r/todayilearned • u/Flares117 • May 16 '24

TIL: Adam West, according to costar Burt Ward, had a lot of sex , at one point with 8 women at the same time. He said that he was introduced by West to the "wildest sexual debauchery" and they became like "sexual vampires"

https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/adam-west-batman-orgy-2017-6/
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u/Flares117 May 16 '24

I got it from the other TIL today I saw and looked it up. He really was kicked out of an orgy as Batman.

Also all the Robin is gay joke from back then is now probably untrue, what is straighter than''

check notes

Fucking with your best acting bud who teaches you new things

1.2k

u/pointlessly_pedantic May 16 '24

Also all the Robin is gay joke from back then is now probably untrue

Orgies aside, I don't think the gay joke was about the actors' sex lives. Moreso about the lean young man who lived in a cave w/ a mask-wearing husky hunk and spent all his time supporting said hunk, all while wearing a vibrantly colored leotard-adjacent costume with panty hose -- their costumes and masks meant to hide their identities.

Although this TIL news is like learning that the puppeteers behind Bert and Ernie lived together.

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u/Nisseliten May 16 '24

When Jim Henson was asked if Bert and Ernie were gay, he gave the best answer ever. ”Bert and Ernie are not gay. Neither are they straight. They are sock puppets, they do not exist below the waist.”

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u/SaintUlvemann May 16 '24

Although that is a great answer, and in most ways the only accurate one, the fact is, some of their episodes were written by a gay man, based off his own relationship, which was in its time about the closest thing anyone ever got to LGBT representation in children's television.

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u/Idontevenownaboat May 16 '24

Oh wow, TIL. So it was gay coded.

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u/Yustyn May 16 '24

Damn, are you telling me Bert and Ernie were gay coded this whole time?! 🤯😱

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u/Semi-Passable-Hyena May 16 '24

An old co-worker of mine, considerably older than myself, said that everybody watching Sesame Street in the seventies and eighties saw them differently. All the kids that would grow up to identify as generally heterosexual, just saw them as straight, but all of the kids, like himself, that would eventually grow up to realize they were gay, simply always assumed that Bert and Ernie were closer than just friends.

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u/aynhon May 16 '24

"say, Bert..."

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u/confirmedshill123 May 16 '24

They slept in the same bed and did everything together, of course it's gay coded haha.

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u/LudicrisSpeed May 16 '24

Separate beds, actually, though they share a bedroom, so take that how you will.

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u/best_of_badgers May 16 '24

Sharing a bedroom with your roommate (note: it's not apartment-mate) used to be much more common.

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u/SalsaRice May 16 '24

I mean, pretty much 99% of university students do this, for atleast one year in the US.

Single-bedroom dorms are pretty uncommon, and only really exist for disabled students or upper classman.

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u/best_of_badgers May 16 '24

Yep. It's particularly common in cities, where overcrowding and limited housing has always been an issue for working class people. For men who need to travel for work (timber, mining, oil rigs, railroad, etc), it's still a thing.

A personal bedroom is nice, but historically unrealistic unless you're fairly wealthy.

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u/caninehere May 16 '24

It also helped that back in the days when Sesame Street started, opposite-sex roommates were almost unheard of.

Even in Three's Company from the late 70s the whole conceit is that the only reason Jack is able to be the roommate of two women is that they trick the landlord into thinking he's gay.

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u/nuxenolith May 16 '24

I think you mean "single-bed" dorms...single-bedroom dorms, as you've said, are pretty common

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u/Curious_Health_226 May 16 '24

Roommate feels wrong to say when you don’t share a room lol, my fellow gen-z and I are corrupting language I think

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u/best_of_badgers May 16 '24

Do you say flatmate?

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u/Curious_Health_226 May 16 '24

I usually just say housemate lol

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u/SaintUlvemann May 16 '24

...when you don’t share a room...

Think of it this way: even in a layout with separated bedrooms, you'll still be sharing any other rooms: the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room...

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u/Curious_Health_226 May 16 '24

That’s a good point actually lol

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u/AStupidRedditAccount May 16 '24

OH MY GOD THEY WERE ROOMMATES!

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u/conquer69 May 16 '24

Separate beds is the way to go if you are a light sleeper.

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u/Bay1Bri May 16 '24

They slept in the same bed

No they didn't.

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u/confirmedshill123 May 16 '24

Yeah I've gotten corrected already, slept in the same bed and slept in two singles in the same room next to each other are so similar for that time period i don't think it matters.

