Given the arc of tolerance in American society over my life, I really wouldn't have thought that music videos had gotten less gay over the years. But I'd have been wrong.
4- It makes a crazy kind of sense. There was a long time in which gay subtext flew below the radar- 'normal' people didn't react to it because they thought no one was gay. Then when gay people weren't something that could be denied those 'normal' people started jumping at everything, fighting for such ancient institutions as marriages in which women weren't simply vectors for the transfer of property.
Watching a Rock Hudson film knowing he's gay, for example, gives those movies entirely new meanings. But the straight people watching them when they were made had no clue about the low-hanging fruit orchard in which they were wandering.
In Pillow Talk he implies that his romantic rival (played by himself) is gay. And then when he is acting as that rival he talks about window treatments and his mother and cooking. But I don't know of a movie where he pretends to be gay the whole time.
I just saw this video at the gym a couple of weeks ago (they always play 80s videos on Saturday morning) and didn't remember that ending. According to Wikipedia, MTV (and I assume the stupid Health Club Video Network [or whatever they call it]) frequently cut off the video before the ending. When I saw ONJ in concert last year, she talked about the video having been banned in England.
Tangentially, I would like to approve of ogged's method of linking to the YouTube, as opposed to embedding it. Older computers have a hard time processing embedded YouTube clips.
I had never seen that. Y'all are old, or had cable. And I'm glad they were gay, because they were totally gay in the scene before that; it would have been so unrealistic had they gone off with her.
(The Calamom: but the lyrics aren't about working out, are they?)
There was a long time in which gay subtext flew below the radar
Surely at some point something is done so blatantly that it ceases to be subtext. Of course what's "blatant" is going to vary by time period, but jesus, two oiled up guys in speedos wandering off holding hands?
And Ogged is right, I really didn't remember that video at all.
No, no, dear god. Rent "Send me No Flowers," Ogged. He plays a hypochondriac who thinks he's dying, and his best friend is played by Tony Randall, and they go around together checking out men. Because, you know, they need to find a new husband for Doris.
15--That's alright. It's just that I've been wanting to make that point to someone ever after that silly YouTube war between The Poorman, Atrios, and Sadly, No! It slowed down my computer tremendously, and crashed my honey's computer twice. The occasional clip will be fine. Just fine.
The ending is great, but all that beating up and making fun of the fat guys made me a little uncomfortable.
The bathhouse scene may have been alive and well on the heathenish coasts, but deep in America's throbbing heartland no one knew about the gay. The backlash that started with Stonewall is only getting stronger because the gay movement is more vocal and visible even than it was in the eighties. It was fine and dandy when gay people hid in the closet, but heaven forbid people have to face the fact that some famous person they'll never meet doesn't like girls.
That also explains MTV cutting the end of the video- they were afraid of people who were becoming aware of the gay movement complaining, but Bogey could put his ex-girlfriend on a plane and walk off with another man without anyone really noticing. Now even Spongebob is gay because the people who have made a business out of rejecting gayness are jumping at shadows and seeing everything being gay. It's a stimulus-response thing.
And Dr B is right- Send me no Flowers is hilarious, too. I like 'That Touch of Mink' for a commentary on pre-marital sex from back in the day. All the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies are entertaining. But never under any circumstances rent The Pajama Game. It's terrible.
27 -- that does not number among the popular "sing-along" Village People hits you hear at e.g. bas mitzvahs, Catskills resorts, mall p.a. systems, etc.
The great thing about YouTube is that in addition to sophisticated pieces of cinema like Oliva Newton John's "Physical" video, we also get gems like "The Day I Shot My Crippled Friend in the Leg While He Was Peeing."
This clip which is the opening to the village people's movie "can't stop the music" is weirdly watchable. I think it is because it was filmed on location. Steve Gutenburg is happier than you.
Can't Stop the Music is full of great moments. The roller-skating intro is priceless. And Steve Gutenburg (sp?) is clearly coked up throughout the whole movie.
