Excerpt
In &Outpisses me off. Queer writer Paul Rudnick might be unmatched in his ability to sculpt hilarious characters and infuse spicy dialogue into his movies, but this particular script panders to straight ideas about gay men by leaning on tired jokes about Barbra Streisand and other antiquated stereotypes. While there is some lingering cultural authenticity in Kevin Kline's role, his character is no one I recognize in my 20- and 30-something set. For that matter, I doubt his appetites and sensibilities are representative of many homosexual men under 45 (dare I say under 50?).
This movie would have been perfect in 1985, maybe even 1990. But 1997? By then my head was filled with Madonna's music, Melrose Placecatfights, and meeting shirtless guys on dance floors. When I still went to see the movie with my friends, I chuckled at many of the lines, but all the while I felt as though the character embodied a joke I'd heard long ago. It was time, I thought, for the next generation of gay men to invent some new stereotypes for themselves.
Mondo Homowas originally conceived to answer that need by recreating, in literary form, those delicious late-night cocktail parties where friends discuss their favorite shows, books, divas, and anything else that excited them while they were growing up gay (closeted or otherwise). I wanted to hear what sources of solace other writers had found, whether they were obvious choices like TV and film, or more specialized areas of popular culture such as fashion, art, and porn. I boldly decided that words like "fag"would be reclaimed and used to add an extra kick to an irreverent attitude so that anyone reading these pages would know, without question, that this was the new face of gay male culture in America. Kevin Kline no more! We are the drag queens from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: complex, filled with desires, dreams, and passions. Most importantly, were men who don't give a shit about what the rest of the world thinks of us.
Homosexual men born post-Stonewall have grown up and fallen in love with a new generation of popular culture icons and ideas that are also ever-changing. The thing that's new about this evolution is that while we can often implicitly recognize queer sensibilities in a book or film or TV show, we're hard-pressed to name what specifically creates or defines those sensibilities. So if stereotypes are birthed, murdered, and regenerated faster than you can turn a trick at a gay pride parade, how can we lay down any sort of definitive statement that says, Thisis gay?
We can't. The point of Mondo Homois to push past the two-second sitcom jokes and avoid the impossible task of painting a complete picture of queer pop culture, or queer culture, or even what it means for something simply to be queer. Thats why we assembled writers who could work as a bridge between generations, men who understood the significance of our queer history but whose work reflected a clear eye and a distinct voice for the future. Together, we could create a composite portrait of queer popular culture by assembling snapshots of the changes each of us has observed and experienced over the course of his life. The idea is that each of these small slivers of queer history reflects the Big Picture, which becomes easier to see when you use all the slivers to make a larger mirror. This was not only possible, but to me, far more interesting.