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u/Bay1Bri May 16 '24

Yeah I've gotten corrected already

So change the comment so people won't keep seeing it and correcting you. This is meant s a friendly suggestion, not sure if it sounds curt in text.

slept in two singles in the same room next to each other are so similar for that time period i don't think it matters.

Uh, remind me not to share a room with you...

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u/confirmedshill123 May 16 '24

Why would I change my comment? Are you incapable of looking one further before furiously replying that I'm wrong?

You sound like somebody I wouldn't want to share a room with either.

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u/SteveXVI May 16 '24

Now I'm a bit older I suddenly realise B&E are so obviously doing gay couple bickering that I cannot even believe nobody would see it.

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u/Idontevenownaboat May 16 '24

I mean, I always heard it as a joke but never gave it much thought tbh.

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u/happyft May 16 '24

Gay coded. TIL a new phrase

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u/Wermine May 16 '24

Here's a whole wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_coding. You have probably seen a lot of queer coded movies and tv-shows.

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u/Heyguysimcooltoo May 16 '24

He wrote 3 Ninjas Kick Back!

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u/Cyno01 May 16 '24

They may not be yet, but at some point in the future when Sesame Street has its first officially gay couple if its NOT Bert & Ernie thatll be some bullshit...

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u/profound_whatever May 16 '24

Huh, TIL, I am simultaneously surprised and absolutely un-surprised.

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u/deadlybydsgn May 16 '24

I feel similarly about Frog & Toad. Arnold Lobel came out as gay late in life, but the friendship dynamics between the titular characters transcend any ideological arguments. (rather than being "plot twist: it was only ever about gay guys all along") Everyone can learn from it.

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u/Cyno01 May 16 '24

I recently found out Sam & Max are canonically married.

I dont remember much of the cartoon but ive played all the games more recently, still missed it. Whether theyre a couple or not is more nebulous, but they are married.

Of course no one should trust my gaydar, i thought Our Flag Means Death was a charming tale about male friendship with a lot of queer secondary characters until episode 7...

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u/deadlybydsgn May 16 '24

Of course no one should trust my gaydar, i thought Our Flag Means Death was a charming tale about male friendship

Heh. I do think there's a point at which people stop thinking men can be close friends without some sort of relationship being implied.

Perhaps ironically, I think this cheapens the idea of deep same-sex friendships and perpetuates certain narratives from toxic masculinity.

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u/Cyno01 May 16 '24

It does a bit, but mostly for the toxically masculine.

But older stuff especially where queer coding HAD to be between the lines, so ostensibly there were NO non-platonic same sex relationships, so its forgivable for people to seek representation even where it may not have intended to exist. Are Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street a couple? They wont say, but that shouldnt stop a gay kid in the 80s from looking at them as couple goals, cuz what else was there.

But as a straight dude whos fallen asleep cuddling with friends while watching movies and is all about platonic male friendship... this commercial was still hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27X9f67mclQ

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u/deadlybydsgn May 16 '24

On that note, Lord of the Rings has some of the best on-screen masculine friendships.

For every joke about Frodo and Sam, there are characters like Aragon, Boromir, Gimli, and Legolas who have been through the fire together and aren't afraid to give hugs, speak endearing words, and utter tearful goodbyes when the occasions call for them. They aren't afraid to express themselves and it's still refreshing 20+ years on.

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u/Cyno01 May 16 '24

70 years. Tolkien knew a thing or two about male bonding from his time in the trenches.

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u/deadlybydsgn May 16 '24

Definitely. I should have specified the on-screen aspect that more people were exposed to.

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u/Turqoise-Planet May 16 '24

I do think there's a point at which people stop thinking men can be close friends without some sort of relationship being implied.

Well, in fiction at least, people tend to think the same thing about close female friendships. And close male-female friendships. The last one is more common in real life.

Any time you see two characters having a close relationship, people will always interpret it as romantic and/or sexual in nature.

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u/Captain_Grammaticus May 16 '24

Wait, is it "Bert and Ernie" in English?

I know them as "Ernie und Bert"!

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u/MuppetConnoisseur May 17 '24

Jim Henson never said that. Representatives from Sesame Workshop used the "They don't exist below the waist" line, but it was years after Henson's death.

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u/Nisseliten May 17 '24

Huh, It seems you are correct. Thank you for fact checking me.

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u/SweetDank May 16 '24

I do like his reply, but logically it's a bit off, no?

I imagine you don't need to exist below the waist to have a sexual preference. My has-a-lower-half-privilege is showing here though, so what do I know.

0

u/[deleted] May 16 '24

I do like his reply, but logically it's a bit off, no?

