GLR May-June 2026

G REGORY A. D OBIE A evision console to her “story,” As the World Turns . As a child, I didn’t care to watch the soap opera or think about why she enjoyed it; it was simply part of the routine when vis iting my grandparents’ house in the 1960s. Twenty years later, I found my own series— FTER LUNCH, my maternal grand mother Vivian liked to take a nap. Then she tuned the living room’s tel time], had a fetish for skinheads, which several of Bruce LaBruce’s seminal films explore. Slava Mogutin, the acclaimed pho tographer, documented this culture in his book Lost Boys (2006), and through these images, we see the homoerotic gang-world fantasy that Madden, the killer, acted out in real life. You have a twisted person who ex ecuted in real life what these artists crafted in fiction. PT: What’s your next queer documentary? RM: I have had a lot of correspondence

with DarraLynn Madden, Billy’s killer [as she is named now]. I want to examine her psychology and pathology and understand Darralyn’s effect on the lives of all the men she killed, their loved ones, and those who got away. I’ve been doing a lot of research for a film that could follow this one, almost like a sequel. PT: A fascinating look at the psychology of violence. Would it be a portrait of a queer se rial killer? Does DarraLynn identify as such? RM: DarraLynn identifies as a trans

woman, female, LGBTQUIA +, and Jewish. She is deeply devout and quotes the Torah in Hebrew. Because of how many people she has killed, she fits the definition of a serial killer. The real question is: who knows how many more victims are out there? We didn’t even scratch the surface, and we found another one … and it was you. Phil Tarley is a freelance writer and the only fellow of the American Film Institute to be inducted into the Gay Porn Hall of Fame.

Boys in Love on Asian TV ARTMEMO

nections, romance, relationships, and sex in an idealized context. Clips of fan meetings show boy love actors working their way through crowds of adoring teenagers. The stars are handsome, well-behaved, and non threatening to their devotees, except when they compete over which lipstick, eye cream, or foundation to wear. In True Tales from Another Mexico , Sam Quinones discusses in the chapter “Telen ovela” the phenomenon of a Mexican soap

sion there’s a love story from Mexico, al most another planet for people here. It was so exotic, so refreshing.” As Emilio Azcár raga Milmo, the sponsoring network’s chief, explained: “Television’s responsibil ity is to bring ... people entertainment and distract them from their sad reality and dif ficult future.” Now I understand Viv’s fascination with As the World Turns . As a housewife married to a minister, at home with the grandkids,

the show offered her relatable characters in unrelatable situa tions. What did Viv know of ex tramarital affairs, sudden riches, or the mysterious reappearance of a long-lost twin? What As the World Turns delivered to Viv is what My Stubborn delivers to me—fantasy—whether I’m com fortable with it or not. My Stubborn hit me at a vul nerable moment. I’ve just fin ished my final semester of teaching, I’m in the midst of multiple retirement decisions, and, at 66, I’m looking back over my life and wondering how I got to this point. It’s a bit like Rip Van Winkle. The show

Dynasty and its spinoff, The Colbys . I wrote up the ridicu lous plot lines and circulated my synopses at work, along with messages reminding the secretarial pool to back up their computer files. Out of the blue one day, Viv said that I liked the shows because of the good looking actors. Wise Viv. Now I find myself addicted to a Thai “boys’ love” series called My Stubborn (2025). Boys’ love—not man-boy love, the province of the infa mous North American Man Boy Love Association ( NAMBLA )—is a genre of nov els, manga, anime, TV shows, and movies popular across Japan, Thailand, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The premise is usually that the “boys,” who range in age from late teens to twenties, meet at school, an

makes me feel disoriented for various reasons: Why is every thing so perfect—clothing, cars, housing, offices, appearances— with evidently no upkeep re quired? What jobs do the characters actually have? How are sexual partners so easy to find? Why is everyone so young? For me, the fantasy of My Stubborn takes me away from but also reinforces the feeling that I’ve missed out on something, what Edgar Gomez calls in Alligator Tears “the difference between what queer people want and what we get.” But I also marvel at the fact that the lead characters are

opera, Los ricos también lloran ( TheRich Cry Too ), which achieved international suc cess. During the 1990s Serbo-Croatian War, streets across that region would empty each night at showtime as “this Mexican telen ovela united two people who were at war,” according to journalist Kasia Wyderko. She said of the experience: “While here they’re killing women and children, on the televi Promo poster for the Thai series My Stubborn (2025).

office, or a locker room, and through a se ries of plot devices—fights, hospitaliza tions, or even vampire machinations—they fall for each other. The main audience for this, as with boy bands, K-pop groups, and franchises like Twilight , is adolescent girls. Boys’ love sto ries, mostly by female authors, offer young women the chance to explore emotional con

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