Shouldn't Bigfoot Be A Gay Icon?

Why don't more people love Bigfoot? I started telling some friends at dinner the other night about a recent National Geographic documentary about him. My revelations elicited a silent response and blank stares rather than the quickly drawn gasps and clinking of forks dropped onto china in surprise that one might expect. In fact, John felt compelled to clarify that I was the only one actually watching the program; he was just in the same room.

In the documentary we met a Tennessee hill woman with whom a Russian anthropologist was living so he could record her stories of a Bigfoot family who had lived nearby for years. Evidently Bigfoots are more social creatures in Tennessee (isn't everyone?) because now and then one would knock on her back door to borrow a cup of sugar or something like that. She would, of course, politely oblige him proving once again that you can safely bet on Southerners to score above average in the good neighbor department.

The woman's memory was sharp enough that she could reproduce the request while mimicking the creature's voice. In case you're wondering, Bigfoot sounds like Kirstie Alley, only 20 years older and after she's sucked the air from a helium balloon. Hill woman also told how she watched a Bigfoot take a deer down with its bare hands. As she matter of factly described the procedure the Russian earnestly reenacted it using a sytrofoam deer dummy. I feel certain that each night when she retires to her bedroom this woman buries her face in a pillow and laughs herself to sleep.

I think I'm so into Bigfoot, and the people who see them, because I was a child of the 70s when that shaky film footage of Bigfoot crossing a dry forest creek bed was reaching the public. It didn't matter to me that the forest was in Washington state and I lived in Arkansas. Bigfoot existed and all he needed was the sun, the air and some shade trees to make him happy. Surely some of his kind were poking around the Ozarks. Turns out, I was almost right. His swampy cousin was spotted in the bayous and bean fields of Fouke, AR. The Fouke Monster's story was retold with so-awful-its-inspired genius in Charles B. Pierce's The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972). A true story told in documentary form with real locals (heavy on the real), Pierce also managed to patch in what looks like leftover 1960s Arkansas game and fish commission publicity footage and even a bizarre musical score ("Hey, Travis Crabtree...Wait a minute for me..."). If you have any sense of irony, this movie won't dissappoint, but do watch it with friends. I want to have a "Legend of Boggy Creek" party for Halloween this year. Maybe my AR friends will host one at the same time and we can blog the event simultaneously.

The movie isn't really scary though (unless you fear poor editing), and that is because Bigfoot isn't scary. Bigfoot is us, and not just gay folks. No, true icons are meaningful to more than one group of people. Bigfoot stands in the gap (perhaps literally sometimes) for all misunderstood folks who wonder if the world hasn't gotten so crazy that they might be better off living disconnected from society, hidden in the backwoods of Arkansas--where they can get shot, trapped, and clubbed to death in an effort to preserve their species.