Fags In the Showers!
Hey, guys! Once Bitten has finally been released on Blu-Ray! Reviews indicate it apparently looks better than any other home video version. Plus it’s been put out by the folks at Shout/Scream Factory, who are enjoying an impressive run of exceptional home video releases.
So it’s all good, right? A clean, somewhat restored version of the film is available… it’s in the hands of talented people… and my next residual check may even inch up into the three-figure range! Before the decimal point! What could be bad about that?
Well, I’ll tell ya.
Every time Once Bitten creeps back into the public consciousness, even in a small way, all the old accusations crop back up. No, not the people who insist it’s not funny. I don’t think it’s all that funny, either. Plus I’ve been hearing and mostly agreeing with that viewpoint for 30 years now. It’s water off this duck’s back.
No, I’m talking about the accusations that it’s - to paraphrase a line I’ve read many times in the past couple weeks - ‘the most homophobic teen comedy of the 80’s.’
First off, that is some tough competition. The most homophobic? Of the entire decade? Filled with 80’s teen comedies? Yeesh. I mean, I was there - and I saw a lot of 80’s teen comedies. Casual homophobia in those films was as common as pastel clothing and inspiring montages.
To be fair, this is also something I’ve been hearing for the past 30 years. And unlike the ‘it’s not funny’ charge, I take exception to the ‘homophobic’ allegations.
The people who tend to be most militant in their offense like to cite Vito Russo’s book about homosexuality in cinema, The Celluloid Closet. In his discussion of the homophobia present in 80’s teen sex comedies, Mr. Russo made special mention of Once Bitten. And if I recall correctly (I don’t own a copy of the book that essentially blames me for the persecution of homosexuals in film and society as a whole - sorry), Russo places special emphasis on what is now simply referred to as the ‘Fags in the Shower’ scene.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the film (and doesn’t know how YouTube works), let me describe it for you: Mark Kendall (Jim Carrey) is in the process of being turned into a vampire by the Countess (Lauren Hutton). This process involves a series of three bites before Halloween or the Countess will lose her eternal youth and beauty. Mark’s friends are told the Countess will have left bite marks on his inner thigh (she drinks from his femoral artery - and yes, we had to fight the producers in early drafts to keep her from biting him in the cock). They decide to search for those bite marks after gym class in the showers, when Mark will be pantless. While searching for the bites in Mark’s crotch area things go wrong, other showering males see them in a compromising position, one calls out “Fags in the showers!” and a stampede of panicky teenaged boys ensues. Aaaaaaaand scene.
I’ll be right up front - my writing partner and I wrote this scene. It existed in the very earliest drafts of the script, survived all our rewrites and the rewrites of others, was filmed, survived the editing process and made it into the finished film. Hell, I even remember the day we wrote it. We were sitting on the tailgate of my truck at a local park when we came up with it. It made us laugh, we jotted it down on 3x5 index cards and now I’m sitting here 35 years later still writing about it.
And it’s not homophobic. Not even a little.
It’s making fun of homophobia, and the homosexual panic of dumb teenaged boys.
While Russo had every right to criticize the film’s portrayal of its only homosexual character (the Countess’ assistant Sebastian, played by Cleavon Little) and some of the terminology used by the characters following the showers (the ‘Rump Rangers’ stuff), he completely missed the boat in using the shower scene as his primary evidence of the film’s homophobia. Completely.
This is not difficult math. How many homosexuals are portrayed in the shower scene? None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. How many panicky heterosexual teenaged boys are portrayed in the shower scene? Many. Bunches. Scads. Oodles. Tons.
So in playing up the ridiculous behavior of the panicky heterosexual teenaged boys portrayed in the shower scene, how exactly are we making fun of homosexuals who are nowhere to be seen?
I’ll wait. Cue Jeopardy music.
Time’s up. The answer (not in the form of a question) is that we obviously weren’t making fun of homosexuals in this scene. We were skewering the homophobia of the characters who were actually present.
I do understand why Russo missed the point (along with those who, in the years since the publication of his book, continue to parrot him). The character of Sebastian is a mincing, stereotypical, limp-wristed cliché that had long overstayed its welcome even in 1985. He’s the first character we see, following him as he prissily prepares for the Countess to awake for their nightly prowl. And while Little - so good in so many roles throughout his career - struggles mightily to give the character some dignity and intelligence, he is ultimately unable to overcome what is essentially the gay version of blackface.
So I get Russo’s instant sensitivity - and over-sensitivity - while watching the film. I understand why he would be loath to give any treatment or mention of homosexuality the benefit of the doubt. I can grasp why hearing the cry of “Fags in the showers” followed by a mass exodus would rub him the wrong way. I really do get it.
But he still allowed his bias to so blind him that he mistook a joke making fun of homophobia for actual homophobia.
Why do I care? Why does it matter that someone misunderstood a joke in a movie I myself admit isn’t exactly a comedy classic?
Because he turned his misunderstanding into a public accusation. Because he accused the writer of the joke he misunderstood of bigotry and hate. And now I’m sitting here 35 years later still writing about it.
So fuck him.
While my writing partner and I freely admit to having written the shower scene, I will now tell you we didn’t write a single word uttered by the Sebastian character. That character was introduced into the film - along with the ‘Vampires Through the Ages’ characters that make up the Countess’ posse - after we left the project. In fact, I remember how we first heard about ol’ Sebastian. We were in the offices of the producers, meeting about another script we were prepping for them, when one came out gushing how he’d just read the latest rewrite. He enthusiastically described how the Countess now had a flamboyant gay butler who made ‘coming out of the closet’ jokes. Which is the moment we knew the film was probably screwed.
We also didn’t contribute the gay slurs to the scene following the showers, in which Mark’s friends Russ and Jamie bemoan the ruination of their reputations. I feel certain we wrote a similar scene - the joke being these two idiots were (A) acting like idiots and (B) didn’t have reputations to ruin in the first place. But I know we didn’t write the ‘Rump Rangers’ stuff because the first time I ever heard any of those phrases was at my first screening of the film.
So go out and buy the Blu-Ray! I can use the bump in the residuals! And hell, maybe you’ll be one of the many, many people who have a genuine and deep affection for the silly old thing. That would make me very happy.
But enough with the accusations of homophobia. I’ve tried to shrug and laugh it off for a long time now, and I’m through. I don’t care if you think the ‘infamous’ shower scene is funny or not. That’s subjective. But if you use it as evidence of homophobia you are objectively, factually - and comedically - wrong.