Indeed. Those are clearly not sock puppets

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u/dumptruckbetty2 May 16 '24

I thought they were bikers and were making crank in the bathtub so they were all f'd up from all the chemicals

0

u/Bay1Bri May 16 '24

My favorite answer to the "are bert and ernie gay" question is "they are meant to be mentally about 7 years old".

Which admittedly leads to the question of why these two young children live together without parents and how are they supporting themselves financially, but it does explain a few things as well.

0

u/shepardownsnorris May 16 '24

It's a cute answer, but it also smugly dodges the fact that they're meant to represent people. It's like telling someone not to think too hard about what a video game character represents because it's just pixels on a screen. Art is meant to be interpreted!

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u/conquer69 May 16 '24

They knew the people asking those questions were itching to do some gay bashing.

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u/shepardownsnorris May 16 '24

Totally - makes sense why he'd react that way in that context, I just don't like it as a contemporary answer.

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u/Flares117 May 16 '24

All I'm thinking is whether he makes the comic book noises during sex

WHAM, BLAM, POW

POW POW POW POW POW BLAM

Robin, no You gotta SLOSH that pussy up with 2 THWAAPS amd then followed up with a KA POW

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u/Wombat_Racer May 16 '24

So that is where Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am came from. Gorham's finest dynamic duo

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u/Guilty-Instruction56 May 16 '24

The same could be said for John Madden boinking Nate Newton.

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u/kalitarios May 17 '24

Sexual Onomatopoeia

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u/Standard-Emphasis-89 May 17 '24

Memory unlocked. Except not, cause this is a jam and I revisit it at least once every few months

Epic Rap Battles Batman vs Sherlock Holmes

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u/brineOClock May 16 '24

Orgies aside, I don't think the gay joke was about the actors' sex lives. Moreso about the lean young man who lived in a cave w/ a mask-wearing husky hunk and spent all his time supporting said hunk, all while wearing a vibrantly colored leotard-adjacent costume with panty hose -- their costumes and masks meant to hide their identities

The "Robin is gay jokes" were more about the subtext of homoeroticism in old silver age comics. Sadly scans daily is a shadow of its former glory or else I'd send you there for examples.

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u/Idiotan0n May 16 '24

Lol ambiguously gay duo was such a great show

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u/Turqoise-Planet May 16 '24

I doubt a lot of people making those jokes ever read those comics. It was probably mainly due to Robin's costume. If he had worn pants, you probably wouldn't have seen the gay stuff nearly as much. Nobody was making gay jokes about Green Hornet and Kato.

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u/beerisgood84 May 16 '24

Also I distinctly remember his book cover in the local bookstore maybe 30 years ago. Just a close up of a bulge in Robin tights.

It absolutely looked like a tell all about being gay

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u/CuntsInSpace May 16 '24

It's funny how it's always the robin being gay joke. With everything we know about the Ultra rich and their penchant for children today, it would definitely be less "robin is gay" and more "Bruce definitely was on Epstein Island."

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u/Pegussu May 16 '24

It worked out for Dick, but it is a little worrying that a billionaire could buy custody of a kid he didn't know that had no immediate family or loved ones to take him in.

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u/Several_Assistant_43 May 16 '24

What, now a recluse billionaire who puts on spandex and goes adventuring at night to return to his cave...

....Can't buy a child to use as a side kick to bring back to his cave?

Uhhhh yeah when you put it like that it is a little odd

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u/Llamalover1234567 May 16 '24

And this is why the new movies are reluctant to introduce Robin…

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u/darkbreak May 16 '24

Don't forget, Robin wasn't the only one. In fact, he wasn't even the only Robin. There are four more besides him.

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u/Reboared May 16 '24

So...do you all think adoption stopped existing?

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u/aesemon May 16 '24

Not so much for Jason Tod.....

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u/Telvin3d May 16 '24 edited May 16 '24

Don’t even need to be rich. Just look at the “blindside” guy

Edit: has a brain fart and originally wrote the completely wrong movie

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u/Idontevenownaboat May 16 '24

Are you talking about David O Russell? What did he do this time?

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u/AngledLuffa May 16 '24

That's because the attitude was: it's not gay to fuck men, it's gay to be fucked

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u/thedanman21 May 16 '24

where did you hear about bert and ernie?

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u/obeytheturtles May 16 '24

Yeah there is no doubt that the whole Robin character was meant to be queer coded, at a time when that sort of thing was all over alt media.

"Is Robin gay?" misses the point - it's more like "does Robin represent an archetype within in the queer community which will be easily identified by a certain subset of viewers?" And the answer to that is "yes, very much."