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. ” 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.
"WHERE THE WILD THGS ARE 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.
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.
TURNS OUT, BARBIELAND ISN'T AS GAY AS S QUEER FANS HAD HOPED
) 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. ” 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.
The siary of the childhood memori quickly be obv pilatns of oral histori such as Keh Vacha’s Quiet Fire: Memoirs of Olr Gay Men and Nancy and Casey Adair’s Word is Out: “At about seven or eight years old I was very well aware of my differenc; I knew I preferred male panns to female” (Vacha 121). ” Beg out to iends and lleagu but not to fay was mon not only among homosexuals of Sendak’s generatn but until at least as recently as the generatn g out the sixti, the time of Where the Wild Thgs Are (Adair 95, 107, 128, 180) children are now, for better or worse, exposed to many imag of homosexuals and homosexualy the popular media, the mid-sixti there were few, and they were negative. A child who was sophistited or cur enough to read his parents’ magaz would have e away terrified if he regnized himself as one of the eaks scribed such articl as “Homosexualy: S or Disease?
WHERE THE WILD THGS ARE AUTHOR MRICE SENDAK: ‘I’M GAY’
” (Christian Century 1099), “Homosexuals Need Help” (“Society should not be misled by propaganda efforts of anized homosexual groups tryg to ga ‘acceptabily’ for homosexualy, a psychotherapist warns”) (Science News-Letter 102), or a 1964 Time article about two men North Carola who were sentenced to long prison terms for mtg a sgle homosexual act between nsentg adults. A breakthrough 1964 article The New York Tim, “Speakg Frankly On a Once Taboo Subject, ” said that though was not known how many homosexuals there were the Uned Stat, what was “far more important is that many – perhaps most – are sperately unhappy about . Neverthels, although basic sexual urg may th be fulfilled to varyg gre, a feelg of plete attament of romantic longgs probably never occurs” (Tim 106) gay kids did not pick up the msage that they were crimal, sick, evil, and sted to spend their liv miserable and alone, they picked up no msage at all.
It is not surprisg that a homosexual child would beg to regnize that he is an alien his own next leg of the g out journey occurs at adolcence or young adulthood when the boy mak some attempt to exprs his sexual sire and is thrown out or leav home. Texas (the 2003 Supreme Court cisn which effectively validated laws agast sodomy the Uned Stat) The Journal of Crimal Law and Crimology not that “[i]n major urban centers like New York, San Francis, and Chigo, up to half of all of [teenagers who live on the street] may self-intify as lbian, gay, bisexual, or transgenr (LGBT). One of the subjects of Word is Out says that he “cid the bt thg I uld do would be to leave so as not to disgrace my fay, and they wouldn’t have to al wh ” (Adair 5) the culmatn, the climax, of the g out myth, the boy seeks and disvers, a bar, or at a peace rally or prott march, maybe a gay pri para, that there are others like him.
Whether was a physil “outsirship, ” gazg upon the world outsi om his bedroom wdow while sequtered om illns as a child his home, or an ternal one as the scennt of immigrant Holot victims and a gay adolcent an extremely heteronormative world, Sendak uld never que blend to 20th century Ameri’s ia of “normal.
WHERE THE GAY THGS ARE
At the heart of Where the Wild Thgs Are li Sendak’s heart: a boy like Max who was pulled between worlds, between his old Yiddishist Jewish immigrant herage and the hostile, homophobic Amerin landspe he was navigatg.