A bit of a nitpick here, but I feel it’s relevant: homoeroticism usually means that homosexuality is only hinted at, rather than discussed. I’m not sure if there is a similar word for something that talks about homosexuality openly. Maybe “queer-themed”?
The bit in The Symposium I mentioned refers to The Iliad. The Symposium itself discusses homosexuality at length, and very openly.
Anyway, I didn’t see any homoeroticism in the books, just in the movie.
That’s one interpretation, but I’m more likely to see it as a product of its time. Books aimed at teenagers and pre-teens in that era (post-war, pre-sexual-revolution) had to have even the vaguest hint of sex removed. This got quite ridiculous. When a 1968 reprint of a 1932 Nancy Drew mystery came out, a passage was removed because it seemed (to the editors) to be a very vague metaphor for masturbation.
That is how it looks in the cover illustrations of the older editions. The thing in the movie doesn’t look much like a cat’s eye, and I don’t remember it having a ring (I only saw the first two films).
Well, I’ve noticed there seems to be a helluvalot of subtext in any McKellan film. The seen in X-Men 2 where Iceman comes out to his parents as a mutant is right out of one of those coming-out-to-your-parents books for gay teenagers. And then there was a scene near the end of Apt Pupil, between McKellan and the homeless guy.
As for subtext in general, allow me to bring up the scene in Ben-Hur again to show how these things happen. Gore Vidal was working on that movie’s script, and suggested to director William Wyler that the movie would make more sense if Judah Ben-Hur and Messalah were “more than just friends.” That meant the story would be about a pair of lovers seperated by politics and religion, not just a couple of buddies.
Wyler’s decision: “Tell Boyd [Stephen Boyd, who plays Messalah], not Heston.” Charleton Heston is major homophobe, and would never have gone for playing a gay role. But the movie is written, directed, and acted (by Boyd), on the assumption that Ben-Hur and Messalah were gay couple. The only one not in on it is Heston, which produces some very funny results – rent the movie, and watch how the two actors interact, and you’ll see what I mean.
Gore Vidal, no less. And as for the relative absence of sexuality in LOTR, I don’t know that that’s due to the sensibility of the 1950s (because Tolkein was writing in Britain, which was less restrained when it came to writing about sex, and also writing for adults, not teenagers or pre-teens) but more to a combination of an absence of sex in the medieval literature Tolkein was using as his model, and Tolkein’s conservative English Catholicism, which, at that time, generally viewed sex as negative.
Well, maybe I should say, “An absence of sexuality in medieval literature as seen by the Oxbridge Medievalists in the 1930s and 40s”. C.S. Lewis was seen as controversal for even looking at the medieval concept of love. Sex just wasn’t discussed or analyzed in the Oxford history or literature departments then.
Again, I really don’t care whether there’s homoeroticism in LOTR or not.
My sole reason for entering this thread is to challenge SoP’s low-level heterosexism as manifested in his need to tell someone who suggested it to grow up and his sadness at the idea of homoeroticism being inferred.
But doesn’t this bring us back to the literary climate of the period? That in the 30’s and 40’s, some topics were taboo? Granted, the context is somewhat different than the one I initially suggested, but my basic point still stands: the sexlessness of Lord of the Rings is more of a product of its time and place than an attempt at making a psychological point, which is what Spectre seemed to be suggesting.
It was Spectre of Pithecanthropus’s rather extreme reaction that got me into this thread, too, though. I’ve encountered that attitude from people more times than I can count, especially when discussing literature or history. I refer to it as “innocent until proven gay” – the attitude that homosexuality is something that a person can be “damned” of (to use Spectre’s word).
Spectre has urged people to “grow the f*ck up” and said how it “saddens” him that anyone would wonder about a relationship in a book. Wondering if there’s a heterosexual relationship in a story never elicits such extreme reactions from anyone.
Well, yeah, I was just being nitpicky. I agree with you. It does bring us back to the literary, and especially the intellectual climate of '30s and '40s England. I don’t agree with Spectre that Tolkien set out to write about sublimation, and I don’t think Tolkien held Freud in high esteem.
Whomever I offended with my initial response to the OP, I’m sorry. If your enjoyment of a film is honestly increased by imagining the sexual possibilities, that’s your privilege. I even concede that it’s natural to do so, because we all enjoy the idea of love, romance, and sex, and like to see people getting it. Hooking up, falling in love, getting it on, these are all things that make us happy. I didn’t get that feeling from the OP, which struck me more along the lines of asking what if we didn’t have bellybuttons or something like that. I’m not judging Nocturnal_Tick as a person, since I don’t know him very well as a Doper yet, but that’s just how this particular thread struck me.
As basic as sex is, I think it’s necessary to remember that it is not necessarily included in every film and every novel. Given a set of characters and a story we can imagine whatever we want about them, but sometimes what we imagine has no verifiable existence outside the playground of our minds.
A long long time ago, in another online life, I once wrote a satirical tabloid news story to post on AOL’s (very active) Tolkein discussion boards. It described the “outing” of Legolas and Gimli’s homosexual relationship, and was hysterically funny.
I have long since resigned my AOL subscription, and the hard drive that might have contained a copy died long ago. But if you have an AOL account, and their archives go back 10 years, then maybe, maybe, you could find it…
I’m not sure I get you. Someone asks what it would be like if we didn’t have belly-buttons. That would upset you? Why? Such a discussion may not produce much debate, but it would be interesting nonetheless, IMO.
