# Gay subtext in stories **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 12, 2005, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600 "2005-05-12T20:45:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![tremorviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@tremorviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tremorviolet)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/61 "2005-05-15T15:07:45Z")
> [@calm kiwi](#): > > Is there a secret reason for the whacky tear drops in all Japanese cartoons? It always seemed like code for something to me 😕 Anime has different visula cues from Western cartoons and that’s what makes it so confusing to many people. The tear drop is sweat meaning the character is nervous about something. Another example is the nose bleed charaters get. In Western cartoons, if a character is really excited by a beautiful woman, his eyes bug out of his head. In Japanese cartoons, he gets a nose bleed because he’s so turned on his entire body has filled up with blood. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/62 "2005-05-15T16:41:33Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > Who deconstructs the deconstructors, you mean? It’s a perfectly valid question, but meta-criticism would be a long {and boring} thread in its own right. > > I should have probably stressed in my original reply, as **La Llorona** brought up, that there are numerous schools and sub-schools of criticism out there, who are often vociferously at each others’ throats for a living: the Intentional Fallacy is probably widely, but certainly not universally, accepted, if we can go on what the author says he means, or take a text purely at face value, it doesn’t leave much scope for deeper readings - and, as I suggested earlier, most critics would be out of work. > > Most textual analysis since the 1960’s draws heavily from Freudian analysis, often overtly, but also in the sense that a text can be analysed like an author’s subconscious, separate from what he says or thinks, or says he thinks it means. This is particularly handy in the case of dead authors, who aren’t around to argue intrepretations, although I suspect that most authors don’t bother with scholarly criticisms of their work anyway, and would probably be horrified if they did. > > Does this mean that all criticism is equally valid or invalid, since we can read whatever our own prejudices or inclinations are into texts? I would say no; it’s a matter of subjective interpretation: there are no real “right” or 'wrong" answers, only more or less illuminating ones. God knows there is plenty of indulgent wankery out there, but a good piece of criticism really does help to open up a work, or at least cause the reader to see it in a different light. > > Unfortunately, it’s somewhat easy, and not always illuminating, to do the kind of attention-grabbing “stunt criticism” which reads sexual {and especially homosexual} themes into every work, particularly if the work has two central male characters or is of an “innocent” nature: sorry to keep plugging it, but my contributions to the **Toy Story** thread were at least partially a parody of that kind of criticism, although I still maintain that the reading I reached purely from internal references was at least a viable one, although whether or not it was illuminating is entirely up to _your_ reading of it. > > I’ll do you the courtesy of not ending this with a rolleyes. What my post is objecting to is this ridiculous notion that the stated views of the author, etc, are _irrelevant_ to understanding the text. That they are not always definitive I’ll accept, but irrelevant? That’s just horseshit. That would imply that there is _nothing_ to be learned from looking at the life and views of an author, or the cultural milieu in which she wrote. Nothing at all? Well, you said “irrelevant”. Not merely “not fully authoritative”, but “irrelevant”. And again, I say that’s horseshit. There’s nothing to be added to one’s understanding of Macbeth by learning that Shakespeare wrote it for James II? Nothing at all? Ooookay. As for Freud, I was under the impression that psychologists these days think he was mostly wrong. You might want to read up on that. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/63 "2005-05-15T22:52:00Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > As for Freud, I was under the impression that psychologists these days think he was mostly wrong. You might want to read up on that. I have, believe me, far more than is probably healthy. Psychologists, yes, English critics, less so: although outright Freudianism is currently rather unfashionable, as I alluded in my last post, most New Criticism {which is actually fairly old now} applies Freud’s methods less in “phallic symbol spotting” than in the sense that the text is viewed similarly to an author’s subconscious, and is thus open to analysis beyond his or her stated or surface intentions. This is a vast and complicated subject, and I’m simplifying greatly, partly because I’m 15 years out of practice and too old and tired to read up on my references again, but also because I honestly don’t feel like embarking on a discussion of the relative merits of various critical schools. I am however genuinely attempting to cast some light on the whole process of analysing for subtext, and I would take it kindly if you would drop the sarcastic tone. ---
