Gay subtext in stories

In My Humble Opinion
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QuickSilver’s thread (the accidental hijack)
QuickSilver had a thread about how many people in his office have assumed he’s gay because he’s a metrosexual (well-groomed, stylish good-looking man) whose boss is openly gay. They claim he got his job by having a relationship with said boss. This is total BS, according to QuickSilver, and I sympathize with him, because I hate when people just start analyzing things and making assumptions without any real basis.

I made the mistake of comparing it to how many older stories and many works from other cultures are often interpreted as being gay because they don’t conform to our modern American macho image. Or because gasp they portray men feeling tight emotional bonds to one another (like Police and Soldiers do), or they have male characters showing tender feelings for one another.

This is a pet peeve of mine.

I should’ve realised right-away before I even posted that people would interpret this as my condemning gays, or saying there are no gay intellectuals, or that there aren’t gay characters in classic literature (thank you very much, Excalibre and Scott_Plaid)

This is simply NOT the case ; I myself am bisexual, and I don’t believe anything of the sort. My only point was simply what was stated above (in double-asterisks).

Excalibre, RTFirefly, and Scott_Plaid all wanted to debate my use of LotR as an example of a story with no gay characters that often gets associated with it. Scott_Plaid also argues with me over my use of Gundam Wing and Megaman X.

If you want to see the whole story, I strongly encourage you to skim through that thread for our posts, then come back here (it’s only like 6 or 7 replies).

Anyways, as this was spiraling into a total hijack, I decided to try and move the discussion to a new thread. I don’t feel this is really GD material, so this seemed more appropriate to me.

To the point: Okay, I already said my piece on LotR, and am waiting for Excalibre’s quotes. Megaman X, yeah, so Zero is bishonen (pretty-boy), so what? Lots of “powerful, mysterious” characters in Japanese Anime and Manga are drawn as bishonen, that doesn’t mean anything. X isn’t really Bishy though, just very cartoony (in the tradition of Megaman), it just always bothers me that because Zero is bishonen, and he and X are very close (ala veteran soldiers, Scott_Plaid I already said this in my first response to Excalibre, you didn’t need to point the comparison out to me, and if you wanna talk with me, please read my posts completely) people are always making them out to be a gay couple (I’m not talking about stuff like Bob and George , where it is meant as ridiculous parody, or even Plague’s Misadventures , for the same reason).

As for Gundam Wing, I am willing to concede the point. I was not aware they had intentionally left the series open to interpretation. It always seemed blatantly clear to me that Duo hooks up with Hilde, Wufei was just a misogynist (sp?), and yes, Heero was meant to be with Relena. They’re played off one another so much, and between the whole ‘desperate longing while looking into the sunset and sighing his name’ thing Relena’s always doing, not to mention Heero’s fierce protection of her made me assume they were in fact meant as a couple. As I said, I was always open to the idea Trowa and Quatre might be gay, because they’re played off one another as often as Heero and Relena, not to mention neither ever has a girl played as a romantic interest for them (Trowa was “like a little brother” for Catherine). But okay, I’ll concede that it may be left for the viewer’s own interpretation. However, the link you gave seems to back up my side of the argument more than yours, really.

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So is there a question in here or is this a long statement?

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I’m sorry, the point of the thread would be to discuss which stories you feel may have a gay subtext or not, and why. It’s largely for me and the guys to continue discussion from the other thread so we aren’t stealing attention away from what QuickSilver was writing about.

I just wanted to head off further misconceptions by explaining where I was coming from. And yeah, I kinda start off with counter-arguments to Scott_Plaid’s replies to my statement in the previous thread.

But any series you wanna talk about along those lines, go ahead…

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Ooh. Can I bring up one? I’m a slasher, by the way. [Cult]We do not attack our own.[/Cult]

Remus/Sirius in the Harry Potter books. In the movies, everyone’s flaming, but the books are completely non-Remus/Sirius. I’m fine with it as a fanon (fan created factoid), but as canon (i.e., the books), I just don’t see it. They’re very good, close friends, but I see almost no romantic hints at all between the two. Yes, they hugged, but don’t guys hug? (There’s a Girl!hug, and a Guy!hug, or so I was informed, but that’s because the heterosexuals are afraid to look gay.) Anyway, it used to be one of my pet peeves, but now I just ignore it. Subtext is subtext, and it’s everywhere. You could make the same case for many Male/Female friendships.

I have to agree with Excalibre though, Sam/Frodo is evident. I find Legolas/Gimli slightly creepy (in reply to your reference on the other thread), but I didn’t even understand the Legolas/Gimli subtext until I saw RotK. I first read the books nearly four years ago, and even then I thought Frodo and Sam were suspiciously close. (I, of course, was young and innocent, and attended Catholic school, so I didn’t recognize it right away.) I understand Sam/Rosie is obviously stated, but I like the idea that Sam is bisexual. Some people read interactions as subtext, some don’t, but I do. I can’t say much about GW though, although as I’m to understand, it is the gayest fandom in the history of the internet. If so many people see those relationships, can it really be overimagination? It can, I suppose, but it’s highly unlikely.

