On Disability After Dark‘s podcast #101 Andrew Gurza rewrites a classic romcom with disability in mind. He picks ‘You’ve Got Mail’ & makes a good plot out of it, but some of the ‘issues’ he’d see addressed come across more as polemic than entertainment – i.e. banning straws. The struggle for accessibility may not play as comedic either – but it’s certainly worth finding out.
This sort of rewriting is something I’ve been doing for years. You know things like: fantasizing that Tarzan would have more fun with the hot Zulu King than that plain Jane he gets stuck with. What was really up with Tony Randall as the ‘straight’ best friend is so many 50’s, 60’s comedies? But of course gays didn’t exist then.
At one time heterocentric entertainment was literally the law. In Hollywood for decades the Hays Commission would force films to remove any mention of divergent sexuality from scripts or edit it out of already filmed footage. In books, queer characters were only acceptable as tragically flawed figures who inevitable had to die by the end of the book.
What if it was Greg Brady who had a crush on the football team captain? What if Bud, on Married With Children, was caught with a copy of Mandate (a gay men’s pin-up magazine) under his bed & not Playboy? Why couldn’t Buffy and Faith ever consummate their clearly sexual attraction? Pop music: why not, say, ‘For Emil wherever I may find him’. Or ‘Mark’s tee-shirt waved in the breeze as Roy Orbison sang.’
So when Andrew rewrites those heterocentric fantasy, wish-fulfillment, romcoms into a stories where real people can be a part of things I’m with him 100% ‘When Harry Wheeled Salvator’ ‘American Crip Pie.’ (I use ‘crip’ as Andrew uses it freely.) We need stories where disabled folk aren’t seen as brave but as sexy.
I’d go further because queering romcom isn’t such a difficult step. There is already a mid-budget niche of good-looking gay gays & gals fumbling in their search for true love. I’d love to see big budget superheroes, or male action figures like James Bond or GI Joe – have a same-sex love interest. Why not Superman with Larry Lane; Iron Man with Pecker Potts. I say male because female-on-female is still more acceptable for general audiences.
I”d love to see “You’ve Got Inspector Mobility Device.”
Born to be Blown
just wrap your lips ’round these velvet rims
and strap your hands ‘cross my engines
‘cause Daddy
we were born to cum
do I have to tell you
I want to fuck you
in a song
or is that the sort of thing
you can’t say in a song
even with all the out singers
there’s still this smothering
hetero cloaking of
what queer pop performers
are willing to say
it’s fine to say
I miss you in the morning
never
I miss your woodie in the morning
the bed is so empty without you
is acceptable
but my mouth is so empty without you
will never make to the charts
she can sing
I long for the taste of you
on my tongue
but
I long for the taste
of my pussy
on your tongue
is just going to far
why are there no queer anthems like
‘Born to be Blown’
‘B-B-Bad to the Boner’
not that I want
to reduce being queer to body parts
but honey
taking the sex out of homosexual
to maintain assimilationist acceptability
gets to be boring
the empty space in the bed
isn’t as lonely
as the empty space between my legs
that you used to fill with your face
the smile I miss
is your smile when
I look up at you
with your dick in my mouth
where is the chart topper
that isn’t ashamed of desire
that doesn’t hide in coy cloying
allusion
let’s bring sex back to sexy
if I have to tell you
I want to fuck you
in a song
I guess i’m going
have to write that song myself
but ‘til I do
get your mouth a runnin’
get head on the highway
looking for adventure
in whoever comes my way
wrap your hips ’round these velvet lips
strap your hands ‘cross my engines
‘cause Daddy
we were born to cum
http://buddiesinbadtimes.com/event/hot-damn-its-a-queer-slam-feat-janice-lee/
http://www.queerslam.com
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