Did We as a Society Abandon ‘Smear the Queer’ Too Early?
As any other kid did, I loved to watch 80s and 90s high school films, but as an effeminate little boy, I didn’t know what my place in the social hierarchy would be once I reached high school. I wasn’t cool or masculine enough to be a romantic leading heartthrob, but I also wasn’t smart (or masculine) enough to be a lovable nerd. I mostly saw myself represented in characters that were the target of chants like “Smear the Queer,” really only existing to be bullied for being gay.
For example, the scene in the movie Heathers following the first funeral for a teen suicide in which some football players decide to jump another student in mourning, yelling “Smear the Queer!” and drowning out the funeral procession. To make homophobic bullying such a priority that a funeral for a fellow classmate could be put on a backburner to ridicule someone gave me a little bit of worry for how I would fare.
In a post-gay marriage ruling world, Smear the Queer didn’t affect me at all. Sure, I’m glad that I didn’t get mercilessly harassed for things I couldn’t control about my mannerisms: shifting my weight onto one of my hips when I stand like I’m popping a pose at the end of a catwalk instead of the normal “legs slightly apart, back hunched to create a slightly dishevelled feel, but still ready to catch a football at a moment’s notice pose,” gesturing with my hands past the point of appropriate theatricality for a man, or moving my bang aside like a girl…
But I never had to protect myself and a consequence of that is that I have become comfortable in my mediocrity. Because my marginalized identity was too accepted, I was able to spend high school doing things like hanging out with friends that didn’t mind the fact that I was gay, and not furiously layering positive traits onto myself to distract people from my queerness because that wasn’t seen as a detriment to my character. I never developed a chip on my shoulder that would lead me to push myself toward aspirations of the highest caliber so my likeness could haunt my high school bullies for the rest of their lives as I was being exceptional in the public eye. I had no high school bullies, so I wasn’t forced to find a reason to push through high school, knowing that I would blossom into a culture-shifting artist with the work that I found solace in as I dealt with homophobia at school.
And this is a trend I’ve observed with a lot of the art being put out by gay artists and showrunners in the mainstream. Where homophobia used to be the status quo, we were treated to films like But I’m a Cheerleader, Pink Flamingos, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show; we had great writers like Oscar Wilde and James Baldwin who fueled their gay fury into thrilling, biting literary works; Paul Lynde’s comedy was driven by the knowledge that his career could be over the moment it was confirmed that he was gay so he made himself indisposable to Hollywood Squares with his joke writing abilities. It is a fact that good art is driven by pain and the hermitude that comes with being ostracized from an early age and that just doesn’t happen to gay men anymore.
As gay people have been seen as more normal, the work put out into the world for audience consumption has become much “safer.” Now my future seems like it’s going to follow in the path of the current car crash of American Horror Story by Ryan Murphy or RuPaul’s song “Cha Cha Bitch.” I am worried about my own future if it plans on following the trend of artwork with the soul of a Whip-Its canister.
It’s not too late for another Renaissance of queer culture that doesn’t involve novelty shirts that say “Yes Daddy,” or Target Pride commercials using a house beat composed in Garagband, or really anything else thought up by someone who’s entire media intake is RuPaul’s Drag Race and gay porn. I’m not satisfied with my average, middle of the road bad time in high school because I can’t profit off of lukewarm uncomfortable memories.
Don’t get me wrong, I tried to get queer-smeared but I was never successful. In retrospect, taking the tactical route of loudly verbally asking to be homophobically bullied was not the best way I could’ve done it. Yelling “Smear the queer, smear the queer, I’m the queer, smear me, smear me” made me look like a plainclothes ACLU agent or a horned up gay guy with a scat fetish. Neither of which are very pleasant to be around. So homophobic bullying is going out of fashion socially. But remember, so was Creationism until it was allowed in the United States Common Core Curriculum. Smear the Queer can’t just be a (hopefully beloved) social tradition, it needs to be integrated systemically.
The most effective way would be making it a unit in PE classes across the country where students are separated by LGBT and straight, the queers are queer-smeared, and then as the rest of the class showers, the queer students have a writer’s room session to productively fuel any emotions brought up during the class period into art. At the end of the school year, there could be an end of year showcase for all of the work created from all of the bullying where the straight students can firsthand experience the fruits of their bigotry.
Movies drive culture, and the venerating depictions of gay men as classy, artistic side characters that exist to be a foil for the frumpy yet normal male protagonist. This is meant to be an idealized life, unachievable to the straight characters. But this has become a relic, a legend of a one great group driven by late in life one-upmanship of the status quo. Gay people used to decorate their homes with paintings from famous artists they knew personally and now they are accepted to the point where an unsteamed polyester pride flag from Amazon is considered decoration enough.
A series of government-funded etiquette/patriotism films about the dangers of setting gay men on a path of unfulfilled potential for greatness. And besides, if they aren’t traumatized into becoming the best versions of themselves they can be, American camp and most subcultures could disappear entirely. A series of shorts in the vein of “Homemakers of the 1960s: Keeping a Respectable Fallout Shelter,” “Exercises to Prepare Your Little Boys for the Draft,” and “Dinner Party Food that Functions Better as Sculpture” could follow a simple narrative arc of boring queer person existing, getting smeared, and then cloaking themselves in a cocoon of high culture as a form of therapy.
As a society, we all reap the benefits of disturbed homosexuals in the form of entertainment and class. So if you’re tired of Keith Haring’s work being plastered onto anything remotely to do with queer art, it’s your duty to go out and make some future artists yourself! Go out and smear some queers because I need some better shows to watch on Netflix.