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Well, a few of the obvious ones would be Shakespeare and his Possibly-Extremely-Gay Antonios: Antonio and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, Antonio and Bassanio in Merchant of Venice, and Antony and Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra.

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Now, with that said, I either make a find some small piece of support for a homosexual subtext, or think it would be interesting to find one, and then keep my eyes open for some, once I found it. It is interesting to note that the original books actively discouraging such things matter not the least. Now, Harry and Draco in the books doesn’t work. However, many writers post such convincing stories, and carry over so many of the character’s personality traits, that I am convinced it really is possible. In other situations, the points for the character being attracted to a boy might be there, and far more overwhelming then for a girl. (Digimon, season 1. Con: Matt is a boy, and in stories, unless said otherwise, boys like girls Pro: Matt and Tai roll around on the ground, in their underwear together, Matt and Tai fights, constantly, and get up in each other’s faces, Matt looks into a mystical pool which reflects one’s thoughts, and sees Tai, etc. all of which are in the original series.)

P.S. But aren’t Matt and Tai kinda young? Yes, but the stores, and fanart I have seen extrapolate their personates, and show them when they are older.

P.S.S. Besides the main girl being assumed to wind up with the main girl, what evidence is there for Relena/Heero?

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Am I the only one who thinks that when Annakin killed the Sandpeople village in Attack of the Clones, he was really trying to kill the gay part of himself with that big phallic shaft of throbbing light? Or that back when Han-Shot-First™ it was because Guido was trying to tell him euphemistically he’d left him for Jabba in his heart?

I guess so.

In that case I’ll go with these:

Gore Vidal, an uncredited screenwriter on Ben Hur, recounts at length in some of his essays and in the documentary Celluloid Closet that a gay subplot was written into the Judah/Messala relationship in the screenplay for the 1959 adaptation. Heston still denies it but according to Vidal, Stephen Boyd understood it and ran with it as finally the enmity between the characters makes sense.

The book that I’ve heard [conservative straight] people [including my own sister] deny there was any lesbian subtext in was Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Evidently the lack of a Queer as Folk Lesbian Sex Scene in the movie and the novel means they were just friends (never mind that the author, Fannie Flagg, is gay and that the character was based on her aunt and her aunt’s girlfriend).

Louis & Lestat/Lestat & Armand/Louis & Armand was clearly meant to mirror the gay relationship cycles of the Castro where the first books were written.

Brick was clearly in love with “Skip-p-p-per!” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, though the Paul Newman/Liz Taylor version downplayed (but didn’t altogether erase) this.

While not gay exactly, I often wondered if the older boys and girls in Oliver Twist were hustling. Certainly Dickens would have been familiar with male prostitution in the Victorian slums.

I always felt Ashley Wilkes was a closet case in GWTW. His complete lack of interest in any woman save for the cousin he married (almost by arrangement) and his lack of passion even for her was an indicator.

I probably read a bit more than James Dobson would into Henry Higgins’ comment “Eliza, not all men are… confirmed bachelors… like me and [Colonel Pickering]. Most are the marrying sort.” Otherwise his failure to take any romantic interest in her, long after she’s let it be known it would be reciprocated, is either totally classist (which Higgins really wasn’t “Pickering treat a flower girl as if she’s a duchess and I treat a duchess as if she were a flower girl- it’s the same to all”) or because for some reason this middle aged man is heterosexual just isn’t the least bit interested in an attractive (so much so that a crowned prince singles her out to dance with her at a crowded ball) young girl who thinks he hung the moon (maybe he only digs Asian chicks or something). Besides which, the fact that Higgins, still young enough to be in full swing romantically and sexually, not only doesn’t have a girlfriend anywhere abouts but doesn’t think twice about letting a young woman move into his home (and orders her into a bathtub) without concerns he might fall in love with/grow attracted to/enter a relationship with her only makes sense if Higgins is a bit more informed than the audience is about his ability to control himself around women. (Even the final song in the musical version has nothing to do with Eros- “I’ve grown accustomed to her face”- he’s saying that he cares for her and he’ll miss her tremendously, but it’s hardly a romantic heartrbreak number.

I must admit I’ve never seen gay subtext in the Ruth/Naomi relationship (I see it as mother/daughter) or in the David/Jonathan relationship (though the fact that my brother and I have the first names David and Jonathan may have created a personal block) and certainly David was straighter than the road to hell in the rest of his life (his life would have been easier if he had been gay). The Achilles/Patroklos relationship certainly has room for it though, as do quite a few other myths (then of course there are a few myths, such as Zeus/Ganymede, where it’s not exactly subtext).

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Well, obviously, I’m not saying people CAN’T make their own interpretations. I’m saying it bothers me when people make an interpretation of a series and proceed to espouse it as factual, when the series explicitly talks about the matter.

