About YMCA

The sanctity or otherwise of an author’s intentions always offers something to chew over. I do sympathise with Beckett’s exasperation over the critical tendency to see theology at work in his most popular play: “If I had meant it to be about God,” he’s said to have snapped, “I’d have called it Waiting for God.” But at the same time I lean towards Barthes’ assertion that the Author (himself included) is dead the moment he types the final full-stop, and it’s down to the mere civilians who are his readers to write and rewrite and bestow meaning. If I think it’s about God then, in my head at least, it is about God, whatever Beckett thinks.

How then do we respond to Victor Willis’s announcement that the song ‘YMCA’, for which he provided the lyrics, is not gay at all, oh no, it certainly isn’t, despite the fact that it was all I could do to stop myself from referring not to “the song ‘YMCA’” but to “the gay anthem ‘YMCA’” mainly because for decades it’s been a gay anthem, for gays, about gay stuff? But Mr Willis, who, and I ought to make this very clear indeed, IS NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT GAY IN ANY SENSE OF THE WORD, has announced that in fact the song isn’t gay either, and the bit about hanging out with all the boys is about black straight male bonding and not gays doing gay things, at the YMCA or anywhere else. And in fact, from next month, if anyone says that ‘YMCA’ is even the slightest bit gay, Willis’s wife, who is a female lady, with proper lady bosoms and stuff, because Victor’s NOT GAY, will sue them with all the heterolegal fury she can bring to bear and with the blessing of her exceedingly not-gay husband.

But he’s OK with Donald Trump (also not gay – have you seen him dance?) using the song at his own not-gay rallies and ensuring lots of similarly straight dollars entering Willis’s lady-snogging bank account. Because neither of them is gay, nor is the song, nor are any of the Village People, including the one with the big moustache, nor is or was anything ever gay. Got that? NOT. GAY.

PS: The Streisand effect.

PPS: Hamlet, Act III, scene ii, line 221.