 |
| Gay icon vampires: Rita Ora and Iggy Azalea. |
The homosexual community has always held up certain entertainers as their own gay icons; the first: the equally talented and tragic Judy Garland; even in the more closeted 1960s, Garland acknowledged her then gay fan base: “When I die I have visions of fags singing ‘Over the Rainbow.’” As with other gay icons and divas of the past: Joan Crawford, Bette Midler, and Diana Ross, there is always a high camp element to the public personas and performances of these actresses and singers. This became immediately self-evident when I attended a screening of “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” (a perennial gay favorite) at The Castro Theater; and the highlight was a drag impersonation of another gay-goddess: Bette Davis.
In the late-1980s, there was a noticeable shift in the gay pantheon, as a younger flood of new recruits entered the community; those, like myself, who were raised during the post-Hollywood glamour eras of the 60s and 70s. A little further media brain-washed, and therefore jaded, we looked for idols that were more explicitly sexual; and even at times vulgar. The penultimate example of this different breed of gay icon was embodied by Madonna; who ingeniously guaranteed her place in the homosexual firmament by coopting the visual style perfected in the earlier black and white imagery of old Hollywood, dreamily realized in her video for “Vogue.” But, what Madonna accomplished was to harden the former mysterious allure of those pictures into a much more calculated and perverse lexicon that had everything to do with the baseness and explicitness that had irrevocably entered the culture through the widespread introduction of pornography in the 1970s. A few years later, she would take everything downward in the album “Erotica,” in her book “Sex,” and in the music video for “Justify My Love.” After that: nothing was off limits.
The official transfer of power, and the throne of gay icondome, was passed over to another generation, during the notorious lesbian kiss between Madonna and her protégées Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the 2003 VMA Awards. Ironically, Aguilera had already paid homage to the damage done by Madonna in her first hit single “Genie in a Bottle:” about a malevolent spirit of hyper-sexuality, that once released, can never be put back. Since that pivotal moment, there is a strange vampiristic element within the cult of all gay icons: a passing of the baton from one to another; with each subsequent inductee becoming further pornographic than the previous: this transpired in its most fully realized form by Lady Gaga, who has openly and purposely been “reductive” of her obsession Madonna; for instance, deconstructing, and reimagining Madonna’s “Express Yourself” into a dark and sinister sadomasochistic tableau.
With the waning of Spears and Aguilera, and the current slips of Beyonce, Mariah Carey, and Jennifer Lopez, whose splashy media stories about their cozy and domestic motherhood, which diminished their iconic status in the gay world, has been soundly taken over by the likes of Iggy Azalea, Miley Cyrus, and Katy Perry. Unlike some previous gay icons, they tend to reference Hollywood less, and are more reliant upon the plastic day-glow commercialism of internet porn pop-culture, and Costco: everything is unambiguous, bright, and overflowing. They are live version of 80s and 90s toys: Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, and a pedo-version of Candy-Land. Like porn itself, it’s gross, sickening, and irrational to watch, but somehow mesmerizing. And, as happens with porn-actresses, current gay icons, though mimicking an exaggerated view of femininity, presently personified by Rihanna - of the constant fleshiness covered by a thin sparky gauze, tend to lose their sense of womanhood. One commentator wrote of Garland: “Judy was beaten up by life, embattled, and ultimately had to become more masculine. She has the power that homosexuals would like to have, and they attempt to attain it by idolizing her.” In the end, these women, as evidenced in Azalea, from the beginning: come out looking like drag-queens. For gay men, these bizarre fantasies of escapist glitziness provides a brief moment of solace. But, like everything in the homosexual mind-set, it’s all fleeting and incredibly transitory. As with the heavy make-up of the drag performers doing sketches of Mae West, it all covers over the true self - and the pain behind the mask.