Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: I've never told you production if I heart radios? How
Speaker 1: stuff work. So about a week ago, as we record
Speaker 1: this intro for a classic episode, UM, there was an
Speaker 1: ad that ran on the Hallmark channel Yes for Zola,
Speaker 1: which is a wedding hosting and planning site, and this
Speaker 1: online anti l g B t Q plus group called
Speaker 1: one Million Moms loudly complained about it. Hallmark pulled the ad,
Speaker 1: claiming they were never going to be divisive or generate controversy.
Speaker 1: That was kind of statement they released, and then they
Speaker 1: generated so much controversy the hashtag boycott Hallmark started trending.
Speaker 1: Celebrities weight in Glad, weight in Zola said they would
Speaker 1: know you're advertised with Hallmark, and then all of our
Speaker 1: Korean stated, the commercial is the season. You gotta either
Speaker 1: stand for something, you got. A Target had that same
Speaker 1: thing going on with them when they did the transgender
Speaker 1: or just the neutral back rooms and the like. We're
Speaker 1: standing by that as well as celebrating UM pride, you
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta Well, maybe Hallmark learned a Hallmark lesson.
Speaker 1: I hope so yes, Love is love, Love is love
Speaker 1: and the classical we have for you today. I thought
Speaker 1: it was kind of appropriate. Is about queering romantic comedies? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because when you think about it, Hallmark has all the
Speaker 1: romantic comedies they do, and they are not queer, or
Speaker 1: they haven't been. Yeah, I don't think I've seen that. No,
Speaker 1: but maybe in the future, let's hope. Let's hope. So.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this classic episode.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from how stuppworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline, and Caroline, I can't believe we're here
Speaker 1: at the last installment of our rom com summer series.
Speaker 1: It's been a wild ride, how it has been, indeed,
Speaker 1: And you know what's part of what has been so
Speaker 1: fun about doing all of this pop culture research is
Speaker 1: revisiting movies and themes that I have previously seen or
Speaker 1: just known about, and uncovering so much hidden meaning and
Speaker 1: nuance that, like a young Caro, didn't know existed or
Speaker 1: didn't know what it meant, such as well, such as
Speaker 1: a lot of the early Haze Code era gay character
Speaker 1: tropes that we see in the thirties and forties specifically,
Speaker 1: but also of course moving into later decades. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really loved learning about how the Hayes Code and censorship
Speaker 1: gave way to romantic comedies because we're like, well, we
Speaker 1: can't can't get directly sexy, so let's just do a
Speaker 1: little a little slapstick and some jokes, which is actually
Speaker 1: probably strategies I've had on dates, um might work better
Speaker 1: on screen than off. Yeah, I mean to revisit something
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about through our series. The Haze
Speaker 1: Code was basically this moral code that existed over Hollywood
Speaker 1: films that you couldn't say certain things, show certain things,
Speaker 1: and you obviously couldn't have certain types of characters. And
Speaker 1: of course all of this encompassed staying away from sex
Speaker 1: and drugs and all of that dangerous stuff. Hence you
Speaker 1: do get all of the witty repartee between characters, which
Speaker 1: is basically the cornerstone of romantic comedy. And who doesn't
Speaker 1: love some witty repartee repartee Hello um before we get
Speaker 1: into this final episod, So though, can we just take
Speaker 1: a nostalgic look back everything that we've covered, because let's
Speaker 1: let's see where we started from and where we've arrived,
Speaker 1: because we started with rom coms one oh one and
Speaker 1: really with the Hayes code and talking about how the
Speaker 1: genre evolved, and then what did we talk about? So
Speaker 1: then we talked about the independent career woman who basically
Speaker 1: gets saved by love because she works too much. She's
Speaker 1: married to her job. Yeah, we talked about people of color,
Speaker 1: characters of color in rom comms they tend to be
Speaker 1: shoved off to the side, and how romantic comedies are
Speaker 1: the most segregated genre in Hollywood. They're super segregated because
Speaker 1: even when you do have a gay character or a
Speaker 1: black character or an Asian character, that person is likely
Speaker 1: going to end up the sidekick, which was another episode
Speaker 1: we did. Oh yeah, the sassy but probably unlovable or
Speaker 1: undateable sidekick who's just an accessory to propel the protagonist
Speaker 1: story exactly well, and speaking quickly though, of people of color.
Speaker 1: One of the studies that we were looking at in
Speaker 1: this episode just mentioned as an aside that if you
Speaker 1: look at just crowd scenes in romantic comedies, even those
Speaker 1: are usually a sea of white people. Well, we did
Speaker 1: discuss was it in the original episode. We did discuss
Speaker 1: romantic comedies as a type of science fiction. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. So the rom coms clearly happen in a
Speaker 1: universe or on some sort of plane of existence where uh,
Speaker 1: people of color are just maybe they're on another planet somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like an all white planet where people magically
Speaker 1: meet and they can have they can afford like giant apartments.
Speaker 1: Even though they write one like magazine column per month,
Speaker 1: and somehow there are dozens of Matthew McConaughey's just waiting
Speaker 1: for you. That is funny to imagine that, um, the
Speaker 1: typical romantic comedy characters, everyone from a Meg Ryan and
Speaker 1: a Tom Hanks to Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Kate Hudson,
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey, that they all exist. It's like the same person.
Speaker 1: It is funny to imagine that this person is just insane.
Speaker 1: Well maybe that's the appeal of the ensemble rom com,
Speaker 1: which I feel like it is kind of the new
Speaker 1: the newest iteration where you just pack all the stars
Speaker 1: and all the storylines in into one Valentine's Day or
Speaker 1: one like why can't I do like an Arbor Day?
Speaker 1: I would like to see a very arbitrary holiday ensemble
Speaker 1: rom com an Arbor trary Caroline, My Love for You
Speaker 1: only gross. But today we are closing out this series
Speaker 1: talking about LGBT rom comms because in the Hollywood mainstream
Speaker 1: rom com canon, only white people fall in love and
Speaker 1: only straight people fall in love. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: very heteronormative cis gender genre. Yeah, and I mean it's
Speaker 1: important to talk about how LGBT characters have been portrayed
Speaker 1: over the decades because even still in more mainstream, um,
Speaker 1: more mainstream cinema, and this is changing gradually, especially now
Speaker 1: that we have marriage equality, but gay characters have typically
Speaker 1: been denied the happy ending. They've typically been relegated to
Speaker 1: that sexless sidekick role. And when you look at Hollywood
Speaker 1: around the time that the Hayes Code was instituted, really
Speaker 1: the only way for gay characters to exist, if they
Speaker 1: existed at all, was through super negative, awful stereotypes. Well,
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling that that's obviously not just
Speaker 1: the Hayes Code and religious organizations like the Catholic Legion
Speaker 1: of Decency that would bring its hammer down um if
Speaker 1: any of the films got too racy, but also just
Speaker 1: the general homophobia of the day, sure, exactly, and but
Speaker 1: you had that homophobia institutionalized through the Hayes Code and
Speaker 1: through the Legion of Decency, which labeled LGBT people as
Speaker 1: deviants sexual deviance. And so just like the Hayes Code
Speaker 1: forced filmmakers to get creative, like you can't show sex,
Speaker 1: but you can show the you know, the witty, funny
Speaker 1: slapstick lead up to sex, like our verbal for play.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, filmmakers had to get creative with showing
Speaker 1: or including gay people. And unfortunately, rather than the the
Speaker 1: high side of things, which is like, oh, from censorship,
Speaker 1: we get romantic comedies, which are like cute and fluffy,
Speaker 1: when it came to LGBT people, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're the villain. And so one of the first tactics
Speaker 1: used to navigate this band was a continuation of a
Speaker 1: character that Hollywood had created a little earlier leading up
Speaker 1: to the Haze Code, which is the Cissy. And this
Speaker 1: character did start to dwindle over the lifespan of the
Speaker 1: Haze Code simply because the Cissy even was too overtly
Speaker 1: gay to be depicted on screen. And so basically, in general,
Speaker 1: if you look at real life outside of the movies.
Speaker 1: Homosexuality was seen as the sort of attack on masculinity
Speaker 1: and gender norms, which in the nineteen thirties and during
Speaker 1: the Great Depression was already under attack. You have male
Speaker 1: breadwinners who are suddenly out of work and unable to
Speaker 1: provide for their families, and so the cissy or the
Speaker 1: pansy was sort of a way to deal with those anxieties.
