Weird Science: Underwear in the Eighties
Because I’m medically never allowed to leave the house again, I’ve been following some strange cinematic inclinations. Last week it was Muppet Treasure Island (not that great!), and then Tootsie (moral dilemmas never solved, time frame strange, inexplicable cameo by Andy Warhol, but otherwise totally hilarious! Sharp dialogue!)
Today I watched Weird Science. Weird Science is the sort of movie that kind of appealed to the guy I used to be. Back when I was “straight” (it’s easier to think of my life as divided into “straight” and gay, even if there is a strong argument to be made for “you were always gay”, so don’t fight me on this. Put “straight” in inverted commas and you’re happy), one of my favourite TV shows was Weird Science. I was eight. I’m not sure if I was in love with Vanessa Angel, as I would later convince myself that I was in love with Melissa Joan Hart and her one-two punch of Clarissa Explains it All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but it’s possible.
Anyway, at one point in my life I was in danger of becoming a horribly outdated John Hughes dweeboid. It never happened, thank God, but it’s strange to watch such overtly “heterosexual” movies in my gay twenties. I’m not sure I ever loved Weird Science as a movie (indeed, I’d only seen it through once before today), but I now see it with distinctly different eyes.
All of this is an incredibly long overture to some pictures illustrating underwear standards. The movie starts with a 20 year old Robert Downey Jr pantsing our heroes Gary and Wyatt, revealing their horrible utilitarian underwear:
Which is the least sexy look in the world. This is the equivalent of Bridget Jones’ safety underpants.
I wouldn’t comment on this were it not for later on in the movie, wherein Wyatt wakes up wearing the following:
The “joke” is that Wyatt is wearing “panties”. Lady’s underwear! Next thing you know he’ll be wearing bras on his head!
Thing is, if the movie hadn’t made a big deal of it, I would never have noticed. In 2011, my eyes don’t parse Wyatt’s underwear as gender inappropriate. Large chunks of the movie are homoerotic anyway, as a lot of movies about guys who hang around with no one but each other in various states of undress are guaranteed to be.
So I basically thought that there was no joke (excepting that the cut off shirt is hilarious), and was surprised that Wyatt was wearing something vaguely sexually appealing (Weird Science is not a sartorially pleasing film). Gary looking at his retreating form in figure 5, that’s just him checking out his friend.
I was wrong. It was “cause for concern” - and the sexiest part of a movie that is actually pretty low on genuine sexual appeal to people of any sexuality. True, it has a few sample Playboy pages in it and a piano playing girl loses her top, but there’s nothing truly titillating for someone of the modern age except for the brief glimpse of Wyatt in the wrong underwear (I am honour bound to point out that Ilan Mitchell-Smith was 16 in this movie).
Of course, the punchline is yet to come: Bill Paxton’s Chet saying “For Chrissakes’ will you cover yourself!?”
Or, as Private Hudson might have put it, “Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen!”
Weird Science really isn’t a very good movie. It is eighties racist and, to an extent, eighties homophobic (“you don’t come into my friend’s house, with your faggot friends …”). It’s definitely dated, and one can’t help but feel that Wyatt and Gary would never have needed to create the perfect woman had they realised they had already found love in one another’s arms.
We easily find the reason for their inability to realise this love: Wyatt’s father is a terrible person. Wyatt greets his parents upon their return, and when he tries to hug his father he shakes his head and says “No no no no no”, then whispers “like a man”, and they shake on it.
Hooray for being ashamed of your feelings!
Not only does Weird Science end with the theme from Rocky (seriously! Bill Conti!), it ends with the worst of cinematic crimes: the WINK AT CAMERA FREEZE FRAME.
It can therefore be comfortably stricken from the canon without any guilt in my heart.
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
