Contents:
- WHY “WILD THGS” WAS A DEFG FILM FOR GAY MEN IN THE ’90S
- THE GAY HISTORY OF AMERI’S CLASSIC CHILDREN’S BOOKS
- "WHERE THE WILD THGS ARE GAY"
- TURNS OUT, BARBIELAND ISN'T AS GAY AS S QUEER FANS HAD HOPED
- WHERE THE WILD THGS ARE AUTHOR MRICE SENDAK: ‘I’M GAY’
- WHERE THE GAY THGS ARE
WHY “WILD THGS” WAS A DEFG FILM FOR GAY MEN IN THE ’90S
For gay men who grew up the ’90s, there are two distctive eras: the time before we saw Kev Ban’s full-ontal scene Wild Thgs, and the time ’s been 20 years to the day sce Wild Thgs h theaters. Many of who were still figurg ourselv out gravated ls toward more overt pictns of gayns, like The Birdge or In & Out, and more to subtler, subtextually homoerotic feels absurd to e the word “subtle” nnectn to Wild Thgs, the kd of steamy erotic thriller that should have been relegated to late-night Cemax but somehow end up wh a wi release. But whether tentnally or not, there is an unrcurrent of gayns that ma pecially tillatg to all the cur and qutng teens who managed to bypass Blockbter’s age-rtricted rental prohibns.
THE GAY HISTORY OF AMERI’S CLASSIC CHILDREN’S BOOKS
But we n acknowledge how eply offensive a movie is and also how formative s climactic shower scene was to a certa subset of gay the end of the movie, after Sam has double-crossed Suzie and Kelly, he returns to his beach bungalow to fd someone the shower.
"WHERE THE WILD THGS ARE GAY"
” It’s about a t who liv wh two gay men; you n tell by the book, then jt published, was evintly meant to help normalize already borgly normal fai like ours by g the tradnal substutn of animals for people orr to illtrate how much fun havg gay dads n be. They get to scrap separately but get out of them together, which is not a bad fn of left: Jam Marshall, “Gee and Martha, ” urty of Houghton Miffl Harurt; Arnold Lobel, “Frog and Toad are Friends” © 1970 Arnold Lobel, ed by permissn of HarperColls Publishers; Jam Marshall, “Miss Nelson is Missg!, ” urty of Houghton Miffl HarurtOur boys loved the stori, as did we — but not bee Lobel was gay.
They ntued to make books together for years: a Frog and Toad tale if ever there was, Lobel’s gayns, when I learned of much later, seemed like somethg I should have known all along; lurked everywhere his words and pictur. Sss and Shel Silverste were prumably heterosexual, no matter that Silverste glowered om the photos on his book jackets like a hot Scff by permissn of HarperColls, urty of Children’s Lerature Collectn, UMNBut remas the se that the thors of many of the most succsful and fluential works of children’s lerature the middle years of the last century — works that were formative for baby boomers, Gen-Xers, lennials and beyond — were gay.
TURNS OUT, BARBIELAND ISN'T AS GAY AS S QUEER FANS HAD HOPED
At a time when those wrers wouldn’t dare (as Paola recently told me) walk hand hand wh a lover, when only a straight children’s thor like Silverste uld get away wh publishg a story Playboy about life the homophile En that is Fire Island P, they won Caltt and Newbery Medals for books that, whout ever directly speakg their tth, sent out a secret language that was somehow accsible to those who need to receive . The msage: Leave me alone wh my imagatn and I’ll be mt have lighted Sendak to know that, spe the ocsnal censorship kerfuffle, an Ameri terrified of gay fluence on children was vourg his ovre as fast as he uld whip up.
WHERE THE WILD THGS ARE AUTHOR MRICE SENDAK: ‘I’M GAY’
) While the Save Our Children csar Ana Bryant and the Foc on the Fay attack dog Jam Dobson were huntg down homosexual propaganda schools and stateho, Sendak and the others were hidg the one place no one bothered to look: on their children’s night this wasn’t a liberate strategy of subversn, wasn’t a cince eher. Roughly enpassg the first 10 years of the morn gay rights movement, the books (and their thors) uld only dream of a world which “Lucy Go to the Country, ” by a male uple who announce themselv as such on the flap, would seem monplace, or which a picture book lled “Stonewall: A Buildg.
WHERE THE GAY THGS ARE
” It is also the plot of Mrice Sendak’s Where the Wild Thgs g out story that gay men tell ntas certa basic elements which changed ltle om the 1930s, when Sendak was growg up, to the 1960s, when Where the Wild Thgs Are was published.