Out of the Closet, Into the Box
Disclaimer: I know how annoying it is that I cannot stop talking or writing about this subject. If it bothers you, I'm actually sorry and I would like you to know that I am really trying to stop. The good news is that American Idol starts again in a little over a month and I will have a whole slew of new people to obsess over!
I read this great article on Neil Patrick Harris in New York magazine yesterday. It was an old issue that has been sitting in my office for months, one I never got around to reading. I’m glad I finally did and that I did so now, in the middle of Adam Lambert Mania.
Joanne and I were talking the other day about how difficult it must be to be famous and how we would never really want that life. I said I couldn’t handle being hated by so many people, because every single famous person has haters. Nobody is loved by everyone--except, of course, for Neil Patrick Harris.
It’s easy to see why so many people love him. He’s handsome, smart, charming, and funny. He’s a good actor. He’s a good dresser. He can sing. He frickin’ knows magic. He’s a class act. The words that adorn the cover of this magazine are “Womanizer. Theatre Nerd. Frat Boy. Emmy Host. Leading Man.” (It doesn’t even mention that he’s Doogie Howser, which is kind of amazing.) Maybe it’s his ability to wear all of those hats so comfortably that makes him so universally lovable.
The article talks about his sexuality a lot, and how he’s really accomplished something by coming out in such an unfussy way and only becoming more popular in the aftermath. There are a few lines in the article that stood out to me because of how I related them to Adam Lambert:
“When we were filming Dr. Horrible, I was imagining watching it in my living room. When I’m co-hosting with Kelly Ripa, I’m not thinking Neil the Actor, I’m thinking Housewife, ironing clothes, eleven o’clock. What kind of thing does she want to see?”
Danny [Roberts, of Real World: New Orleans] was distinctly masculine, I point out: the first gay cast member who could easily pass as straight.
“Oh, he was very sexy, but everyone thought so,” says Harris drily. “One wants to be sexy to everyone.”
I ask Harris if he’d ever found himself watching, as many young gay men do, other men for hints of how to “pass.”
“I’ve always thought that people should act to accomplish whatever they need to get. I don’t feel like if you’re talking professionally with your boss-if you talk strip clubs with him if he’s the kind of person who goes to strip clubs-that means you’re being a kiss-ass. It just means you’re being effective.”
First of all, I find this journalist’s rhetoric to be pretty problematic. She seems to think that men should be masculine and that a gay man who can pass as straight is easier for America to swallow. That doesn’t seem correct and it’s a sort of basic muddled view of the relationship between gender and sexuality (that I will explore more deeply later).
But let’s discuss what we’ve learned about NPH here. He’s a people-pleaser to the core and possibly an opportunist as well. But since his only real endgame is getting people to like him (nothing sinister about that) and he’s oh so canny, he just behaves in a way that will allow the highest number of people to do just that. I don’t know why this never occurred to me before but I’m a little surprised that he showed his hand like that.
Ostensibly this is almost the exact opposite of the way Adam Lambert operates. He just does whatever the fuck he wants to do (although I don’t think he’d whip his dick out on a morning show, in his latest interview with EW’s Michael Slezak, he mentions that he jerked off the mic stand when he performed “Whole Lotta Love” ON IDOL but the cameras stayed fixed on him from the waist up…paging the ghost of Elvis Presley anyone?).
Adam frequently mentions that he is weird and that the biggest risk he’s ever taken was just going out there and being himself. People seemed to respond to what he was doing, so he kept on doing it. Memorably, on the Idol tour, when he performed that very same song, women threw undergarments and sex toys at him. Is it any wonder he thought that what the people want is rock music with a large side of sex?
There was an incredible article in the L.A. Times this week (easily the best one on this subject). It touched on how sex is gone from rock, how that genre of music has been co-opted by “Christians, dads, earnest political activists and other basically wholesome superstars.” The journalist name-checks a bunch of boundary-treading old rock stars that Adam now stands beside-Bowie, Jagger, Presley, Cobain-every single one of them straight.
Adam has touched on this before-how wearing eyeliner and nail polish is not a gay act; it’s a (punk) rock act. Billie Joe Armstrong does it. He’s straight. The emo boys in Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco do it. Pretty sure they’re straight too. And didn’t this all start with the glam-rockers of the ‘70s (many of whom were straight, although things were less uptight back then) and the hair bands of the ‘80s (super-heterosexual, if I recall)?
In another interview I can’t recall right now, Adam discussed how people called some of his performances really gay and he said “it’s not gay; it’s sexual.” I have played into this myself: assuming that Adam’s gayness was a huge part of who he was as an artist when really it was his sexuality in general. This accounts for his shameless flirting with people of both genders. It’s easy to interpret this as trying to repress his homosexuality, but how could that be when everyone knows? NPH said that he feels free now to tell women AND men that they are sexy. There is nothing to fear when you are open about who you are.
It may seem like I’m forcing this NPH/Adam Lambert connection just because they’re both out gay men, but check out this line from Adam’s interview with OUT: “There’s a way in which both you and Neil Patrick Harris are being talked about as exceptions to the rule, to the idea that there could never be an out, gay leading man or male musical star. You both seem very confident and comfortable with who you are.
I do think they are incredibly different people, which touches on something Adam has been saying for a long time: that gay people are individually just as different as straight people and there is no uniform Gay Agenda. Gay individuals want different things, just like straight people.
