Is Nothing Sacred?
By Robert J. Sodaro
I’m going to present — without comment — the cover for the May edition of The Advocate.
I haven’t actual read the article; a friend of mine sent me the on-line image, which is all I’ve seen at this point. According to the on-line blurb, “Advocate arts and entertainment editor and lifelong comics fan Alonso Duralde looks at superheroes and their appeal to gays and lesbians.”
As someone who has been a part of this industry (as both fan and semi-pro) since the early ‘60s, I am very interested in learning what the article actually says (if someone who has read it wants to summarize it or (ahem) post it for us, that would be great).
Still (and again, not having read the article), I can’t help but to wonder what the mainstream media will make of the article (or at least the magazine’s cover and article’s title). It could be nothing, or it could be a big deal. I guess it all depends on what kind of a news day it is.
This post has been revised from an earlier version of the post
posted by rjsodaro @ 12:29 PM
15 Comments:
Why wouldn't comic fandom want it? Lord knows there are plenty of gay and lesbian comics fans (and creators, for that matter).
Judging from the online excerpt, Duralde's cover story isn't the 700th installment of, "Are Batman and Robin gay?" Instead, it appears to be a fairly personal account of what comic books meant to the writer when he was a kid, and what appeal the characters have to The Advocate's audience.
The cover headline is a little sensationalistic, but that's the nature of the beast.
Plus, Bryan Singer's openly gay, as is X3's McKellen. So, it's a no-brainer for an issue of the gay culture and politics magazine devoted to summer movies.
Um, why wouldn't comic books appeal to gays and lesbians?
I'm gonna have to ditto Kevin and anonymous here.
I have to ditto Kevin, anonymous, and Shane. Comic fandom needs to grow up.
"Yeah, that’s sort of how I feel about this magazine’s cover as well."
how exactly are we supposed to feel about the magazine's cover? like we should hold it by the corner, say "ewww" and then drop it into the fireplace? that's the impression I get from your post.
there are a lot of gay and lesbian comic fans, creaors and even comics out there. pull your head out of your ass and take a look around.
So what, exactly, is your point here? Because, to be honest, it sounds like you are finding the very idea of gay and lesbian comic fans to be somehow objectionable.
Sadly, it's not "just you" as I've often found that comic fans, and super-hero fans in particular, have a strangely defensive rejection to the idea of gay comic fans, as if our very existence somehow taints the sacred heterosexual image of your precious little hobby.
It might just be me, but the headline "Is Nothing Sacred?" is kind of the opposite of presenting something without comment. Sheesh.
I hope the ugly thought behind the dichotomy asserted is just some unfortunate writing.
Oh, that was me, Tom Spurgeon.
OK, a couple of things here. First, I apologize for the inadvertent tone of my original post (it has since been revised, please re-read it). Second, I call all of my posts “Is Nothing Sacred” (it is the punch line to an old Playboy joke that I have always found funny). Third, I completely don’t care that there are gay and lesbian fans or pros in the field, I’ve obviously known this for years. What I was attempting to say (and doing badly) was that I was concerned about what the mainstream press was going to do with the admittedly sensationalistic headline on the issue.
My fear was/is that as the press has gotten consistently more conservative, an article about the (real or imagined) “gayness” of long-established characters could potentially be turned into yet another "Seduction of the Innocent"-like witch-hunt, driving us even further underground or marginalizing our industry. Imagine, what would occur if someone decided that Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, or a dozen other long-established heroes never formed long-term relationships with woman because they were all latently gay.
As I stated in the post, I had not read the article, and not knowing the writer I didn’t know if he was going to make all kind of wild assumptions about superheroes based on what he thought rather than what the original writers thought a decade or five back.
Remember at the Oscars how Jon Stewart lampooned old cowboy films from the ‘40s and ‘50s as filtered through a “Brokeback Mountain” lens? Well, given as how we all “know” that comics are specifically and exclusively targeted for children, I wasn’t certain that a similar look at comics in a gay magazine would be as entertaining to a conservative press.
Hopefully, this comment better clarifies my position.
"My fear was/is that as the press has gotten consistently more conservative, an article about the (real or imagined) “gayness” of long-established characters could potentially be turned into yet another "Seduction of the Innocent"-like witch-hunt, driving us even further underground or marginalizing our industry."
That doesn't seem like a very plausible scenario.
Marvel's re-envisioning of the Rawhide Kid received plenty of mainstream attention, and no torch-carrying villagers appeared.
Ditto with openly gay writer Allan Heinberg's mainstream interviews about the gay characters in Young Avengers, or the attention (and awards) Judd Winick received for his homophobia storyline in Green Lantern.
Even if the gist of The Advocate article were, "Superman is sooo gay," what would it matter? It'd be no different than the well-worn jokes about Batman and Robin (or Wonder Woman, for that matter).
It might garner an eyeroll from the mainstream press, and maybe one of those funny little "eye-opener" briefs. ("When contacted for comment, DC Comics Executive Editor Dan DiDio said, 'I don't know, you'll have to ask Lois Lane'.")
