What ever happened to him anyway? Seems like he should've been able to get more incarnation-of-pure-evil roles after playing Killer Bob.
Frank Silva died on 13 September 1995, aged 44, from complications of HIV.
I never suspected that, but then he was playing such an extreme type that everyday mannerisms aren't going to show too well. And you never saw him out of character. Here he is in real life, clearly showing the gay "surprised baby" face, with mouth agape and eyebrows raised straight up.
David Lynch is known for going strongly by his intuition when casting, as well as when filming. Was it any accident that one of the most intuitive minds seized upon casting a gay man in the role of a serial killer? He was not tested before filming began -- he was part of the crew -- but Lynch found him creepy and terrifying enough to make a snap decision to put him in the role of the embodiment of evil.
Recall an earlier post which estimated that queers are 2 to 7 times over-represented among serial killers who are infamous enough to have their own Wikipedia entries. Adam Walsh, the 6 year-old boy whose brutal kidnapping and murder led his father John Walsh to found America's Most Wanted, was killed by a homosexual and sometimes transvestite, Ottis Toole. And perhaps the last of the most notorious serial killers to stick in our memory -- Jeffrey Dahmer -- was also a homosexual.
In these falling-crime times we only see gays as harmless little pets, of the type that are collected by childless women. But when the crime rate was rising near its peak, we were better able to discern the pattern of homosexuality as mental abnormality -- and if you were abnormal in one part of the mind, you were probably abnormal in some other part of the mind too.
None of us had crunched the numbers on the sexual orientation of serial killers back then, but we could still sniff out that the homosexual mind had a perverted, narcissistic, and unhinged quality to it. Not the type of guy you'd want to babysit your children. Sadly, it'll take another wave of serial killings to remind folks of how much more warped the faggot mind is compared to ours. As it stands, the average American today -- certainly under age 30 -- would boycott a re-release of The Silence of the Lambs for promoting homophobic stereotypes.
Do you think we have entered a rising-crime time?
ReplyDelete"the rate of violent crimes including rape, robbery and assault, rose by more than one-third from 2010 to 2012"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/31/us-usa-poll-crime-idUSBRE99U11Z20131031
There might a few more trends helping gays "act straight" in our society or stay "hidden" but prominent in showbiz, compared to previous times -
ReplyDelete1) Lower promiscuity and sociosexuality, both through aging and the smaller cohort effect - there is less of a tell that a man is gay, if straight men aren't as aggressively seeking out women and gay men conspicuously aren't, and less of an expectation that straight male characters have to exude that kind of vibe, which a gay man would find hard to act (i.e. gay men can't play the desexualised Gandalf / "Dumbledore" type as easily, because there aren't as many male characters written like that).
2) Lower interpersonal aggression / defensive vigilance - gays might be more likely to do bizarre killings due to psychological problems, but in matters of violence are more flight and less fight compared with straights. Since the culture's not so violent, straight male characters don't have to give as much of a "fuck off" aggressive / self protective vibe, and so gays can more plausibly play them.
3) More of a "managed", predictable and controlled media / pop culture system in general, if gays have a more cautious or rusk averse personality type (addictions aside).
Twin Peaks is my favorite show of all time and I only watched it a bit over a year ago. Lynch normally too weird for me, but can't wait to share with my husband who is familiar with him.
ReplyDeleteAlso relevant:
ReplyDeleteAnthony "Psycho" Perkins, "died at his Hollywood Hills home on September 12, 1992, from AIDS-related pneumonia."
"Twin Peaks is my favorite show of all time and I only watched it a bit over a year ago."
ReplyDeleteDefinitely the best of TV shows before the current shift toward TV and away from film. It pre-figured a lot of the current trends, too, like being more serial than one-off episodes.
I think I caught a few episodes during the original Peaks mania, but have been watching it fairly regularly since it was re-run on Bravo in the '90s.
I was planning to break out the gold box edition and watch it again leading up to Halloween, but it doesn't feel autumn enough yet to set the mood.
"Do you think we have entered a rising-crime time?"
ReplyDeleteNo, the apparent increases are mostly simple assault (not aggravated) and mostly confined to blacks or Mexicans in suburban areas (one year it was blacks, another it was Mexicans, forget which).
The main thing you want to look at is homicide, since that's not something that goes "unreported to police," the way a fist-fight at a bar might.
And it's impossible to say whether a rising-crime period is under way until it's been going for several years, ruling out year-to-year random fluctuation.
Not only gay men have aids.
ReplyDeleteMost serial killers targeted women, and most violent crimes are against women.
are you serious with this shit?
"Most serial killers targeted women"
ReplyDeleteExcept for the gay homosexual ones, who are over-represented among serial killers, according to my research, by a factor of 2 to 7.
Not the type of guy you'd want to babysit your children.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in New York City, I taught at this Hindu Sunday School. There was one closes homo who taught kindergarteners. There was an open homo who was gay married who taught the 12 year old boys. The homo to who he was married did volunteer work with children.
I complained about it to my circle, but everyone in the school itself seemed pretty accepting.
I think I was remiss in not trying to find a sympathetic authority to complain to.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.soyoureengayged.com/2010/real-gay-engagement-dumbo-new-york-navin-and-navin/
Right, what could go wrong giving homosexuals easy, daily access to little boys? Ask the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church.
ReplyDeleteAside from the more certain damage they'll do through stunting the kids' maturation by providing a Peter Pan role model. The blind leading the blind.
"Lynch found him creepy and terrifying enough to make a snap decision to put him in the role of the embodiment of evil"
ReplyDeleteLike you, I also didn't pick up a gay vibe from the BOB character. I don't know if it had anything to do with Lynch keeping that initial shot in the show. But the most purely evil character I've seen outside the horror genre is the titular character from "We Need to Talk about Kevin". There is something very creepy & androgynous about him throughout the movie (although I don't think the character is canonically gay). And that seems to match up with the actor.
Something trivial, but did you change the date on Frank silva's death? Seems like it was 1992 originally...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I can't remember any depictions of gays in the media from the New Wave era(1960-1990). Seems like it wasn't as common.
-Curtis
Why do you think there are few media depictions of homosexuality in the New Wave, even though gays themselves were more sexually active(as everyone was)?
ReplyDelete-Curtis
I copied the death date from Wikipedia. Maybe you're thinking of Anthony Perkins, who died in '92.
ReplyDeleteFolks had bigger problems to worry about than homos back in the day. So unless they were part of the story -- molesting children, kidnapping, serial murder, etc. -- they were dismissed as airheads.
Unfortunately we don't have that situation today. The normalization of abnormality has become *the* big issue.
I've never watched "Twin Peaks," but remember hearing about it briefly as a child. Thanks to hearing Angelo Badalamenti's haunting theme and now this freaky gif, I really want to check it out.
ReplyDelete"Maybe you're thinking of Anthony Perkins, who died in '92"
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's it. I must have been running on low sleep.
-Curtis
Kinda weird how both died right at the beginning of falling crime.
ReplyDelete-Curtis
I guess different personalities thrive in each period. Those two guys, despite being gay, must have been more rising-crime kind of guys.
ReplyDeleteWhenever the crime rate changes, it seems that the old set of celebrities either self-destruct or stop being popular. I could be wrong about that, though.
-Curtis
Kevin Spacey is a self righteous sadist in Seven.
ReplyDeleteNot a good movie though.
Because of you, I've started to watch Twin Peaks and finally got to this sequence! Season 2, Episode 2....great series!
ReplyDelete