Don't Know. How Gay Is There?
"How Gay Is Superman?" asks Alonso Duralde of The Advocate.
The cover shot: Brandon Routh in costume SUPERMAN RETURNS, directed by Bryan Singer. (June 20, Warner Bros.)
Instead of trying to quantify or measure The Gay contained within Bryan Singer's summer blockbuster- to -be, Duralde, the magazine's entertainment editor, begins a personal essay about becoming a comic book fan as a sixth grader in the 1970s.
"So why was I drawn to these heroic tales of adventure and derring do?"
The Advocate's free site ends there. Read the magazine or subscribe to find out.
But I'm guessing it's got something to do with
1. A kid's identification with the superhero's life of artifice and hiding - half of the time - his unique qualities from a world that is obsessed by them. Yet sometimes the world persecutes and banishes him for these same heroic qualities.
(see: 8 million fan sites, Queer Theory, PhD dissertations on popular culture)
2. Good stories, cool pictures, EZ reading.
Should anyone at The Advocate require my opinion: when I look at the contemporary Superman, I think I'm seeing a fair amount of gay. Proud, strong and present. That's just me.