Is anything lost when a prominent gay man becomes a symbol of hetero-masculinity?
Neil Patrick Harris. If you are a white male between the ages of 18 and 27, you probably just conjured up a whole load of ideas: one-night-stands, “suiting up,” impeccable male fashion, internet memes, unicorns, and just maybe adolescent medical practice.
The internet era seems to have a habit of creating semi-ironic ultra-manly figures out of the detritus floating through pop culture, and NPH, as he is affectionately known, is among the newest and most masculine examples. Chuck Norris, Don Draper, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Charlie Sheen, et cetera.
Harris’ aura of mythical manliness has primarily grown out of his character on CBS’s otherwise bland “How I Met Your Mother”, the ultra-hetero Barney Stinson. Combined with his offbeat cameos in the “Harold and Kumar” movies, Harris has constructed and inherited an image of outsized masculinity, complete with hedonistic womanizing, macho-man confidence, and a good helping of wacky millennial mysticism. Yet the really bizarre thing about NPH’s persona is it’s coexistence with his thoroughly public sexual orientation.
Of course, this persona was already well under construction when Harris came out as gay in 2011. That its evolution continued with only minor retrofitting is either a wonderful comment on the inclusivity of the mythos of modern masculinity, a weird indication of the non-essentialism of sexual orientation in perceived identity, or an odd combination of the two.
Some of these cultural retrofittings have raised, among those who think seriously about this sort of thing, some really interesting questions about how we perceive gay men. Take for example a recently popular caption in NPH internet memes: “Neil Patrick Harris only became gay when he ran out of women.” That statement can occupy multiple points on the spectrum between treating sexual orientation as a casual non-issue, and treating it as phase, something that is not inherent or meaningful to a person’s identity. As a straight man, I’m in no position to claim that Harris is obligated to be a beacon of the gay community, but I don’t think that this is his choice anymore.
There is little doubt that the mythos of NPH as we know it primarily appeals to college-age straight men who like “The Hangover” movies, “Family Guy”, and pounding Jaeger before checking out some honeys. In this sense, Harris’s invented persona can almost be viewed as a type of reverse minstrel: instead of portraying his own identity in an absurd, outsized manner, it portrays the other identity in the same manner, for the purpose of their own amusement. But like minstrelsy, a gay man becoming a symbol of hetero-masculinity reflects only what the all-powerful audience desires to be portrayed, rather than what the subject himself may accurately reflect.
Photo: AP, Mark J. Terrill