I think that, to the extent that some sort of homophobia plays into the popular reception of boy bands, it’s largely due to the perception that anyone listening to them is not listening because they like the music, but because they think the band members are cute. Consider the stereotype of the teenage girl who’s fixated on the latest boy band. She’s not interested in the music, she likes them because, “Joey is so dreamy!” The assumption is that anyone who likes these bands must like them because they find the performers sexually attractive - largely because it beggars belief to think that anyone likes them for their music.
So the view, here, is not that the bands themselves are gay, but that they exist first and foremost to appeal to people who are sexually attracted to males, and therefore, the only way a guy would find them appealing is if he, too, were attracted to males.
Mark Wahlburg has done pretty well as an actor, as has his brother, former New Kid Donnie Wahlburg.
I don’t have anything to add to the larger debate going on that hasn’t been said, but I wanted to share this amusing (to me) anecdote.
I remember seeing a video by the Backstreet Boys on MTV waaay back, well before I had any idea who they were. It would have been '93 or ‘94. It was a slower balladish tune, and the focus of the video seemed to be shots of the Boys’ hairless and toned bodies, and I think even at one point one of them poured water on himself or something. This was around the time (it seemed to me at least) that more US minority groups other than African-Americans were getting into the Hip-hop and R&B scene as performers. My immediate reaction, was, huh, interesting, a gay R&B group. Not in any way judgmental on my part, I’ll have you understand; if anything I thought it was interesting sociologically and I was impressed that a group who seemed to be so glaringly focussed on homoerotic imagery were being played on MTV. Being then as now completely out of touch with mainstream pop-culture, it wasn’t until a couple of years later when my girlfriend at the time referenced some of her shallow hometown friends who only listened to the Backstreet Boys that I was made aware that they had become a cultural phenomenon, and that they were not, in fact, an openly gay R&B group, but a manufactured ‘boy band’.
Anyways, at the time I was a rowdy angry punk rocker who only wore ripped up jeans and leather jackets, and while I never would have considered listening to the backstreet boys as an option, the revelation that they were not gay caused a severe drop in my estimation of them.
I was going to say exactly this, only Diogenes said it for me. To amplify a little:
The whole point of boy bands is that they’re targeted at little girls whose sexuality is, at most, just starting to develop. These little girls aren’t drawn to straight men - straight men would be too dangerous. Neither are they drawn to gay men - the chemistry isn’t there. They’re drawn to smooth in front: safe, emasculated boys who they can practise fancying till they grow up enough to try out the real thing. Therefore, record companies present the boy-band members as, basically, eunuchs, and give them neutered music to sing.
It’s way too late at night to start on the Freudian reasons why men tend to have issues with castration, but you take my point.
I’d agree that the clothes the Ramones wore were like those of many other young white guys, but wasn’t Dee Dee Ramone an actual boy hustler prior to the formation of the band?
Christ, dudes. What the eff do you care about how a group was formed, who listens to them, etc.? If the music is good, enjoy it. If it isn’t your cup of tea, move on.
Any band with status is going to be market to certain groups a certain way. I was a huge INXS fan in the 80s. When their album Kick came out in '87, they were being marketed to teenage girls… so there were a lot of posters with Michael Hutchence preening out at that time. Didn’t make their music kick ass less to me.
The Sex Pistols were a manufactured band. They changed music. And while I don’t particularly like the type of music that NKOTB or NSync or Backstreet Boys performed (and while we’re at it, can we just acknowledge that the latter sounds like a slang term for “rent boys?”), it has nothing to do with who likes it. If I find out that Led Zeppelin is liked by a bunch of teenage girls, I’m not going to stop liking them.
Many of the Motown bands were manufactured as well. That’s a tradition in the music biz. Just imagine how many dead ends you’ll probably go down if you are starting a band “organically.” Shit, Nickleback could have the most awesome, “we’ve been playing together since we were ten” story and I would still think they suck.
If a band sucks but they became famous through their own hard work and good fortune, I’m less inclined to out and out hate them (Coldplay, for instance). I reserve my hate for bands who are shoved in my face. I personally believe Hole only became famous because Courtney Love milked her dead husband’s coattails for all they were worth.
Huh… I read the OP as *looking for *homophobia where none existed. The OP couldn’t grasp the concept that people can thoroughly detest a particular performer or band just because they suck. “No! No! There must be some *other *reason! Like… homophobia!” No… suckophobia. We detest performers who’s music sucks. Unlike, for example, Freddie Mercury or Rob Halford (just to name a few).