back”, The Kinks “Lola”, and the Rolling Stones had dragged up for the cover of “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby”, but those had been one-offs, not the basis for an entire musical catalogue.

These are the comedic responses to this music at the time. In at least half of the cases they’re no more thoughtful than the jokes about The Beatles when they first became popular. I’m sure I could trawl through old copies of NME, Rolling Stone and any number of old rock mags for unenlightened jokes from hacks embittered by the pollution and disgusting emasculation of their pure, manly rock n’ roll. In which vein see this later sketch about The Village People on Saturday Night Live. Although when you look at a band like “Sweet” performing, they’re probably more than halfway to deliberate sexual parody anyway. Since music was another area where homosexuality was making itself expressed, these don’t employ the comic contrast of jokes about gay cowboys or soldiers, but are satirical exaggerations of a current social trend. In at least a couple of instances it’s an attempt by the humorist to one-up the bands in effeminacy and outrage.

An imaginative, if not wholly effective, means of acquainting yourself with this musical period is Todd Hayne’s film “Velvet Goldmine”. Even if you don’t care for the music, there’s the very pretty Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Ewan Macgregor to occupy the eyes. And even Christian Bale, before he decided that a more tight-arsed interpretation of Russell Crowe’s award-winning impression of the delivery of several hundredweight of gravel was the way to go with his career.



“Rim Shot” National Lampoon, October 1972.

A parody of the tendency for rock bands to feature provocative covers on their albums and include ever-more controversial material in their songs. How far can you go? Besides describing the harsher effects of drugs, hymning anal sex, why not analyse pretences to heterosexuality while being blown by another man. Bad taste ahoy! This pastiche is supposedly a long suppressed Rolling Stones album. The lavatory mis-en-scene recalls the “Beggar’s Banquet” cover. Don’t bother trying to figure out who’s supposed to represent whom. (from left to right)Tony Hendra, Michael O’Donoghue, Michael Gross, P.J. O’Rourke, and Sean Kelly

252: K-Y Comics Presents Dixie Nixon and the Boys in the Bund

by Sean Kelly and Tony Hendra. Art by Larry Hama and Ralph Reese
in “National Lampoon” February 1974

Edward Heath’s unwavering sobriety and conspicuous lack of any sexual or emotional attachment suggested an intense grinding sublimation making him a curiously ambiguous figure ripe for such queer quips. With Heath cartoonists and satirists could only indulge in innuendo, though, for fear of making any too absolute a statement. Besides, all the fun was in the suggestion. Particularly since Heath was such a prissy, sulky, sensitive self-regarding lump.
This comic can indulge in such lavishly grotesque gay travesties and caricatures because Richard Nixon and co were so tediously straight as to be almost unbelievable. So why not make it as unbelievable as this load of screaming, lascivious stereotypes to suggest a different type of scandal more reminiscent of the Decline of Rome.
There is an almost admirable amount of ingenuity in Hendra’s and Kelly’s combining of camp bitchery and sexual outrageousness with the convoluted details of Watergate. What the writers go after are all the most outrageousness stereotypes to spice up the dense facticity of the real life scandal. They go far beyond any sissy imagery, it’s all crude double-entendres, extravagant transvestism, and non-stop promiscuity.
If you want, I think a strong case can be argued that a very definite smear is intended on Nixon and co with such extreme gay clichés. Frankly, Hendra’s assumptions about what makes for a good homosexual gag amount to smears in themselves.

89: The Pied Piper of Burbank

The “Pied Piper of Burbank” by Sean Kelly and Michel Choquette in “National Lampoon” March 1971
Illustrations by Gahan Wilson

Well first, I must admit it’s an excellent parody of Browning’s poem, which you can read at http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/piper/text.html

Secondly, it’s not just a parody but also a very well-executed piece of satire. The governor in question is of course Ronald Reagan, who was attempting to spearhead a conservative moral revolution in free-living California. The piece also exposes conservative hatred and political machinations throughout, as homosexuals, whose influence is limited to fashion and the media, are made scapegoats for the decay in society’s morality. An unknowing foreshadowing there of the later 70s and Anita Bryant. The poem manages to work in a broad array of gay stereotypes and representations of what a gay lifestyle might have been at the time. But while lightly mocking of homosexuals, the real satire is aimed at the bigotry of the conservatives.

34 - Gay Lib: National Lampoon

Editorial by Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly in “National Lampoon” May 1977

In approaching the question of homophilia, or "gayness,” it is important to remember that while it is in execrable taste to make fun of cripples, there is nothing reprehensible about ridiculing Republicans.

So long as homosexuality was understood to be a result of childhood trauma or glandular deficiency, it was hardly a fit subject for humor, and those that indulged in "queer-baiting;' "fag-bashing;' or "fruit-looping" were to be deplored. Now, however, that we are assured by homophiles themselves that the love that dare not speak its name is simply a political act arising from political choices, the practices of queer-baiting, fag-bashing, and fruit-looping would appear to be nothing more than the healthy exchange of opinion in the forum of democratic debate.

The arguably naive question arises whether a man whose chosen form of political expression is shoving his fist up some loved one's rectum is fit to be president. It maybe that, as many gays profess, we have already had such presidents, in the persons of George Washington, Franklin Pierce, et al.; it does not follow, however, that enjoying some Greek qualifies any Johnny-on-the-street to assume high office.

But perhaps we are attacking a straw man. Perhaps, as the Reverend Malcolm Boyd privately emphasizes, frequent and prolonged oral-genital contact between members of the same sex is not a political act, but a religious one. Not, as it were, an unnatural act so much as a supernatural one. But in what sense is giving or receiving a blow job a religious act? Certainly there would appear to be a superficial precedent established in the immortal injunction "take, eat - this is my body"; those words, however, were delivered by and on behalf of the Savior of all mankind. The category does not appear to include Golden Shower Gil or that hot little number in the naugahyde knickers.

In a similar vein, can we say that pederasts should not be school-teachers, coprophiliacs proctologists, sadists policemen, or piss-freaks firemen?
Why cannot Eros be served by a tug on your buddy's nipple-ring? Can love sweet love not as well appear through a hole in the wall of a lavatory stall? May not the friction of two crewcut mons spark the same divine fire that burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Why not indeed?

For the majority, the vast and powerful heterosexual majority of us, these questions remain ineffable. Let us take comfort in the certainty that while the blacks, the native Americans, and the poor we shall have always with us, we shall only have to endure for one generation the puling of this by definition unreproductive minority.