The baiter supreme (My Policeman)
Years ago, I wrote reviews for the imaginatively titled Film Review. One of my fellow critics was another gay man, who automatically loathed all gay-themed films, sight unseen. His stance was simple and forcefully expressed: “It’s always awful.” And he would refuse to review anything remotely “queer”.
Today, he’d be left with nothing to write about: everybody wants a slice of the gay pie. You can’t get an invite to the rom com prom without a sexual quirk or kink. LGBTQ is now recognised as a mainstream genre, something that caused Netflix considerable online grief when they put their Jeffrey Dahmer drama into it.
Along with this ubiquity arrives the accusation of “queerbaiting”. This weird little expression means either luring in the gays with the promise of something gay, and then not delivering, or using a “queer aesthetic” without being “queer” enough, or — horrors! — even at all. Dr Justin Bengry, lecturer in “Queer History” at Goldsmiths, recently told Euronews in fluent boilerplate: “We, as queer people, are right to demand ever more representation and celebration of our existence and the incredible variety and diversity within our communities.” He went on: “When we critique someone’s behaviour as ‘queer baiting’… we are accusing that they are wilfully misusing their privilege and even deceiving us about their own understanding of themself to attract attention and even benefit socially and financially.”
A confession. I think Channel 4’s Cucumber was a masterpiece. I enjoy the books of John Rechy. I think Frasier writer Joe Keenan’s novel trilogy beginning with Blue Heaven is sublime. But I find most gay culture, and nearly all “queer” culture, excruciatingly bad and frequently embarrassing. I have a theory that more gay teen wretchedness is caused by “empowering” gay culture, supposedly uplifting but horribly depressing, than anything else. I bought a book called How To Be A Happy Homosexual when I was 16 and it drove me to the outer edge of despair. The mere thought of The Communards, even now, makes me look hungrily towards the medicine cabinet.
The current craze for “representation” is nothing more than hollow fetishism, with all the vacuous, rictus-grinning “celebration” of an office party. It has not widened or improved gay culture, but simply bloated it. In fact, I often prefer it when straight people do the job: Bowie and early Suede, Marty Feldman and Barry Took writing for “Julian and Sandy” on Round The Horne, Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina in Prick Up Your Ears. Mary Renault and Barbara Pym wrote great books about gay men.
It is very strange to think that only homosexual artists can produce art that includes homosexuality, that only gay actors can act gay parts. When it happens the other way round, nobody even notices. Legions of lesbians and gaggles of gays have written hetero stories. Noel Coward wrote plays where young male characters have non-gay secrets — heterosexual affairs — and they function perfectly. James Baldwin wrote about white heterosexual people in a world where his gayness and his race were considerably more of an issue than they would be today, and he did it brilliantly.