Speaker 1: This was one of Hollywood's first gay stock characters, and
Speaker 1: this character was portrayed as over the top of feminine
Speaker 1: lipstick wearing, has a th and mustache and a trim
Speaker 1: suit and really, now I'm just picturing John Waters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just two dimensional characters obviously used for
Speaker 1: a cheap laugh. Um. And I think it's worth noting
Speaker 1: too that also during this time, even if it's just
Speaker 1: an implied gayness, only gay men exist, because also, I mean,
Speaker 1: like we have the psychoanalytical panic um peeking at this point,
Speaker 1: worrying about like girls hanging out too much together and
Speaker 1: possibly becoming lesbians. Um. But I think there were still
Speaker 1: kind of vestiges of that old Boston marriage era assumption
Speaker 1: that we two women can't really do much with each other.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they all have barbie crotches. Well. And also
Speaker 1: it was all men making the movies. Oh yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And the second of three basically horrific uh stereotypes of
Speaker 1: gay people that would continue to reverberate forever is portraying
Speaker 1: gay people as villains or victims. And so in the
Speaker 1: ninety thirties and forties, one of the other ways to
Speaker 1: navigate around the code was to portray gay people as
Speaker 1: villains or victims. And this is yet another stereotype that
Speaker 1: Hollywood helped institutionalize and whose echoes are still felt in
Speaker 1: popular culture. Um. Basically, gay people were shown to be
Speaker 1: committing terrible crimes because of their sexual orientation, with the
Speaker 1: implication that homosexuality leads to insanity. And this is another
Speaker 1: one of those nuances. It was totally lost on young
Speaker 1: Caroline watching old movies, like I didn't know that someone
Speaker 1: was supposed to be gay. I just it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a fancy villain. Well yeah, because in those days,
Speaker 1: homosexuality was in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders, correct,
Speaker 1: So of course they were deviant. Of course they were deviant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Alfred Hitchcock was one filmmaker who definitely leaned heavily
Speaker 1: on this particular trope. If we look, for example, at
Speaker 1: the movie Rope. It's based on the real life killers
Speaker 1: and lovers Nathan Leopold and Richard Lobe, who met at
Speaker 1: college in Chicago, and they kidnapped and killed a boy
Speaker 1: as an intellectual experiment in staging the perfect crime. Basically,
Speaker 1: they were evil and weird. Interesting personal side note, My
Speaker 1: family's lake house in Michigan is right down the street
Speaker 1: from Lobes family farm, which is now a wedding venue.
Speaker 1: The Richard Lobe, the Lobe family, they're They're farm in Michigan,
Speaker 1: which is now it's called Castle Farms, and it's right
Speaker 1: down the street. I grew up driving past it all
Speaker 1: the time. And didn't he use a similar device In Psycho,
Speaker 1: where Norman Bates is uh inner, evil is sort of
Speaker 1: quietly attributed to his homosexuality. Yeah, I mean well, and
Speaker 1: and the reason we get that assumption is because of
Speaker 1: his close really sation ship with his mother. With his
Speaker 1: mother at the same time. Now, I just saw your
Speaker 1: eyes light up and I backed away. I wanted you
Speaker 1: to have it. How creepy would it be? Side note?
Speaker 1: If instead of stuff Mom Never told you, this podcast
Speaker 1: was called stuff Mother Never told you. Um. I laugh
Speaker 1: sort of hollowly because a lot of people do call
Speaker 1: it that, but usually it's like stuff your mother never
Speaker 1: told you. Maybe that's just my father who says that
Speaker 1: that might be what I'm thinking of. Um, but can
Speaker 1: we talk about ben Her because another weirdo Kristen as
Speaker 1: a child moment, it was one of my fames as
Speaker 1: a kid, and I really, of course did not pick
Speaker 1: up on the potentially homo erotic relationship between ben Her
Speaker 1: and his former BFF Massala Kristen he wasn't a bff.
Speaker 1: Well initially they were bf ass and then Massala turns
Speaker 1: on him and gore Vidal, who partially screenwrote ben Her,
Speaker 1: later got into a public feud via the l A
Speaker 1: Times Letters section with Charlton Heston when he came out
Speaker 1: on a documentary called The Celluloid Closet saying, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I wrote it so that uh there was, you know,
Speaker 1: a secret gay relationship between the two. Charlton Heston never knew,
Speaker 1: but that was always in the background. Well yeah, um,
Speaker 1: gore Vidal said that, Yeah, I was totally meant to
Speaker 1: be implied that been Her and Massala had been lovers
Speaker 1: in the past and that Missala wanted to reignite their relationship,
Speaker 1: and the director was like, totally against this. This is
Speaker 1: obviously horrific. Gay people are terrible. We can't have them
Speaker 1: in off films. Um, but Vidal promised to quote, never
Speaker 1: use the word. There will be nothing overt, but it
Speaker 1: will be perfectly clear that Massalah is in love with
Speaker 1: been Her. And it was so between the lines, because
Speaker 1: this was the other tactic of using of how to
Speaker 1: paint gay characters. It was so between the lines that
Speaker 1: this biblical movie with gay undertones ended up being a huge,
Speaker 1: award winning blockbuster. And it's possible that I missed the
Speaker 1: gay undertones because I, as a child, only saw this
Speaker 1: movie on Mystery Science theater, So my only exposure to
Speaker 1: it was having some robots talk over the movie. That
Speaker 1: sounds like such a better way to watch it, first
Speaker 1: of all. Um. Secondly, my childhood memory of watching ben
Speaker 1: Her is just me zeroing in on their armor and
Speaker 1: that they had like the pokey nipples in the in
Speaker 1: the chest playing. And I don't mean it's just in
Speaker 1: been Her, I mean in general, armor doesn't need need nipples,
Speaker 1: I know, and that and that's what I thought as
Speaker 1: a child, like, huh was it? Those are nipples? I'm
Speaker 1: what those nipples doing there? I'm feeling strange and I
Speaker 1: don't know what to call this, but I love that.
Speaker 1: Like years and years later, Gorvidal, you know, makes this claim,
Speaker 1: and Charlton Heston writes a letter in to the l
Speaker 1: A Times is like you you are doing a disservice
Speaker 1: to Billy Wilder. And then Gourvidal writes back and he
Speaker 1: was like, oh, chuck, chill out, and then he and
Speaker 1: then winky emoji. Yeah, because you know that Charlton Heston
Speaker 1: would not like be cool like conservative charld and Neston
Speaker 1: would not have been cool with playing a quietly gay
Speaker 1: character hashtag masculinity. So fragile, But onward we go. That's
Speaker 1: right because one classic classic film that I super need
Speaker 1: to go rewatched now as a grown up person that
Speaker 1: helped weaken the Haze Code was Billy Wilder's classic romantic
Speaker 1: comedy Some Like It Hot that came out in nine.
Speaker 1: So basically, cross dressing helped put the first little dents
Speaker 1: in the armor, the Nipley armor of the Haze Code.
Speaker 1: The movie features Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis in drag
Speaker 1: basically the whole time, almost the whole time, fending off
Speaker 1: male suitors and enjoying a little quality time with Miss
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe. And since they spend so much of the
Speaker 1: movie in drag, the movie was condemned by the Legion
Speaker 1: of Decency. It was banned in Kansas, did you know? Um?
Speaker 1: It also did not get the Haze Codes Seal of
Speaker 1: Approval um. And Jack Lemon's friends also warned him that
Speaker 1: he would essentially damage his reputation as a masculine actor
Speaker 1: by dressing up as a woman. And isn't it his
Speaker 1: character that's eventually proposed to buy a guy in the film? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So basically, another way that this movie ends up touring
Speaker 1: with gender and presentation is that Lemon's Daphne gets proposed
Speaker 1: to buy a millionaire and when he rips off his
Speaker 1: wig and says I'm a man, the millionaire's responses, well,
Speaker 1: nobody's perfect, which is kind of great. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a progressive moment. Yeah, but I mean, the studio even
Speaker 1: brought in a female impersonator named Barbette. According to this
Speaker 1: great article in Indy Wire, to teach the men how
Speaker 1: to walk like women so that they could uh portray
Speaker 1: women better on the screen and passed. But Jack Lemon
Speaker 1: was he had other ideas. But they still dressed up,
Speaker 1: they cross dressed and would walk around the MGM studio
Speaker 1: and see if they could get into places. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they went in, which would enrage North Carolina legislators. They
Speaker 1: went into women's public restrooms to apply their makeup. And
Speaker 1: when they finally weren't getting really strange looks from people
Speaker 1: in the in the bathroom, they knew that they could
Speaker 1: they could pass, that they were ready. And I gotta say,
Speaker 1: Tony Curtis was pretty attractive and drag and who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe that is what made the Legion of Decency a
Speaker 1: along comfortable because they're like, I don't I don't like
Speaker 1: how I feeled I look at him on screen. And
Speaker 1: with the film coming out in nineteen fifty nine, it
Speaker 1: does seem like it is a reflection of culture starting
Speaker 1: to slowly, slowly, slowly open up to even the possibility
Speaker 1: of gay people as people and not just stock characters.
Speaker 1: Because ten years later you have the Stonewall Riots, and
Speaker 1: even in the late nineteen fifties, in early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: you have the homophile movement, which was a social movement
Speaker 1: of gay and lesbians essentially asking to be assimilated into
Speaker 1: broader culture and to have the same kinds of civil rights.
Speaker 1: Um that street people were afforded. Yeah, And in the
Speaker 1: seventies finally you mentioned the d s M earlier, homosexuality
Speaker 1: is removed from the d s M, so it's no
Speaker 1: longer classified as some sort of mental disord but more
Speaker 1: context As we moved through our timeline of rom comms
Speaker 1: in the Defensive Marriage Act has passed DOMA. So do
Speaker 1: you think then that the passage of DOMA like essentially so,
Speaker 1: do you think then that the passage of DOMA took
Speaker 1: gay rom comms backward? Do you think that we would
Speaker 1: have seen more had we I mean, obviously, had we
Speaker 1: had marriage equality earlier? Yeah, I mean I think and
Speaker 1: and uh, scholars link so much of the development of
Speaker 1: gay rom coms to what was going on contextually at
Speaker 1: the time in society. But um, I don't know that
Speaker 1: it necessarily took gay rom comms back, but it definitely
Speaker 1: put a massive stumbling blog because, of course, the cornerstone
Speaker 1: of a rom com too is the eventual marriage that
Speaker 1: if it doesn't happen at the end, there's a promise
Speaker 1: of marriage at the end of a movie. Um. And
Speaker 1: two of those scholars are Kyle Stevens and Deborah Model
Speaker 1: mag who definitely link the way that LGBT characters are
Speaker 1: shown in movies to their place in mainstream society at
Speaker 1: the same time. And so because marriage is sort of
Speaker 1: seen in society but also portrayed in rom coms as
Speaker 1: basically the way that you become a functioning, socially acceptable adult,
Speaker 1: it's definitely the key in the movie that's like, hey, look,
Speaker 1: this person has grown beyond his or her narcissism to
Speaker 1: become a contributing member of society, and we'll go on
Speaker 1: to procreate. Like well, oh, but gay people aren't allowed
Speaker 1: to marry. There are no same sex marriages happening yet,
Speaker 1: and we still only have the sexless sidekick character. And
Speaker 1: in the process, you're denying these gay characters any sort
Speaker 1: of sexual agency, which is really a reflection of just
Speaker 1: denying their existence and complexity as people and also denying
Speaker 1: them the potential of being desirable to other people. Hence
Speaker 1: things like the sexless gay sidekick. Yeah, and by denying
Speaker 1: them the happy ending of tying everything up with a
Speaker 1: marriage bow at the end of a rom com and
Speaker 1: allowing them a place in the social order. They're just
Speaker 1: sort of left out. Doesn't ever, girl grow up dreaming
Speaker 1: of her marriage bow, her marriage bow. I know, and
Speaker 1: I mean this doesn't mean that though that marriage isn't
Speaker 1: present in gay focused rom coms. Kyle Stephens rights that, regardless,
Speaker 1: a lot of the narratives in these movies still hinge
Speaker 1: on impending nuptials, sometimes the protagonists, sometimes of family members. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's always a looming wedding. He writes, that forces
Speaker 1: the homosexual hero to confront his desires and and he writes,
Speaker 1: complicating Byron's dictum, romantic commnies with homosexual heroes that end
Speaker 1: in marriage would constitute a tragedy. In other words, gay
Speaker 1: characters couldn't get married. Obviously, we're pre marriage equality, so
Speaker 1: you don't get that happily ever after ending. And if
Speaker 1: they did, it could also be considered as not a
Speaker 1: great win because it would still be hewing to that heteronormative,
Speaker 1: conservative traditional value system. So there's no winning. So there's
Speaker 1: almost no winning in this uh in this explanation and
Speaker 1: then we get In and Out starring Kevin Klein and
Speaker 1: Magnum p I otherwise known as Tom Selleck. That's who
Speaker 1: he is. I I just only picture the mustache, so like,
Speaker 1: I can't hear his name in my brain over the mustache,
Speaker 1: even though in the movie he doesn't have a mustache.
Speaker 1: It's very confusing. Yeah, it's a whole whole new Tom sellec.
Speaker 1: It's like a different face. There's so much real estate
Speaker 1: above his lip. I just don't know what to do with.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I'm saying all this having not actually seen
Speaker 1: the movie myself. Um, but Stevens uses In and Out
Speaker 1: as an example of the anxiety that can come up
Speaker 1: around same sex relationships and the inability to tie things
Speaker 1: up with a wedding. So in In and Out towards
Speaker 1: the end or at the end you see spoiler. Sorry, Uh,
Speaker 1: the lead gentleman Kevin Klein and Tom Selleck putting on suits.
Speaker 1: They're all handsome, They're clearly getting ready for a wedding,
Speaker 1: and all, oh my god, there's all this tension of like, wait,
Speaker 1: a wedding. This is a year after DEMO was passed, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: so so how can two men be getting ready for
Speaker 1: a wedding. Um, But don't worry, nineties audience. It turns
Speaker 1: out that it's just one of the men's parents renewing
Speaker 1: their vows. So even a quote unquote gay rom calm
Speaker 1: has straight people tying the knot in it rather than
Speaker 1: a same sex couple. So this basically just reaffirms that sacred,
Speaker 1: sacred hetero love at the end. So I read the
Speaker 1: Stevens analysis before I watched In and Out for the
Speaker 1: very first time. Seriously, this romcom series has just done
Speaker 1: so much good for my like pop culture knowledge. I'm
Speaker 1: finally catching up. I'm in like what es seven? You're
Speaker 1: getting there? Like sixth grades finally. Um. And I found
Speaker 1: stevens Is critique of In and Out to be overly
Speaker 1: harsh in comparison to what I saw as a viewer. Um,
Speaker 1: because a it's laugh out loud funny. I was surprised
Speaker 1: how how much I found myself laughing throughout the whole thing. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: Joan Cusack is wonderful. I mean, it's it's an ensemble
Speaker 1: cast perfect. Joan Cusack is in it. Oh yeah, should
Speaker 1: have said earlier. So Joan Cusack plays Kevin Klein's fiancee,
Speaker 1: and the relationship between them is really sweet because they
Speaker 1: obviously have a true platonic love for each other and
Speaker 1: they've never had sex, and she has gone through all
Speaker 1: of this dieting to like make over her body so
Speaker 1: that she can fit into a wedding dress. Um. So
Speaker 1: there are all these other trophy anxieties that the movie
Speaker 1: plays with as well. Um. And Tom Selleck without his
Speaker 1: mustache comes along and essentially opens Kevin Klein's eyes to
Speaker 1: the fact that Matt Dylan was probably right. Um. And
Speaker 1: to me, the whole thing was really satirical because I
Speaker 1: was I started watching it expecting to be kind of
Speaker 1: horrified at the almost bird cage like level of the
Speaker 1: son's you know, like disdain in homophobia. Um. And of
Speaker 1: course the small townspeople once they start suspecting and later
Speaker 1: find out that Kevin Klein is in fact gay, he
Speaker 1: loses his job and people start turning on him. But
Speaker 1: then in the end it's so redemptive because essentially it's
Speaker 1: a story about showing audiences how being gay in no
Speaker 1: way like makes you a different person. It doesn't. It
Speaker 1: isn't some type of character failing. And so you see
Speaker 1: this small town rallying to support Kevin Klein's character and
Speaker 1: get him his job back. After Bob new Heart, Oh god,
Speaker 1: Bob new new Heart is the principle of the school
Speaker 1: and he reluctantly asks Kevin Klein to step down after
Speaker 1: he outs, you know, comes out of the closet publicly. UM.
