Bonus video! The Silliest Sissies of the Seventies
Added 2024-04-07 16:00:09 +0000 UTCHello there!
For this week's bonus video, we're going to take a brief look at Mr. Humphreys from Are You Being Served? and then a looooong look at gay TV of the 1970s.
[And a quick update about Mr. Humphries & John Inman -- I'm completely wrong in the video when I say that the actor wasn't queer! I was looking at some OOOOOOLD sources that insisted he was straight, but of course they were just being willfully ignorant. I should've known better!]
In particular, I've been digging up some of the weirdest, worst, and wackiest gay characters of the "dark ages." That's the period between Stonewall in 1969 (which raised the visibility of gays on TV, but generally in very negative ways) and subsequent smaller, targeted rebellions in 1973 (which forced TV shows to add a few more positive depictions to the mix.
We'll be taking a look at some of the strangest '70s queer characters I could find: A fashion photographer who hates cowboys; Ron Howard's gay-dad ulcer; and a Hawaii Five-O surfer who MAYBE was the basis of those "The Californians" sketches on Saturday Night Live?
I often find myself grappling with characters like these -- one one hand, sometimes I find them legitimately funny. But on the other hand, OOF they're really derogatory (at best) and sometimes downright dangerous, such as in a Jerry Lewis sketch which is really just giving he audience permission to laugh at gay-bashings. Harvey Fierstein once said that he believes in visibility at any cost, but I wonder if maybe the cost of Alan Sues on Laugh-In is just too high.
Oh also thanks to everyone who's joined us for the My So-Called Life watch-alongs on Discord! We're doing those every Thursday night. Instructions for joining us here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-patreon-for-100466127
Backup link for the video: https://youtu.be/3JrSdY6_gLc
Comments
Yeah, I think his comedy can often be pretty mean!
Matt Baume
2025-06-13 02:38:22 +0000 UTCAlways hated Jerry Lewis as a kid. Maybe his jokes were for older audiences, but I remember finding them ultra offensive as well as silly.
M.D. Wiselka
2025-06-12 21:58:39 +0000 UTCI have watched every episode of Are You Being Served? Yes the over campy act of Mr Humphries can be grating. I agree Alan Sues is over the top. But Mr Humphries was not as bad as some of the other characters portrayed (a la Kenneth Williams in the Carry On series; which can be great but also got sad). Also Mr Humphries you could say is more Bisexual or Pansexual. He’s up for almost anything and gets on with most everyone. They make lots of jokes of swinging back and forth. I suggest taking another look at AYBS? But also listening to Oh Stop Messing About the radio series from Britain.
Xandra Homes
2024-04-25 23:52:05 +0000 UTC
