June may be busting out all with Richard Rodgers' glorious music during the current revival of Carousel at the Imperial Theatre. Unfortunately, June is busting out all over the country with toxic masculinity. From famously snide and sadistic assholes like Corey Lewandowski, Stephen Miller, and Rudy Giuliani to unnamed employees of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, overblown attempts at proving one's macho manliness through pathologically misguided aggressive behavior have backfired, branding these people as the moral equivalents of Nazi thugs.
To lighten the mood, I offer the following number from that great 1938 Rodgers & Hart musical, The Boys From Syracuse (a perky adaptation of Shakespeare's 1594 farce entitled The Comedy of Errors). Even 80 years after Lorenz Hart's lyrics were first heard by Broadway audiences, it's easy to find plenty of men who fit their description.
While June is often associated with Father's Day and the joy of weddings, this year in the Bay area June is conspicuous for opportunities to mock multiple manifestations of male bonding by both heterosexual and homosexual men. On one side of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Theatre Company is presenting Young Jean Lee's satire entitled Straight White Men (a Broadway production begins previews on June 29). Meanwhile, at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre, the Frameline Film Festival draws laughs every year during screenings of its popular Fun In Boys Shorts program.
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Watching a program of short films often makes one wish they could see more of an artist's work. Among the many treats bringing sorely-needed smiles to LGBT audiences is a clip from the popular YouTube web series entitled Matt & Dan.Grammar Nazis will derive a perverse sense of satisfaction from the wickedly funny (and deliciously punishing) lesson in British diction delivered through a series of text graphics during the Bay area premiere of Rocket Ear's debut film, a three-minute animated short entitled Don't F*ck With England. Once you hear the film's narration, you'll be begging for more!
Those who may be too timid for BDSM play can soothe their inner sissy with a screening of Femme, an 18-minute comedy (written by Corey Camperchioli and directed by Alden Peters) in which an effeminate gay man gets an unexpected boost of confidence from a professional drag queen.
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| Poster art for Femme |
Femme begins as Carson (Camperchioli) trades pics with a potential sex partner on a hookup app for gay men. There's no doubt that his pics have strong visual appeal. But when the hot lawyer he's been chatting with (Derek Klena) opens the door to his apartment, it quickly becomes evident that Carson is hardly the masculine stud Evan anticipated.
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| Corey Camperchioli and Derek Klena in a scene from Femme |
Subsequent attempts at hooking up with men like Dean (Johnny Sibilly) only confirm that Carson's body language and eagerness to please are the cause of his being rejected so often. While passing out flyers with Harper (Stephanie Hsu), it's painfully obvious that people who ignore an effeminate white boy like Carson are more than willing to take a flyer from a short Asian woman. As Camperchioli explains:
"Growing up, I was always teased for being too gay, too much, too femme.' I thought that when I moved to New York City, came out, and found my community, that would all stop. I was wrong. I’ve encountered 'no femmes' and 'masc only' from within the community more times than I can count. Femme is my attempt to not only unpack and challenge this behavior, but to celebrate femme-ness in a way that I’ve craved my entire life."
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One of the funniest gay shorts I've seen in years is Edward Jack's 11-minute romp entitled The Fix. Luke Mire stars as Steven, an employee at the Cornhole (a fast food joint that specializes in corn dogs) who is desperate to find a cure for his peculiar oral obsession. Like many gay men, he is hopelessly addicted to cock. |
| Luke Mire stars as Steven in The Fix |
Frequently intimidated by his co-worker, Gerald (Maverick Shaw), who always receives the Employee of the Week award from the restaurant's hunky manager, Terry (Jeremy Vandermause), Steven's daydreaming while he watches hunky customers savor their corn dogs can lead to overcooking the tasty treats in a deep fat fryer, causing them to bend and shrink. Upon hearing about Dr. Bruce's revolutionary method for treating young cock addicts, Steven sets up an appointment which leads to some Rorschach-like inkblot tests filled with phallic imagery (the following video is from the film's Kickstarter campaign).
While one might think that the main goal of The Fix is to spoof conversion therapy for gay men, it turns out that Dr. Bruce and Terry have their own secret fetishes. The filmmaker claims that The Fix often makes him think about what John Waters could do with (or to) Stanley Kubrick's 1971 hit, A Clockwork Orange. As he explains:
"No matter how supportive our friends and family are, the experience of growing up queer leaves us with the nagging feeling of needing to fix ourselves (the continuing high rates of drug abuse and suicide among queer people speak to that). Growing up in a culture that is only slowly starting to see our identity as something other than an aberration means that we have a more troubled relationship to our desires than straight people. Homophobes want young queer kids to think that their lives will be grim, so describing the joy of being queer is a radical act. It's vital to show that queer people are not only capable of joy, but that they can be joyful because they are queer."
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| Artist's rendering of Steven in The Fix |
"To me, the best movies twist our everyday anxieties and manipulate them into narratives that allow us a shared experience of catharsis. One of the lasting impacts that queer people have had on the wider culture is our willingness to puncture self-seriousness and pomposity through acts of creative expression. I hope that this film will be a small contribution to what we might call the Canon of Queer Joy (and what a long, throbbing, thrusting canon it is). Above all, I want it to be outrageously funny. I also hope that the film will speak to some of the fears and anxieties we have as queer people."
