We’re Straight! We Swear!: Being Homosocial in a 3OH!3 Music Video

What do you call two straight men who are very, very close friends?

Give up? I don’t know either. While our society seems to recognize and often even celebrate purely platonic bonds between women, we still don’t quite know what to do with men who are close but not romantically interested in each other. Recently, we’ve attempted to give a name to this relationship—the “bromance,” but the term is still a pun on the word “romance” and has a homoerotic undercurrent.

This is the bind that patriarchal society puts men in. On the one hand, they are expected to be blatantly heterosexual. A man’s not a man if he can’t seduce and impregnate a woman, and the more women he can do this too, the more manly he is. At the same time, however, women are mere objects for his sexual pleasure, and as a man (who is expected to be intelligent and strong while women are expected to be flighty and weak), he can’t really form a deep and meaningful bond with a woman. (I’m referring here to the ideals of patriarchal society and how they are often portrayed in certain aspects of popular culture, not to how relationships between men and women really play out.) He can seek out these meaningful bonds with other men, but these relationships must be tempered. They can’t be too emotional, lest they seem “womanish” or “sissy,” and they must be restricted in how they show affection, lest they be mistaken for homoeroticism. You can save your buddy’s life, beat up his enemies, and tell him you’ve “got his back,” but you can’t hug him or tell him that you love him.

So how does popular culture present close, emotional bonds between two men and avoid homoeroticism? It surrounds those men with adoring, beautiful women. The effect the women are supposed to serve is a that of a signifier for heterosexuality. “See, we’re straight,” the men seem to say as they bask in female attention. “We’re surrounded by all of these women, and we love it! Oh, that guy over there? He’s just my buddy. But we’re totally straight! I mean, look all of these women!”

Many of the music videos put out by 3OH!3, the pop duo consisting of Nat Motte and Sean Foreman from Boulder, Colorado (area code three-oh-three), take this convention to ludicrus extremes. Nearly all of the videos focus on a platonic relationship between Motte and Foreman, but to avoid the accusation of homoeroticism, the videos surround them with adoring women. The videos are often concoted around ridiculous premises to explain why women would be fawning over them, but the absurdity of the videos often highlights the bizarre position in which patriarchal society places men and their platonic relationships.

(Note: From here on out, when I refer to Motte and Foreman, I do not mean them personally. Instead, I am referring to the pop personas that they have taken on and perform in their music videos.)

3OH!3’s best known song and video, “Don’t Trust Me” features a ridiculous premise. It is, so an introduction informs us, the story of two male models who are the only survivors of a virus that has wiped out the rest of earth’s male population. While anyone else faced with this highly unlikely situation might show some concern,  Motte and Foreman, in the context of the video, see this as an opportunity to bask in the adoration of a planet full of women who are starved for men. (Because, of course, women want nothing more than a man to satisfy them. Even lesbians are just waiting for the right man.)

But are they really basking in the women’s adoration? A quick view of the music video might assume that they are, but a closer look reveals that the video isn’t so much about the women as it is about Motte and Foreman. The women exist on the periphery, literally. Most of the camera shots focus them as they stand together in the middle of the shot, its focus, while the women are placed, like props, to the side of the frame. Te women’s prescence is merely that of a signifier of male heterosexuality. They are there to reassure us that, no matter how much Motte and Foreman might wrestle with each other, rap together or playfully shove each other, they are ultimately heterosexual.

I also think that the video, to some extent, is aware of its own ridiculousness. At the beginning, after we have established that Motte and Foreman are male models, the first shot of them we see portrays them as adorned in purple capes and speedos. They don’t look like male models so much as they look like two frat boys playing at being male models. Neither of them are particularly muscular or toned, the “ideal” body for male pop stars. (Aside: I actually find their average physical appearances refreshing. Unlike many pop stars, who are so perfect-looking as to be interchangeable, Motte and Foreman actually stand out.) Motte is tall, skinny, and lanky, with long, stringy hair, while Foreman is short and stocky. When paired together, their opposite physiques are even more noticeable. They do not dance so much as they flail and crudely mime the lyrics to their songs. The video mocks the performance of pop—the elaborate costumes, the impossible perfection of pop stars’ bodies, and the ostentatious dance routines that often accompany music videos. “This is all in fun. Don’t take it too seriously, because we certainly aren’t,” the video seems to say to the audience.

Stripped of its spectacle and reduced to what looks almost more like two fans rocking out to their favorite song than two pop artists in a music video, the video makes Motte and Foreman more relatable to the audience. They’re just two average guys—straight guys, mind you! Very, very straight! Did you see all those hot chicks back there? They’re kind of hard to see because they’re just on the edge of the camera shot, but they’re there and boy, are they hot!—having a good time together. This stripped version of pop, however, adds to the masculine image of the video. Dancing artistically, wearing elaborate costumes, and looking beautiful are all coded as “feminine” in patriarchal society, so to prove that they are not feminine (and therefore not gay), Motte and Foreman, in their video, eschew anything that could be construed as homoerotic.

Their “Starstrukk” video, featuring Katy Perry, goes one step further and inserts a girl between them. All of the elements from “Don’t Trust Me” remain. The new ridiculous premise is that the guys have found a fountain full of coins that women have tossed in, wishing for men. When they remove the coins, they become the answer to the women’s wishes, and the women run at them, eager (we are led to assume) to have sex with them. Unlike in “Don’t Trust Me,” in which Motte and Foreman were paired as the focus of the camera shots and interacted with each other, they are now joined by Katy Perry, who stands between them, like a bulwark protecting them from any accusations of homoeroticism.

However, the video is still more about the buddy relationship than it is about relationships with women. The scenes in front of the fountain are intersperced with scenes of Motte and Foreman, always together, doing manly and adventurous things…in order to attract women, of course. In one scene, they are boating in Italy and hold up champagne glasses to the (presumably female) viewers with “come and get it” gestures. In other scene, they pose for the camera while dressed as street toughs, the bodies of other, weaker men whom they’ve just beaten, strewn on the side of the shot. Though these scenes appear to be about attracting women, they actually emphasize the relationship between the two men. Women may come and go, but they’ll still have their friendship and be able to do things like climb mountains while feeding each other sashimi (a homosocial and perhaps even vaguely homoerotic image if there ever was one). Like the “Don’t Trust Me” video, this video also emphasizes the buddy relationship between Motte and Foreman, and it uses the women in the video to assert their heterosexuality. They may be close, but they’re not that close.

All of the hypermasculine imagery of the 3OH!3 music videos works for the purpose of establishing Motte and Foreman as heterosexual men. The videos are unkind to women, perhaps even misogynistic, but the reason for it is to establish the 3OH!3 duo as he-men. The bind that patriarchal society puts women in is obvious in these vidoes, but what also becomes apparent is the bind that patriarchal society also puts upon men who have close friendships with other men. There is a tension in the videos between emphasizing the bond between Motte and Foreman and also trying to de-emphasize the bond so that their relationship does not seem homoerotic.

This tension points to the larger problem within patriarchal culture, which does not seem to know what to do with male-male friendships. When women are nothing but objects, to have any kind of meaningful relationship, men must seek out other men. At the same time, however, these men cannot appear to close to each other for fear of being branded homoerotic. Our society lacks any kind of way to talk about and discuss male relationships that are not sexual, and as a result, the homosocial and the homoerotic tend to become inflated. Men can, of course, be straight and have close, platonic relationships with other men. Unfortunately, our society lacks a way to place and understand these realtionships outside of homoeroticism.