"Slap Shot might not seem like a gay movie at the outset, but as legendary filmmaker Bruce La Bruce explains in a recent post, the Newman-fronted hockey drama was the closeted 1977 audiences got to Heated Rivalry. Especially toward the end, when Canadian actor (and Twin Peaks favorite) Michael Ontkean performs a striptease that leaves him wearing nothing but a beige jockstrap and a trophy."
"Slap Shot is the story of a hockey team on its last legs. Newman, a "failing" coach, is trying to whip his players into shape, which proves difficult seeing as this era of hockey is less Heated Rivalry and more Geriatic F*ckery. With the exception of Ontkean's Ned Braden, the boys on the ice aren't giving us much in terms of heat, or biceps."
Paul Newman was a heterosexual Hollywood star who appeared in films during the 1970s that included queer subtext and explicit homoerotic moments. Slap Shot centers on a downtrodden hockey team coached by Newman's character, with a climactic Michael Ontkean striptease in a beige jockstrap and trophy. The film blends sports comedy and underdog tropes while delivering unmistakable homoerotic imagery. Earlier in the decade, Patricia Nell Warren's 1974 novel The Front Runner portrayed a closeted coach, Harlan Brown, mentoring queer athletes and arguing that sports harbor significant homosexuality despite public pretenses of heteronormativity.
Read at Queerty
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