I just listened to a great (as usual) epsiode of the Slate Culture Gabfest which devoted a substantial amount of time to deconstructing The New Yorker‘s now-infamous post-DOMA cover, which depicted a happily cuddling Bert and Ernie.
Slate‘s high-profile lesbian columnist, June Thomas, wrote a much-shared denunciation of the cover shortly after it was released, expressing considerable frustration at the rank triteness of the old and annoying ha-ha-Bert-and-Ernie-are-gay trope. On the podcast, she expounds further on her thesis, which is basically that a lot of pop culture, and society in general, suffers from a marked “failure to appreciate the difference between friendship and lovers.”
I disliked the cover as well, and I share June’s irritation.
A strong, brotherly friendship between two men is a wonderful thing, and a unique and important source of the companionship, strength, support, and encouragement needed to make life fulfilling, fun, and productive. Even in our current glorious gender-blind utopia, there will always be a special sort of emotional bond that only two male friends can share, born from the particular circumstances of, well, being male.
It’s thus more than a little offensive when society routinely seeks to cheapen that sort of relationship by constantly joking, teasing, and implying that any prominent, long-term partnership between two men must be kinda gay. Batman and Robin? Kinda gay. Holmes and Watson? Gay. Spock and Kirk? Totally Gay. The Lone Ranger and Tonto? Super gay. Lenny and Carl? You get the picture.
Worse still is the faux-progressive suggestion that these relationships should get even gayer, that sexual tension should be ratcheted up on this-or-that show; that Bert and Ernie should actually get married on Sesame Street (as a stupid online petition a few years back demanded) — as if the existence of any non-sexualized male-male relationship was unto itself inherently oppressive and closeted.
Men shouldn’t fear being thought of as gay, but they also shouldn’t feel that being part of a close male-male friendship is an invitation for snickers and suspicion. I also worry that this whole trope of dreaming up “homoerotic overtones” everywhere contributes to a problem I notice a lot in the gay world, namely that many younger gay men are quite indifferent to forming friendship with straight males on the basis that male-male relationships are pointless or impossible without the shared gimmick of sexual orientation.
It’s a weird place we’re in as a culture right now. Being gay is cool, but also sort of subversive.
But not everything in life needs to be both.