A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men and Popular Cultur by Paul Burston & Colin Richardson

Author:Paul Burston & Colin Richardson [EDITED BY PAUL BURSTON AND COLIN RICHARDSON]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

THE ICEMAN COMETH?

Top Gun, Tony Scott’s 1986 Boy’s Own story, was memorable on two accounts. It established Tom Cruise (an aspiring brat-packer whose previous experience included dropping his trousers at regular intervals throughout 1983’s Risky Business) as a major box office attraction, effectively eclipsing the more mature Gere in the heartthrobstakes. And it brought the fetishisation of flying jackets out of the gay clubs and onto the high street.

Cruise plays Maverick, a new recruit at Fighter Weapons school (referred to by the recruits as ‘Top Gun’), whose tempestuous temperament makes him a hazard to all around him. ‘I’m dangerous,’ he boasts to rival recruit Iceman (Val Kilmer), whose frigid demeanour and blond-boy good looks confirm him as Maverick’s polar opposite. If the Iceman is impressed, he doesn’t let it show, but an intense and intimate rivalry between the two is established from the point at which they look each other in the eye and issue challenges across a crowded room.

Like every good Boy’s Own story, Top Gun has its share of heterosexual love interest, provided here in the shape of Charlotte (Kelly McGillis), who goes by the name of ‘Charlie’ and gradually falls for Maverick’s cheeky-boy charms after overcoming her reservations at being his instructor. True to her name, Charlie spends half the film dressed in unisex naval uniform, complete with peaked cap, though she does have the courtesy to let her hair down and put on a frock for her big love scenes. Her first conversation with Maverick, which starts in the bar and ends in the ladies’ room, serves to underline the fact that flying fighter planes isn’t all that different from having a good fuck. ‘So, are you a good pilot?’ asks Charlie. ‘I can hold my own,’ replies Maverick with a lecherous grin. On this occasion, Charlie holds her own. She would have been well advised to do so on each subsequent occasion, too, though this would have made things a bit difficult for poor Tony Scott, whose valiant attempts to defend the frontiers of heterosexual viewing against the onslaught of homoerotica are already failing hopelessly. The romance may be firmly on the ground, but the passion is anchored in the cockpit.

The coding of the young fighter pilots as erotic spectacle relies heavily on cockpit to locker room editing techniques and the camera’s lingering looks over torsos and precariously held towels. In the first locker-room scene, one man is laid out on a bench next to Iceman, who appears to be contending with an erection through his towel. As the scene changes, a senior officer’s voice is heard shouting ‘I want somebody’s butt and I want it now!’ Mere coincidence? A later scene, in which Maverick and Iceman compete in a game of volleyball, is lifted straight out of the homoerotic portfolio of Herb Ritts. Stripped to the waist, the men jump in the sunlight, their torsos glistening under the customary coat of sweat, their pleasures heightened by a rock rendition of Playing with the Boys.

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