**Author:** ![Tracy\_Lord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@Tracy\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracy_Lord)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/64 "2005-05-16T01:19:22Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > There’s nothing to be added to one’s understanding of Macbeth by learning that Shakespeare wrote it for James II? Nothing at all? There’s the added understanding that apparently MacBeth was written 150 years earlier than previously thought! ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/65 "2005-05-16T02:38:59Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > I have, believe me, far more than is probably healthy. Psychologists, yes, English critics, less so: although outright Freudianism is currently rather unfashionable, as I alluded in my last post, most New Criticism {which is actually fairly old now} applies Freud’s methods less in “phallic symbol spotting” than in the sense that the text is viewed similarly to an author’s subconscious, and is thus open to analysis beyond his or her stated or surface intentions. > > This is a vast and complicated subject, and I’m simplifying greatly, partly because I’m 15 years out of practice and too old and tired to read up on my references again, but also because I honestly don’t feel like embarking on a discussion of the relative merits of various critical schools. I am however genuinely attempting to cast some light on the whole process of analysing for subtext, and I would take it kindly if you would drop the sarcastic tone. Thing is, you’re trying to have it both ways. Now the author’s unconscious psychology is relevant to interpretation, but conscious intentions aren’t? That’s practically incoherent. Look, as I said, I’m fine with saying that the author’s statements about what was meant isn’t the be-all and end-all in divining the meaning of a text. But decreeing that intentions are _irrelevant_ is just ridiculous. Writing is an intentional act. It’s intention that imbues it with meaning in the first place. That’s the difference between a chimpanzee that happens to type a grammatically correct sentence by happenstance, and a person who types that same sentence. The person can form the intent to _mean_ something. The chimpanzee can’t. (Though it might be able to form the intent to mean something by hand signals - by typing not so much.) Thinking intention is relevant to meaning is a capital-F Fallacy? That’s just failing to understand what meaning is. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/66 "2005-05-16T02:41:08Z")
> [@Tracy Lord](#): > > There’s the added understanding that apparently MacBeth was written 150 years earlier than previously thought! Ah heck, what’s an I or two between friends? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/67 "2005-05-16T02:48:18Z")
> [@Tracy Lord](#): > > There’s the added understanding that apparently MacBeth was written 150 years earlier than previously thought! I haven’t heard that one- please elaborate. Many have argued for a gay subtext in the Paul-Timothy correspondence of the NT. In the movie _Osama_ I got the impression that the old perv who weds her in the end was an ephebophile whose taste was young boys, explaining perhaps his contempt for his wives and certainly his obvious lust for Osama from the first time he sees him/her. (This is not to imply any gay-pedophilia connection of course, but with ephebophiles the gender of the victimized usually _is_ related to the orientation of the perpetrator.) God what a disturbing ending to that movie, incidentally. Now _Orlando_ would be a great debate as to when and where and to what extent the gay sub-text lies. I’ve sensed gay sub-text in Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ but I can’t remember exactly what it was at the moment. Bother. ---
**Author:** ![Tracy\_Lord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@Tracy\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracy_Lord)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/68 "2005-05-16T04:14:29Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I haven’t heard that one- please elaborate. **Gorsnak** typoed “James II” for “James I,” which I pretended to misunderstand as referring to James II of Scotland instead of James I of England. …aw, it’s less funny when you spell it out. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/69 "2005-05-16T05:37:07Z")
Well, remember, kids: “subtext” is just an anagram for “buttsex”! ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/70 "2005-05-16T07:52:20Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > Well, remember, kids: “subtext” is just an anagram for “buttsex”! Well I’ll be damned… :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/71 "2005-05-16T09:16:36Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > Thing is, you’re trying to have it both ways. Now the author’s unconscious psychology is relevant to interpretation, but conscious intentions aren’t? That’s practically incoherent. I seem to be doing an awfully bad job of explaining this, but I think you missed a crucial “similarly” in the post you quoted. It was an analogy between a critic’s analysis of a text and a psychoanalyst’s analysis {that reads strangely tautologically} of a patient’s subconscious. It was probably a confusing analogy, but if we treat the text {_not_ the author; I’m not suggesting that anyone psychoanalyse him or her as a person} as the “patient”, or subject for analysis, a reading of subtext {which is not necessarily a psychoanalytic one: it might well be a Marxist analysis, for example}, is analogous to the psychoanalyst’s interpretation of the patient’s subconscious. I don’t really have any disagreement with your second paragraph: I think that Wimsatt and Beardsley, Private Investigators, _did_ overstate their case in saying that an author’s intentions were irrelevant. As you say, though, they’re not the be-all and end-all, which was really why I brought up the intentional fallacy {I’ll type it in lower-case} in the first place, in reponse to **Captain Amazing** ’s post in which he said “If Tolkein _{sic}_ didn’t intend it, how is it there? I mean, they’re his characters.” ---
**Author:** ![audreyayn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@audreyayn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audreyayn)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2005, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600/72 "2005-05-16T15:12:33Z")
Yes, what the author says later is irrelevent. It may help you interpret the text, but it’s not the text, so it doesn’t really count. If it’s important, it should be in the text. Your job as an author is to convey meaning through the text, if you failed, you failed, shut up about it. If it bothers you that much, learn to write better. Not to mention writers are people. People change their minds, and they lie, and they forget how to write their own characters and end up with Anita Blake. They write beautiful works of art, and then you find out that they’re small-minded bigots who belong to the KKK. I don’t care what my authors think. I only care that they write well and often. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gay-subtext-in-stories/303600.md?page=3)