3.18.2008

Nearly Naked Boys Singing 1970s-Style - Stop Being Such Cynical Effing Douchebags Blogathon

Final Girl has instigated something called the "Hey, Internet! Stop Being Such Cynical Effing Douchebags!" Blogathon, in which she challenges internet movie writers to "write about something in the world of film that fills you with complete and total unbridled fucking retarded JOY." It's a brilliant call, really -- to demand that web cinephiliacs shirk their carefully constructed attitudes and let something delightfully embarassing hang right out there... And it took me a moment to settle on something, but thanks to a fleeting encounter with Grease2 on television this weekend, I was reminded of an obscure genre of cinematic pleasure which just stirs my very soul: unexpected musical numbers in films of the later 1970s and early 1980s in which men get nearly naked. I'm not sure why I thrill so. I suspect it's a combination of the innocent irreverence of male nudity in the 1970s, coupled with my giddy delight at the well-positioned (and well-proportioned) musical number, as well as my personal concupiscence when I first encountered these scenes. And they're all prior to that time when Tom Cruise lip-synched in his underpants, an admittedly excellent scene which nonetheless transformed the nearly naked musical number into something peculiarly innocent. No, there's something about the at once overt and oblique sexuality of these numbers that I do fill me with the requisite "complete and unbridled fucking retarded JOY." Truly, I could just watch these clips on loop for hours on end. Oh, I love each of them so... So, lovely reader, with my giddy blessing, please enjoy:

nearly naked boys singing 1970s-style
click images to be routed to video

Exhibit A
Airotica
A silly song transformed by the genius of Bob Fosse in All That Jazz (1979),
a sequence that instigated my peculiar fascination with the "dancebelt."

Exhibit B
The Aggie Boys
Silly, yes, but hicks doing high kicks while wearing jock straps? Good times.
Among the several stirring pleasures of 1982's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Exhibit Q
Black Boys/White Boys
The polymorphously perverse recasting of this lusty song
to involve both the military men of the draft board
as well as the hot mamas in the park
is among the gestures of true genius in
Milos Forman's 1979 adaptation of the legendary tribal love rock musical.


Exhibit X
The Floor Show
Don't dream it. Be it. With everyone in the pool.
At The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).


and perhaps my most favorite of all
Exhibit Z
The Hockey Striptease
Michael Ontkean gives all to win his team the championship
in the sports comedy Slap Shot (1977).


Did I miss any of your favorites?
Add to "the unbridled fucking retarded joy" in comments.

1 comment:

Criticlasm said...

I used to know what time in the movie the Aggie Boys came on when BLWIT showed on the movie channel.

And Take of With Us is such a meeting of bodies, boys, theatre--I was just overcome....still am.