Speaker 1: So I wish that I could have seen it in
Speaker 1: the late nineties because it is such a mainstream film
Speaker 1: with such an a list cast. UM. And I would
Speaker 1: be curious to go back and and read reviews from
Speaker 1: the time UM about it, because to me, it's still
Speaker 1: even though it played a lot on game mal stereotypes.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of barber streisand jokes. There's this
Speaker 1: whole scene of Kevin Klein dancing, um in a rather
Speaker 1: effeminate way. Um. But at the same time when he
Speaker 1: has his quote unquote bachelor party, when he's still closeted,
Speaker 1: Kevin Klein's character, UM, he gets really frustrated because all
Speaker 1: of his kind of like blue collar small town guy
Speaker 1: friends are like, hey, we're gonna play your favorites it
Speaker 1: strives in night, and Kevin Klein's like, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: a man. I don't want to hear that and they're like,
Speaker 1: but it's our favorite too, So it's kind of cute
Speaker 1: how they play around with a lot of that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you aside from you know, the comical kiss that he
Speaker 1: and Tom Selleck share, which we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: later on, it is also a product of its time
Speaker 1: in how unsexual Kevin Klein is and even after he
Speaker 1: and Tom Selleck get together, how unsexual or de sexualized
Speaker 1: I should say their relationship is. But it is very
Speaker 1: much a product of his time, because Kevin Klein remains
Speaker 1: really de sexualized in his character does even after he
Speaker 1: gets together with Tom Selleck, even when they are very
Speaker 1: lovingly putting on you know, each other's taxes, helping helping
Speaker 1: each other tie the tuxedo bow tie not exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much as far as their physicality goes. And
Speaker 1: that's when you remember, oh yeah, this is coming out
Speaker 1: on the heels of doma and I mean in this era,
Speaker 1: people do love a rom com. Oh yeah, they do
Speaker 1: love a rom com. Model Mogs sites Mark Rubenfeld. I
Speaker 1: guess that this must be a fellow rom com scholar. Also,
Speaker 1: what a great phrase, model Mogs sites Rubenfeld, Uh and
Speaker 1: Rubenfeld notes that the nineties were rom com boom time.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't have to tell you people this.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to our series, you already know. But
Speaker 1: in alone, there were fifteen Hollywood romantic comedies that sold
Speaker 1: more than three point four million tickets at the box office,
Speaker 1: and eight of those actually grossed more than a hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars. So basically, at this time in the nineties,
Speaker 1: we are clearly in love with love. We're in love
Speaker 1: with happy endings. But the thing is all of these
Speaker 1: gay rom comms and and I really, I don't say
Speaker 1: gay rom coms as like a dismissive or jord of thing.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm lovingly saying gay rom comms. Um, these these
Speaker 1: rom comms have to find an alternative ending, because there can't,
Speaker 1: like we said, there can't be that wedding at the end.
Speaker 1: It can't be too serious, it can't be too passionate,
Speaker 1: like the gay characters can't or the same sex characters
Speaker 1: can't love each other too much or or kiss passionately
Speaker 1: even well. And it seems like as a result of that,
Speaker 1: a lot of the mainstreaming quotes gay ish rom coms
Speaker 1: are more about a straight person either a presumably straight
Speaker 1: person either discovering that they are gay, like navigating a
Speaker 1: journey with their sexual orientation, or a straight person being
Speaker 1: in love or attached to somehow a gay person like um,
Speaker 1: object of my affection with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rod
Speaker 1: Where yeah, where he is a she is straight, she's pregnant,
Speaker 1: she wants Paula Read to be her main squeeze and
Speaker 1: help raise the baby. Um, there were a lot in
Speaker 1: the nineties two that was like prime time for all
Speaker 1: of that anxiety to about, like straight women falling for
Speaker 1: a gay men and wanting to form the conventional family
Speaker 1: unit with them. Well, isn't it also that time that
Speaker 1: the whole gay best friend trope is starting to peak
Speaker 1: on TV as well? You have Will Embrace Sex in
Speaker 1: the City. Yeah, I mean think about it though, because
Speaker 1: Will wasn't allowed to be very sexual, where at least
Speaker 1: Jack got to flirt and be outlandish, and Stanford on
Speaker 1: Sex in the City wasn't really allowed to be sexy
Speaker 1: or sexual either. He was also more trophy and like
Speaker 1: almost a girlfriend. So you have these characters that are
Speaker 1: again are devoid of the sexual, devoid of the political,
Speaker 1: and are basically the best friend. Yeah, because obviously our
Speaker 1: culture still doesn't know what exactly to do with it,
Speaker 1: so you have to have some straightness, it seems like
Speaker 1: in there so that we are kind of coloring still
Speaker 1: within the lines for the most part. Yeah, basically. And
Speaker 1: included in coloring within the lines is the way that
Speaker 1: LGBT centric rom coms are distributed, because it's not like
Speaker 1: many of them have been huge hits in mainstream theaters
Speaker 1: outside of major cities. They're more likely to be in
Speaker 1: your art house theater here in Atlanta, that's Tara. And
Speaker 1: I'm not I mean, I'm not even kidding, like if
Speaker 1: you've gotta Tara, that sounds so awful that our that
Speaker 1: the movie theater, the movie theater, y'all that we go
Speaker 1: to in Atlanta's is Tara. But it's not just gay themes,
Speaker 1: it's i mean, any type of outside the mainstream theme
Speaker 1: at all. That's where I saw Obvious Child starring Jenny Slate,
Speaker 1: which is all about I mean, it's a rom com,
Speaker 1: but it's about abortion. But I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 1: These themes that exist outside of the white, straight, uh
Speaker 1: conservative traditional storylines creat Yeah, yeah, that are enjoyed in
Speaker 1: mainstream theaters end up in these art house theaters because
Speaker 1: Hollywood is just not down with distributing something that might
Speaker 1: not make money. I mean, let's be honest, Yes Hollywood
Speaker 1: has racism and sexism and all that stuff, but it
Speaker 1: also wants to make money. And if it's afraid that
Speaker 1: people aren't going to shell out the dollars to put
Speaker 1: their eyeballs in front of the screen, then they're not
Speaker 1: even going to bother. And so, basically, as scholars model
Speaker 1: mug Rubenfeld and Stevens argue, this really reinforces the mothering
Speaker 1: of LGBT people and the idea that same sex romance
Speaker 1: and sexuality are shameful and something that you, as a
Speaker 1: straight person in the major theater, you shouldn't even bother
Speaker 1: being interested in. And so basically, if you have an
Speaker 1: LGBT centric rom com or featuring LGBT themes, if you
Speaker 1: want to wind up up in a major theater, those
Speaker 1: same sex romances have to be like in and out,
Speaker 1: completely comic or ultimately tragic. I'll Brokeback Mountain, but that
Speaker 1: is not a rom com mostly non sexual and white,
Speaker 1: because I mean, when's the last time in a major
Speaker 1: theater you saw an LGBT rom com about people of color. Well, also,
Speaker 1: when was the last time in a mainstream theater like
Speaker 1: an AMC you saw a gay romcom period? Yes, well exactly.
Speaker 1: And so one thing that um, I believe it's model
Speaker 1: mag talks about in her paper in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Popular Film and Television from two thousand nine is the
Speaker 1: presence of the key kiss. So the key kiss, think
Speaker 1: the end of one of my least favorite movie, has
Speaker 1: Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore and Michael Vartan. I
Speaker 1: really enjoy it. But sorry everyone, no, I mean we
Speaker 1: can have different tastes. In rom COM's Caroline, Oh thank God,
Speaker 1: But that key kiss, when Michael Vartan runs out and
Speaker 1: kisses Drew Barrymore on the baseball field, that is that's
Speaker 1: the key kiss, and the key kiss symbolizes that commitment
Speaker 1: is happening. True love has been found. This is serious,
Speaker 1: committed love, and these people are together now and everyone
Speaker 1: approves of it. They have the whole community support because
Speaker 1: you know, in Never Been Kissed, the stands are filled
Speaker 1: with everybody in town. As if you need somehow to
Speaker 1: reinforce the fact that like you might as well have
Speaker 1: big cartoon arrows pointing to the couple kissing, like, this
Speaker 1: is who you're cheering for. We want them to be
Speaker 1: in love. I feel like I needed those arrows and
Speaker 1: Hope Floats because I didn't want those characters to be
Speaker 1: together like so bad. One thing I've learned from this
Speaker 1: series is that you hate Hopeful more than anything. I
Speaker 1: think that Hope Floats has come up in every single episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's the thing. I love that movie, but I
Speaker 1: hate Harry Connick Jr. Like what he does to her.
