Of Ice And Men

THE images in "Blades of Glory" are provocative: Will Ferrell, as a rough-and-tumble macho, and Jon Heder, as the pastel-wearing girlie man, feign romance on the ice as a figure skating pair. They lock legs and hold hands, bump and grind and plant their faces in each other's crotch. It's hilarious and unsettling: The joke, which deftly avoids gay baiting, is on straight men.

Straight men and male bonding, it turns out, make for far richer comic ground these days. "Blades of Glory," which opens Friday, may start with a predictable setup: The male pair in the operatic world of figure skating must be gay! But the humor is more nuanced than that. Homosexuality is noted, but only in passing. Ferrell's Chazz Michael Michaels and Heder's Jimmy MacElroy are ultimately lonely guys and sworn rivals who bond as brothers when forced together. Their performances are inherently homoerotic. But they bicker and fight like adolescents, killing much of the potential for innuendo.

There was a time, as impossibly long ago as it now seems, when two straight American men could go skinny-dipping or even share a bed without having to rip out their chest hair or yell like Tarzan afterward. But today, as deciphering someone's sexual orientation becomes a national pastime and acceptance of homosexuality reaches an all-time high, images of straight guys acting "gay" abound in movies, TV and advertising.

Of course, the straight guy and the gay innuendo is an ancient gag. Every generation gives it a try, from the antics of Laurel and Hardy to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon to that passionate kiss shared by Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott in "Dude, Where's My Car?"

The difference now is the context. Sexual identity is more of a public and political issue than it's ever been with the gay marriage movement and the stream of images of gay men kissing that have accompanied it. At a time of war, we see images of traditional masculine heroes, and yet there's the whole "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" aesthetic that confounds straight guys at every turn. Hence, the absurdity in Ferrell's "Blades" character -- a metrosexual if there ever was one. He's a straight "sex addict" who parades around bare-chested in a turban and leopard print towel and religiously brushes his hair 100 times each night with a $12,000 handmade brush.

Another sendup in a series