Why? Why does a deep love for a friend always have to be “gay”?
Why do so many men seem to be afraid of this kind of feeling in today’s society?
I never thought of them as gay. I thought of Sam as having a love for his friend that too many people are afraid to show these days in fear of being labeled a homosexual.
Interesting this thread has come back up. I’ve just come home from seeing the ROTK movie for the second time, and I was thinking about this again while watching the ending.
As I said earlier on in the week, it doesn’t make a difference to me which way the love between them is defined (as a slash writer, I can see it as sexual whenever I bloody well feel like it, but it isn’t necessary to see it that way for my understanding of the relationship and how it motivates Sam*); it is the love itself that is central to the story. This is after all, the most important relationship in the story (to me, anyway). And I think this last film in particular does play it up that way.
I have no doubt that movie-Frodo does love Sam (it’s in all those lovely, dewy-eyed looks). However, as Mr. Dexter Haven suggests, book-Frodo tends to more detached and occasionally condescending to Sam. I don’t think book-Frodo fully appreciates the extent of Sam’s loyalty or his true worth until the situation really begins to get rough: “Frodo wouldn’t have got far with Sam,” he says on the stairs, and means it.
*I tend to read that “…its fallen mate” line as not so much an indication of whether or not they were lovers, but how strongly Sam feels about his emotional connection to Frodo. It’s that close.
I have to tread carefully here as expressing opinions on the non-sexuality of the relationship between Sam and Frodo has got me accused of homophobia before now :rolleyes: but that’s the stand I’d definitely take, as Tolkien wrote the characters.
Further to Miss Mapp’s interpretation of the “fallen mate” line, I’ve always read it simply as a metaphor for reckless bravery.
Sam was potentially “torn in two” before Frodo went to the Havens because he had a code of absolute loyalty to his beloved master, but he was also a husband and father. He couldn’t give both of them the undivided attention they needed.
Oh, and you can “comfort” someone with your body without any sexual excitement involved on either side. I do it to my four-year-old son whenever he falls and hurts himself.
That said… in the scene in the film just after the destruction of the Ring, when Sam and Frodo are passing their last few minutes talking of life back in the Shire, and Sam says if he’d ever got married, Rose Cotton would have been the one… it’s just possible Frodo’s expression is meant to convey “Oh best and loyallest of servants, there aren’t words enough to say how much you deserved it”, but I caught a slight suggestion of “What am I, chopped liver?”. 
Well, I’m saying if they WERE gay, they’d be a good couple.
But otherwise, they’re almost like twin brothers-in the movies, at least. It’s very touching, whether it’s romantic or not.
And while we’re at it, let’s say Gandalf was in a BDSM relationship with Elrond! And Arwen was transgendered!
There’s essentially a zero percent chance that Tolkien meant to imply Frodo and Sam had a gay relationship. Looking at the entire work, it’s actually quite absurd, a perfect example of 2003 political and social viewpoints being grafted onto a work that was written a long time ago with an attitude, and based on a mythology, even older than the work itself. Tolkien wouldn’t have known what the hell you were talking about - he was prudish, not coy.
I can’t see ANY reasonable interpretation of the Frodo-Sam relationship other than that between friends who are bonded by struggle - well, a mixture of that and the servant/master relationship, or maybe even an officer/enlisted man or noble relationship (a form of love that Tolkien uses in a number of other places in the LOTR works.) It fits perfectly well with the mythology Tolkien was trying to create.
Exactly what I think. They’re not gay (there’s obviously too much proof against that.), buy if they were, they’d be adorable.
I think Tolkien’s WWI experiences were the template for the Frodo/Sam relationship. From Vets I have talked to in the past I have heard stories of the close bond between men in times of crisis and constant danger.
There forms a deep love that binds them that is not erotic or homosexual. They will do anything for their brothers and they will never form a relationship outside of that circumstance that will ever be as deep or meaningful. It is hard from the outside to understand this as we are taught to have distant relationships with other men. We can joke and have comradery but there are boundrries we do not cross.
Those boundries quickly disapear in those horrible times when death seems imminent and you must depend on those around you for your very life and they depend on you.
The same can be said for Sam and Frodo. The bond they have formed is due to the shared danger and the need for each other to survive the quest.
I found the ending touching and while some of the teenage boys in the theatre cringed at the long kiss on the forehead, I thought it was moving. I likened it to the emotion I feel for my sons. There is nothing erotic about it. Just a strong love for another human being (or in their case a halfling.)
It is a shame that these days the idea of love has only come to be recognized as synonomous with sex.
You know, I was thinking about this while I was drifting off to sleep and it hit me-the perfect analogy would be Han Solo and Chewbacca.
They are NOT lovers-oh, GOD, I hope NOT-ew!*-but they’re as close as close can be and other than their wives and children, (if you subscribe to the EU), there’s no one they love more than one another.
So Sam is Chewie to Frodo’s Han.
*[sub]This is not homophobia-this is WOOKIEE-HUMAN phobia![/sub]
I don’t think they were in a relationship that was anything but platonic, but I thought Sam had a crush on Frodo. He didn’t act upon his feelings, but he seemed a bit more emotionally attached than you’d expect even a best friend to be. I don’t think poor Frodo even noticed.
They sorta reminded me more of Jay and Silent Bob (hello im Frodo, and this is my hetero life partner Sam) Of course Jay is a closeted homosexual so this analogy probably doesn’t apply. Or maybe it does
I tend to think of Sam’s relationship to Frodo as being similar to that of Lord Peter Wimsey’s Bunter: soldier-servant who looks protectively after his gentleman during the war, even to saving his life, and goes on taking care of the somewhat damaged gentleman after the war is over. Wimsey, however, does recover. Presumably then, had Frodo stayed on in Middle Earth, he and Sam would have gone about the Shire solving mysteries (and I think I just got a good fanfic idea…)
I think Tolkein intended them to have a deep brotherly love, as mentioned. kingpengvin’s post put it really well - they need each other to complete the quest.
However the movie characters do come off as closer than a gentlehobbit and his hobbitservant usually are. And it’s sweet, and it makes me happy to see them together. And it’s inspired a lot more fan fiction than Blackadder and Baldrick, I’m sure.
I hope so. I really, really hope so. :eek:
Miss Mapp – snicker at Frodo and Sam solving mysteries. I love it. 
I was also very much moved by this scene; it’s one of the points at which I came closest to crying. But I also saw erotic aspects to it. I do understand that straight guys wouldn’t see it the same way, but I don’t see how seeing an erotic side to something somehow taints it. I can look this, as I look at many other interactions between the two in both the book and movies, in both a sexual and non-sexual light, and still think they are beautiful moments in either case.