It’s been sixteen years since Russell T Davies’ Queer As Folk hit UK TV screens on Channel Four. Set in Manchester and covering the intertwining lives of its three main characters it caused outrage and controversy for its explicit display of gay sex, particularly that of under age teenager Nathan with cherry popping Stuart (played by Aidan Gillen seen more recently in Game of Thrones) as the archetypal sexual predator. Wind the clock forward and the age of consent has been equalised, marriage legalised, and gay rights enshrined within the Equality Act of 2010 yet little has changed in the world of Russell T Davies. Cucumber, it’s baby brother show Banana, and web based Tofu (all references to erectile hardness no less) have aired and whilst at least some of its characters were rather older they remained equally sexually obsessed. Similarly the show’s main entertainment value centred on its “in your face” and one might say “down your throat” relentless explicitness and near disco soundtrack. One particular early scene had lead character Henry waxing lyrically to a full taxi waiting room about how actor Ryan Reynolds loves cock. After its initial shock tactics Queer as Folk soon dissipated into a gay soap opera that ended happily ever after with two of its lead characters driving off into the sunset together. A similar tactic was later played out in EastEnders when voracious Christian (played by real life “muscle Mary” John Partridge) was tamed by the love of a good man Syed (Marc Elliott). On the basis of the first few episodes Cucumber seemed set to do much the same and the only true meat to its bones came in the form of grumpy – and apparently anal sex fearing – Henry’s relationship with long time partner – and it seemed ever anally hungry – Lance. Feeling the need to inject some life into things, Lance arm twisted Henry into going on a date where he proposed marriage, got rejected, and then manipulated them into having a deeply disastrous threesome. The scenes of them (and many of the other characters) retreating into the Internet and observations of grindr culture were as wry as they were funny yet Henry’s hopeless infatuation with the near teenage Freddie did little to challenge the notion that gay men, if not a bunch of borderline pederasts, are certainly still youth obsessed. Of course the narrative did however twist shockingly away from the happy ever after of sixteen years earlier into a story of homophobic murder. Perhaps this is where the world Davies has grown up? Except one’s lovers usually die from non-sexual causes like accidents or cancer not death by repressed homosexual. So it’s still all sex, sex, sex. Thus the difficulty here is how exactly does one present gay sex on TV? Unlike other oppressions, sexuality is not visible other than through somehow making it “blatant” whether verbally or in other ways. It is also arguably true that the sexually explicit modus vivendi perfected by the shows of Davies (or in more heterosexual female form in Sex & The City) is a good deal better than the misery (Dirk Bogarde on a beach in Death in Venice), camp effeminacy (John Inman in Are You Being Served?), or simple invisibility that plagued representations of gay sexuality prior to the 1990s. Yet gay sexuality remains stuck as some exotic flower in a tea garden – beautiful, wild, and colourful – yet still otherworldly and totally controlled.
Tag: Fashion Dolce Gabbana Elton John Babies Synthetic
Indelicates
The recent furore concerning Dolce and Gabbana’s claims about “synthetic” babies would appear to be predicated upon the assumption that the world of fashion should be politically responsible when it is arguable it has rarely, if ever, been so. The current scandal is the latest in a long line of outrages from heroin chic to Naomi Campbell’s claims about racism in modelling and from Galliano’s comments about Nazis to the horrors of crashing factories in Bangladesh. The latter is a case in point. Shoppers interviewed outside Primark the day after the tragedy openly declared they would not stop shopping and carried on filling their brown bags. It would seem then that somewhat homophobic comments about babies are more likely to lead to a boycott than slavery and carnage in the world of fashion. Of course in addition to this Primark is cheap and D&G is not. Boycotting the expensive when you are part of a wealthy few is not really a boycott at all when not buying your tops at Primark does mean you have to spend more money elsewhere. Nevertheless why do so many need so much at all? Fashion in many ways depends upon its capacity to wipe political consciousness and render the mittens of the homeless a design trend. It is perhaps not surprising then that those enclosed in the bubble of profitable design houses should then prove so politically inept. The problem remains explaining why this particular fracas should grip the public imagination far more than others – it could partly be the increasing enslavement to celebrity but I suspect it has far more to do with babies. The baby’s bottom line sits on biology here or rather love. Elton John’s increasingly hysterical outbursts here centre on his assertion that love conquers all – his love of David Furnish and their love of their children. We seem to be entering the rather strange terrain here once seen by Antony Giddens as the “pure relationship” unshackled from demography, class, or wealth and whiter than your baby’s unused nappy or indeed away with the Fairy… except now the separation is not from the social but the biological. Non-bio you might say. Shulamith Firestone famously argued in the early 1970s that women’s emancipation depended upon advances in reproductive technology. Whether she quite foresaw what is happening now is perhaps debatable but just don’t depend on the world of fashion to do other than wash more dirty laundry in public or spot a buck and put a slogan on your T-shirt.
The Cat's Meow 