I dunno, Simmons is pretty fucking charming. His sense of humor is disturbingly like the ex's dad's, but I guess that's a middle-aged jewish guy thing. I even kind of liked his teenaged son. Anyway, worth checking out one episode.
You have missed the message of the video. ONJ goes off with the old fat guy, and leaves the slender, good-looking, guys with the muscular definition and shit, who like all good-looking slender young guys are gay, gay, gay!, in their hell of false appearances.
Also, ONJ's grandfather was a Nobel Prize winner, Max Born, which means that she is Jewish by Nazi standards.
If the old fat guy was intended to be her father or Nobel Prize winning grandfather, then my previous statement is inoperative. Unless she was screwing them. I didb't watch the whole thing.
one red paperclip, the book, is due to hit bookshelves next summer. I will write the book in my favorite language: Canuck-Yank-Bloglish. Words like "toque" and "skidoo" are in, but those pesky bonus u's are out.
"Shelton was fired from the band during the filming of the "Come On Eileen" video. Rowland ordered his bandmates not to do any bathing of any kind or shaving of any kind. Shelton did not follow the orders and Rowland fired him." (Wiki)
A quick trawl through YouTube reminds me that Morris Day was the coolest man in American history. I dream of the day I can pull off the mirror move at the end of the video with such casual panache.
You have to distinguish between one-off song, and one hit wonder. There aren't two in ten people who remember the names of the Knack and the Vapors, but everyone remembers Dexy's. Also, women in overalls still get me a bit bothered.
Back to Rock Hudson- there's also the scene in "All that Heaven Allows" in which he and Jane Wyman are talking about how she has to be strong and tell her children about their relationship, and she utters the line, "So, what you're saying is, you want me to be more like a man." !!!
I just barely remember the Fifties, but that period was obsessed with homosexuality. It was usually in a psychiatric social-problems sense, but it lurked in the background of a lot of the pop culture. Guys were pretty much told to be always watchful for signs that they, or someone they knew, might really be one of "them".
"Suddenly Last Summer" was a terrible movie in my opinion, but as vivid Fifties nostalgia it has everything -- Katherine Hepburn overacting like you wouldn't believe, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift being sexy without doing anything, the silliest happy ending you ever saw, dystopian psychiatry giving a lobotomy to silence a witness (almost), grossly racist portrayals of mobs of Arab street kids, and an dead queer who's ofstage who's the center of the plot. Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal.
In the fifties, homosexuality had been made more than anecdotal by the Kinsey report, which may have overstated the incidence due to sampling errors, but was not wrong by an order of magnitude. And it was widely assumed to be the consequence of social factors, of upbringing, of nurture rather than nature. That was where the panic came from: what might you be doing wrong? Was it contagious? Could you be "turned?"
I totally remember it, because I saw it on VH1's "I Love the Eighties" about a year ago.
Agreed on YouTube being a "visual collective memory bank."
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 4:15 PM
Oh man. I'm the reader Ogged had in mind for this post: I had no idea!
It's especially worthwhile to see Ogged and Labs glance back over their shoulders after walking out.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 4:21 PM
I was not permitted to watch such filth in my youth. Looking at it now, I agree with my caretakers.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 4:32 PM
Given the arc of tolerance in American society over my life, I really wouldn't have thought that music videos had gotten less gay over the years. But I'd have been wrong.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 4:42 PM
4- It makes a crazy kind of sense. There was a long time in which gay subtext flew below the radar- 'normal' people didn't react to it because they thought no one was gay. Then when gay people weren't something that could be denied those 'normal' people started jumping at everything, fighting for such ancient institutions as marriages in which women weren't simply vectors for the transfer of property.
