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noizemagazine - Index

noizemagazine - noiZe Magazine Issue 59 February 2009 - Index

find more creative ways to reveal
themselves.
Most famously, Batman epitomized
the sublimated gay comic theme by
introducing Robin the Boy Wonder
in the ‘50s as Bruce Wayne’s young
“ward.” Robin not only lived with
Bruce, but slept in the same bed
with him. Once that image was
introduced, almost any crimefighting
words put in their mouths
became loaded with sexual innuendo.
So much so that the series was
attacked by psychologist Fredric
Wertham as having an “atmosphere
of homoeroticism which pervades
the adventures.”
In 1954, that was more commonly
seen as a bad thing for kids to
obsess over. (The inherent camp
in the Batman comics was brought
front and center in the ‘60s TV
show.) The industry seemed to learn
its lesson; the tricks of the trade got
more subtle for a while before actual
gay characters were finally introduced
in the ‘90s. Sometimes the
writers and illustrators employed
irony. Check out the rampant use of
changeling storylines in the comic
world that made gay sex more of
a transsexual phenomenon—something
the industry was oddly more
comfortable with than outright
homosexuality.
Japan & Finland: Out & Hot
In the (arguably) more sexually
repressed society of Japan, gay
sex rears its head quite prominently
through several genres of man-onman
action. The most interesting
is called "yaoi." The word is an
acronym that means “no climax, no
point, no meaning,” which was a
dig at a less explicit version of the
genre. The surprise with yaoi is that
it is especially popular with young
Japanese women. They seem drawn
to the erotic romantic tales that pair
strong dominant men with beautiful
male youth, although some have
posited that they are more comfortable
with sexual situations not
involving females. Whatever, the subtleties
of Japanese gender dynamics are
the subject of a much longer article.
Suffice it to say that the genre is wildly
popular with girls and boys all over the
world. An online search for yaoi yielded
nearly 5 million hits.
A notable exception to the “comic
book” rule is Tom of Finland. His work
remains the most iconic gay art ever
produced. He helped transform the idea
of the homosexual man for an entire
generation. Seen as prancing, catty and
foppish historically, gay men were not
viewed as objects of overt masculinity.
By the 1970s, that image had been
replaced by the cruisy porn icon of the
“clone” swaggering across the docks
with absurdly tight jeans and a handlebar
mustache.
Young Touko Laaksonen was born in
Kaarina, Finland, in 1920. He spent
much of his youth obsessing over the
sweaty laborers of his homeland. He
was soon conscripted into the army to
fight in the Second World War, where
encounters with hardened fighters
sealed the archetype deep into his
psyche. After the war, he worked in the
advertising industry as a graphic artist,
but the stage was set for his impactful
career. Working under the pseudonym
“Tom” while submitting erotic work to
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