Speaker 1: I know I can go back. I can't go back
Speaker 1: down that road. We already had feedback on Facebook that
Speaker 1: was unhappy with me. Um okay, So all I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say is that the key kiss symbolizes seriousness. It
Speaker 1: symbolizes that two people are in love, and if those
Speaker 1: two people are of the same sex, well that just
Speaker 1: means you're going to the art house theater. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times in those movies, the key kiss is
Speaker 1: not going to happen in a packed out baseball stadium
Speaker 1: or at a wedding with with both families there. Um.
Speaker 1: It's usually in a more private setting where it's just
Speaker 1: one on one. And it is interesting now as model
Speaker 1: Mogue points out, and something that I've never thought about
Speaker 1: until all of our rom com scholarship, um is the
Speaker 1: fact that so many of these key kiss scenes and
Speaker 1: the whole audience is cheering, or the whole township, or
Speaker 1: the whole baseball stadium is cheering for the kissing straight
Speaker 1: couple or are opposite sex couple. This is emerging around
Speaker 1: the same time that DOMA was past. So you do
Speaker 1: you have all of these like straight people anxieties. Well,
Speaker 1: and I mean think about how a decade before what
Speaker 1: was going on in the gay community. It was the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis. So before we have all of these rom
Speaker 1: coms happening, you have to have a Philadelphia like It's
Speaker 1: We had to move through those cycles because aside from
Speaker 1: one AIDS rom com that I could find sided I
Speaker 1: think it's called Jeremy. I mean, they're in the eighties.
Speaker 1: There's nothing like funny at all of the portrayal of
Speaker 1: gay characters on screen, because all of it was like
Speaker 1: basically trying to shake mainstream America to say, Hello, this
Speaker 1: is real, this is happening, and we're dying. Yeah, exactly. So,
Speaker 1: because all of those negative stereotypes about gay people and
Speaker 1: these like fearful assumptions that AIDS was the unquote gay
Speaker 1: cancer as it was first reported on in the New
Speaker 1: York Times, and all of the homophobia that was still happening, um,
Speaker 1: and just the slow recognition of gay people as existing
Speaker 1: and being worthy of attention and respect as people. It
Speaker 1: takes until the mid to late nineties for us to
Speaker 1: see them not as this other group of people who
Speaker 1: are having something like a horrible epidemic sweep through them,
Speaker 1: but who are having love lives, love lives that are
Speaker 1: in no way connected to tragedy. And as a byproduct
Speaker 1: of all that gay activism though that happened in light
Speaker 1: of the AIDS crisis, it does pave the way for
Speaker 1: lighter films that we're going to talk about. We come
Speaker 1: right back from a quick break, all right, So once
Speaker 1: we hit the nineties, right, this is this is romcom
Speaker 1: boom time style. Personal style is peaking. We've got lots
Speaker 1: of frosted tips. We've got those uh, flipped up bucket
Speaker 1: hats with sunflowers on them. That's right. I actually had
Speaker 1: a I had a flipped up hat because I addressed
Speaker 1: as Matilda to a second grade costume parade. I thought
Speaker 1: you were adorable. I don't know, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I hope I was um and And well,
Speaker 1: those negative tropes around LGBT characters didn't disappear like we
Speaker 1: said earlier. Mainstream film and TV slowly begin to feature
Speaker 1: more positive portrayals of gay characters. Again, they might not
Speaker 1: be more than two dimensional, kind of like trophy sidekick characters,
Speaker 1: but at least they're not villains whose sexual orientation have
Speaker 1: driven them insane to murder people. That's a plus. I
Speaker 1: feel like that's a step up. Well, this is also
Speaker 1: the time, especially in the mid nineties, when we start
Speaker 1: to get the first LGBT rom com cult classics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in four, which I also believe is the same
Speaker 1: year that Reality Bites came out, I'm pretty sure. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, ninety four like something great was happening.
Speaker 1: Good year for movies. But we get Priscilla, Queen of
Speaker 1: the Desert, which, as far as eccentric movies about drag
Speaker 1: queens in a bus going across the desert goes, is
Speaker 1: really really heartwarming. I really love Priscilla Queen of the Desert,
Speaker 1: And can you tell me a little more about it?
Speaker 1: Because I have never seen it. Yes, it is on
Speaker 1: my queue, um, but I've never seen it before. Basically,
Speaker 1: you have some drag queen characters. You also have a
Speaker 1: trans woman character, which when I saw the movie didn't
Speaker 1: think anything of it. But when I'm looking back now
Speaker 1: and I think of the context of the time where
Speaker 1: we were in ninety four and where we are now
Speaker 1: talking about trans rights and visibility, it's pretty stinking incredible,
Speaker 1: um and and and and not to spoil it, which
Speaker 1: really you should see the movie anyway, but the trans woman,
Speaker 1: I mean she's not painted as a caricature. I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of ridiculous things happen in the movie, and
Speaker 1: they are like dressed up and shown putting on makeup,
Speaker 1: even when they're stranded, they're putting on their fabulous clothes.
Speaker 1: But she doesn't die. And I know that's I know,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, Like what that's like the bare minimum? Right? No.
Speaker 1: I mean so often you had gay characters or LGBT
Speaker 1: characters in general, meeting some sort of horrible end to
Speaker 1: compensate for their evil and their subversiveness and whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: But she finds love. Oh, she gets the wrong amid
Speaker 1: the calm she she she gets the happy ending that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is massively progressive Australia. But I mean
Speaker 1: Australia does have, like I want to say, is it
Speaker 1: Sydney that has the big drag queen culture? Um? But yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so I love Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
Speaker 1: And the following year, I don't know what's in the water. Uh,
Speaker 1: movement towards equal rights maybe, um, but we get too
Speaker 1: wong food with love Julie Newmar. And this is Patrick Swayze,
Speaker 1: John Leguizamoh and Wesley Snipes dream Team as drag queens.
Speaker 1: But again, looking back, yes they were drag queens and
Speaker 1: they performed in drag, but their characters were really really
Speaker 1: women identified. I mean they were still when they were
Speaker 1: by themselves in their house in this movie, they were
Speaker 1: still a lot of times, especially Patrick Swayze's character, dressed
Speaker 1: and behaving as women. And so I'm one dring. Now
Speaker 1: if you could go back and look at that movie
Speaker 1: and it does it have more to say about trans women.
Speaker 1: But I mean, however, hokey this movie is. I mean,
Speaker 1: you do have these three outlandish characters coming to a
Speaker 1: small town and changing hearts and minds. It still is incredible.
Speaker 1: This movie. My mother took me to see this movie
Speaker 1: in the theater and she loved it. Loved it. But
Speaker 1: how could you not love Patrick Swayze and anything though? Honestly,
Speaker 1: but John Lama's character in that movie, I think her name,
Speaker 1: I'm I seriously think her name is Cheche or something
Speaker 1: like that. Um. John l. Wizama's character has this like
Speaker 1: adorable falling in love storyline where she meets this young
Speaker 1: farm boy, you know, he's never been away from home,
Speaker 1: and he just thinks she's so beautiful and exotic because
Speaker 1: you know, oh, my goodness, a Latina woman and she's
Speaker 1: beautiful and tall and broad shouldered. Um. And he has
Speaker 1: to then grow apple with her actual identity. So so
Speaker 1: these cult films, these early LGBT rom coms, are are
Speaker 1: such interesting time capsules in the nineties well, and in
Speaker 1: treating these characters as people rather than just accessories. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious though, to know what you think about
Speaker 1: a movie that came out the next year, in the
Speaker 1: year the Olympics came to Atlanta. Um, when The Bird
Speaker 1: Cage came out. Because now I did not immediately think
Speaker 1: of The Bird Cage as a rom com, but some
Speaker 1: argue that it is. I feel like it kind of
Speaker 1: it's sort of like sits on the line between rom
Speaker 1: com and just a com com um. And I tried
Speaker 1: to watch it recently and it was unbearable because as
Speaker 1: delightful as Nathan Lane and Hank Azariah are, their sons
Speaker 1: like deep seated like embarrassment and all of just the
Speaker 1: homophobia um in it coming from the sun. I mean,
Speaker 1: I get the whole plot line that creates the conflict,
Speaker 1: but he's just awful to his dad's yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh Robin Williams and uh Nathan Lane are the
Speaker 1: fathers of the son who's newly engaged to Calista Flockhart.
