The power’s been restored and Crankenstein’s back home, rattled and relieved in (almost) equal measure. We’d planned to celebrate a special occasion this weekend and some of those festivities have been postponed, but there’s cake and she’s chosen The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug for tonight’s viewing. Though we seem to watch it annually, I’m perpetually lost; there are too many barrels and arrows and unwashed creatures to keep track of them all. The few non-Hobbit character names I remember were retained by using a Papa-inspired mnemonic of sorts: identifying gay actors the way he alerted his family — and anyone else in a five-mile radius — to the Jewish ancestry of film and TV actors.
“Thorin Oakenshield’s a homo!” I want to joke when Richard Armitage’s character appears, in a nod to Adventures in Babysitting. If I can digress from Middle Earth for a moment, rather than cram this into a footnote, I haven’t seen Babysitting in decades and don’t recall it being any good, but I watched it countless times as a kid because it was one of the hospital’s only options. Videotapes were expensive then and none of us carried tiny screens in our pockets; if you wanted to borrow a movie from the hospital’s library, an adult had to fill out a requisition form or your parents had to call the appropriate desk. When it was your turn to watch, an AV cart was wheeled to the foot of your bed for a couple hours, then whisked away. My dad still chuckles when he thinks of Babysitting and recites its most popular quote: “Thor’s a homo!”
Returning to Tolkien Gays, we mustn’t forget Bard the Bowman actor and tanning enthusiast Luke Evans, who was quite the dish before he became a one-man production of A Raisin in the Sun. How much more attention might I have paid to The Hobbit trilogy had Thorin and Bard been permitted the sort of sexual chemistry the Hobbits shared in the Lord of the Rings films? (As with the answer to the Tootsie Roll/Pop question, the world may never know.) Armitage officially came out in the press a couple years ago, but he was widely known to be gay throughout his career; Evans had been out early and toyed with ducking back into the closet to further his career. But man must remain true to his nature, and it’s well within Evans’ to spend considerable time cavorting on beaches with chiseled male models who share his penchant for Speedos and well-oiled pecs.
That’s just the tip of the homosexual iceberg with the Hobbit cast, which also includes Stephen Fry and Lee Pace, an actor I’ve never warmed up to. Pace, who first came to gay prominence in the not-actually-gay Soldier’s Girl in 2003, was also late to (publicly) coming out; his sexuality, like that of Evans and Armitage, was enough of an open secret that costar Ian McKellen, the Grand Poobah of gay Tolkien actors, accidentally outed all three of them at one time or another.* If I’ve omitted anyone, perhaps a rewatch will refresh my memory… provided my eyes don’t immediately glaze over.
Crankenstein probably would’ve selected this film as comfort viewing tonight even if we had nothing to celebrate; she’s still reeling from yesterday’s weather events, in which one of her worst nightmares was realized.** She was in extreme distress, which sent my stress soaring. It didn’t help that we were in separate locations; my reduced ability to multitask frustrated us both because there were times when I had to focus more on our house and Muriel than trying to quell Crankenstein’s anxiety. Today wasn’t the right time or place for another come-to-Jesus talk about the physical and emotional toll of all these ‘Niles’/Parkinson’s Wrestlemania throwdowns, but I stupidly initiated one anyway that caused more aggravation. If Luke Evans would stop sunbathing for a few minutes, maybe Bard could take aim at these conflicts and restore peace throughout the land.
* I say Soldier’s Girl wasn’t gay for the same reason I wouldn’t categorize Boys Don’t Cry as a lesbian movie: if we recognize Calpernia Addams as a woman and Brandon Teena as a man, both films are about heterosexuals. Transphobia and homophobia often intersect but they aren’t interchangeable, and it’s quite strange to me that contemporary ‘queers’ are no more enlightened about this today than most straight people were 25 years ago. In simpler terms, trans people face bigotry, harassment and abuse for rejecting their biological sex; gay people face bigotry, harassment and abuse for accepting ours. If you see more similarities than differences between those two things, I’m not sure where you’re looking. Boys Don’t Cry moved me to tears as a teenager and its violence made me viscerally ill, but it’s a trans story, not a gay story.
** I’m not sure whether I’ll write a more detailed account; it would work best with the inclusion of photos and links that are at odds with my preference for vagueness about her professional life.