But there’s something else that NPH and Adam Lambert have in common. I think there is a part of Adam that, like Neil, just wants to be liked. After Idol ended, he described his style as “edginess with a smile.” Although in performance (as on the AMAs) it often seems like he’s angry, he’s always quick to say that he wasn’t trying to piss people off. In interviews he seems totally happy and easy-going. Ann Powers, who wrote the L.A. Times article, used a phrase that I really liked (because it very succinctly described the way I feel Adam has been reacting to this scandal): “always conciliatory, even when being unapologetic.”
Maybe that sounds a bit back-handed and maybe it sounds like I’ve been saying something similar about NPH, but what I really believe is that we are looking at two people (who happen to be gay) who are stars not only because of their multitudinous talents, but because they are either naturally likable and charismatic, or they are incredibly well-educated in How A Celebrity Should Behave.
It’s not very difficult to understand why: Neil has been famous for most of his life and has eluded the trappings of child stardom; Adam has been performing professionally for years (once aside a rather huge Hollywood celebrity). They’re both smart businessmen in addition to being artists. They both know their way around a soundbite. When NPH came out of the closet, Howard Stern asked him whether he was a top or a bottom and he responded, “Whatever you please, man.” As far as Adam goes, sometimes I think I enjoy watching his interviews just as much as I enjoy watching his performances. He’s so cheeky and delightful. I honestly believe that these two people are doing enough for the so-called gay cause just by being out, successful, and happy. They are role models, and not just for gay people.
A big difference between the two is that NPH might be a gay role model but, “The idea all along has been to acknowledge the fact of his sexuality, then change the subject to his talent. Still, there was a kind of alchemy involved. Maybe it was Harris’ easy style of masculinity, at once unthreatening and seductive” (Emily Nussbaum, New York).
There we go, confusing gender with sexuality again, almost as if to say “NPH is masculine, so he’s not really THAT gay.” Or his sexuality is unthreatening. But Adam Lambert is another matter: he wears make-up and he kisses men in public.
Adam said in the OUT interview that, “I think one of the things about the gay community that’s really interesting is that while people own their homosexuality, there is a strange aversion to letting the masculine and the feminine exist within you in a balanced way. And for me, personally, I feel I have a very strong masculine side, and I also have a very strong feminine side. And a lot of people are scared to live in that gray area.”
Butch/fem gender politics ARE outdated, especially in the music world. Adam is a little more feminine and a little more sexual; those traits make him a little queerer. And in turn, he must be a Champion of Gay Political Causes and take responsibility for his “dangerous” actions.
There was an article in The Huffington Post entitled “How Adam Lambert Is Hurting Gay Marriage.” Here’s an excerpt:
And what is the mainstream most worried about, Adam Lambert? Why are they afraid of our partnerships, our service to our country, our working lives, our families? They are worried because they think gay life is exactly what you portrayed on the American Music Awards: focused on the kind of sex that turns people into animals (almost literally, in this case, with crawling dancers leading you on leashes), geared toward enticing children (ABC is a network owned by Disney, for heaven’s sake), degrading, rapacious, empty.
This is why mainstream America votes against gays, Adam Lambert. Not because of people who have families and jobs and bills and weddings. Because of people like you, who use sexuality thoughtlessly in order to advance your own agenda, instead of thinking about the very real consequences your actions will have on others’ civil rights.
And here I thought we’d moved on to thinking of gay people as harmless eunuchs who host talk shows and dress up straight people! Let’s face it: what this woman is really saying is “Tone it down, Adam. You’re scaring The Children and Their Heterosexual Parents.” And why should he care about that? Why should he tone it down? Because of the so-called "responsible" gays who might lose their rights as an incredibly tertiary indirect result? Wouldn’t THAT be the real step back?
A lot of fuss has been made about the double standards between female and male displays of sexuality in pop music. What Adam did last Sunday was a queer act not just because of the boy-on-boy action, but because he was behaving in a way that we have only deemed acceptable for female performers.
But would it have been acceptable if he were a straight man? To my eyes, one of the most disturbing things about Adam’s performance (and one I rarely see being discussed) was that he did it all while fully clothed. When a female artist wants to “express her sexuality,” she usually does so by taking off most of her clothes. There is something off-putting about watching Justin Timberlake, Usher and Robin Thicke (all of whom are R&B artists, I should mention) miming sexual acts while wearing three-piece suits. A man doesn’t have to take his clothes off; a man is always in control.
Adam’s gayness is what turns this problematic behavior on its ear: although he is fully clothed, he’s surrounded by women AND men in various states of undress. It’s the same in his music video, which gives him a cool sort of Ringmaster of Sin vibe. (And people were surprised to find out he’s a top?)
I think what people were most offended by in Adam’s AMA performance was not that he did some sexual stuff, but that there was an aggression behind it (it’s weird to agree with Elisabeth Hasselbeck). People actually seem more uncomfortable with his masculinity than anything else. They want him to choose a box and hop in it: Butch (perhaps like NPH, who has proven that he can “pass” when the situation calls for it in his acting) or Fem (Sparkly Gay Eunuch like the boys on “America’s Next Top Model”). And they want him to keep any hint of libido locked firmly away--not just from their children's eyes, but from their eyes.
I think Claude Kelly and the Dark Overlords of American Idol will join me when I say that that is simply NOT GONNA HAPPEN.
(I would post that .gif of Kris sassily snapping his fingers if I could find it.)