It appears that the female pop singer has become the modern gay man’s Star of Bethlehem. Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Beyonce: if you consistently release emotionally desensitized music and have no real sign of a soul behind your increasingly plastic smile, then there are flocks of gay men out there willing to worship at your bland designer-clad feet. This is the stagnant legacy leftover from a closeted homosexual culture’s sad assignation to itself fifty years ago of a canon of tragic martyrs: Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli.
‘Oh’, the queens breathed as one, ‘their heartache and their self-destructive fire reflect me so well! My life, too, is a cabaret!’ When, really, some of the true tragic martyrs in gay history were the likes of Oscar Wilde, sentenced to two years’ hard labour for gross indecency, Alan Turing, the wartime code-cracker chemically castrated for his homosexuality by the British Government, or Harvey Milk, the first US gay politician, assassinated by a colleague. Yet all three of these figures require explanations in a gay magazine, and Garland et al can generally be referred to by just their first names in a gay bar and everyone will know who is being spoken about.
At least Marilyn Monroe has a genuine essence of interest laced about her persona; now it seems that the highlight of a gay man’s year is to buy front row tickets in which to view Leona Lewis happily suck the last whimpering dregs of true feeling out of a series of forgettable ballads at the O2. What everyone says about Kylie Minogue is that she’s nice, and yes, she seems lovely, but that doesn’t exactly make her an inspiring musical personality. Essentially she releases highly over-produced tuneless slices of beige with ludicrously inane lyrics slapped onto a generic dance beat. In her latest offering she repeatedly asks ‘what’s the point of living if you don’t wanna dance?’, which as a global policy for eugenics is rather more sadistic and radical than Hitler’s.
Beyonce couldn’t be any more disturbing if she tried. Crafted from birth by a parent who long ago traded his eyes for dollar signs, she’s an all-singing, all-dancing cash cow with a voice boasting all the depth of a Platinum American Express. She’s the self-appointed spokeswoman for ‘all the single ladies’ (albeit currently happily married to multi-millionaire rap artist Jay Z) and releases terrifying promotional videos where she multiplies herself over and over again like Agent Smith in The Matrix. Not to forget her renowned thigh-jiggling skills. She really is the embodiment of the ‘can do’ nation: this is where you can get if you try, and if you sacrifice almost all the last vestiges of your humanity along the way.
Madonna is a shallow parody of her former self, deserving only of our pity, growing old disgracefully in all the wrong ways; Mariah Carey, as we all know, is bonkers. But why, then, do gay men elevate these figures above their status as entertainers? And they are, for the most part, entertainers rather than artists. There are teams of stylists, make-up artists, managers, PR and songwriters – not to mention a panel of record company executives sitting in smoke-filled rooms – deliberately marketing these symbols to appeal directly to those punters within viewing distance of the video screens littering the Soho gay bars. That they appeal then is no surprise but it is shocking, given their essential vacuity, that they hold so much power over some gay men’s lives.
‘When my boyfriend and I split up,’ one guy recently told me, ‘he went mad. Smashed up the whole apartment. I just sat there. Until he went for the Kylie CDs, then I attacked him too. You don’t touch Kylie.’ Another man I know self-tattooed ‘KYLIE’ onto his leg while on a drink-and-drugs fuelled bender. The only time I’ve seen a particular friend descend into abject fury was when he was moved to defend the ‘I Am Sasha Fierce’ album against another’s accusation of ‘mediocrity’. ‘How dare you…’ he began, and the taxi ride generally went downhill from there. People genuinely seek meaning and guidance from these figures, which is all the more inexplicable given that they are very often nothing more than a face representing a coldly calculated brand. One is moved to ask whether gay culture is not at a loose end with its aspirations as to higher directions.
But then, perhaps the problem presents itself, there are not exactly a plethora of strong gay male icons within wider society to latch onto, are there? It’s not as if one can expect to find fulfilment and integrity by devoting one’s self to Alan Carr over Kylie, and, admittedly, Kylie is nicer to look at. Many comedians are gay, but their role is to observe and satirise society, no one asks them to lead or provide strength. Joe McElderry is, by definition, a poor dear lamb with slightly too many teeth, and Adam Lambert smacks worryingly of an American record company attempting to create an intensely sanitised performer into appealing to the gay communities, when really he’s no more controversial than a lukewarm bowl of porridge: ‘OMG, IS HE A (QUITE PLUMP IF WE’RE HONEST) DUDE WEARING EYELINER?!’
Globally renowned names like George Michael, Boy George and Elton John have not done much to help the cause. Michael, having been outed in an LA toilet by a policeman, arrested on drugs charges, and often spotted at notorious cruising zones; Boy George phoned up the cops in New York to complain that he’d been robbed, but was subsequently arrested for possession of drugs, never mind also allegedly locking up a rentboy in his bedroom; Elton John managed to rack up a £100,000+ bill in one year for the overbuying of flowers.
Madonna might be pitiful in terms of her obsession with chasing a youth that day-by-day drifts ever further away, but compared to her male counterparts from the same pop era it is no wonder that gay men devote their respect to her than actual gay and famous figures.
Perhaps Will Young is one of the few gay artists out there who can provide all the attributes for a young gay guy to look up to, in a similar vein that a young straight guy may look up to Eminem or seek to emulate Justin Timberlake’s sexiness. Lady Gaga is undoubtedly an artist in her own right, creating an aesthetic that works so potently it’s conquered the world. And she’s remarkably outspoken about her support for gay rights. There are undoubtedly these artists in the public sphere who are deserving of accolades and can rightly provoke loyalty and followings in their fans, whose lyrics may speak deep in a heartfelt manner, but it doesn’t come in the form of someone jiggling her thighs in a leotard and repeatedly informing you that if you liked it you should have put a ring on it.
Pop music and pop singers are fun and entertaining, and all of the artists mentioned in this article have made at least a couple of songs that are great to dance to in clubs, but as a collection of people to look up to, in which to find some order and explanation for our own lives, perhaps we need to look to a new brand of icons that hopefully will materialise over the next few decades: gay men who can actually inspire.
Patrick Cash
