Awakenings in the Dark: How Pop Culture Lit the Way for Generations of Gay Men

This post probably does not fit my usual art history post, but as I was thinking about the art of the male nude throughout the ages, I thought about the moment many gay men can point to—not always with words, but with a scene, a song, a sensation. A flicker of something electric, confusing, and undeniable. A man on a screen, a model in an ad, a lyric that hit too close. We call these gay awakenings. They rarely arrived with clarity, but they lingered, imprinted deep in the memory. They were the first time something inside whispered, That. I want that. Were their moments like that for men throughout history? Surely it was not a 20th century phenomenon, but we don’t have historical evidence since men rarely left behind evidence of their same sex attractions, especially not what sparked them.

However, we do have evidence of what sparked gay awakenings in the 20th and 21st centuries. These moments shifted over the decades, shaped by the media of the time. Yet across generations—from Baby Boomers to Gen Z—the need was the same: a glimpse of oneself, not necessarily as the man on screen, but in the wanting of him.

For gay men growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, the world was rigid, policed, and wrapped in postwar propriety. But desire, as it always does, found cracks to seep through. That first pulse of awareness might’ve come while watching Elvis Presley swing his hips across a black-and-white TV screen on The Ed Sullivan Show. It might’ve flickered during a particular heartthrob in a movie: a Rock Hudson melodrama, Cary Grant in almost anything, Marlon Brando’s famous shirtless scenes as Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire or Marc Antony in Julius Ceasar, maybe it was James Dean or Tab Hunter. Even if the smiles of these movie stars were aimed at women, it didn’t matter. It was that moment when you realized, I’m attracted to him and not her. It’s a moment you can’t get out of your head and know that you need to see more of it.

These early awakenings were subtle, even silent. There were no gay characters on sitcoms, no Pride ads in June. But for a boy watching from his living room in the heartland, something stirred. Not quite nameable yet—but real.

By the time Gen X came of age in the ’80s and ’90s, the closet still loomed, but the culture had begun to shift. It was easier to access desire—though often through coded or carefully curated channels. A single moment, burned into the memories of many: Ryan Phillippe, naked, stepping out of the pool and showing his perfectly round little butt in Cruel Intentions. Dripping, glistening, camera lingering. For an entire generation, that was it. The scene that turned curiosity into hunger.

But it wasn’t just Phillippe. Mark Wahlberg’s Calvin Klein ads—shirtless, groping himself, caught in a mix of menace and seduction—lit up billboards and bedroom walls. In films like My Own Private Idaho, River Phoenix’s quiet, aching portrayal of love between men became a poetic kind of longing. These weren’t just pretty faces. They were emotional mirrors. My earliest such moments were probably either Harry Hamlin in Clash of the Titans or seeing Jose Canseco playing for the Oakland Athletics in the World Series. It started me collecting baseball cards. I can remember getting baseball cards from a cereal box one time and one of the cards was of Ryne Sandberg, who played for the Chicago Cubs. But still nothing cemented that knowledge that I had innate desires that could not be quelled like Cruel Intentions. Seeing Ryan Phillippe, naked, stepping out of that pool! Who cared if he was doing it to entice Reese Witherspoon? I sometimes forget there were women in the movie, especially with the scene of Greg McConnell (played by Eric Mabius) and Blaine Tuttle (played by Joshua Jackson) being caught in bed together.

Millennials, too, found themselves through media, often somewhere between Tiger Beat and Tolkien. Orlando Bloom’s Legolas—the long hair, the soft voice, the bow taut with tension—captured the hearts of queer teens who didn’t yet know how to articulate why. Brad Pitt, shirtless and boyish in Thelma & Louise, became another kind of icon: all-American, sunlit, and openly objectified. TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer blurred the lines even more. Angel and Spike weren’t just crushes—they were obsessions. Dangerous, beautiful men in leather with tortured pasts? For many, it was the perfect metaphor for closeted longing.

These awakenings were both erotic and emotional. They offered not just something to look at, but someone to feel through—long before there were gay storylines, there were boys and men who lived in our imaginations, held close in the safest, quietest corners of ourselves. And then came Gen Z—digital natives raised in a world where queerness was no longer only subtext, but storyline.

For many, Call Me by Your Name marked a watershed. Timothée Chalamet’s Elio was delicate, curious, and wholly queer in his desires. His aching love for Oliver wasn’t a tragedy—it was treated with reverence. Suddenly, queerness wasn’t just tolerated; it was cinematic, sun-dappled, and wrapped in classical music. Shows like Heartstopper carried the torch further, giving Gen Z something previous generations never had: visibility that was joyful. Awkward handholding, nervous smiles, first kisses that felt earned. This wasn’t subversion—it was celebration.

In music, Troye Sivan crooned openly about blooming into desire, backed by visuals that were lush, erotic, and defiantly gay. Even Shawn Mendes, unintentionally or otherwise, became a fixation—his sensitivity and softness standing in contrast to the hard-edged masculinity of previous eras. For Gen Z, the awakening didn’t have to be hidden. It could be shared, tweeted, TikToked. And while every personal journey is unique, there’s comfort in knowing you’re not the only one who paused the movie, rewound the scene, or stared a little longer than you were “supposed” to.

These weren’t just crushes. They were compass points. They told us what we desired, yes—but also what we feared, what we yearned for, and what we might one day become. In eras when queerness was unspeakable, these awakenings whispered, You’re not alone. Sometimes that whisper came from a jock in a magazine ad. Sometimes from a vampire in a leather coat. Sometimes from a boy in the back row who looked at you just a second too long. But they all left a mark. And for many of us, that first flash of longing—in the flicker of a television screen or the fold of a catalog page—wasn’t just the start of desire. It was the beginning of truth.

While I know I could never name every example, here’s a curated selection of some of the most iconic gay awakening clips and ads:

• Ryan Phillippe in Cruel Intentions (1999)
• Mark Wahlberg Calvin Klein ad (1992)
• Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show (1956)
• Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise (1991)
• Call Me by Your Name trailer (2017)
• Heartstopper trailer (2022)
• Troye Sivan – “Bloom” (2018)
• River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho (1991)