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Whereas gay filmmakers have let their freak flag fly for many years, they have much more colorful material to work with than the subjects of Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men. The three brothers depicted onstage proudly admit that they are assholes. Though fully grown, they don't seem to have much interest in music -- nor do they spend a lot of energy talking about sports. As the play progresses, one can't help but wonder if they suffer from a combination of white male privilege and arrested development.Since their mother's death several years ago, all three brothers have returned home each year to spend Christmas with their father and relive some of their family's holiday traditions. For Ed (James Carpenter), these include buying new pajamas for his sons and filling their stockings with candy canes and other gifts. Their presence in the house helps to fill the gap left by his deceased wife and renew the bonds he shares with his boys.
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| James Carpenter (Ed) and Ryan Tasker (Matt) in a scene from Straight White Men (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
The oldest is Jake (Seann Gallagher), a divorced banker who has achieved all the career goals that should be the mark of a successful man. Financially secure, he has two children and is quite pleased with himself. Whenever a problem arises, Jake is quick to nip it in the bud by explaining what it is, why it is, what will fix it, and how the problem will be solved.
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| Seann Gallagher (Jake) and Drew (Christian Haines (Drew) in a scene from Straight White Men (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
The middle son, Drew (Christian Haines), is a tenured professor and best-selling author whose struggle with depression once brought him to the brink of suicide. Luckily, the youngest brother, Matt, was able to coax Drew out of doing anything stupid and, bit by bit, help him to return to a normal level of functioning.
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| Ryan Tasker (Matt) and Christian Haines (Drew) in a scene from Straight White Men (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Recently, Matt has been working for a temp agency while living at home with his father in order to save on expenses. Although he seems to have given up on pursuing a career, he's been quietly learning how to look beyond himself so that he can be of use to others while embracing a kind of humility that is alien to someone like Jake.
Matt's two older brothers still enjoy calling him by his childhood nickname ("Shit baby") and are happy to indulge in the kind of horseplay they enjoyed in their youth. Whether the men's antics are focused on tickling Drew or trying to steal one brother's spot on the living room couch or in their father's recliner, it takes very little effort for them to switch gears from adulthood to a "boys will be boys" mode.
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| Ryan Tasker, Seann Gallagher, and Christian Haines in a scene from Straight White Men (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
During their traditional Christmas dinner (take-out Chinese food followed by apple pie), the usual amount of trash talking takes place. But when Matt suddenly starts sobbing, the other men are at a loss for how to react.
- Drew is quick to recommend therapy and eager to pay for anything that could help the brother who saved his life.
- Ed offers to pay off Matt's student loans and cannot understand why his son would refuse his unsolicited generosity.
- Jake, of course, is too busy interrupting and talking over everyone without having the foggiest idea what might have triggered Matt's emotional outburst.
While Ed has gotten used to the way Matt takes care of the house, Jake and Drew are shocked to see him methodically vacuuming the living room floor with a placid smile on his face. They're even more disturbed to learn that household chores make Matt feel good about himself and bring him a sense of having accomplished something useful. Despite all their "Get out there and go get'em" pep talks, what Ed, Jake, and Drew cannot articulate (much less understand) is that their noncompetitive kid brother's comfort zone resides within a gender role traditionally assigned to women.
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| Christian Haines, Ryan Tasker, Seann Gallagher, and James Carpenter in a scene from Straight White Men (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
When the playwright met with college students during an early workshop for Straight White Men, she asked them to list things they wanted to see in a character who was more “woke.” But when she wrote a character that matched the qualities they suggested, the students hated him because he came across as a loser. No one wanted to date him, be friends with him, or hire him. At other performances, Lee found that some people would laugh their heads off while tuning out any political content that made them feel as if they were being subjected to a lecture.
“In spite of all these social justice values in our peer group, being a loser is worse than being an asshole. Their reaction revealed our continuing investment in the patriarchy,” notes the playwright. “As a result, Matt became a litmus test. Audiences are driven insane by him for being the way he is, which exposes their actual value systems. Everyone at the first workshop was like: 'I want a straight white man to sit down and shut up. I want him to take a back seat, to take a supporting role. I don’t want him to be aggressive. I want him to be passive and sit there and take it. I want him to listen. I don’t want him taking the head role or the biggest job or to be going after the biggest stuff. I want him in a supporting role to me.'”
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| J Jah is the Person-in-Charge during Straight White Men (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
For the play’s New York premiere at the Public Theatre, the playwright tried to create a pre-show environment marked by loud hip-hop music with raunchy lyrics by female artists. Lee also added a transgender/queer non-straight-white-male character as “The Person in Charge” who directs scene transitions and whose presence informs the audience that a non-straight-white-male is running the show.
Much has been written about Lee's habit of trying to make audiences uncomfortable but, for Bay area theatergoers (especially those who identify as LGBT), the pre-performance lecture about the proper use of pronouns for transgender people may seem as commonplace as a flight attendant's instructions about safety procedures aboard an aircraft.
Working on Lucianna Stecconi’s handsome unit set (with lighting by Heather Basarab, sound design by Sara Huddleston, and costumes by Fumiko Bielefeldt), director Morgan Gould achieves a nice balance between the merriment of a Christmas family reunion and the pathos of Matt’s disturbing personal crisis. Performances of Straight White Men continue through July 8 at the Marin Theatre Company (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer:
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