It’s such a cliché to watch queer-themed movies during Pride Month.
Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name, and Milk all get played to death every June. The straightest people I know will contact me in June to ask if I’ve heard of the “hidden gem” Carol. The hippest of them will even find a way to mention that Brokeback Mountain shouldn’t have lost Best Picture to Crash in 2006. This once happened to me during a conversation about the weather. Anyway, my point is that you don’t have to put on Brokeback Mountain for the 55th time to be a good queer person or ally during Pride Month. You can engage in an even queerer annual tradition: Discovering the homoerotic subtext in heterosexual classics. In that vein, here are some of the most accidentally gay movies of all time.
Universal Pictures
This movie is so accidentally gay that American Dad ran a joke about how the original uncut version was full of explicit gay scenes and that it was only released in France. But even if that were the case, the movie that Americans were left with was still plenty gay. While straight men loved this movie – and its increasingly wild sequels – for its stylized action sequences and unabashed worship of cars, queer people knew what was up. There was a reason that the movie’s most revealing and emotionally intimate moments happened between Vin Diesel’s and Paul Walker’s characters as they talked about how fast their vroom vroom cars went. These men were being vulnerable with each other. There’s nothing gayer in the world!
Warner Bros.
Even straight fans of this movie had to acknowledge its inherent homoeroticism. After all, 300 depicted a society in which shirtless muscular men worked, bathed, and slept alongside each other, often without a woman in sight. Anytime Gerard Butler lovingly rested a hand on a fellow Spartan’s bare shoulders, a demon twink got his wings. Things only got complicated when an even hotter and more muscular shirtless man, Xerxes, got between all 300 of the movie’s protagonists. They simply had no room for a 301th member in their utopian queer polycule and thus had to unalive themselves.
DreamWorks
This movie is essentially an animated indie dramedy about a gay couple working out their relationship issues against the backdrop of the sublime Mexican wilderness. It’s so gay that a rumor has persisted about the original script writing the central male bros as explicitly in love. It’s so gay that you can’t Google “road to El Dorado + gay” in public without your Safe Search on. The propulsive tragedy of this Wildesque film is that the two men have to open up their relationship to that Aztec woman after one realizes that he’s bisexual. Tragic bisexuality! How was this movie not made by the French?
New Line Cinema
“Oh Mr. Frodo, don’t go where I can’t follow.”
“It’s me, it’s your Sam. Don’t you know your Sam?”
“I’m glad to be with you, Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things.”
(They make out.)
Paramount Pictures
Queer theorists insist that this movie was purposely homoerotic to make heterosexual male viewers uncomfortable. But if said viewers didn’t feel uncomfortable watching Vin Diesel stare into Paul Walker’s eyes while caressing his Dodge Charger, then why would they pick up on the homoeroticism in Top Gun? I call B.S. The volleyball scene was obviously meant to be an unironic celebration of the ideal male form and the unbreakable lifelong bonds that shirtless heterosexual men form with each other while slapping balls around.
20th Century Fox
Is Fight Club accidentally gay? Or is it subversively gay? While not celebrated as a queer movie by its most ardent fans, this movie does happen to be adapted from a novel written by a gay man. It is also about a secret cabal of frequently shirtless fit men who love rolling around in their own sweat. The central character must slowly and painfully come to terms with his identity and reconcile this with his learned preconceptions about masculinity. All this movie’s missing is a pair of corny hobbits!
Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name, and Milk all get played to death every June. The straightest people I know will contact me in June to ask if I’ve heard of the “hidden gem” Carol. The hippest of them will even find a way to mention that Brokeback Mountain shouldn’t have lost Best Picture to Crash in 2006. This once happened to me during a conversation about the weather. Anyway, my point is that you don’t have to put on Brokeback Mountain for the 55th time to be a good queer person or ally during Pride Month. You can engage in an even queerer annual tradition: Discovering the homoerotic subtext in heterosexual classics. In that vein, here are some of the most accidentally gay movies of all time.
1. The Fast and the Furious (2001)
Universal Pictures
This movie is so accidentally gay that American Dad ran a joke about how the original uncut version was full of explicit gay scenes and that it was only released in France. But even if that were the case, the movie that Americans were left with was still plenty gay. While straight men loved this movie – and its increasingly wild sequels – for its stylized action sequences and unabashed worship of cars, queer people knew what was up. There was a reason that the movie’s most revealing and emotionally intimate moments happened between Vin Diesel’s and Paul Walker’s characters as they talked about how fast their vroom vroom cars went. These men were being vulnerable with each other. There’s nothing gayer in the world!
2. 300 (2006)
Warner Bros.
Even straight fans of this movie had to acknowledge its inherent homoeroticism. After all, 300 depicted a society in which shirtless muscular men worked, bathed, and slept alongside each other, often without a woman in sight. Anytime Gerard Butler lovingly rested a hand on a fellow Spartan’s bare shoulders, a demon twink got his wings. Things only got complicated when an even hotter and more muscular shirtless man, Xerxes, got between all 300 of the movie’s protagonists. They simply had no room for a 301th member in their utopian queer polycule and thus had to unalive themselves.
3. The Road to El Dorado (2000)
DreamWorks
This movie is essentially an animated indie dramedy about a gay couple working out their relationship issues against the backdrop of the sublime Mexican wilderness. It’s so gay that a rumor has persisted about the original script writing the central male bros as explicitly in love. It’s so gay that you can’t Google “road to El Dorado + gay” in public without your Safe Search on. The propulsive tragedy of this Wildesque film is that the two men have to open up their relationship to that Aztec woman after one realizes that he’s bisexual. Tragic bisexuality! How was this movie not made by the French?
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
New Line Cinema
“Oh Mr. Frodo, don’t go where I can’t follow.”
“It’s me, it’s your Sam. Don’t you know your Sam?”
“I’m glad to be with you, Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things.”
(They make out.)
5. Top Gun (1986)
Paramount Pictures
Queer theorists insist that this movie was purposely homoerotic to make heterosexual male viewers uncomfortable. But if said viewers didn’t feel uncomfortable watching Vin Diesel stare into Paul Walker’s eyes while caressing his Dodge Charger, then why would they pick up on the homoeroticism in Top Gun? I call B.S. The volleyball scene was obviously meant to be an unironic celebration of the ideal male form and the unbreakable lifelong bonds that shirtless heterosexual men form with each other while slapping balls around.
6. Fight Club (1999)
20th Century Fox
Is Fight Club accidentally gay? Or is it subversively gay? While not celebrated as a queer movie by its most ardent fans, this movie does happen to be adapted from a novel written by a gay man. It is also about a secret cabal of frequently shirtless fit men who love rolling around in their own sweat. The central character must slowly and painfully come to terms with his identity and reconcile this with his learned preconceptions about masculinity. All this movie’s missing is a pair of corny hobbits!