Mick Jagger and David Bowie, “Dancing in the Street” The sight of those unshaved legs must have been too much for MTV, which banned the clip.Ĩ. “Express Yourself” gets extra gay points for the horde of shirtless men doing pushups in the rain while Madge serves Marlene Dietrich power-dyke realness.įreddie Mercury was gayer than a harlequin unitard in this video, where he and his fellow Queens got all dolled up in drag. Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Penn Ritchie, Queen of Pop, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons. This list would be incomplete without the presence of Ms.
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Category is: music video first time in drags at a ball. Perhaps Max from Happy Endings said it best.Ĭlear the floor! Clear. In recruiting their gay army, the Pet Shop Boys not only asked but told everybody. Tiny naked men floating on little balls elevate this Erasure video into the gay stratosphere, which, in all fairness, is where Erasure belongs. So toss some glitter in the air and clear the next hour from your schedule because we’re counting down the gayest music videos of all time.īefore sending queens to sashay to their deaths, RuPaul was just a young gal about town with an afro and a dream-a dream to snatch both wigs and the spotlight! Well, yes, all of that. But also that undefinable quality that makes you think, “God, that was so gay it should be starring in Mission Impossible 5.” Or, “That was so gay, it deserves all the Tonys.” Related: The 14 Gayest Moments In Pop Culture This Year And so instead of blushing, we laugh.What makes a music video “gay?” Shirtless mens? Drag queens? More campiness than John Waters’ living room? This video introduces us to a fellow queen who is hurting, and on some level we realize we can offer little succor without doing violence to other aspects of his personality. In the end, I wonder if we are not so much embarrassed for Caldwell as we are embarrassed that people like Caldwell may see so little of value in current gay culture that denying themselves in order to find acceptance where they can is an appealing option. But considering his effeminacy, his faith, even his blackness, would the mainstream gay community be any more welcoming? Given what we know about the historical treatment of those issues “over here,” I am not at all sure of that. Nor, it should be said, can he find shelter in the church queen archetype the success of the gay rights movement has had the consequence of making those kinds of previously tolerated roles increasingly untenable.
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The church community appears to be important to this man, and it is clear that he cannot be openly gay and remain a part of this particular one.
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But Caldwell’s case reminds us that many people feel they cannot follow that model for a range of legitimate reasons. However, it has tended to require that queers model their self-expression and negotiate their relationships in very specific ways in order to be included in the progress. The formula of “visibility equals political progress” has been wildly successful for the LGBTQ movement. (That’s as far as I’ll get into processing the racial politics of this video’s popularity, but suffice it to say they play a part here.) Remix parodies of the testimony arrived right on schedule, and the standard response has converged on an “oh lord, look at this queen” head shake. Caldwell’s specific example is all the more potent, given his sartorial boldness and the effervescent worship style common to many predominately African American churches. His open-secret, self-sacrificial lifestyle choice reads as pathetic from the (secular) out point-of-view, and so giggling at him is easy. And why not? The “church queen”-the closeted gay man who sublimates his sexuality in service of the church, often in an artistic capacity like choir director-is a familiar and oft-derided figure.
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When the gay blogs initially covered the video’s viral breakout, most posted it with little commentary other than a general suggestion that this object was patently risible. Tellingly, most seem to have gone with their guts, and the laughing option seems to have been the most popular.