Diet soda.
this reminds me of growing up in the 50s-60s down south. a friend had a father who wouldn’t let her listen to blacks singing anything on the radio. (our only pre-teen to teen source of new music). soon she couldn’t listen to much at all. glad my father wasn’t like that.
I’m also reminded of my 6th grade teacher who introduced us to the musical theatre, even taking the class on a field trip downtown to see behind the scenes of a ‘real’ theatre. why yes, it turns out that teacher was gay. but acknowledging the gayness of the musicals or the teacher was a long way off.
I don’t think gays/blacks invented everything, but avoiding gay culture has always been impossible, as has avoiding black spirituals or whatever. It’s acknowledging it that has changed, I think.
well that was a pretty dumb post - but I think I’ll leave it anyway.
Disco was, but I never heard that before about Rave.
What exactly was Rave’s effect on UK culture? (Ya can’t hardly find Raves any more in the U.S., I’ve tried recently.)
I want to get the Jes and homosexuals out of the theatre.
Without Jews and homosexuals, you have no theatre.
The Producers (paraphrased)
I had no clue about The Village People.
Then again, I was only ten at the time and not very worldly, even for a ten year old.
when I said “I don’t think gays/blacks invented everything,” the follow up line should have been “we’re forgetting the Jews”. glad Annie-Xmas took care of that.
and young man staying at the Y? someone said that wasn’t deliberately gay?
QFT.
The Village People were a prefab group, the guys on stage were really just dancers. When Jacques Morali auditioned them, he didn’t check to make sure they were homosexual gentlemen before hiring them, but when you’re looking for dancers in New York, a lot of them are gonna be gay.
But Dorothy spends the whole movie trying to get back to Kansas!!!
Even now, there are still little old ladies doing the YMCA dance at weddings and bar mitzvahs who never got the joke and still don’t.
Heck, that’s nothing new. Liberace had millions of female fans who sincerely wondered why such a talented, charming man never met the right girl.
Come to think of it… how many straight teenagers who thought of themselves as macho embraced the whole leather scene because of Judas Priest?
It’s weird, really. Back in 1982, if you wore a Duran Duran t-shirt to a Judas Priest show, the headbangers would have called you a fag and beaten you up… though we now know that Rob Halford is gay, while all the guys from Duran Duran are married to supermodels!
YMCA could not get more mainstream than Jesus
OK, it turns out that “The Cop”, Victor Willis, was also the singer and one of the songwriters. So not all the guys on stage were just dancers. And he was also briefly married to Phylicia Rashad. He got married a second time later, again to a woman.
A culture is a set of ideas, customs and experiences that helps to identify and characterize a group. Gay culture would be those things which are primarily popular within gay culture. Things that gay people would get that most straight people wouldn’t. i.e. the whole bandana in the back pocket thing from the 1970s. Simply having a gay lead singer (Queen) isn’t enough.
James Whale, director of the iconic Universal horror movies “Frankenstein” and “the Bride of Frankenstein” (among others) was openly gay in the 1930s, which was quite rare even amid Hollywood’s very loose standards. There is a long-standing debate about just how much his sexuality informed the above two movies - but it’s hard not to see that the films have a lot of empathy for a “freakish aberrration” (as Laura Schlessinger would’ve put it) and outcast from the community.
According to the book “the Gay Metropolis”, The musical “West Side Story” was considered an epochal collaboration among gay men in the 1950s. It’s creators Sondheim, Bernstein, Laurents, Robbins were all gay or bi. The story of course isn’t explicitly about homosexuality, but does have a theme of “forbidden love” (Tony and Maria both defy their respective communities’ insularity by getting together) and “outsiderdom.” Both the stage musical and film were a spectacular mainstream hit, which gays of the 50s chuckled about as much as 80s gays chuckled over straight girls wearing “Frankie Goes to Hollywood” t-shirts.
I was admittedly young during Queen’s '70s heyday, but it seemed to me at the time that people didn’t even get that Freddie was gay, despite the almost overwhelming evidence when seen in hindsight. Singing songs about women (written by other band members) probably helped obscure the fact to the average schmoe, as well.
So what you’re saying is that gay people in the 50s were really dumb? Because looking at West Side Story and seeing anything but “Romeo and Juliet With Choreographed Dancing” is very definition of looking for things you WANT to be there.
I am good friends with the second cop Ray Simpson, his wife Leslie and their daughter. So mcuh for gay cops.
I’ve had the idea of turning West Side Story into a clash between a Christian sect a la Phelps and a gay rights group, with a guy from the former hooking up with a guy from the latter.
It can be more than one thing at a time.
[QUOTE=voguevixen]
Yup, I came of age in the “Left is right, right is wrong” era. Now everyone pierces everything as soon as possible.
[/QUOTE]
And most gays I know don’t pierce anything. It’s become passé .