Harvard nam Clde Gay 30th print – Harvard Gazette

Contents:

• ‘THE OTHER TWO’ TOOK DOWN HOLLYWOOD GAY-BAERS THE FUNNIT WAY
• HARVARD NAM CLDE GAY 30TH PRINT
• GAY DEAN

‘THE OTHER TWO’ TOOK DOWN HOLLYWOOD GAY-BAERS THE FUNNIT WAY

And obvly a good al of him nstantly beg funny is a cred to Jim Rash, who also helps havg a gay man play the character, for throwg himself headfirst to every crazy suatn the Dean fds himself , but as a queer person who thks you n have any person regardls of their inty be the ic relief of entertament so long as their ic inty isn’t centered around whatever mak them a “mory” and do so an offensive way, the Dean’s whole characterizatn as a queer character who’s sole purpose is not to be a stereotypil reprentatn or someone who’s there to be the “weird one” is somethg I’ve really e to appreciate. His last movie, Giant, h theaters sixty-five years ago this culture has endlsly reimaged Jam Dean om the moment he died—he is straight, bisexual, and gay; sensive and aggrsive; misunrstood and manipulative; victim and predator; the bt of and the worst. Ple Kael, then a risg film cric, plaed 1955 that watchg him was like stumblg onto the vulgar eroticism of homosexual cisg grounds—“grossly explic, ” too dulgent of boys and their “toerotic” fixatns.

Too often, his negative experienc epted , aggrsive, or dangero behavr, what Bast spected was Dean’s way of takg revenge on a society that wronged Hollywood mors started as soon as Dean ma the papers, whispers that he was bisexual or gay. His stud, Warner Bros., promoted him alongsi Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, two closeted gay men, as their most eligible bachelor. Much k would be spilled over the years tryg to p down his sexualy—straight, bisexual, gay, asexual all found their advot—but he risted labels, not least bee the labels were tied up bigger qutns of masculy and manhood.

HARVARD NAM CLDE GAY 30TH PRINT

In those days, “homosexual” was synonymo wh a mpy, effemate stereotype he uldn’t intify wh.

“I’m not a homosexual, ” he told a reporter who asked if he was gay, “but I’m not gog through life wh one hand tied behd my back.

In the heart of the homophobic ’50s, he and director Nicholas Ray quietly weaved a queer love story to his most famo film, Rebel whout a Cse, a movie filled wh qutns about what masculy meant the postwar world. ” Roger Ebert only acknowledged s homoeroticism prt 2005, and mimally at that.

GAY DEAN

Somerset Mgham read and unrstood, as did future gay activist Jack Frscher. “Jam Dean was mascule; he was blond; he was hot; he was California; he was Amerin; he was gay, ” Fristcher relled of his teenage fatuatn.

”“I’m not a homosexual, ” he told a reporter who asked if he was gay, “but I’m not gog through life wh one hand tied behd my back. Worse, after the Stonewall Rt signaled the start of the gay rights movement, openly queer men like culture crics Parker Tyler and Jack Babc claimed Dean as an in of gay liberatn. His picture hung gay bars.

Gay magaz and newsletters discsed his sexualy, and San Francis’s first leather bar, Fe-Be’s, missned a statue of a biker that remoled Michelangelo’s David as a leather-clad Jam Dean. A generatn of wrers, both straight and gay, began claimg he was a sexual predator, a socpath, someone who should be shamed for his sex life, which they wrongly envisned creasgly baroque ways. Bgrapher Venable Herndon alleged that Dean had been a gay sex worker for whom no act was too gradg or too extreme.