Friday, June 02, 2006

Holy Crap

I don’t know why I look at Drudge Report, but I do. And today Matt Drudge has a link to an L.A. Times story about the upcoming Superman movie Superman Returns, the beginning of what I suspect will be a determined effort on his part to undermine its box office, akin to his recent efforts on King Kong. He tried the same thing with that crap festival of a movie The Da Vinci Code, but once the movie started raking in cash his links mysteriously disappeared. I don’t know what his motivation is; maybe he just gets cranky when he can’t find any animal hoarder stories he obviously has a fetish for.

But anyway, the article itself is about the supposed gay appeal of Superman, and whether or not it will hurt the mainstream appeal of the film. Why is this an issue? Because John Duralde wrote “Superheroes—let’s face it—are totally hot” for a cover story in the “prominent national gay magazine” the Advocate.

Yep. That’s it.

If that’s all it takes to create a controversy and disturb sexually insecure straight guys, then gay people have a method whereby they can run every anti-gay official out of office. “Rick Santorum—let’s face it—is totally hot.” So long, Senator!

Of course, the plan would require stories about the quote in newspapers with apparently nothing better to print. Suggestion: start with the L.A. Times.

Hey, what about the gay appeal of football? Those uniforms are so tight, yet colorful, and you know gay guys must be excited when the quarterback lines up under center. Football is HOT, baby! So, will this "new" gay appeal harm the NFL? Will beer-bellied heteros feel uncomfortable with what had heretofore been their favorite pastime? What a story! What great reporting!

No: what a waste of trees and bandwidth. Hey, I know all about having to come up with stuff for a deadline, and since I don’t know him, I’ll give John Horn the benefit of the doubt and attribute his nonsense to a bad case of writer’s block and not some addlepated, self-important motivation to manufacture a controversy out of thin air. But that doesn’t excuse his editors, who let the damn thing see the light of day.

And here I am linking to the stupid article, which I guess undermines my point entirely, because I'm sure the Times couldn't care less how dumb they are so long as they're generating traffic.

But hey: I like Superman, I’ve always liked Superman, and I’m not going to stop now. Why would I care if some gay guy somewhere is turned on by Superman? That’s great, I guess. We all have our weird turn-ons. Some people even dig animal hoarders. You know, I like David Bowie, too, and he’s a lot fruitier than the Man of Steel. I think I’ll crank up “Lady Stardust” right now.

So unless I hear that the movie climaxes with Supes and Lex Luthor doing the ooga booga, I’m going to see it. And hell, I'll probably go see it even then.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"why is this an issue"

Brokeback Mountain got banned in two states. A very scary Republican got voted in by red states who believe that these people are going to hell.

Aside from that, money. Warner Bros. Poseidon tanked at the box office, Superman was mysteriously absent from Cannes, and I don't know if you've see the trailor, but the movie looks awful. I like the magazine cover because it can be taken two different ways.

There has always been a gay thing with superheros in pop culture mostly due to their costumes and male buddy relationships (I think to the short SNL cartoons). And of course the double standard would be Batwoman; most fans wouldn't give a crap about that, and this reflects our culture; lesbians good, male homosexuals bad. Jack Nasty Bad!

Drudge does anything he can to capitalize on his conservative stance via fearful headlines that are on more steroids than CNN or USA.

Lein Shory said...

I personally thought the trailer looked really cool.

Hey, sure, any time you've got a guy running around in colorful tights, you at least have to wonder. But the point is not whether there's ever been some gay subtext running through superhero comics; it's rather that this article manufactures a controversy.

The average guy on the street is not thinking, I'm not going to see Superman Returns because Superman is gay--or if he is thinking it, it didn't suddenly spring into his mind, unless of course he read the L.A. Times. It's just an attempt to create a meme, and it's dumb.

Aurelius said...

I checked out the Drudge Report once. It was so stupid I lost even more respect for those who proudly get their news from 'conservative news sources.'

Anyways, I'm with you. I couldn't care less about gay superheros, gay marriage, or Yahweh's punishment on the U.S. cuz we havn't exterminated homosexuality yet.

One slightly the same subject, did you hear about White House staffer Josh Bolten's decorating his office with pictures of George Bush's hands? That's so queer, I totally weirded out.

Good luck on the screenplay thing. It's the journey and the habits, not the destination. Writers are superior people.

The Author said...

The hands thing was a might disturbing. Even more disturbing, possibly, than the image of Condi riding her "husband" or that same "husband" having a sleepover with the Polish ambassador (or whomever). This guy Lein and I went to LSU with collected xeroxes of men's hands to, um, feed his fertile gay hand-fetish imagination. Of course, at the time he xeroxed mine, he told me it was because he was studying palmistry.

Anonymous said...

>Brokeback Mountain got banned in two states. A >very scary Republican got voted in by red >states who believe that these people are going >to hell.

woooow!! thats shocking, do you have a reference to that? i mean news source link or something, i didnt know about tthat