This weekend Saturday Night Live produced a skit about pop singer Troye Sivan. Bowen Yang told the audience that Sivan was “gay famous.” This inspired me to revisit the glam era. These rock stars achieved mainstream success by hiding their queerness in plain sight.
Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine pays homage to Citizen Kane. A reporter (Christian Bale) investigates a glam rocker (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who faked his own death. The cast looks gorgeous in their period clothes (and out of them) but the screenplay keeps us at arm’s length. Meyers is a chilly cipher. Bale seems miscast. Too old and butch to play a teen embracing his femininity. Only Ewan McGregor’s turn as an angry American rocker captures the sex and danger of the moment.
Screenwriters James Lyons and Todd Haynes use the slender plot to explore glam rocks’ place in the larger evolution of queer culture. The glam rockers are said to have lifted from Oscar Wilde, drag artists and each other. Some imitated their predecessors. Others tweaked their styles to create something new. It is unclear which side of the divide Meyers’ star lands on. There’s an interesting idea here. I wish it had been developed further.
Let’s take a look in this spoiler filled recap
Commencing Countdown
There’s no point in beating around the bush on this. Glam was finally some kind of free expression of male homosexuality in popular culture, five years after it had been partially decriminalized…. Glam opened a door and people could explore various things about themselves – the whole point was that sexuality is fluid.
Music Journalist Jon Savage, 1998 interview with The Independent
Scene One: Dublin. 1854
(A UFO beams Oscar Wilde to Earth.)
OSCAR WILDE: I’m Oscar Wilde and this is my important brooch. 120 years from now gay men will still be fabulous.
Scene Two: A Rock Concert. 1974
BRIAN SLADE (Jonathan Rhys Meyers): And for my next number I’d like to fake my own death.
(A man “shoots” Slade on stage. The audience panics.)
Scene Three: Interviews. 1984
REPORTER (Christian Bale): I’m writing a story on Brian Slade. (Who I secretly love.)
MANAGER: He fired me when he became famous. Haven’t seen him since.
REPORTER: Do you know where Brian Slade is now?
EX-WIFE (Toni Colette): He left me when he saw Ewan McGregor’s penis.
REPORTER: Understandable. What happened then?
EX-WIFE: They built their personas by copying other queer artists. Ewan was too unstable to record music. So, they split.
Scene Four: Past and Present
REPORTER: I wonder if Ewan remembers me.
(Flashback to young Ewan and young Reporter having sex after a concert. A UFO flies overhead for… gay reasons.)
EWAN MCGREGOR: I can’t tell you where Slade is. But I can give you this important brooch.
Scene Five: Anticlimax
TOMMY STONE (a vaguely conservative rocker): And for my next number I’d…
REPORTER: THAT’S BRIAN SLADE!
(Stone/Slade flees. Reporters pursue.)
THE END
Can You Hear Me?
A film that had the hardest time, at least initially, was Velvet Goldmine, and it’s the film that seems to mean the most to a lot of teenagers and young people, who are just obsessed with that movie. They’re exactly who I was thinking about when I made Velvet Goldmine, but it just didn’t get to them the first time around.
Todd Haynes, 2007 Interview with the AV Club
We have a very modest goal for this film. That’s just to turn every gay person straight and every straight person gay.
Todd Haynes, 2018 BFI Retrospective
In 2020 the unauthorized David Bowie biopic Stardust flopped in cinemas. The filmmakers were denied Bowie’s music so they focused on his early days. His Ziggy Stardust persona didn’t appear till the finale. Todd Haynes sidesteps copyright by creating legally distinct rockers. The likes of Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed are invoked but not imitated. This lets him explore glams’ larger than life aesthetics.
Boy George arrived at the tail end of the glam movement. His flamboyant persona made Liberace look tame. But execs ordered him to play coy with his sexuality. Now singers can discuss their queerness openly. It’s unclear if they’ll achieve the international success of their closeted predecessors. We may never see the likes of Ziggy Stardust again. But, like Oscar Wilde’s brooch, queer culture continues to thrive.
You can find more of my reviews on The Avocado, Letterboxd and Serializd. My podcast, Rainbow Colored Glasses, can be found here.