Watching a Rock Hudson film knowing he's gay, for example, gives those movies entirely new meanings. But the straight people watching them when they were made had no clue about the low-hanging fruit orchard in which they were wandering.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 4:51 PM
Isn't there a Rock Hudson movie where he plays a straight guy pretending to be gay? I want to see that one.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 4:58 PM
In Pillow Talk he implies that his romantic rival (played by himself) is gay. And then when he is acting as that rival he talks about window treatments and his mother and cooking. But I don't know of a movie where he pretends to be gay the whole time.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:07 PM
Hey, speaking of gay, did you know that Nicholas Cage is starring in a Liberace movie?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:08 PM
Before 9/11 we didn't realize the need for serious camel-toe defenses, apparently.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:14 PM
I think that's it, Winna.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:15 PM
I just saw this video at the gym a couple of weeks ago (they always play 80s videos on Saturday morning) and didn't remember that ending. According to Wikipedia, MTV (and I assume the stupid Health Club Video Network [or whatever they call it]) frequently cut off the video before the ending. When I saw ONJ in concert last year, she talked about the video having been banned in England.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:18 PM
But that ending isn't subtext, exactly. One of the youtube commenters says that MTV ended the video prematurely to edit out the gay.
Also keep in mind that there was a lot of gay in disco, and in the early 80s the bathhouse scene was still alive and well.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:19 PM
Tangentially, I would like to approve of ogged's method of linking to the YouTube, as opposed to embedding it. Older computers have a hard time processing embedded YouTube clips.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:21 PM
I had never seen that. Y'all are old, or had cable. And I'm glad they were gay, because they were totally gay in the scene before that; it would have been so unrealistic had they gone off with her.
(The Calamom: but the lyrics aren't about working out, are they?)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:22 PM
But sometimes, JM, I will embed, because I think people are much more likely to watch when I do. My apologies.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:23 PM
There was a long time in which gay subtext flew below the radar
Surely at some point something is done so blatantly that it ceases to be subtext. Of course what's "blatant" is going to vary by time period, but jesus, two oiled up guys in speedos wandering off holding hands?
And Ogged is right, I really didn't remember that video at all.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:23 PM
Aargh, Labs in 12 beat me to it.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:25 PM
No, no, dear god. Rent "Send me No Flowers," Ogged. He plays a hypochondriac who thinks he's dying, and his best friend is played by Tony Randall, and they go around together checking out men. Because, you know, they need to find a new husband for Doris.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:27 PM
What about the guy with the red 'fro and the total porn star moustache?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:28 PM
What about the guy with the red 'fro and the total porn star moustache?
You mean Ben?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:29 PM
Both 2 and 20 make jokes I wanted to make. Advantage: Armsmasher!
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:31 PM
15--That's alright. It's just that I've been wanting to make that point to someone ever after that silly YouTube war between The Poorman, Atrios, and Sadly, No! It slowed down my computer tremendously, and crashed my honey's computer twice. The occasional clip will be fine. Just fine.
The ending is great, but all that beating up and making fun of the fat guys made me a little uncomfortable.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:40 PM
The bathhouse scene may have been alive and well on the heathenish coasts, but deep in America's throbbing heartland no one knew about the gay. The backlash that started with Stonewall is only getting stronger because the gay movement is more vocal and visible even than it was in the eighties. It was fine and dandy when gay people hid in the closet, but heaven forbid people have to face the fact that some famous person they'll never meet doesn't like girls.
That also explains MTV cutting the end of the video- they were afraid of people who were becoming aware of the gay movement complaining, but Bogey could put his ex-girlfriend on a plane and walk off with another man without anyone really noticing. Now even Spongebob is gay because the people who have made a business out of rejecting gayness are jumping at shadows and seeing everything being gay. It's a stimulus-response thing.
And Dr B is right- Send me no Flowers is hilarious, too. I like 'That Touch of Mink' for a commentary on pre-marital sex from back in the day. All the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies are entertaining. But never under any circumstances rent The Pajama Game. It's terrible.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:46 PM
Bogey could put his ex-girlfriend on a plane and walk off with another man without anyone really noticing.
