Matt Smith: Who doesn't want to see the penis of Prince Philip, Charles Manson, Christopher Isherwood, Superworm, and Dr. Who?

 


We've been watching the 2011 series of Doctor Who, the seemingly endless British sci-fi series that sends the last remaining Time Lord through time and space to save Earth, an alien planet, or the entire universe.  Again and again.  Oddly, when his world-saving takes him to modern day Britain, there are plenty of exteriors, but when it is a distant planet or the far future, all we see are endless corridors. 

Doctors regenerate every few years, getting new bodies and personalities.  Right now it's Matt Smith, an effervescent, jokey type, with an inner trauma that sometimes comes out.  After all, he saw the destruction of his people, and he's over 1,000 years old, so dozens of human companions have died, gotten lost, or left him to go on with their lives.

Matt Smith has appeared as the Doctor in dozens of projects outside the show itself: videos exploring odd corners of his universe, video games, a lot of four-episode miniseries, spin-offs starring former companions Sarah Jane and Amy Pond

The children's program Blue Peter

Comic Relief: Red Nose Day, An Adventure in Time and Space...I got tired of counting.  You have to be British to really understand his amazing popularity.


The Doctor would be enough for a career, but Matt has played a wide range of other characters, mostly based on real people:

Christopher Isherwood, the gay author of A Passage to India and Maurice, in Christopher and His Kind, a 2011 adaption of his memoirs. Left, the one without the biceps.

Rowing star Bert Bushnell in Bert & Dickie, 2012.  Neither was gay.


Prince Philip, the consort of Queen Elizabeth, in The Crown, 2016-7.

Robert Maplethorpe, the controversial gay artist, in Mapplethorpe: The Director's Cut , 2018  

Left, the one with the ring

Hippie cult leader Charles Manson in Charlie Say, 2018


Plus a variety of fictional characters. As far as I can tell, they're all heterosexual.  I guess he only takes gay roles if they're of historical significance.

A detective fighting witchcraft.

An evil clone with a nice bulge.

A zombie-fighting parson in the Regency era.


The case worker of a refugee family facing evil

An evil spirit in the psychedelic 60s

A tourist in Morocco for whom things go terribly wrong

More Matt after the break

The Jonas Brothers: I wanna be like you

Joe Jonas 

The Jonas Brothers, consisting of Nick (born 1992), Joe (born 1989, left), and Kevin (born 1987), were already popular performers, recording several albums and appearing on MTV, the Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon --  not to mention the White House -- before Disney took notice around 2006.

But after that the group was a Disney Channel juggernaut, recording new versions of movie classics like "I Want to Be Like You" (from The Jungle Book), appearing on Hannah Montana and Camp Rock, and finally getting two tv series of their own, The Jonas Brothers: Living the Dream (2008-2010) and Jonas (2009-2010).



That didn't keep them from releasing new songs: 14 singles and 16 music videos between 2005 and 2010, plus two more in 2013.











And from releasing beefcake photos.  Like Justin Bieber, they drew the special interest of fans looking for random arousal.  Joe seemed especially vulnerable; his moments were tagged "joners."

Like most boy bands, their lyrics were heterosexist, with lots of "girl! girl! girl!"  But some dropped pronouns.  And their version of  "I Wanna Be Like You"  sounds decidedly homoerotic:

What I desire is man's red fire
To make my dream come true
Give me the secret, mancub
Clue me what to do
Give me the power of man's red flower
So I can be like you


I wouldn't mind getting a little of that power of man's red flower myself.



The brothers are gay allies.   In an interview with The Advocate in 2012, Nick (left) noted that they loved their gay fans: "They’ve been incredible over the years. My brothers and I totally look forward to meeting them, because they really respond to our style."

In 2013 they appeared on the cover of Out magazine.

Their boy band days are long past, but Jonas Brothers are stil performing together.  Joe has also embarked on a solo career, and appeared as himself in tv shows like Dash and Lily and The Righteous Gemstones.


Joe nude, sort of, after the break

Theo James: Why is he naked all the time, and has he done anything gay-positive?

 


In White Lotus Season 2, Cameron and Ethan (Theo James, Will Sharpe) and their wives visit the Italian resort, and start flirting with every woman in sight, plus each other. In Episode 4, Cameron even says "I want to be inside you.  I want to do stuff to you."  But it is just queerbaiting; the two never lock lips.  In fact, they hate each other.

You could probably figure that White Lotus, well known for its shocking homophobia, would never portray an actual gay romance.  After all, it was created and written by Mike White, aka The Devil. 

But Theo James is not personally homophobic; he has been interviewed an a dozen gay magazines, he wants to play a gay action-adventure hero, and he was in the running to play gay pop star George Michael.  Let's check his previous work for gay roles.


The Time Traveler's Wife
(2022) features (straight) lovers stymied by the guy's frequent involuntary time slips.  Heterosexuals all the way down, although it does give us some nice rear and frontal nudity.

Sanditon (2019-22) is an adaption of a novel that Jane Austen left unfinished at her death in 1817. There is actually a gay character, outed in the second season. Theo plays Sidney Parker, whom focus character Charlotte love/hates with the "He's arrogant!" trope.  

In the animated Castlevania (2018-21), Theo plays Hector, whose plot is propelled by that horribly cliched Dead Wife Trope.  


Archive
(2020)?  Another guy with a Dead Wife, who he tries to recreate with an android.  Yawn.  I'm beginning to think that it will be tired cliches as well as heterosexuals  all the way down.  Are the butts and dicks worth the trouble?

Lying and Stealing (2019)? Caper romance between two thieves.

How it Ends (2018)?  "In the midst of an Apocalypse, a man struggles to reach his pregnant fiance, who is a thousand miles away." That's actually the motive behind about half of the characters on The Walking Dead: "I'm looking for my wife!"



Before The White Lotus, Theo was most famous for the Divergent series, four movies set in a teen dystopia where people are classified according to their primary virtue: Candor, Dauntless, Erudite, Abnegation, and Amity.  He plays Four, a Dauntless instructor who romances focus character Beatrice. 

Ok, let's try Theo's future projects.  In the upcoming The Gentleman (2024), he plays Eddie Halsted, who inherits his father's estate without realizing that it is the front for a drug empire.  And he...falls in love...with...

I give up.

Bonus: Theo dick after the break