Speaker 1: Hankers Area is like their house boy, and I use
Speaker 1: that term I understand, but I use that term because
Speaker 1: he literally is like the tropiest, most caricatured character ever.
Speaker 1: He wears little short shorts, denim cutoffs, and is hysterical,
Speaker 1: but he is a total trope um. But no, I
Speaker 1: thought the exact same thing, and when I was looking
Speaker 1: at this as a potential rom com, because you do
Speaker 1: have a lot of rom between Robin Williams and Nathan
Speaker 1: Lane despite all of the caricatures that are in that movie.
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing. I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know today if you could have this movie, because the
Speaker 1: driving force is them being afraid of upsetting their homophobic
Speaker 1: son or he's and how embarrassing they are. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: but you're right. I mean there are really sweet moments,
Speaker 1: especially of Nathan Lane toward Robin Williams, but partially it's
Speaker 1: because he has on false eyelashes and is batting them
Speaker 1: so perfectly. That's another movie. Both of my parents loved
Speaker 1: The Bird Cage. I wish if you knew my parents well,
Speaker 1: and it's so colorful. It's a very vivacious movie. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, a little different to watch in vers. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the next year is when we get In
Speaker 1: and Out, we get Kevin Klein. He's about to get
Speaker 1: married to a lady, but his former student, who is
Speaker 1: now a successful actor, Matt Dylan, is up on stage
Speaker 1: delivering acceptance speech thanking his teacher quote who is gay,
Speaker 1: And Kevin Klein this like sin him on this journey
Speaker 1: of self discovery because he's like, I'm not gay, I'm
Speaker 1: engaged to Joan Cusack. Am I gay? And so you know, like, okay,
Speaker 1: great nineties movie. Make the straight guy the impetus for
Speaker 1: the gay guys self discovery. Whatever, we'll overlook that. In
Speaker 1: and Out has the key kiss that is central to
Speaker 1: so many rom coms, but it is completely slapstick. It's
Speaker 1: devoid of that intimate close up. In the swelling music.
Speaker 1: Kevin Klein is like flapping around crazy like as Magnum
Speaker 1: p I kisses him, and that is essentially model. Mogue argues.
Speaker 1: That is essentially what kept In and Out in the
Speaker 1: mainstream theaters and out of the art house theater ghetto.
Speaker 1: She writes, the implication is not only that heterosexuals are
Speaker 1: naturally revolted by same sex eroticism, but that gays should
Speaker 1: be to the entire audience is asked back away from
Speaker 1: or to laugh at the gay kiss, not to desire it.
Speaker 1: And apparently the uh the filmmaker considered taking that scene
Speaker 1: out because he was worried that it was too much
Speaker 1: like a bridge too far, but it tested so well
Speaker 1: with audiences that they left it in because it's hilarious. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, good for you not being disgusted
Speaker 1: by two men kissing. On the other hand, like, oh,
Speaker 1: but it can only be if it's played for laughs,
Speaker 1: although I will say that a very much redeeming factor
Speaker 1: in all of this is that while yes there is
Speaker 1: this slapstick kiss and a lack of physicality between um
Speaker 1: Tom Selleck and Kevin Klein, really beyond that at the end,
Speaker 1: the town's embrace and support of Kevin Klein and the
Speaker 1: way that they do it, and I really can't describe it,
Speaker 1: and you need to watch it because it made me
Speaker 1: will up a little bit. I'm going to be honest.
Speaker 1: Is not for laughs at all. I mean, there's it's
Speaker 1: still kind of funny, but like the nder lying message
Speaker 1: is a very serious one that these are people. This
Speaker 1: is like a beloved English teacher in small town, USA
Speaker 1: who has tremendous friends and a devoted family, who also
Speaker 1: happens to be gay. You know, at one point you have, uh,
Speaker 1: what's his name? He did the Quaker oats commercials. It's
Speaker 1: a Quaker oatmeal commercials, and he was in life goes
Speaker 1: on Wilfred Brimley. Okay, so Wilfred Brimley, this old guy
Speaker 1: places his dad and he's a farmer. And at one point,
Speaker 1: after Kevin Klein comes out as gay, Wilfred Brimley walks
Speaker 1: in and he's just like, you know, San, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily understand it all, but I love you,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's just like very sweet. Um,
Speaker 1: So again I have I have a couple a couple
Speaker 1: of owns to pick with Stevenson Model mag But a
Speaker 1: couple of years later we have But I'm a Cheerleader,
Speaker 1: which I watched this morning, Caroline before we came in
Speaker 1: to record this podcast, because when we on Facebook asked stuff,
Speaker 1: man never told you listeners of their favorite rom coms.
Speaker 1: But I'm a Cheerleader was one of the in the
Speaker 1: top ten. And it stars Natasha Leone who is sent
Speaker 1: off to gay reform camp essentially, and she falls in
Speaker 1: love with Graham, who is another lesbian there who is
Speaker 1: um resisting reformation. And it's so campy and um, have
Speaker 1: you ever seen House of Yes? It has very much
Speaker 1: the same kind of like outlandish feel as that movie
Speaker 1: starring Um Parker Posey. It might also be because both
Speaker 1: movies have a lot of pink and then but it
Speaker 1: co stars Rue Paul who's hilarious and I mean, and
Speaker 1: it just takes all of those stereotypes, all of those
Speaker 1: caricatures that we've seen in a lot of these mainstream
Speaker 1: films leading up to this point and just blows them
Speaker 1: up and essentially like satirizes all of the homophobia happening
Speaker 1: at the time. So if you haven't seen it, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. It is on Amazon Prime and Google Play.
Speaker 1: And this episode is brought and this episode is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Netflix by lesbians. No it's it's fantastic,
Speaker 1: go back and watch it. It is laugh out loud, funny,
Speaker 1: and Natasha Leone, a young Natasha Leone, is a delight. Well.
Speaker 1: So when we move into the New Millennium, I wonder
Speaker 1: if I can get echo on my voice there in
Speaker 1: the New Millennium thousand actually or two thousand one, we
Speaker 1: get Kissing Jessica Stein, which stars Jennifer Westfeld as basically
Speaker 1: this she thinks she's straight lady who answers a woman
Speaker 1: seeking woman ad in the paper clicks instantly with a
Speaker 1: woman who placed it and Hi Jinks in Sue Well
Speaker 1: and that was another gay rom com that stuff one
Speaker 1: ever told you listeners loved and that was like almost
Speaker 1: a critical darling at the time because it does treat
Speaker 1: sexual fluidity in a really novel way, especially at the
Speaker 1: time Um, but I gotta tell you, the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought of when I was watching the trailer was
Speaker 1: that it starts off with her going on a date
Speaker 1: with Jhon Ham and of course it doesn't work out
Speaker 1: because she goes on to start a relationship with a woman.
Speaker 1: But you know, I r L they end up getting married.
Speaker 1: Just that's a very much didn't tangential thing. Oh yeah no,
Speaker 1: and they just they just broke up. I know, I
Speaker 1: wrote I wrote this, I broke the news on Refinery.
Speaker 1: Yeah they got um. But uh, I really I really
Speaker 1: want to see that one. But I was reading a
Speaker 1: couple of reviews of it, and the one in Slate
Speaker 1: from when it came out like almost loved it. He
Speaker 1: was frustrated because you have Jessica Stein in this relationship
Speaker 1: between two women that's like very genuine and is exploring
Speaker 1: themes in rom coms that you never see in terms
Speaker 1: of emotional connection versus sexual connection. What do you do
Speaker 1: if you don't that key kiss is different for both people. Um,
Speaker 1: but they end up having this deep bond anyway. But
Speaker 1: he was disappointed because it's still circled back to so
Speaker 1: many rom com tropes and the two women, both of
Speaker 1: whom had been in straight relationships before, talked about men
Speaker 1: so much to each other that it seemed like that
Speaker 1: was sort of the stand in for having a guy
Speaker 1: in there, you know what I mean, to kind of
Speaker 1: stabilize the whole thing. Yeah. Interesting. And then they don't
Speaker 1: stay together, but they stay friends. Spoiler spoiler, spoilers for
Speaker 1: so many spoilers. And the thing is, I wish that
Speaker 1: I hadn't read those reviews before I went back UM
Speaker 1: and discovered that Kissing Jessica Sign is an HBO GO,
Speaker 1: so well there you go, I know. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: watched it and very much enjoyed it UM and very
Speaker 1: much agree that it's a rom com focus not necessarily
Speaker 1: on heterosexual love or gay love lesbian love, but rather
Speaker 1: on fluidity and the idea of openness. But it does
Speaker 1: play on so many of the same rom com tropes,
Speaker 1: and it's funny to see how they kind of twisted around.