That's 'cause Rick and Renault were totally not gay.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 5:56 PM
I had only the vaguest memories of this video. The men in speedos to hot chick ratio was not at all what I rememberd.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 6:17 PM
But we all know who the real homo is.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 6:36 PM
Sex over the phone!
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 6:43 PM
Unbelievable find, baa! An act of YouTube genius.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 6:45 PM
27 -- that does not number among the popular "sing-along" Village People hits you hear at e.g. bas mitzvahs, Catskills resorts, mall p.a. systems, etc.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 6:54 PM
Tyson got him back for that.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 7:05 PM
29 No indeed. But it should be!
I love the computer running the Sex Scenario. State of the art, man.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 7:11 PM
The great thing about YouTube is that in addition to sophisticated pieces of cinema like Oliva Newton John's "Physical" video, we also get gems like "The Day I Shot My Crippled Friend in the Leg While He Was Peeing."
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 7:14 PM
ogged,
I was looking for the pic of Green's face post the 4am brawl in harlem. Couldn't find it, alas.
SCMT,
I knew you would like that!
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 7:19 PM
This clip which is the opening to the village people's movie "can't stop the music" is weirdly watchable. I think it is because it was filmed on location. Steve Gutenburg is happier than you.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 7:22 PM
pic of Green's face post the 4am brawl in harlem
I looked for that too. Even the internet won't go to Harlem.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 7:33 PM
These days, I am desparately trying to find housing in Harlem. I'm just hoping I can get there before the tidal wave of developers do.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 8:25 PM
Mitch Green's myspace page.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 8:40 PM
trippy -- to the point of unreadability.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 8:42 PM
Can't Stop the Music is full of great moments. The roller-skating intro is priceless. And Steve Gutenburg (sp?) is clearly coked up throughout the whole movie.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 8:44 PM
unreadability
The signal characteristic of myspace.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 8:45 PM
Hey apo, are you watching the Gene Simmons reality show on A&E?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 8:53 PM
No, I've seen ads for it but reality TV just seems really pointless.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:01 PM
I dunno, Simmons is pretty fucking charming. His sense of humor is disturbingly like the ex's dad's, but I guess that's a middle-aged jewish guy thing. I even kind of liked his teenaged son. Anyway, worth checking out one episode.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:04 PM
Wait, the ex is jewish? Now that's haram.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:25 PM
I'll set the TiVo to get it then.
Firestarter.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:28 PM
Wait, the ex is jewish?
Surely I've mentioned that before?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:29 PM
Different woman from the Russian?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:31 PM
Nope. Same one. You should see me in a yarmulke.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:35 PM
I'm sure it really brings out your nose.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:39 PM
"I just wanna hurdle your girdle and do slam dunks in your swimming trunks."
Candypants.
He's exclusively a minister of sobriety.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:41 PM
My nose doesn't need an excuse to come out.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:42 PM
"I would eat the seat."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:46 PM
By the way, the paperclip trader got his house.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:47 PM
Did the have to fit you specially for your yarmulke? You know, because of the pointiness?
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:47 PM
Yeah, but would you want to live there? What a tool.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:48 PM
You have missed the message of the video. ONJ goes off with the old fat guy, and leaves the slender, good-looking, guys with the muscular definition and shit, who like all good-looking slender young guys are gay, gay, gay!, in their hell of false appearances.
Also, ONJ's grandfather was a Nobel Prize winner, Max Born, which means that she is Jewish by Nazi standards.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:49 PM
If the old fat guy was intended to be her father or Nobel Prize winning grandfather, then my previous statement is inoperative. Unless she was screwing them. I didb't watch the whole thing.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:50 PM
I don't understand your antipathy to the trader-man. I'd take a house in Saskatchewan if it only cost me a paperclip. He can always sell it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:54 PM
No he can't. On the Great Plains, houses are abandoned.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:56 PM
Millsy, apparently the pointiness of my head is within the bounds of typical Jewish pointiness. Eve 1, Phrenology 0.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:59 PM
Ogged, get your little Jewish hat out of your eyes and see what is plain as day: that guy is a tool.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 9:59 PM
one red paperclip, the book, is due to hit bookshelves next summer. I will write the book in my favorite language: Canuck-Yank-Bloglish. Words like "toque" and "skidoo" are in, but those pesky bonus u's are out.