As I said, I concede the point about GW, because, okay, if the story is intentionally leaves it up in the air, then yeah, go right ahead (see my post about Trigun in Cafe Society, for example). If it is maybe not intentionally left openbut particularly unclear, or we’re merely having an open discussion (which is inherently framed in an “I think…” perspective), then yeah, go for it.

But in a story where it is clearly laid out otherwise, like Taichi and Yamato in Digimon, it bugs me that people often start making assumptions because they’re close, etc. IIRC, in season two, after Taichi chickens out of attempting the relationship with Sora hinted at in the movies, she starts dating Yamato; there are several emotionally awkward scenes with the teenage “Tai” and Sora in season 2 that have remarkably well-written romantic tension for a kids show.

If you wanna talk about Digimon, I never really saw it in the other characters, but I always thought Ken from season two had kind of a gay-vibe myself (when they first used DNA-fusion, I thought for sure that’s where the show was going, and that we were going to see the show get butchered ala the Sailor Moon dub’s heavy edits to cover-up the lesbian relationship between Uranus and Neptune, among other things). Even when Yolei starts to pursue him, he never seemed very interested. I was honestly surprised by the epilogue, where they marry and have kids.

As for GW, I already said earlier in this thread, there wasn’t anything specific as to why I thought the way I did, it was just the overall representation of how they related to one another that led me to the thought (and not just cause they’re the main guy and girl). But yeah, it never came out and said anything, so chalk one up for a big-ole’ question-mark.

PS. Sampiro, it’s Greedo, not Guido. I’m pretty sure you’re just trying to be funny, but c’mon.

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This would probably get more responses in Cafe Society, btw.

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If you want an analysis of the homosexual subtext in the Toy Story movies, try here:

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I thought it was! I beamed here from the aforementioned thread.

H3Knuckles, I do not understand your objections. Are you saying that unless they show str=ong affection, above a certain threshold, they are automatically considered straight? That seems quite odd, seeing as how while that might (or might not) be the way the author planned it, you yourself are bisexual, and know that a boy can date a girl without necessarily being straight. Also, I can not believe you really think that people are claming that such couples are gay is a statement is fact. No, it is fanon. Some of it is quite interesting. (Knight Rider: KITT, the car on Knight Rider, is actually built around a Cylon brain that crash-landed on earth at the end of Galactica 1980.) Oh, and as for digimon, the moment I saw the show, I could see how passionately Tai and Matt fought, and all the rest, and my mind was made up. Besides, in most drama series, when the two leads fight, it usually indicates that they are hot for one another. For a good example of a lemon (sexy story) illustrating this point, see: Rhionae’s story “Any Which Way You Can”, at the fansite Oxygen: the Taito-ML Archive (No, I will not direct link to it! I learned my lesson in another thread.)

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Subtext? It’s bloody text.

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Jonathan is trying to disguise his friend David, who is on the run from Jonathan’s manic-depressive father. Later David says something to the effect of “His love was dearer to me than the love of women”, which I interpret as “I was closer to him than I have ever been to any of my wives” (of which he had quite a few) rather than a sexual reference.

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Two older films that have a clear gay subtext:

The Maltese Falcon. Guttman tacitly admits he is gay and that Wilmer is his lover. It’s missed today, but when Sam Spade called Wilmer Guttman’s “gunsel” it’s 100% obvious: “gunsel” in that time period meant a young homosexual, usually in a relationship with an older one. Simiilarly, the look Spade gives when he catches the perfume on Joel Cairo’s business card is an indication the Cairo, too, is gay.

Bringing Up Baby. Cary Grant utters the immortal line “Because I suddenly went gay all of a sudden” when he’s wearing Katherine Hepburn’s robe (Yes, “gay” did have that meaning back then in certain circles). Later, he says “I’m just waiting for a bus on 42nd Street,” a common gay pickup spot (and “waiting for a bus” was both an euphemism and an excuse if the cops caught up).

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Not to mention that Peter Lorre stops just short of fellating his cane. (This scene is in Celluloid Closet.)

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While Sam/Frodo is obvious, from what I gather, Tolkien himself was somewhat homophobic (well, no more than most of his generation), and didn’t intend it. But yeah, it’s definitely there.

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Let us not forget Edward Everett Horton and Erik Rhodes in Top Hat. They’re so blatant about it even Horton’s wife comments on it.

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I think you mean Eric Blore, not Rhodes.

I was going to mention that, too, especially when Horton says something like, “I’m making a big hit with the ladies” and Fred Astaire says incredulously, “You!!!”

In Modern Times there’s a scene in a prison. If you take your eyes off Chaplin during the scene where the prisoners are lining up, you’ll notice one man using stereotypical “swishy” gestures.

There’s a subtext of homosexual obsession in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, at least on the part of Bruno.

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I have read that in the novel on which The Lost Weekend was based, the main character was homosexual, but that this was cut from the movie. I have never read it.

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If Tolkein didn’t intend it, how is it there? I mean, they’re his characters. He created them, he knew how his characters thought or felt better than anyone else could. If you see a gay subtext, that’s because you’re bringing your own biases to the text.