Speaker 1: Not that different from In and Out, because you have
Speaker 1: a wedding that prompts conflict, you have people from different
Speaker 1: worlds who are coming together that kind of opposites attract
Speaker 1: situation UM, and you have just like very stock rom
Speaker 1: com scenes where you'll have the awkward first kiss and
Speaker 1: then them sitting nervous next to each other, not knowing
Speaker 1: what to do after that. Um. And it does, ultimately, yes,
Speaker 1: kind of anchor itself around straight relationships with men. But
Speaker 1: it was I've just never seen a rom com like
Speaker 1: that before. Well, I mean you said something that, uh,
Speaker 1: that I thought was important. Um. I mean, yes, we
Speaker 1: could argue very easily, and in some cases this is true.
Speaker 1: You could argue that some of these rom com trips
Speaker 1: are damaging regardless of who the stars are and what
Speaker 1: the plot is. Some of these tropes are you know,
Speaker 1: playing up people's lives and realities for laughs. But not again,
Speaker 1: not having seen kissing Jessica Stein, is it possible that like,
Speaker 1: that's where we should be going? And by that I
Speaker 1: mean that sexual fluidity in relationships is shown is just normal,
Speaker 1: a normal part of a rom com. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: there's life beyond a relationship as well. I really appreciated
Speaker 1: how they ultimately explored what is a very common issue
Speaker 1: when you are dating, which is the um if you
Speaker 1: have the imbalance of someone who might have, you know,
Speaker 1: a more aggressive sexual libido and someone who is more
Speaker 1: emotionally connected, and how those two things really interact over
Speaker 1: the long term, because I think that that's an issue
Speaker 1: that a lot of couples who have been together for
Speaker 1: a while deal with, as as the dust starts to settle,
Speaker 1: you know, and figuring out like what that balance is, Um,
Speaker 1: the lust dust the lust does yes, um. But but
Speaker 1: I like how they are able to We see these
Speaker 1: characters after the breakup happens, and they're okay, we know
Speaker 1: that we know that Jennifer Westfelt has undergone a serious,
Speaker 1: you know, a long term change in her life because
Speaker 1: her hair is now crimped and she's using Uh, this
Speaker 1: is the big thing. So she's this writer and she
Speaker 1: hates computers. Um, she finds them just loatheso. But then
Speaker 1: at the end when she is like at the very
Speaker 1: very end, when she is reconnecting with someone, I won't
Speaker 1: say who, although if you watch it, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: easy to guess. She gives this person her email address,
Speaker 1: to which the person is like an email address, and
Speaker 1: she laughs and says, yes, yes, it's true. Email is
Speaker 1: the easiest way to get in touch with me now
Speaker 1: with their curly hair just bobbing around. And then she goes,
Speaker 1: you know, to meet up with with someone I feel
Speaker 1: like I shouldn't say anymore because now I'm just like
Speaker 1: revealing the end of this movie. Um, but so wait spoilers.
Speaker 1: She talks to someone and then meets up with someone.
Speaker 1: There are more than there are scenes with more than
Speaker 1: one person on screen. Yes. Uh. The only thing that
Speaker 1: I found unnecessary and very much a product of its
Speaker 1: nineties time is her initial like ill at the thought
Speaker 1: of lesbian sex. Oh yeah, that is something that's played
Speaker 1: up for laughs. We saw that in Sex in the
Speaker 1: City too. Yeah, it's like, no, come on, all right.
Speaker 1: But overall, I gave it a what's our Sminty rating
Speaker 1: system for for movies that hystorical uteruses? Oh yeah, dampons? Yeah,
Speaker 1: uterus is okay, well out of how many five? Okay,
Speaker 1: I would give it a four and a half out
Speaker 1: of five Sminty gold uteruses. Yeah that's high praise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very enjoyable. Um. So looking forward to hearing what
Speaker 1: listeners have to say about that one. And and I
Speaker 1: can't speak on this movie this next movie because I
Speaker 1: have not seen it, but it is one that I
Speaker 1: definitely want to see. It's two thousand fours Saving Face,
Speaker 1: which not only features a lesbian couple and one of
Speaker 1: the women's pregnant mother who has to move in with them,
Speaker 1: and of course one of the daughters is like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't tell my mom I'm gay, Like she keeps
Speaker 1: wanting to marry me off. So you've got all of
Speaker 1: those masquerading screwball hijinks, but it's an Asian American couple
Speaker 1: and their emilies and it's like, oh my god, finally,
Speaker 1: and it looks so good. It looks so good. And
Speaker 1: it's one of the ones that someone on Twitter was like,
Speaker 1: this is one of the few LGBT rom coms I
Speaker 1: know of what else is out there? So I have
Speaker 1: to see Saving Face. Well, and that also is one
Speaker 1: of the few rom coms starring Asian Americans. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: talked about that in our last episode, that you just
Speaker 1: it's not like you see Asian American rom coms rolling
Speaker 1: around everywhere. I mean, it is so rare, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I for so many reasons, not only that it just
Speaker 1: looks good. I need to see Saving Face. Um. So
Speaker 1: as we moved through the two thousands, we do start
Speaker 1: to see a little bit more diversity coming. In two
Speaker 1: thousand fours, Touch of Paint deals with issues of religion.
Speaker 1: And then if we jump forward to two thousand six,
Speaker 1: we get another movie that was a pretty relatively large
Speaker 1: success as far as LGBT rom coms go, although this
Speaker 1: one is more of a rom com dram And that's
Speaker 1: Imagine Me and You with Piper Parabo, and so Piper
Speaker 1: parables like she's happily committed to Matthew Good and and
Speaker 1: I he's so hot, um, but she discovers her mutual
Speaker 1: attraction to a woman. Okay, so it sounds kissing Jessica
Speaker 1: Stein ish you have presumably straight, but oh look at this,
Speaker 1: we have maybe bisexuality or some sexual fluidity happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have that in common, and they have their more
Speaker 1: or less mainstream success in common as well. So what
Speaker 1: is up? Why why do you imagine me and you
Speaker 1: and kissing Jessica Stein? Why did they go against the
Speaker 1: usual trend of oh my god, same sex, key kisses
Speaker 1: me and you go to the art house theater because
Speaker 1: it's two women, yeah, and attractive white women. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean not to be like chasing Amy about it, but
Speaker 1: it's like that is more palatable usually and is more
Speaker 1: eroticized definitely than two men kissing, which that we're minds
Speaker 1: me of. It's not necessarily a gay rom come, but
Speaker 1: one that came out a few years ago that does
Speaker 1: include men men kissing, although their their friends. Is the
Speaker 1: movie hump Day starring Mark dupless Um, where he plays
Speaker 1: kind of straight lace guys got the the house and
Speaker 1: the wife and the kid, and his friend comes to
Speaker 1: town Um who is living more of a wild lifestyle.
Speaker 1: He's not tied down to anything, and they get drunk
Speaker 1: one night and they're talking about the I think it's
Speaker 1: in Portland there it's an actual porn festival Um that
Speaker 1: I want to say Dan Savage out of hand in
Speaker 1: uh in starting and they get the cookie idea to
Speaker 1: make a porn and submit it because they were like,
Speaker 1: I mean, we can do this. We love each other,
Speaker 1: we're guys. We can totally like make a porn together.
Speaker 1: And it could veer off into browy homophobe territory, but
Speaker 1: it actually in the end, from what I remember of,
Speaker 1: it has a really nice, honest moment of these guys
Speaker 1: actually exploring their sexuality in the sense of like talking
Speaker 1: openly about it. Because when it comes down to the time,
Speaker 1: they're like in the hotel room, they're like, are we
Speaker 1: gonna do this or not, And they do end up kissing.
Speaker 1: I won't give away the rest, but they have an
Speaker 1: honest conversation about what it would feel like, and Mark
Speaker 1: Dupless's character actually is like, I mean I I did
Speaker 1: have a fantasy about a guy at one time, and
Speaker 1: it's not played up for jokes. Yeah, so I mean that.
