Reflectg on Queer Cema's Goln Age: The Gay '90s

Contents:

• THE GREATT GAY COMEDIANS OF ALL TIME
• LGH YOUR FEARS AWAY WH 7 OF THE FUNNIT GAY COMEDIANS EVER
• 7 HILAR GAY COMEDIANS WHO SLAY EVERY PERFORMANCE

THE GREATT GAY COMEDIANS OF ALL TIME

6Will And Jack Of 'Will & Grace'While many of the st of Will & Grace have sce said they regret perpetuatg stereotyp their rol, 's still fair to say that Will and Jack both gave voice to a lot of gay people the '90s. Havg a moment, the late ’90s and early ghts, meant that, sudnly, a gay performer or character would appear a space that had been prevly domated by straight people — say, at the center of a TV s like “Will & Grace” or a stand-up special, or as the voice of reason to the leadg lady a romantic edy like “My Bt Friend’s Weddg” — and everyone uld appld and say, “We solved !

Gay edy isn’t niche ’s all changed so fast that at one pot, while he’s discsg a sketch about rporate sponsorship of gay pri paras that he did wh Lil Nas X last May, Yang, 31, tch himself and says, lghg, “Why am I talkg about this the past tense, like ’s another era? (The podst format, which gay obssns n be discsed and nstcted at length, or which the hetero world n be filtered through gay sensibili, as is on Sam Taggart and Gee Civeris’s “StraightLab, ” has bee fertile turf for emergg edy stars. ” says Rogers, who, like all of his lleagu, has many ncurrent projects; he spent an early month of the panmic hostg (hilarly) a pet-groomg realy show lled “Hte Dog” for HBO Max; he -created a short-form seri lled “Gayme Show” (“for Quibi, rt peace”), whose wrg room was “entirely stocked wh queer people”; and he will have a regular role on a new Showtime edy lled “I Love That for You, ” tentatively schled for this sprg, wh the “S.

” Lyn’s style of humor — bchy, suatg, spiked wh alhol, rancid wh self-mockery — was rarely overtly queer; was what would now be scribed as “queer-d” — other words, legibly gay to anybody, gay or straight, who knew what signifiers to look for but to the obliv, merely droll. Lyn (who was self-protectively disparagg about gay men terviews) and ntemporari like Charl Nelson Reilly on “Match Game” (another game show) the 1970s were gay entertaers before that was a tegory; they are the first DNA strand ntemporary gay male edy’s triple send strand was the first generatn of out male edians — guys like the performance artist Frank Maya, who beme the first out gay man to get a spot on the early ’90s MTV seri “Half Hour Comedy Hour, ” and Bob Smh, the first to crack “The Tonight Show” durg the Jay Leno era, and Stt Thompson, the gay member of the Canadian edy qutet the Kids the Hall. They were pneers who had to walk a plited le, at once makg stand-up safe for gay performers and makg gay edy palatable for straight dienc that, 30 years ago, were still far more fortable lghg at queer people than wh them.

LGH YOUR FEARS AWAY WH 7 OF THE FUNNIT GAY COMEDIANS EVER

And the third strand was drag — there all along, olr than pop culture self, the subject of angry ntentn the gay muny between those who embraced as an act of transgrsive fiance and genr subversn and those who nounced as mstrelsy or, worse, bad for the e; pop culture, was a s-long journey om “La Cage x Foll” on Broadway the 1980s to “RuPl’s Drag Race” the 2000s, at which pot the naysayers fally had to adm feat.

Source photos: Alex SchaeferOne thg that distguish the new wave of gay edy is that n draw om all the tradns and rebe them to somethg new — at once polil and mpy; cheerful and subversive; stumed and nfsnal; explic and mastream. In the scene, Styl plays a distracted, gay, sexually (hyper)active social media brand manager who’s ught advertently postg his own horny Instagram msag unr the pany acunt — cludg one to Shawn Mens, to whom he sends what he sheepishly adms to his boss ( a le that drew screams of lighted shock om the stud dience) was “a picture of my open throat.

7 HILAR GAY COMEDIANS WHO SLAY EVERY PERFORMANCE

”The sketch was an stant h, which was surprisg not jt bee Styl gamely threw himself to the role but bee the language ed — “still on a poppers high, ” “feelg really prsed after threome, ” “wreck me, daddy” — was for-, by- gay talk of a kd that was unprecented on “S. L., ” which had only the last , wh the rise of Kate McKnon and the stallatn of the gay -head wrer Chris Kelly, started to journey out of a long, vexed history of homophobia. Sce Ellen DeGener me out 1997, lbians and gay men have had, and ntue to have, separate and plited trajectori through edy, and one major and persistent difference is that the ia of sex between men still triggers a more vol, openly disgted type of homophobia om some dienc than do the ia of sex between women.

“Sara Lee” didn’t seem the least alarmed by that; wasn’t a sketch aimed at heterosexual drive-by gawkers but one unmistakably wrten straight-outta-Grdr language by gay men who weren’t pecially terted translatg their work for a wir dience. VioThe edian shar an anecdote about g out to his LeeIn one way, that sensibily was nsistent wh Yang and Rogers’s unforced gay-bti vibe on “Las Culturistas, ” which is not gay as “We’re here, we’re queer, ” but gay as “We’re two adult men havg an extremely long and impassned discsn about Glenn Close — don’t expect to make fortable for you. The character, makg a tense and hghty appearance on “Weekend Update, ” exemplifi the ways which gay edy is now, so to speak, genre-fluid: It’s performed and -wrten by an out gay man; ’s not overtly gay but is, Yang’s words, “very much queer-d”; and ’s also drag.

A kd of drag that seems steeped ls the world of RuPl than the mp zans of “Pee-wee’s Playhoe” (a subversive, tangibly queerish show that’s still makg s fluence felt s after buted 1986), but drag nohels — apparently, we all know a gay iceberg when we see one. Bt of all, nothg is done for the purpose of ncealment: All the dg displays a fluency the var ways that celebry gayns n tersect wh pri, vany, narcissism, tensn, jury, entlement, persistence, weeps and termatn.

”Torr’s edy upends several tradns, cludg the gree to which gay men have so often been asked to ntextualize themselv wh the straight world — as ic relief, as sikicks, as the bt iend. (That class distctn — placg femmey or mpy gay men a tier below gay men who n, if not pass as heterosexual, at least -swch — is entangled wh real-world hierarchi and prejudic wh and outsi of gay muni that pop culture over the s has both reflected and rerced.

) One of the strikg thgs about this moment is that effemacy — or, more accurately, tonatns or gtur that we read as gay — is no longer a joke for the benef of straight dienc; ’s jt part of who the performers are (or, some s, aren’t). Watchg him is like spyg on a wildly bright and imagative gay kid while he’s creatg a fantasy world alone his room — where, after all, many bright gay kids spend a lot of their time. VioThe edian livers a monologue on LeeTODAY’S GAY COMICS often nnect eply to their own childhoods, but that shouldn’t be misread as a form of timidy or trepidatn: The guys also talk about sex.

Source photos: Young-Whe: Flora Hanijo; Esla: Sean Santiago; Torr: Amy Lombard for The New York TimThis all happened what was supposed to be the post-acceptance era, when the age of enlightenment picted on numero TV shows didn’t match the on-the-ground realy for a lot of gay kids.