Ok, fine. But your antipathy is still irrational.
A book and movie deal. Jesus.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 10:03 PM
You see my point. Also some of the last trades were pretty weak.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 10:04 PM
55 gets it completely right. Trust me.
But the book and movie deal things piss me off.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 08- 7-06 11:42 PM
Why are you talking about Ogged when you could be talking about the wonder that is 50? It ought to be the Unfogged theme song.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 1:57 AM
Also, ONJ's grandfather was a Nobel Prize winner, Max Born, which means that she is Jewish by Nazi standards.
I'm having some kind of super-sick waspy morning, but this is hilarious to me.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 6:18 AM
Q. What's more disgusting than sweat on Olivia Newton John?
A.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:00 AM
Hey watch what you say about Dexy's Midnight Runners!
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:03 AM
"Come on Eileen" is the "See Emily Play" of 80's American pop/country fusion.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:04 AM
Have to agree with CA in #68. Dexy's is the canonical one-hit wonder, and should be accorded the respect it's due.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:07 AM
"Shelton was fired from the band during the filming of the "Come On Eileen" video. Rowland ordered his bandmates not to do any bathing of any kind or shaving of any kind. Shelton did not follow the orders and Rowland fired him." (Wiki)
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:28 AM
A quick trawl through YouTube reminds me that Morris Day was the coolest man in American history. I dream of the day I can pull off the mirror move at the end of the video with such casual panache.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:33 AM
Dexy's is the canonical one-hit wonder
I disagree. That dubious honor belongs to these guys.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:47 AM
The great thing about "Come On Eileen" is the opportunity to be merciless when a friend's mom is named Eileen.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:50 AM
Didn't LB say all her mom's friends were named Eileen?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 8:55 AM
Those that weren't named either Mary Margaret or Margaret Mary.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 9:00 AM
73: I dunno, The Vapors put in a decent bid for the title. Btw, I have both this album and two (count 'em, two!) Knack albums on vinyl.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 9:15 AM
You have to distinguish between one-off song, and one hit wonder. There aren't two in ten people who remember the names of the Knack and the Vapors, but everyone remembers Dexy's. Also, women in overalls still get me a bit bothered.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 9:20 AM
women in overalls still get me a bit bothered.
Here ya go, Tim.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 9:35 AM
Back to Rock Hudson- there's also the scene in "All that Heaven Allows" in which he and Jane Wyman are talking about how she has to be strong and tell her children about their relationship, and she utters the line, "So, what you're saying is, you want me to be more like a man." !!!
Posted by Blume | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 10:52 AM
I just barely remember the Fifties, but that period was obsessed with homosexuality. It was usually in a psychiatric social-problems sense, but it lurked in the background of a lot of the pop culture. Guys were pretty much told to be always watchful for signs that they, or someone they knew, might really be one of "them".
"Suddenly Last Summer" was a terrible movie in my opinion, but as vivid Fifties nostalgia it has everything -- Katherine Hepburn overacting like you wouldn't believe, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift being sexy without doing anything, the silliest happy ending you ever saw, dystopian psychiatry giving a lobotomy to silence a witness (almost), grossly racist portrayals of mobs of Arab street kids, and an dead queer who's ofstage who's the center of the plot. Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 11:00 AM
In the fifties, homosexuality had been made more than anecdotal by the Kinsey report, which may have overstated the incidence due to sampling errors, but was not wrong by an order of magnitude. And it was widely assumed to be the consequence of social factors, of upbringing, of nurture rather than nature. That was where the panic came from: what might you be doing wrong? Was it contagious? Could you be "turned?"
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 08- 8-06 11:10 AM