'I don't know, you'll have to ask Lois Lane'
Ask Lana about Lois.
It's not the first time a sensationalistic headline was used to help sell magazines.
The last line of the online excerpt (link in the first comment by Kevin) is certainly interesting enough for me, a straight guy, to want to read.
Nothing could make me change the channel faster than an old Rat Patrol or Daktari episode popping up in the middle of my afternoon of TV. So why was I drawn to these heroic tales of adventure and derring-do?
Of course, this is a great tease for anyone, straight or gay.
I help manage a collective blog for romance (although I am not a romance writer), and there was a guest post this last December by a couple of writers who write gay romance books... You see, in each of their books, they don't have one romantic male lead, they have two. In this post,
http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/?p=468
they give several reasons why they fall in love with male heroes.
Here are a few of the reasons they list:
-- Our leading men have a well-developed sense of right and wrong, social justice, and courtesy. They reserve judgment, treat others with compassion, but they are unafraid to dine with sinners—including us!
-- Our leading men make us feel like ours is the first and deepest love no matter how many came before.
-- They make it worth our while to play hooky.
-- Money is not required to be a leading man. Energy will do.
-- Our leading man (perhaps reluctantly) will dance. He isn’t necessarily any good, but he is willing.
-- Our leading men have stubborn jaws. They aren’t led by the nose, by us, or by anyone else.
-- For all the drama that marks romances (and gay stereotypes), steadiness under fire is preferred. The leading men of romance novels are often warriors—knights, cops, military. They can’t all be war heroes, but they all defend honor and express loyalty.
***
By and large, these are certainly traits that almost all lovers of heroic adventures can agree with.
The flip-side argument here seems to be: Which POPULAR comic book hero or character that seems to be the LEAST gay? I'd posit that the least gay character is one having mannerisms of the old fashioned knuckle dragging males, usually seen chomping on cigars and apprciatively slapping women's behinds. Again, I'm pretty hetero, so I suppose I'm in no place to judge what is gay and what isn't. As always, your milage may vary.
That doesn’t seem like a very plausible scenario.
For all of our sakes, Kevin, I certainly hope you are right, and I am being just an alarmist. Still, I watch Fox News, and see how Right-Wingers view the world as “us” and “them”.
I think it's too late to be concerned about the original writers. I'm sure there's plenty of things they didn't think about their creations that go on these days.
DerikB; I remember a film program that I was watching years ago discussing two films. In the first, from the ‘50s, a woman was beaten by a man off-screen so that the audience would be spared the violence. In the second, a ‘60s film, the woman was beaten on-screen so that the audience wouldn’t think that she was being raped. So yeah, things change.
Finally, as for Heinberg’s, and Winicks’ interviews and gay character/storylines I was completely unaware of them, so hopefully I AM just being an alarmist, and there is nothing to worry about. As far as the Rawhide Kid is concerned I recall that, and again, I’m hoping that the shift to the right will still continue to ignore us.
However, while there are plenty of gay characters in film and on TV and (as Walt points out) even in Romance fiction, I can’t stress this enough, while those of us who inhabit blogs like this know better, comicbooks are still widely perceived as “kiddy” fare. As someone who has lived this a couple of times already, I can’t help but to think that our desire for older, more mature themes in our comics may eventually come back and bite us in our collective arses.
Again, I hope I’m wrong.
Ah, not for nothing, but I have to dispute the fellow who said,
"Even if the gist of The Advocate article were, 'Superman is sooo gay,' what would it matter? It'd be no different than the well-worn jokes about Batman and Robin (or Wonder Woman, for that matter)."
The difference is in the first instance the comments about Batman liking young boys and Wonder Woman being butch were (presumably) made between fellow fans who have some sort of affinity for the medium, while the cover story about superheroes being gay or pedophiles is in a national magazine and could/will be seen, and picked up, by a conservative press that isn't as forgiving.
Sort of the difference between you shoving your younger brother around in a friendly fashion, and the neighborhood bully kicking the crap out of him simply because he can.
Something to think about.
The difference is in the first instance the comments about Batman liking young boys and Wonder Woman being butch were (presumably) made between fellow fans who have some sort of affinity for the medium, while the cover story about superheroes being gay or pedophiles is in a national magazine and could/will be seen, and picked up, by a conservative press that isn't as forgiving.
I don't think there is a difference, really. The Batman and Robin jokes go well beyond comics fandom, perhaps because of the campiness of the '60s TV series. The duo's relationship is even being featured in a San Francisco Symphony cabaret.
And Wonder Woman has become a bit of a gay icon, largely because of the Lynda Carter TV series. "Suffering Sappho!" quips aside, the character has an undeniable link to gay culture.
Beyond any of that, though, I doubt the conservative press is taking its cues from The Advocate. A gay magazine wondering how gay a fictional character is really isn't torch-lighting material.
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