Speaker 1: And again though that was more of an indie film,
Speaker 1: but it got a lot of attention when it came
Speaker 1: out because it was like, oh wait, we're seeing wait
Speaker 1: is this a bromiance? Is this a gay rom what's
Speaker 1: going on? How do you classify sexual fluidity and just
Speaker 1: general openness and acceptance? Yeah, because like, oh, we're We're
Speaker 1: a totally on board if it's too if it's too
Speaker 1: hot girls kissing, but like, oh wait, two guys, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what to do with that,
Speaker 1: and especially two guys who look like you know, I
Speaker 1: mean if you watch the league, I mean like they
Speaker 1: look like two dudes like hanging out at a bar,
Speaker 1: maybe playing fantasy football or something. They're like very much bros.
Speaker 1: They're not a Stanford Blatch on sex in the city.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to be curious to see as marriage
Speaker 1: equality becomes more of just like the thing that has
Speaker 1: always been UM, trans rights continue to become more and
Speaker 1: more accepted and destigmatized. Whether we will see that reflected
Speaker 1: on the big screen because on the small screen we've
Speaker 1: seen more progress with that. Yeah, I mean things are
Speaker 1: definitely slower for the big screen. We had in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen another movie that I have to go back and see,
Speaker 1: which is Boy Meets Girl and the leading lady is
Speaker 1: a trans woman. This is she's played by Michelle Henley,
Speaker 1: who's an actual trans woman, thank goodness, not someone masquerading
Speaker 1: as trans. UM who gets her own wonderful storyline of
Speaker 1: self discovery. This character is allowed to dream and have
Speaker 1: love and romance and doubt and fear, and her best
Speaker 1: friend is a dude who's like, basically okay with the
Speaker 1: fact that his bff is a trans woman. There's not
Speaker 1: drama there, that's not the source of the conflict. UM.
Speaker 1: And she even has a relationship and tries to explore
Speaker 1: obviously not just gender. Gender has been on that's been
Speaker 1: figured out, but she explores her sexual orientation as well.
Speaker 1: And so how wonderful to see um trans issues on
Speaker 1: the big screen displayed normally. I mean, I know that
Speaker 1: sounds weird, but not as a joke, not as a
Speaker 1: trope or a trick or something like that, or a
Speaker 1: tragedy or a tragedy. Yeah, exactly. And obviously there are
Speaker 1: fewer gay rom coms than there are hetero rom coms.
Speaker 1: But there are so many, especially independent films that we
Speaker 1: haven't had time to mention. And some of them are
Speaker 1: real stinkers, you know, just like Sames's with a straight
Speaker 1: rom cum I mean, never been kissed. You're not a fan,
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan. I'm trying to think of one
Speaker 1: that I hate. I'm sure that I don't know. My
Speaker 1: brain is just a little fuzzy right now. But um,
Speaker 1: I would love to hear though from listeners about their
Speaker 1: favorites and what they predict for the rom com genre,
Speaker 1: because we are at a point where some wonder if
Speaker 1: it's even going to survive. Um because in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, like our society has progressed beyond the typical
Speaker 1: rom com formula. Um, so what are we gonna do
Speaker 1: with it? We're just gonna keep having ensemble rom coms
Speaker 1: about Harbor Day, maybe a gay ensemble rom com. We
Speaker 1: haven't seen that well, no got ensemble calm, A ensemble calm,
Speaker 1: a mainstream ensemble calm, because there have been indie ensemble comms.
Speaker 1: Who was the Who was the Scholar? Mogel Dog and
Speaker 1: her Gonsomble Calms starring Dilmot mcdingleho. And I think that
Speaker 1: is the sign that our series has come to a close,
Speaker 1: because we've talked so much about rom coms now that
Speaker 1: we are making up words and acreatives that do not exist.
Speaker 1: So listeners, please write to us, give us the words.
Speaker 1: We want to hear all your thoughts about this um
Speaker 1: and we should probably set up some kind of stuff
Speaker 1: I've never told you uh must see movie list, because
Speaker 1: we've gotten so many fantastic suggestions and so many films
Speaker 1: that I now need to see and have seen by
Speaker 1: virtue of your suggestions, listeners, So thank you for that
Speaker 1: and mom stuff at how Sober suck com is where
Speaker 1: you can send us your letters. You can also tweet
Speaker 1: us a moms of podcast or messages on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of messages to share with you
Speaker 1: right now. I have a letter here from Caitlin in
Speaker 1: response to our Surfer Girl episode. She said you expressed
Speaker 1: some doubt that Queen Emma was a real person or
Speaker 1: if her name was anglicized from a Hawaiian name. She
Speaker 1: was in fact a real person, and my son attends
Speaker 1: the preschool named after her and which is part of
Speaker 1: a group of Catholic school she originally founded. It's very
Speaker 1: common for Hawaiian elite i e. Members of the ruling
Speaker 1: class to have English names. In the nineteenth century, the
Speaker 1: elite often intermarried with the American missionaries and businessmen who
Speaker 1: came to Hawaii. In addition, the elite admired the British
Speaker 1: royal system and society a great deal and borrowed from
Speaker 1: it in their post contact system of governance, as well
Speaker 1: as established relationships and alliances with the Brits. For example,
Speaker 1: Queen Emma's husband's name was Alexander Lee Hooliho, and the
Speaker 1: last Hawaiian king's name was King David Calicawa. It's difficult
Speaker 1: to overstate the influence American missionaries and businessmen had on
Speaker 1: modern Hawaiian history and culture, the names of individuals being
Speaker 1: only one small example. Kristen, I'm glad you enjoyed your
Speaker 1: visit to Hawaii. I've lived here for thirteen years and
Speaker 1: still have to pinch myself when I'm sitting under a
Speaker 1: palm tree on the beach looking out at the incredible
Speaker 1: blue and beautiful ocean. Hope you return to do a
Speaker 1: live show one of these days, Oh my god, anytime.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I want to get back to Hawaii as
Speaker 1: soon as possible. So I have a recommendation here from
Speaker 1: Christina for a rom com. She writes, I have the
Speaker 1: most amazing movie recommendation for you. I'm not even through
Speaker 1: your Working Girl rom com episode, and I haven't listened
Speaker 1: to the first episode in the series, but I don't
Speaker 1: care because I love this movie and I think you
Speaker 1: will too. And I highly doubt you're going to mention
Speaker 1: it because it's not as famous of an oldie wife
Speaker 1: versus Secretary. Arry is a movie that clubs to death
Speaker 1: so many tropes. The gold digging secretary and the attractive
Speaker 1: women aren't smart and career driven women are happier when
Speaker 1: they lay off work and get married. It's a wonderful
Speaker 1: movie you will like. In the vein of My Girl
Speaker 1: Friday and Working Girl without too many spoilers, the wife
Speaker 1: played by Myrna Loy allows herself to be persuaded on
Speaker 1: really shaky evidence that her very devoted husband, Clark Gable,
Speaker 1: is cheating on her with his secretary played by Jeane Harlow.
Speaker 1: The secretary is actually a very smart and competent woman
Speaker 1: who knows gender is holding her back and is also
Speaker 1: dealing with her boyfriend played by Jimmy Stewart, talked about
Speaker 1: an ensemble rom com wanting her to quit working and
Speaker 1: settle down. It's funny, smart, and is so so freaking good.
Speaker 1: It's the first movie where Geene Harlow is in the
Speaker 1: sexpot role, but there's nothing sex pot about her. It
Speaker 1: addresses the idea that women can crave life satisfaction through
Speaker 1: a career and are just as competent and capable as men,
Speaker 1: and are held back by societal rules and fears of
Speaker 1: women in the workplace. There are a few issues on
Speaker 1: the feminist front with it, but relatively minor, and overall
Speaker 1: it's very modern and liberal thinking for the times, despite
Speaker 1: coming before the postwar pushed to send women home, and
Speaker 1: it's not exactly like secretaries today don't deal with the
Speaker 1: same kind of thinking or that jealousy and fear of
Speaker 1: workplace romance. Wow, so that sounds fantastic. Christina I'm adding
Speaker 1: it to my queue. I need like a month off
Speaker 1: to watch all of these movies. So thank you listeners
Speaker 1: for tuning in with us all summer for our rom
Speaker 1: com series and keep your recommendations and letters coming. Mom
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
Speaker 1: address and for links to all of our social media
Speaker 1: as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts
Speaker 1: with our sources so you too can learn even more
Speaker 1: about rom coms, head on over to stuff Mom Never
Speaker 1: Told You dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com