I can't say I'm a fan of Elton John. In fact, I can safely say I'm not (actually, I can't stand the man). Why anyone would want to watch him bang away at his piano for two hours, is beyond me; but good on him for making the news by taking a punch at little Johnnie. If only it was Australian news he was making.

 

Sir Elton made the headlines twice yesterday, while in Australia for his latest tour. First, came the news that he had exited the stage, mid-way through his first show, to "chunder" (as he later called it). Pretty exciting stuff, it would seem, considering every major paper and news broadcast found it compelling enough to run as the headliner entertainment news (narrowly beating the arrival of British Wanker No. 2, Robbie Williams). Elton explained that he did it out of respect for the front row, and thought it better to excuse himself momentarily, than to "chunder" on his excitable middle-aged fans.

 

More important, one would think, was Sir Elton's other comments, yesterday, when asked by Channel 7 what he thought of John Howard's discriminatory policies on homosexuality.

  

"Up yours", he scoffed at the Prime Minister. 

 

This instantly made headlines - but sadly, only throughout the rest of the world. Of the 23 news articles in Google News, only 3 were Australian, as opposed to the 21 Australian news agents that ran with Elton's "Chunder Down Under" story.

 

Elton was perhaps pop culture's first known Brokeback Mountain (as opposed to the many others we were never clued into), and it was in fact an Australian woman who took the role of cover-up wife (who he married in Sydney, in the early 80's). Elton endured a long pop revival at the time, forced by his record company to assume the heterosexual pose, unwilling to publish any music that was in any way gender specific. Eventually, when Elton penned the hit, Nikita, with the rather obvious hitch - Nikita being a man's name - the filmclip was set in Russia (where the name is also commonly taken by women) and became the moving love song for a gorgeous little Russian soldier, who carried her make-up almost as well as she carried her gun.

 

In the end, Elton became, like so many closeted stars of the 80's, caught up by the cultural trend towards the masculinising of the 90's. We forget that in this supposedly progressive little world of ours, the obsession with gender division and masculinity (male heterosexuality) is very much a recent revival. In the 70's and 80's, men were culturally permitted to aesthetically embody somewhat feminine (I say "feminine" from the subjective viewpoint of today's standards) traits, the mid-80's being the high-point of gender-bending and androgony. People often remark, "How did anybody think he was straight?" (and not just Elton, but George Michael, and even, as bizarre as it seems now, Boy George). But the hetero-obsessed gaze, ready to judge based on a range of superficial cues we now recognise as denoting homosexuality, were simply not in place. We can look at old photos of male relatives, and think; "He looks so gay!" But the truth is, our very concept of what it "is" to "look" gay is a cultural categorisation schema that developed throughout the later part of the 80's, to take hold by the early 90's. When the masculine revolution gripped the world (largely driven by a number of things, but partly by the arrival of AIDS, originally seen as a "gay plague", where it became important for a man to clear himself of any potential homosexual implications), by the end, these men, once hidden in the times, became increasingly categorised for their sexuality. Inevitably, Elton and the Georges came out with what was now - the new visual categorisation in place - obvious.

 

Elton, in particular, has managed to retain his predominantly straight audience (the Georges were ruined by scandals - George Michael's far too homosexual toilet incident, and Boy George's somewhat unbecoming heroin addiction), and middle-aged conservative after middle-aged conservative is happy to basically ignore this factor. The truth is, you can serve the people - you can sing, and dance, and entertain them - and somehow be excused. But don't expect those loving crowds to incorporate any awareness that this man they adore also happens to be a member of a discriminated minority. At least, not in this country. Did you hear about Elton? He chundered, during a concert! What a funny little fag he is. 

 

In England, laws have now been redrawn, and gays enjoy not only the right to marriage, but the various legal recognitions that come with it. Sir Elton (what would Johnny think of the Queen knighting a homosexual?) was one of the first to enjoy these new laws, and wedded his partner, David Furnish, earlier this year. "It was just a commitment I wanted to make because I love him, and vice-versa," Elton told Seven, "and it was just a great day."

 

And so, as Australia becomes increasingly Americanised, not only culturally but politically, the cultural drift between our sunburnt country and it's "parent" commonwealth furthers with (alongside many others) this issue. Gay press in America have also picked up on the anti-Howard story (and not too surprisingly, The San Fransisco Chronicle); but in England, some of the mainstream press have used it to paint a picture fast becoming the new cliche for what it means to be an "Aussie" in the motherland - a country now seen as a conservative American ass-licker.  

 

When asked recently to justify his government's moves to send advances towards homosexual liberation back to the 50's (his move to over-ride the ACT's plans to bring in gay marriage on a state level has been successful), Howard again insisted his laws are not discriminatory (in an era of double-speak where war is peace, and discrimination is preservation); "It is not a question of discriminating against them. It is a question of preserving as an institution in our society, marriage, as having a special character…".

 

Is that the special chracter it had at Elton John's Sydney wedding, and the thousands of other closeted men who marry into a doomed union, because of the phobia and social emphasis placed on what is, to them, a lie? What can we say, Johnnie, except UP YOURS.