Due to the fact that I wasn’t even a zygote until 1984, I kinda missed out on the *Starsky and Hutch *thing. Out of a weird notion, I checked out a couple of episodes on Youtube. Holy crap – this show is homoerotic – and I mean that in the most delightful way possible. It’s something in the way they’re always touching each other, getting right up in each others faces to speak, snuggling, or Hutch teasing Starsky about being “a bad kisser”. I even found an outtakes clip, and judging from that, Paul Michael Glaser ruined about half their shots by trying to kiss David Soul.
So my question is for the Dopers who were alive in the 1970s and saw Starsky and Hutch – did it seem that homoerotic at the time? Or did it just come off as male bonding?
I was too young to pick up on it at the time, but I have a book called Cult TV or some such and yes, others have noticed it too. The book said something like “it might seem like there was something more there, but they’re just blood brothers” or whatever. There was an episode where Hutch was forced to take heroin and he became addicted, and the end of the episode has Starsky holding him in his arms while he throws up as he goes through withdrawal. Starsky is really distressed and says something like, “I’m gonna help you get through this,” or “I’m gonna take care of you,” and yeah… I can see it.
I watched Starsky and Hutch regularly in its original run. Like the original Star Trek, it seemed to me to have an incredible amount of male bonding, which was one of my favorite parts of the series. I didn’t think of it as homoerotic at the time – I felt it was very similar to a show like Simon & Simon, where the bond is between brothers.
Oh, hell, yeah! We school age girls watched it faithfully back in the day BECAUSE of the ho-yay, which has always been around. The more recent pornization of popular culture is obvious now even to your Aunt Minnie, but even when the hidden current was more ambiguous then, we certainly picked up on it. (where do you think the start of slash fiction began? not just Star Trek.) And that’s why we watched it - shooting, car chases and funky fashions were what it was about. (And the ho-yay.)
I like male bonding. When was it written that two heterosexual men can’t be close friends? There’s this whole thing in movies now where the plot doesn’t include women or the male heroes’ social lives, but they still have to stop and make sure that everybody understands that these two guys may live together or work together or go on an epic quest together and spend an awful lot of time together but by God they’re NOT GAY, okay?
My Cult TV book also refers to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and two robot cops named Shootie and Bang-Bang, who were meant to be a parody of S&H in that they “shoot people and then agonize about it with their girlfriends later.”
So, see? They’re NOT gay; they’re just… very sensitive.
Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that, of course, as you said.
I am a gay male and I watched the show and never picked up any gay vibe. Maybe because all the gay people I know don’t act all nice and snuggle and warm to each other
But as others have said, the 70s were a time where all the shows were “get in touch with your feelings.” “Love yourself so you can love others” “We have to have a relationship” type shows.
The shows comedy and drama were more about “feelings and relationships” then they made them funny or dramatic or whatever.
I never found it to be homoerotic. Starsky & Hutch did love each other but not in a sexual way, just as very close friends and partners who were cheating death on a regular basis. But they were both very emotional. I don’t see how that translates to gay though.
I watched the first and second seasons of S&H a few years ago. To me the most noticeable thing about it is the pacing. No TV audience today could sit still for a show like this. For every car chase and action sequence there are at least 20 minutes of guys in plaid suits sitting around in dingy rooms, smoking cigarettes and talking.
Oh, I agree they did love each other, were emotional, and were very close friends and partners, male bonding and all that. In my previous post I mentioned that there was a homoerotic element, but let me clarify when we watched S&H, it was we, the viewers, who watched with an eye for something more. It wasn’t so much in the show, unconsciously or not, as it was in our own imaginations. Such a thing was shocking and thrilling to adolescent girls - we could imagine a ‘real relationship’ between our heroes, though the love that dared not speak its name was just then beginning to speak, lol!
Short for “homosexual yay”. When two males act like they like each other, but aren’t in actuality, gay. They usually blush around each other, and apologize for no reason a lot. The female version of Ho Yay is Les Yay. Joe: H-Hi, Tom. blush
Tom: Um, what’s up…Joe? blush
Guy 1: Look at those two guys. There’s some Ho Yay goin’ on between them.
- shooting, car chases and funky fashions were what it was about. (And the ho-yay.)