From mrpeenee:
Is there anything more ephemeral than advertising? You know what they say, mass mind control today, gone tomorrow. And yet some ads live on, almost always because some homo gay has either a) fetishized it like the Brawny papertowel guy or b) decided there is gay relevance in there hidden by code.
Code was the way queers were able to find each other and to express themselves during the years of repression we had to tolerate. Making eye contact with some stranger and then following him into a toilet is all well and good for sex, but for communicating in various media, we needed a way to hide in plain view. And thus, code.
The most perfect example of this, I think, are these weird ads from Schlitz beer from the 1950s. They all appeared as three illustrated panels followed by the internal monologue of one of the heroes.
They all start off with the same pronouncement: "I was curious." Of course, "curious" nowadays is understood to mean "looking for hot dick, but I want to maintain plausible deniability." In the Eisenhower America these ads appeared in, the word would not have had those lurid overtones, but the illustrations make it clear that what he's actually curious about is what's in the other guy's pants.
The rest of the text is bland advertising naff, but that's where the artwork takes over and really spins these beauties into the love that dares not speak its name, but really likes to hint around about it.
Every one of the ads has the second panel with the ladies dropping out to leave the boys alone and with one of them (usually the more experienced one, ready to lead the other down the primrose path of butt sex) sporting a knowing look on his face. A look that says "I've got the cure for that itchy prostate."
The final panel is my favorite, with our two lads now closing in for the clinch and both of them bright eyed, leering at each other and probably popping a stiffy. If there had been a fourth panel, can there be any doubt sodomy would have been involved?
