There's no Word in Afrikaans for Gay (Ep. 6: South Africa)

April 30, 2015 Matthew Baume

"We were finally getting our high school crush that we'd missed out on," Johann says, recalling the time he fell head over heels in love. They met online, flirted for a year, and then finally met up for pizza and nachos and found a dark street where they could make out.

It took Johann a long time to get to that point. He grew up in apartheid South Africa, where there were strict limits on any access to gay culture. Sheltered and deeply religious, he could only catch brief glimpses of queer relationships in books like E.M. Forster's Maurice. Even when he tried to come out, his friends wouldn't believe him. He had a two-year relationship with a girl that started after he told her he was gay.

So what changed? Drag Race came along at just the right moment. He landed in Seattle around the time that Ben DeLaCreme was hosting weekly screenings of Season 6 at the Century Ballroom, and in the massive audiences that came to watch the show Johann discovered what a queer community looks like. Suddenly, he didn't feel quite so alone.

This episode zooms around across a wide range of topics -- here's a few snippets from the movie version of Maurice.

Adorably, most of Johann's gay cultural influences involve deeply nerdy men: studious, academic, quiet and introverted and brainy. Here's a sexy kissy scene with Michael and Ben from Queer as Folk.

And Object of My Affection, which I've been told was extremely important to shy closeted boys in the mid-'90s.

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Funny and Salacious and Dangerous (Ep. 5: Soap)

April 23, 2015 Matthew Baume

It's a little unfair that so many gay men adore The Golden Girls, but so few have heard of Soap, without which Blanche, Rose, Sophia and Dorothy wouldn't exist.

Both shows featured strong female characters sitting around a kitchen table eating baked goods and talking openly about sex, but Soap did it first. And according to my guest Andrew, did it better. The show was essentially a parody of soap operas, told in a sitcom style -- alien abductions, evil twins, sex changes, mystery diseases, and secret affairs kept the plot humming along for several years before it was cancelled in the midst of an infuriatingly unresolved cliffhanger.

Soap became a bit of an obsession for Andrew as a kid, particularly because of the motherly power of the character of Jessica. Though her family was fractured and weird, her love never wavered. That family loyalty made such an impression on him that he still thinks about -- and aspires to it -- to this day.

Here are a few clips, starting with the basic cast of characters and their drama.

I'm not sure what's up with the color here, but this gives you a sense of the tone of the show:

And here's the show getting awfully serious:

And here's the famous MASH episode with the gay soldier. Skip to around 8 minutes for the big scene.

And one of my all time favorite episodes of Cheers:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Short and Super-Perverted (Ep. 4: Salome)

April 18, 2015 Matthew Baume

When he was a bassoon-playing band kid, Greg fell in love with operas and would listen to them alone in his room. But it wasn't until he fell in love with another opera nerd (a slightly older New Yorker, also named Greg, adorably) that he realized there were others like him. Soon, he was whisked away on bohemian visits to New York and deeply emotional experiences in darkened theaters -- the only place where Greg permitted himself to cry.

But like so many love affairs, this one wasn't fated to last. After devoting his entire life to opera for years, Greg started to find that his relationship to the art form had cooled ... but saying goodbye was a painful experience.

Greg did me the favor of recommending several fantastic operas to watch, which is fortunate because I would have had no idea where to begin. Behold:

Start listening at 1:39:00. Greg explains, "It's a play within a play -- and she just supposed to be a speaking actress -- but her passion grows SO HOT that she HAS to burst into song. And her singing is three times louder than her yelling which shouldn't be possible?"

In the above clip from Wagner's The Ring, Greg describes the singing that follows 1:02:00 as "choice."

Start at 46:00 for some beautiful music from Richard Strauss's Salome.

That's a particularly moving death scene from Aïda.

The above clip is a radio broadcast of Figaro from the '40s, which isn't what Greg was listening to as a kid, but "the thing is the narration was NOT THAT DIFFERENT when I started listening in the '90s," he says. "Oh did I mention they always describe the dresses during the curtain call? 'Miss Malfitano in taking another bow, in her scarlet empire-waisted gown and velvet cape,' so you can picture it in your mind."

And let's end it on one more big diva moment: Figlia impura di Bolena. Magnifico!

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Gay Men's Catnip (Ep. 3: Wizard of Oz)

April 16, 2015 Matthew Baume

There was a time when gay men were so besotted with Judy Garland that "Judy" was just slang for a gay man. Josh Trujillo caught the tail end of that culture: as a kid, he was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz, and discovered that Oz conventions (yes, there really is such a thing) served as a sort of meeting-place for older closeted gay men.

What is it about The Wizard of Oz that calls to the gays, and why has its grip weakened over the last few decades? Also: why are there so many INSANE adaptations? I'm not just talking about the creepy Return to Oz or the delightful The Wiz, but also strange phenomena like the sex ed play The Wizard of AIDS, a Japanese version set in space, and a proposed TV series that would have Dorothy working in a hospital. Oooookay.

If you're enjoying the show, please do give it a rating & review on the iTunes store! You might also enjoy my marriage equality show, Marriage News Watch; or my videos over on the Matt Baume YouTube channel. And let me know your thoughts -- I'm @mattbaume on Twitter.

And now, here are a few YouTube clips of interest. Let's start with The Wiz, parts of which I adore and other parts of which I can't skip over fast enough. I forgot just how '70s this movie is.

