Not to yap too much, but a few things bother me about people who say The Lost Boys Musical โwasnโt gay enough.โ First is that they have an extremely narrow idea of what counts as explicit, textual queerness, and second that they appear to discount bisexuality as โgay enough.โ
First: textual gayness. In an age where the term queerbaiting gets thrown around a lot, and often in contexts where it isnโt warranted, many people think that the only way a couple (especially a gay couple) is โcanonโ or that any given character is โcanonically queerโ is if they end up as the endgame ship, marked by some kind of unmistakable kiss.
This way of interfacing with media, where anything must be waved loudly in the viewerโs face for the viewer to acknowledge it as part of the text, completely overlooks the workโs intentional subtleties. (Itโs not even that subtle.)
Michael sings, โsomeone make me feel like that,โ and David sings, โI can make him feel like that.โ Michael sings, โI want a love which can slow down time / that last forever and never diesโ while staring at David, whoโs lit and reaching out to him. David literally cannot keep his hands off of Michael and at no point is Michael like โbro stop touching me.โ David teaches Michael guitar (while doing a jerk off motion jfc), which is so common itโs a romantic clichรฉ, like teaching someone billiards. Donโt even get me started on vampirism as sex. Itโs understood that Davidโs touchiness and sensuality is part of what enchants Michael about him.
This is NOT a subtextual crush and seduction. This is a TEXUAL crush and seduction. If an audience expects Michael to get on the mic and say directly to them โhello I have a huge crush on Davidโ they completely close themselves off to more complex stories in which attraction is experienced, feared, mixed with a desire to belong or escape. If they only accept declarations of love and kisses as confirmation, they erase stories of unrequited love, secret crushes, or (perhaps in the case of David and Michael) unhealthy, confusing situationships that end in flames.
So there are those people, which put blinders on and ignore all text that is not kissing, or declarations of love in exactly the way they expect to hear them. Then there are people who do pick up on the rest of the text, identify it as gay, but who dismiss the musical as not gay enough because David and Michael donโt end up together. So you admit it! Michael and David are textually involved! Then why is the musical not gay/not gay enough? Because Michael ends up with a woman.
I donโt have to write an essay to explain why this is blatantly biphobic. Michael is not less gay (umbrella term)/queer because he ends up with Star. Bi stories with same gender endings, or which involve nonbinary love interests, are not more queer than bi stories with opposite gender endings. Bi stories are not suddenly โstraightโ because they resolve with opposite gender couples, even if they donโt ever fool around with a same gender/nonbinary person at any stage of the story (which Michael DOES anyway). If you do in fact recognize the romantic and sexual overtones of David and Michaelโs dynamic, then saying the musical wasnโt gay enough is bi erasure, plain and simple.
I will grant that this could be done in a heteronormative way, but Star is not portrayed is Michaelโs better choice because she is a woman, nor David the worse choice because heโs a man. To drastically simplify some of the central themes of the musical, Michael has been on the wrong end of abuse, David is the perpetuator of abuse, and Star is actively committed to breaking the cycle of abuse and tries to protect Michael from it. David maintains family through violence, coercion and deception, while both Star and Michael are looking for a healthy family of love and care, and find it in each other. The musical itself explores normative family structures and rejects the pressure to conform to them most obviously through the rejection of Max. They are adapting a story that ends with Star and Michael getting together, but they are not trying to reaffirm the heteronormative family structure and spend the entire musical critiquing it. Wake upppppp
Anyway I found the musical abundantly queer. Weโve got a gay, a transmasc, a couple bisexuals and pansexuals, some raging poly vibes, and, again, a CENTRAL THEME of challenging the heteronormative family structure and celebrating found and chosen families.
