Boy Villains
Most of you know I love me some nasty heels--and I'm not talking about pumps. When I was a kid, I was (and still am) fascinated with villains and villainesses in movies. (God, how I love the word "villainess"!) Just under Johnny Weismuller as Tarzan, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Victor Buono, and Vincent Price were my favorite actors. The old Batman TV show was a plethora of delights for me, with its weekly "Special Guest Villain." And were there any glimmers of potential heterosexuality in my youth, they had to be my obsession--OBSESSION!--with Maila Nurmi, Barbara Steele, and Carol Ohmart. I wish I still had all the pencil drawings of these women, traced from the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland--we're talking volumes. But then, again, as most of you realize, my obsession (OBSESSION!) with these B-movie actresses was, in fact, a pretty clear signal of my homosexuality.
My interest in the dark side dates as far back as age seven--an earlier indication might be that, at age five, my favorite record was Sheb Wooley's "The Purple People Eater"--and so it was perhaps natural that I came to be obsessed with the idea of a child villain, even a child monster, a narrative concept, apart from The Bad Seed and Billy Mumy on Twilight Zone, that is in too short supply. I have written on this particular corner of my kink elsewhere, focusing on my early infatuation with Tommy Cook, who played the duplicitous, even murderous 16-year-old Kimba in Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), and got his ass royally kicked by 15-year-old burgeoning stud muffin Johnny Sheffield (Boy). (Sheffield died two months ago of a heart attack following a fall from a ladder--I just found out about this while researching dates for this post--sad--but happily only the good die young, and evil Tommy Cook still breathes, knock on wood.)
Okay, here is where my pledge to try to be totally transparent in this blog gets a little sticky. First, let me say that I am not a pedophile. I have a middle-aged gay man's healthy appreciation of chicken, to be sure--a steady diet of aged red meat can become tedious--but we're talking, at the youngest, the absolute very youngest, fifteen, and that only at a safe and unsuspicious distance. I lack even a wholesome interest in children and childhood. But I find the idea of a boy villain totally hot. I wish supervillains had teen or tween sidekicks as Batman, Green Arrow, and Aquaman do: The Boy Wonder versus "Punchline," the Joker's pubescent ward, let's say, is something I'd like to see.
Along these lines of thought, I hope teen wrestling sensation Owen Phoenix finds an age-appropriate nemesis (Nega-Phoenix?) and that they grow old together, kicking each other's ass into senility.
I hope too that pro wrestling takes a cue from eighties movies and starts coming up with sidekicks and henchmen like Golden Youth, Mighty Wez's ill-fated bike buddy in Road Warrior (1981). (For further inspiration, see my review of BG East's Tag Team Torture 6, or read my story "Hard Rick and Dante.")
My interest in the dark side dates as far back as age seven--an earlier indication might be that, at age five, my favorite record was Sheb Wooley's "The Purple People Eater"--and so it was perhaps natural that I came to be obsessed with the idea of a child villain, even a child monster, a narrative concept, apart from The Bad Seed and Billy Mumy on Twilight Zone, that is in too short supply. I have written on this particular corner of my kink elsewhere, focusing on my early infatuation with Tommy Cook, who played the duplicitous, even murderous 16-year-old Kimba in Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), and got his ass royally kicked by 15-year-old burgeoning stud muffin Johnny Sheffield (Boy). (Sheffield died two months ago of a heart attack following a fall from a ladder--I just found out about this while researching dates for this post--sad--but happily only the good die young, and evil Tommy Cook still breathes, knock on wood.)
Okay, here is where my pledge to try to be totally transparent in this blog gets a little sticky. First, let me say that I am not a pedophile. I have a middle-aged gay man's healthy appreciation of chicken, to be sure--a steady diet of aged red meat can become tedious--but we're talking, at the youngest, the absolute very youngest, fifteen, and that only at a safe and unsuspicious distance. I lack even a wholesome interest in children and childhood. But I find the idea of a boy villain totally hot. I wish supervillains had teen or tween sidekicks as Batman, Green Arrow, and Aquaman do: The Boy Wonder versus "Punchline," the Joker's pubescent ward, let's say, is something I'd like to see.
Along these lines of thought, I hope teen wrestling sensation Owen Phoenix finds an age-appropriate nemesis (Nega-Phoenix?) and that they grow old together, kicking each other's ass into senility.
I hope too that pro wrestling takes a cue from eighties movies and starts coming up with sidekicks and henchmen like Golden Youth, Mighty Wez's ill-fated bike buddy in Road Warrior (1981). (For further inspiration, see my review of BG East's Tag Team Torture 6, or read my story "Hard Rick and Dante.")
And I hope somebody will tell me if there is ever a scene in the Harry Potter series, where Harry wrestles Draco Malfoy to the ground and kicks his anemic ass, to hell with the magical powers, because that would surely be the one DVD in the series I would buy (stop the teasing, please ... let the boys kick up a little dust).
Perhaps there is a rhyme and a reason to the fact that babyfaces turn heel as they age. I'm certain that a part of the appeal of pro wrestling is its allegorical depiction of the eternal struggle between youth and age--the Oedipal triumph over the father figure. And fans are more likely to support dewy youth in the ring, if only out of some sort of collective maternal instinct.
But is it fair that the old guys have almost all the fun in being wicked? Isn't there something a little alluring about a dewy youth who is not so innocent? Me, I have always loved a punk who needs to be taken down a notch or two. Always, even as a child. And it's never occurred to me that kids have to be possessed of demons or aliens to be complete assholes, as I have known many in my life who were, on their own, entirely deserving of whatever whoop-ass lands upon them.
Even as a child, I did not buy the whole "innocence of youth" claim. I knew there were some boys (and girls) no less sinister than Peter Lorre or Carol Ohmart. I even fancied myself one of them, in make believe anyway, luxuriating in the fantasy of being, for one example, the first underage James Bond villain--a brainy kid with the capability and the will to destroy the world, unless Bond's Asian sidekick, a boy my age, grabs me by the throat and crotch and throws me into the pit of the volcano first.
Why such sadomasochistic fantasies at so young an age? Perhaps because I was a fairly cerebral child in a society that had little respect for brain power? Perhaps because I was a gay (or pre-gay) child under the false impression that I needed to be punished? Perhaps because I was an only child in desperate need of attention? Or perhaps I was then what I am now, a kinkster, living in his own head, harmless in the world of actuality, but dreaming of kick-ass adventure and the chance to tussle with the popular jocks, whom everyone recognized as the wholesome, the good, and the decent--and I simply wanted a crack at kicking a little of that kind of butt.
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