"All my friends are gay ALL MY FRIENDS ARE GAY" - Edina Monsoon
Of coded characters and cucumbers
Whenever female heterosexuality is depicted with any degree of realism-of-spirit, and from a female perspective, the theory has to be raised: did a gay man write this? Or: is this actually about gay men, but with a cast of ‘straight women’ because that reaches a wider audience?
The classic example is of course “Sex and the City.” After all, what would a group of 30-40-something women be doing, going around NYC, having sex and brunch, going shopping, gossiping, and otherwise not settling down (except when they do). The show’s creator, Darren Star, is a gay man, a fact from which it was extrapolated at the time meant the entire show was not really about women, because women are not like that. Ever. No women possibly could be. Never mind that the dating columnist behind the show, the real-life Carrie, Candace Bushnell, is, I believe, of the lady persuasion. Never mind that the show resonated so much that women of all ages from across the developed world probably still form a line around the block in the West Village to get Magnolia cupcakes.
Or: Was “Absolutely Fabulous” about codependent and substance-dependent female best friends, or was it Actually about gay men in drag? Discuss.
Which brings us back, yes, again, to “Benidorm.”
When I learned that the show’s creator, Derren (not Darren!) Litten, is a gay man, I had this thought of, yeah, OK, this adds up, this is why something about the show’s sensibility, even when it seems to be about hetero family drama, is… yeah. There is no non-essentialist way of putting this. And here I am, doing the very thing I criticize: conflating any interesting or just realistic treatment of human interaction with some sort of magical queerness. I am exoticizing and essentializing. And rationalizing having watched far too much “Benidorm” during the pandemic. (All eps at least once.)
But in my defense, maybe the gay-men angle is in the complete indifference to female hotness. It’s not that conventionally attractive young women never appear on “Benidorm,” but they’re very much beside the point. They’re not the center of the action, nor—as on “Are You Being Served?”—a constant backdrop. For straight women, the Beautiful Woman—younger, thinner, better-dressed—can be a source of personal insecurity. (See: the entire concept of fashion models, and why they’re able to sell things.) Gay men, for obvious reasons, do not appear to have the same fraught relationship with beautiful women, as a rule, so beautiful women can simply be left out of the equation.
But forget all of this. Season 2, Episode 6, is a gift to likers of men, whatever the gender of the likers. What matters is who’s gazed at, not who’s gazing. We have:
1) The main plot, which in this case (but not always!) involves the Garveys, and their tumultuous family life. Mick—who as newsletter readers know I find inexplicably attractive—has forgotten his 10th wedding anniversary. Wife Janice is all dressed up and nowhere to go, the picture of pathetic middle age. But on account of leaving the resort while looking particularly nice, she winds up inadvertently attracting the attentions of a hot 24-year-old man. It happens! She nevertheless winds up singing a karaoke Meat Loaf song for Mick (“Dead Ringer For Love”) because all is forgiven (and because Mick is better-looking than the 24-year-old; no I don’t know why I think this). She has the swagger for the song. (Whenever the moment calls for it, Janice can knock someone out with a head-butt. She is also at one point, in another ep, sort of spontaneously brought on as a theme park’s professional gladiator.) So rock’n’roll that you almost forget the same actress played the conniving maid on “Downton Abbey.”
2) But this is only after Troy, in skimpy leather, karaokes a glam-rock song for husband Gavin. They have their share of drama elsewhere in the series, but here they’re just sweet. They kiss after and it’s a couple-on-holiday kiss, not (looking at you, “Modern Family”) a ‘these are two men, so we are going to have them kiss in a manner that anticipates social distancing, even though they are a married couple.’ Is it hot? I guess if you’re into either of these men. But it’s certainly no less so, objectively, than a scene in which two women kiss would be to likers of women.
3) Meanwhile, back at the hotel itself (the buried lede…), Donald and Jacqueline—who as newsletter readers know is played by the wonderful Janine Duvitski—are punishing (‘punishing’) Mateo, for convoluted plot reasons. In a very literal sense, they are abducting and torturing him for having wronged a young British woman they’re friendly with, a hotel employee who had been his fiancée. Don’t try this at home and all that. In a context-of-the-show one, the aging swingers have quite simply tied an extremely fit Italian man (playing an extremely fit Spanish man; whatever), in his speedoesque underwear, to a bed, and, offscreen, are doing something too absurd to be erotic to him involving lube, latex gloves, and a large cucumber.