Marvin Gaye Makes You Want to Be Gay

The controversy over whether Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” is inappropriate appropriation of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up,” has naturally brought Gaye’s iconic song back into the public eye (the Robin Thicke song and its attitudes towards women has also created some negative responses, particularly on some English university campuses where it has been banned by student unions, “Blurred Lines: The Most Controversial Song of the Decade," The Guardian, 11/13/13). But it’s not only “Got to Give it Up.” There’s “Sexual Healing,” “Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” “Hitch Hike” and “What’s Going On,” among others. And they prove that Marvin Gaye is the sexiest man or woman who has ever lived. The sexuality makes even the most dyed-in-the wool heterosexual male want to melt into Gaye’s arms. The fact that he died an untimely death at the hands of his father makes him all the more desirable. People always want what they can’t have and in the “Got to Give it Up” video  Gaye is vibrating to such an extent that there’s an almost Orphic effect. Remember how Orpheus was not supposed to look back. Maybe our longing is exacerbated because of the fact that Gaye calls to us from the underworld of unfulfilled desire. The fact that the Gaye saga involves a reversal of the classic Oedipus myth only increases the mystique. But seeing Gaye strutting his stuff, any vengeful or competitive feelings his father might have had seem almost understandable. Anyone would be jealous of such a creature. 

Tropic of Marvin

Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. The myth was adapted by Freud because it made practical sense. It’s really Darwinian when you come to think of it. The father must symbolically and literally be removed from power in order to make way for the son. In the case of Marvin Gaye, you had the Oedipus complex in reverse. Gaye was murdered by his own father, Marvin Sr. Many parents discountenance the idea that they might be competitive with their own children. It’s an unpleasant thought. Marvin Jr. was in fact killed with a .38 Smith & Wesson he’d given to his father--a fact that makes for an even more dizzying variation on the theme of oedipal rivalry. But it’s easy to see why any male would have felt competitive with a son like Marvin Gaye. He was the sexiest man dead or alive, sexier than Dumas pere or Hugo (who were famed womanizers), sexier than Wilt Chamberlain (who in his A View  From Above claimed he had slept with over 20,000 women), sexier than JFK, Jack Nicholson, De Niro, Pacino or Tom Cruise, and certainly sexier than current idols like Justin Timberlake, JZ, Ben Affleck or Brad Pitt. Take a look at the video of Sexual Healing. Can anything be sexier than this? Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer is one of the sexiest books of all time, but Miller’s words are no match for Marvin’s moves.