Hang ‘Em Low

Scott McBride, Suree House, 1977

Though my collection of vintage gay adult books leans heavily in the direction of genre novels, Westerns are somewhat underrepresented because, to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of America’s collective myth of stalwart men, rough justice and the civilization of a wild world that needed taming. That said, it’s fascinating to see the tropes of the Western spun through a queer lens, gently chiding the classic Hollywood version of how the West was won and positioning Hang ‘Em Low as a corrective, however small, to decades of Old West gay-washing.  Whatever you think of 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, it offered a mainstream alternative to decades of comic-relief tenderfoot / sissy gags, the general dismissal of city dudes too “civilized” (read: “wimpy”) to make it in the real man’s world of ropin’, ridin’ and drinkin’ under the stars. Thank goodness for saloon girls and whorehouses; without them there would have been no plausible deniability for guys living in a fictional Western world where men significantly outnumbered women … and where, regardless, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, if you catch my drift.