soccer and gay sex
by Douglas Messerli
All sports, with their general
disapproval of gay behavior—given that terrible fear of locker boys and men
that some other male may actually find them attractive (a fear I never quite
comprehended; mightn’t they be just little pleased and aroused, but of course,
that is an even worse terror)—have often been the subjects of gay filmmaking.
But soccer, in particular, given the general beauty of the ball-kicking boys
has been a particular focus of short-film gay stories.
In this gathering I chose only two of the dozens of such films I have
encountered throughout the years, Irish director John Butler’s 2016 film Handsome
Devil and, from the same year, British director Rhys Chapman’s Wonderkid.
Some things have changed in the world of athletics, long a place where
men and women intensely needed to hide their gay identity. Tom Daley, the great
Olympic champion swimmer, proudly knits, has a male husband, children, and has
become quite popular in the media. Diver Greg Louganis has even become a kind
of symbol for the gay athletic community. Gay sites are filled with pictures of
soccer and rugby players whose pants have been pulled down and off, cocks
displayed in public. I’ve even written about how the captain of my Marion, Iowa
high school football team probably was a gay boy. But still, it remains a dark
and mostly forbidden territory.
Since 2016, Galitzine, who stars in Handsome Devil and was
himself a rugby and football player as a young man, identifies as being
heterosexual, but has become a sort of gay heartthrob, performing in The Craft:
Legacy, Red, White & Blue Royal, and Mary and George, in
which he played bisexual or gay figures.
In the second essay, I created a very small account of gay and lesbian
history in sports. But the subject should be explored on a much larger context.
I may go there some day.
Los Angeles, April 9, 2025
Reprinted from My Gay Cinema blog
(April 2025)
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment