HHH as a nuanced portrayal of a gay man

[Loss]

This was posted by Kevin Cook on DVDVR not long ago, and makes me laugh every time I read it. So I thought I'd post it here.

 

I was reading the other gay thread and it's a real abortion. So to bring some positivity to the board I thought I'd start a thread on positive representations of gay people in pro wrestling.

 

My favorite example is Triple H. WWE gets a lot of flack for not showing long-range thinking in booking and character development, but the way Helmsley has evolved over the years puts the lie to this.

 

He debuts as a blue-blood snob, bringing a different stripper to the ring with him every week, clearly overcompensating for what went on at Groton. Soon enough he starts palling around with a leatherboy and a pre-op female-to-male tranny undergoing hormone therapy, and they have an ill-defined menage-a-trois, showing how The Cerebral Assassin has become more comfortable with his experiences and more open to exploring his sexuality.

 

Not long after this, though, like so many conflicted gay men, The Game, in a fit of self-loathing and despair, marries a (rather mannish) woman and tries to fit into a heteronormative society. At first he is able to convince himself he is happy, especially as his new wife's father is able to help him with his career, but after a traumatic incident forces him to reevaluate his life, he ends things with her. Unfortunately there is violence involved, but that's frankly pretty common in this sort of relationship.

 

At this point The King of Kings had really upped his steroid intake, which is very common among body-image obsessed gay men who aren't fully comfortable in their own skin, and he even began sporting a handlebar moustache, hinting that he felt real sadness in having missed out on the wild years of the 1970s. He went back to his old lover Shawn Michaels temporarily, but that very night he got violent with him. Soon enough he began hanging out with an aging old queen, a big Chelsea clone, and a rentboy; the four of them formed a sort of alternate nuclear family, an understandable reaction to a world that didn't understand them.

 

As had been typical for him, though, The Connecticut Blueblood tried to exert too much control. His rentboy friend wanted to strike out on his own and establish his own ties to the world; his Chelsea clone friend chafed under Hunter's controlling influence; and eventually even his aging queen friend grew sick of his heavy-handed, domineering ways. As all these relationships fell apart, our man's professional life did as well. What's his response been? It appears that the next evolution for his character will be the long-awaited establishment of a mature, mutually fulfilling relationship with his one true love, the aged leatherboy Shawn Michaels, who's turned to God in an attempt to suppress his own doubts, but appears to have accepted the Episcopalian stance on love between men and God's feelings on the matter. I'd expect there to be some tension over past instances of domestic violence and whether or not HHH can reconcile his long-held doubts on the nature of faith and come to terms with the Anglican Communion (as a Connecticut blue blood, doubtless the family that rejects his sexuality is Episcopalian), but WWE's traditionally sensitive and subtle exploration of these compelling issues should make for fine drama.

 

Looking at this dramatic arc that's taken place over nearly a decade, you have to admire Vince McMahon for showing a talent for long-term booking that even Giant Baba would admire. What other kinds of sensitive pro-wrestling depictions of the joys and sorrows of modern gay life can you think of?

[Mad Dog]

Where does Barbarian HHH fit into all of this?

[Coffey]

I thought Steph was hot when she first got with Hunter, certainly not "mannish." It wasn't until after she got the balloon implants and her arms started getting bigger that it started going downhill.

[Mad Dog]

It was all downhill after her breast implants. Maybe he's been secretly pumping her full of steroids at night. She was definately getting manly during her run as the Smackdown GM.

[Loss]

That actually adds to the depth of it. From what everyone says, Stephanie looks the way she looks now because that's how HHH likes her to look.

[Coffey]

He's a chubby chaser? Hey, look! A pun!

[Guest teke184]

And, from interviews the happy couple have done with Howard Stern, it's been more than implied that he likes taking her up the Helmsley Hershey Highway too...

[Strummer]

Back in 2000, when Perry Saturn first joined the WWF, he was doing commentaries/ Q and A on his website. One question asked about what kind of women he liked. He responded by saying that he liked body building type women with a hard non-feminine look (Saturn dated Chyna in the early 90s). As an aside, he said HHH liked the same type of women (Saturn and HHH were friends on the New England indepedent circuit in the early 90s). Stephanie looked very feminine from 99-2002 and started to obviously bulk up in 03 to please Hunter.

[sek69]

Chyna has said on Stern shows that HHH likes to pitch and catch when it comes to backdoor activities.

 

I seem to recall Meltz making a throwaway comment about Steph doing whatever enhancers HHH was doing and that was the main reason she turned into everyone's chubby smokers-voice aunt practically overnight.

[Guest teke184]

Chyna has said on Stern shows that HHH likes to pitch and catch when it comes to backdoor activities.

 

I seem to recall Meltz making a throwaway comment about Steph doing whatever enhancers HHH was doing and that was the main reason she turned into everyone's chubby smokers-voice aunt practically overnight.

Maybe he decided he wanted the real thing instead of her strap-on...