How to Be Gay by David M Halper – review | Society books | The Guardian

Contents:

• HOW TO BE GAY
• HOW TO BE GAY BY DAVID M HALPER – REVIEW
• HOW TO BE GAY
• HOW TO BE GAY
• ‘HOW TO BE GAY’ BY DAVID M. HALPER

HOW TO BE GAY

No one rais an eyebrow if you suggt that a guy who arrang his furnure jt so, rolls his ey exaggerated disbelief, lik techno mic or show tun, and knows all of Bette Davis’s bt l by heart might, jt possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexualy is a cultural practice, exprsive of a unique subjectivy and a distctive relatn to mastream society, people will immediately prott. David Halper, a pneer of LGBTQ studi, dar to suggt that gayns is a specific way of beg that gay men mt learn om one another orr to bee who they are.

Inspired by the notor unrgraduate urse of the same tle that Halper tght at the Universy of Michigan, provokg cri of outrage om both the right-wg media and the gay prs, How To Be Gay trac gay men’s cultural difference to the social meang of style.

HOW TO BE GAY BY DAVID M HALPER – REVIEW

Far om beg terred by stereotyp, Halper nclus that the geni of gay culture ris some of s most spised featur: s atheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoratn of glamour, ritur of women, and obssn wh mothers. Halper, a profsor of the history and theory of sexualy at the Universy of Michigan, Ann Arbor, provotively argu that when to fg what means to be a homosexual man, sex is overrated. ” The great value of tradnal gay male culture, he further poss, perhaps even more challenggly, “ris some of s most spised and repudiated featur: gay male femy, diva worship, atheticism, snobbery, drama, adoratn of glamour, riture of women and obssn wh the figure of the mother.

HOW TO BE GAY

” The claratns n unter to much of the prevailg gay pri ethos, which argu that gay men are, to borrow the tle of Andrew Sullivan’s 1995 book, “virtually normal. Halper, like the figure on the Heisman Trophy, rais his hand rebuff: “For all s unniable benefs, gay pri is now preventg om knowg ourselv.

) Instead, the class was about how men who are already gay velop “a nsc inty, a mon culture, a particular outlook on the world, a shared sense of self. But his class examed why Madonna, midcentury morn furnure and Mi Coopers, to name merely three thgs, me to matter so much to so many gay men. Among the most unual thgs about “How to Be Gay” is that is, at heart, a 500-pl-page work that explor a fundamental kd of gay sensibily by ncentratg almost exclively on one actrs, Joan Crawford, and on a sgle scene a sgle movie, the 1945 drama “Mildred Pierce.

Halper teas an enormo amount out of this scene, cludg the sense of “glamour and abjectn” gay dienc fd Crawford, and how the film packag the “transgrsive spectacle of female strength, tonomy, feists and power. Halper works up to an argument (impossible to summarize here) about how the film evok a “dissint perspective” on the very ia of romantic is articulate about many other thgs this book, cludg how gay men often fd more ronance straight cultural artifacts than gay on. Halper even neatly mows down hipster irony the face of the kd of gay male irony that f ’s a kaleidospic book that at s base breaks wh what the thor lls “the ‘Brokeback Mounta’ crowd.

HOW TO BE GAY

Some of those men – gay but not Gay, as were – regard the whole mils-terr ratn-fashn-thg as a cur foreign language, not really worth learng. What he n be ncerned about, seems, is the culture of Gay, passed down through generatns of slappers, proppg up the bars of Soho London, Chelsea New York, and the Marais Paris, all quarters which are now as ad as the proverbial Halper has wrten an over-long book, more lolised s applitn than he seems fully to appreciate, about the aspects of beg gay other than sexual choice. Naturally, when a urse "How to Be Gay" was announced the Amerin mid-wt, an army of enraged fay-first mpaigners rose up tpe leisurewear to nounce Profsor Halper for wantg to rec the nocent.

He adms that "Amerin" is an unspoken adjective much of what he has to say, cludg the tle of the book – I gus "How to be an Amerin Gay" would be an even more unvg subject than the one he has chosen. Outsi Ameri, he reliably gets thgs wrong, suggtg that Bollywood mils may reprent the same sort of gay cult to Indian gay men that Sex and the Cy do to Amerins – he's clearly never seen a film a Calcutta cema, or he would have noticed that the appeal is not a gay thg at all at s source.

He don't show much tert gay meetg plac – when he do rerd fdg himself a backroom, is to talk about the porn playg to an acpaniment of 19th-century opera.

‘HOW TO BE GAY’ BY DAVID M. HALPER

He don't, amazgly, show any tert clubbg, which I would say was a much more powerful exprsn of gay culture to recent generatns of gay people than terrible old movi.

He don't wre about cloth, or gtur, or ga, or any of what intifi a gay man to another at 80 pac, or the syntax and vobulary and slang which mak them mutually clear at closer quarters – I mean, you n't always be sayg "Have you seen Mommie Deart?

The book would have been much stronger if were a discipled 120 pag about Mildred Pierce, and s off-shoots – Mommie Deart and var drag-show renstctns – specifilly examed om the viewpot of a middle-aged gay man. That is not a subject whout s terts, but Halper's attempts to shift Crawford to the centre of what gay culture means and meant is pla old weird.