The Dark History of Anti-Gay Innuendo - POLITICO Magaze

Contents:

• I SHOULDN’T WONR: GAY MEN AND INNUENDO
• THE DARK HISTORY OF ANTI-GAY INNUENDO
• YEP, THE PURPLE TELETUBBY WAS GAY
• STALAG 17 : GAY NUENDO THE FILM
• ‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK’ IS ACTUALLY THE GAYT MOVIE OF THE YEAR
• GAY INNUENDO T-SHIRTS & SHIRTS
• TURNS OUT, BARBIELAND ISN'T AS GAY AS S QUEER FANS HAD HOPED
• THE REAL STORY OF THE YMCA THAT INSPIRED THE VILLAGE PEOPLE'S GAY ANTHEM

I SHOULDN’T WONR: GAY MEN AND INNUENDO

Most of the signifint figur the history of gay men edy are renowned for their e of double entendr to nvey humour; Kenny Everett, Kenh Williams, Julian Clary are all acts that rely on this type of joke.

Firstly, is gay men that have a more proment associatn wh nuendo, and sendly, I am one, and my motivatn is largely of the challeng that queer ics face at most gigs they perform at is prentg their queer inty a room that isn’t a queer space.

THE DARK HISTORY OF ANTI-GAY INNUENDO

That is to say, whilst there has been a dramatic rctn homophobia recent years, there are still many people who thk gay men shouldn’t talk about sex the same way as heterosexual people might. Lookg back at the roots of the associatn between gay men and nuendo, seems to have begun wh Polari, the gay vernacular ed to mask the te subject of nversatn om pryg ears when homosexualy was is my personal view that nowadays, the e of nuendo by gay male ics is an act of markg their sexualy as the other, and tablishg as a taboo subject what is tantamount to an act of self-censorship. I thk that gay male edians intified as part of the ‘alternative edy movement’, which is self another argument for another day, succeed makg sex funny the same way as heterosexual alternative ics often do; ankly talkg about the mdfuck that everyone’s sexual inty evably is.

The e of nuendo shows like Round the Horne gave gay men a visibily that would otherwise have been nied them by censors.

YEP, THE PURPLE TELETUBBY WAS GAY

It mtn’t be fotten that Julian Clary did ph the boundari of not only reprentatns of gay sexualy, but sex general on televisn.

Stereotyp of gay men are still rife edy, and while we’re makg the transn between “don’t drop the soap” and “How to Look Good Naked”, the reprentatns of queer inty aren’t gog away. I don’t wish to ll anyone out and say that what someone do to get a lgh is actively harmg the gay rights movement, bee that isn’t what I feel, but ’s certaly the se that the once ntroversial and groundbreakg image of ‘gay edy’ has bee tame and almost twee. I thk that subversive reprentatns of gay men, and for that matter sex posivy general is sorely lackg the world of stand up edy.

Bohlen’s volvement at Yalta ma him spect the ey of some Republins, led by Senator Joe McCarthy, who tried to pat him as not only soft on the Soviets but also gay. “I don’t say every homosexual is a subversive and I don’t say every subversive is a homosexual, ” Nebraska Senator Kenh Wherry had warned 1950. ” While another source admted to havg no relatnship wh Bohlen, he nohels volunteered to the FBI that, “Bohlen walks, acts and talks like a homosexual.

STALAG 17 : GAY NUENDO THE FILM

Moral disgt was not the only nsiratn that ma beg gay a disqualifyg tra for ernment service at the time; gays, was wily believed, were also uniquely vulnerable to blackmail. So reprehensible was beg gay, the thkg went, that a gay person would rather betray his untry than risk exposure of his shameful secret.

The month after Hoover posed his report on Bohlen, Eisenhower signed Executive Orr 10450, which permted the feral ernment to fire those spected of “sexual perversn, ” a phemism for beg gay. Over the ensug s, far more people (timat range to the thoands) would lose their jobs over (real or alleged) homosexualy than spected munist sympathi; many thoands more were nied jobs the first place. Fast-forward over six s to the prent, and the same smear tactics are beg employed, aga service of a dub narrative volvg supposed rptn of prumed gay people by a hostile foreign power.

‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK’ IS ACTUALLY THE GAYT MOVIE OF THE YEAR

Even if he secretly were, the accatn that he is therefore sceptible to blackmail is historilly groundls, predited upon the same flawed assumptn most people held about gays at the height of the Cold War: that they would m treason orr to avoid beg outed. But of all the Amerins who did betray their untry by mtg pnage for a foreign power, there is not a sgle example of a gay person blackmailed to dog so. A 1991 study found that the 117 spy s disvered sce World War II, only six volved gays, and none of the was sexual orientatn a cidg factor.

That same year, asked about the impendg outg of his spokman, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney referred to the blackmail ratnale as “an old chtnut” ed to bar gay people unfairly om servg sensive ernment posns. To claim today, baselsly, that a closeted gay person is beg blackmailed to workg agast his untry, retroactively validat the Cold War persecutn of gays, who uld be nied secury clearanc until a 1995 Executive Orr by Bill Clton reversed Eisenhower’s mandate.

GAY INNUENDO T-SHIRTS & SHIRTS

The sad irony is that the only rmg some gay men and women did durg this time was unr durs om their own ernment, which prsured them to intifyg fellow gay people so that they, too, uld be purged.

One of the sourc Hoover’s secret report on Bohlen was a gay man who, thanks to a “sixth sense, ” claimed he uld “separate the ‘queer’ om the men. ” Another such rmant, a former Department of Commerce employee named Thomas Tattersall, intified dozens of men and women as “homosexuals” to feral vtigators. “Var homosexual terms were ed, ” they later reported, and the “tone of the nversatn and the tone of voice” of the Interr employee were “fely homosexual.

TURNS OUT, BARBIELAND ISN'T AS GAY AS S QUEER FANS HAD HOPED

” Like those who gay-ba Ldsey Graham today, assertns about an dividual’s sexual viancy the 1950s and 60s were often based upon ltle more than stereotyp and njecture.

In one of the few s where the Soviets did try to blackmail a closeted gay man, their plans backfired.

Embassy and revealed everythg that had happened, cludg his history of gay experienc. ‘Surf Girls Hawai’i’ is the Real-Life ‘Blue Csh’ We’ve Waed 21 Years ForOffEnglishGif: ParamountYou ParamountTop Gun, my experience, is synonymo wh s perceived gayns. There are untls piec probg jt how homosexual s pictn of a (mostly) homosocial world of naval aviators is.

THE REAL STORY OF THE YMCA THAT INSPIRED THE VILLAGE PEOPLE'S GAY ANTHEM

Such disurse was observable om the begng, too: Ple Kael’s review of the film that ran the June 16, 1986, issue of The New Yorker, about a month after the blockbter’s release, observed that when McGillis, Cise’s love tert, is offscreen “the movie is a shy homoerotic mercial: the pilots stt around the locker room, towels hangg prerly om their waists. Perhaps the most famo, and certaly most passnate argument for readg Top Gun as an explicly gay text is Quent Taranto’s monologue Rory Kelly’s 1994 film Sleep Wh Me, an apparently improvised (and entirely Tarantoian) b which Top Gun is fed as “a story about a man’s stggle wh his own homosexualy”:This sort of postmorn readg was particularly hip the ’90s (pecially Taranto’s work—see the multi-character “Like a Virg” analysis Rervoir Dogs), although is certaly heterocentric and, while jokgly so, predited on the notn of gay recment (Kilmer’s Ice Man, the film’s facto antagonist, leadg a crew reprentg gay men who are tellg Cise’s Maverick, “Go, go the gay way”). On Nexis, the search rults for “‘Top Gun’ and gay, ” suggt that this disurse only grew the years after the film’s release.