...and then just a few years later came Return to Oz, a chilling horror show.

And then there's Wicked. The Oz universe sure is a chameleon.

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I was Quite Happy to be the Villain (Ep. 2: Julian and Sandy)

April 16, 2015 Matthew Baume

In the 1960s, fabulous queer characters were hiding in plain sight on the BBC radio show Round the Horne, which featured two squealing gays speaking in barely-veiled innuendo. They were using a form of gay British slang known as "Polari" that's all but died out today.

Decades later, Tork Shaw would listen to tapes of the episode in the car with this family, and he'd hear something of himself in the bookish, aristocratic, quick-witted gays like Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick on the radio. He didn't quite fit in at school -- everyone around him was sporty and posh -- so he cultivated a caustic wit, modeled on the Round the Horne's Julian and Sandy, Oscar Wilde, and Noel Coward. He was kind of a young-boy version of Downtown Abbey's Dowager Countess. Despite being a small, unathletic kid, his classmates grew a bit scared of him and he was voted "worst bully" in his class.

But by the time he was teenager, he was feeling ready to set that aside. "I didn't want to be mean anymore," he said. "What happens if I let go of everything I've done in the past?"

Well, let's find out on tonight's episode!

Hey, if you're enjoying the show, please give it a rating & review on the iTunes store! You might also enjoy my marriage equality show, Marriage News Watch; or my videos over on the Matt Baume YouTube channel. And let me know your thoughts -- I'm @mattbaume on Twitter.

Here are a few delightful Julian and Sandy segments from Round the Horne on the BBC:

And the show Gimme Gimme Gimme that Tork mentioned:

And though it might be unfamiliar to Americans, here's Kenneth Williams in some Carry On films:

Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Camp is like Pornography (Ep. 1: Eurovision)

April 8, 2015 Matthew Baume

Jānis grew up in Latvia with few gay influences. That's probably why he was so drawn to Eurovision, the strange campy continental song contest. Also pivotal: Queer as Folk, which showed him how gay men talk about condoms, and the German version of American Idol, which showed him that there are other flamboyant boys out there. Now that he's living in the U.S., he's making up for lost time by racing to consume as much gay culture as he can.

After the jump: a few of the clips we discussed on the show, including some Eurovision, some gay-adjacent Hitchcock, and some hard-core camp.

Here are my favorite Eurovision clips. Please do tweet more at me -- I can't get enough. I'm @mattbaume.

And here's a trailer for Rebecca. Gosh what a lovely film. Can you spot the lesbian undertones?

And while we're on the subject, here's some good old fashioned American camp: Mommie Dearest and Baby Jane.

Amazon.com Widgets

Music:

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Welcome to the Sewers of Paris

April 8, 2015 Matthew Baume

Ah bonjour, and welcome to the Sewers of Paris! I’m Matt Baume, and I’ve started a brand new podcast about the entertainment that changed the lives of gay men.

We all have a story to tell about the book, the show, the song, the film that made us who we are. And that’s what this podcast is about. Each week, my guest plucks a piece of entertainment from their past, and answers the question: how did it change your life?

Back in the 70s, The Sewers of Paris was a gay bar in Southern California. Their signature drink: the manhole cover. Like its namesake, The Sewers of Paris podcast is a space for gay men to come together between high culture and low culture. Glitz and glamour above, filth and sleaze below. It all blends together into strange, wonderful stories on the show.

Each episode ends with recommendations, so whether it’s a piece of culture you already love, or something you haven’t discovered yet, you’ll hear amazing stories and maybe come away with a new favorite that could change your life, too.

Together we explore such formative entertainments as Oscar Wilde’s opera Salome, the classic sitcom Soap, the erotic Pink Narcissus, camp comedians of BBC radio, The Wizard of Oz, Queer as Folk, Eurovision, Anne Rice, Ru Paul, and so much more.

You can subscribe to the Sewers of Paris right now, for free. Get each new episode automatically by subscribing to The Sewers of Paris on the iTunes store, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you like to hear podcasts.

And if you enjoy the show, please rate and review — those ratings are so important, and your support right now can make a huge difference.

I hope you’ll join me down here in the sewers. Head over to SewersOfParis.com to listen and subscribe. Until we meet again mon cheri… croissant.

Music:

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

About The Sewers of Paris

The Sewers of Paris is a podcast about how queer lives are shaped by our favorite books, movies, music, and shows. Each week, guests open up about their secret struggles, hidden passions, and surprising triumphs by plucking a piece of entertainment from their past and answering the question: What’s the entertainment that changed your life?

About Defining Marriage

Each week on Defining Marriage, hosts Matt Baume and James Morris chat about what's happening with marriage equality, featuring frequent digressions into pop culture, silly banter, and the jokes and quibbles that have kept them together as a couple for over a decade.

The first eighteen episodes of the podcast contain the complete audiobook version of the book Defining Marriage, which traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it, featuring personal insights from the lives of Evan Wolfson, Dan Savage, Ken Mehlman, Dustin Lance Black, and many more.

About Matt's So-Cast Pod

Revisit the iconic '90s drama My So-Called Life, one episode at a time. Every week, host Matt Baume & his guests delve into the teen angst, the grown-up turmoil, and the endless flannel of the 90s -- and examine the show's impact on television and our lives.