Regarding the OP: IMO, with the kind of hallucinations the characters see when they slip on the rings, somebody was probably dipping. The hallucinations and the things the characters see, are, in that case, likely intended at least partly to evoke an “I know what you’re talking about” feeling in others who have experimented. Kind of a nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more kind of deal, I imagine. Not quite on the Simpsons level, though (“I haven’t seen a bong since the 60s!”).
And yes, the stuff the hobbits smoke all the time is tobacco, although tobacco can be a nudge-nudge, wink-wink euphemism for marijuana. Anyone who’s ever been in a smoke shop should be familiar with this concept: the customer knows it’s not for tobacco, and the shopkeeper knows it’s not for tobacco, but the sign says “tobacco pipes”.
I think you’re not giving enough credit to the anti-homosexual cord in the thread. What about the “If Ian McKellan is gay, he’s pushing the gay agenda on any movie he’s in” theme?
Anyone can watch the LOTR and see gay subtext if they want to. That’s the point of subtext. It’s there for homosexuals like Otto and me, and for Hamish’s bishonen-loving girlies. Everyone else can ignore it, because it’s subjective and as Spectre keeps pointing out, irrelevant to the plot. As for the historical defense, I’m more on the side of Otto. Homosexuality was often disguised by more socially-appropriate relationship structures.
Does it increase my enjoyment of the films? Sure. I hate Tolkien and the fantasy/medieval genre, but I love gorgeous cinematography, good acting, epics, and Faramir. I’m perfectly okay with people who watch the film for other reasons than my own.
And, hijacking, the entirety of the X-Men movie franchise is a metaphor for homosexuality, and I believe, entirely meant to be viewed as such. ("Now I think the American people deserve the right to decide if they want their children to be in school with mutants. To be taught by mutants! Ladies and gentlemen, the truth is that mutants are very real, and that they are among us. ") I’m willing to argue that metaphors are different than subtext, that’s why the drug thing makes sense to us all.
This comment was pretty much criticized by others as being homophobic but I didn’t read it that way. I did not read it as sad because people assume everyone of the same sex who show any kind of affection are gay but that it’s rather sad that people can’t accept the concept of strong platonic love at face value and so must assume that there is something more going on.
It seems that people just can’t imagine a friendship where one is willing to go into dangers and risk their life for a friend simply out of platonic love (or familial even, as Pippin and Merry were both related to each other and to Frodo). Or that we can’t imagine a strong platonic friendship/love developing between two people who have shared common dangers and threats. We can’t imagine affection with someone of the same sex without the act of sex being involved or inferred.
I don’t think it’s a fear or aversion to homosexuality but a sad commentary on the state of friendships.
Don’t most of us have those friendships when we are children? The ones where we risk all sorts of dangers (real or imagined) with our friends and it brings us all the more closer. I remember such things as running up to the door of the neighborhood haunted house with my friends and running back and we survived! Then we hugged and jumped up and down and we were as close as can be and we went off to celebrate with milk and cookies. I remember being afraid of bees but taking a stick and using it to carefully shoo the huge yellow jacket off my friend’s back so it would not sting them and then we both ran like hell and grabbed each other and hugged when we were far enough away. In a child’s mind these things are akin to entering a dark orc filled cave or fighting a balrog and they bring us closer. We are comrades in arms. Later when we discuss and relive these battles, as if they were actual battles, “Hey, remember that time with the bee?” “Yeah, that was great.”, we lock eyes and share a thoughtful and knowing smile glad that our friend was there.
I find it sad that we lose these great friendships and apparently lose the ability to believe that those kind of friendships can exist.
Tiramisu, interesting point… let me flip it over. I have great friends. Platonic soulmates, that I would gladly give my riches or my kidneys to, and share a foxhole with. Kill for. Whatever was required, and there is a grand adventure/us-against-the-world feel to things, even if it’s, in reality, as benign as shared vacations. I don’t watch movies in order to see what’s depicted in reality, unless it’s a reality I’m unfamiliar with (i.e. The Dreamlife of Angels or Hate).
However, I am single, and gay. A romantic fantasy in a movie is appealing. It’s something I don’t have, and in LotR, it’s depicted beautifully, on epic scale with sacrifice and earnestness and, we’ll both agree, love.
Perhaps it is unfair of me to attack Spectre’s opinion, when, really, it is the same as my own. I’m sad at the thought of something being taken away from me.
Now, see, here’s my problem with this argument. Homosexuality = sexuality = dirty. No one complains that Aragorn and Arwen are a sad commentary on how men and women can’t be just friends, and still be loyal to each other. If there were subtext in Lord of the Rings, would that make the relationship less beautiful somehow?
Besides, it’s not like gay people aren’t aware of the existence of friendship, or that we don’t don’t see actors playing “just friends” roles as “just friends.” It reminds me of something the openly-gay historian John Boswell said about the problem of bias and interpreting history, in Same-sex Unions in Premodern Europe:
Can I just second this? People seem to be assuming some big McKellen conspiracy thing here. He’s no Orson Welles; it’s very unlikely that as an actor he would be able to influence the films he’s in to the extent mentioned. It’s true, however, that he did suggest to Sean Astin that he take Frodo’s hand in Rivendell. But he wouldn’t have suggested it if it hadn’t kind of been in character.
I personally think people are absolutely right in thinking that Sam and Frodo, and everybody else, in the original Tolkien were homosocial rather than homosexual. In the film, though, it’s a different matter. We get an abnormally attractive and girlie-looking male in the stereotypically gay ‘passive’ role, pursued by practically everybody, including a whole troupe of wildly beardy manly men striding around with massive fuck-off swords; we get another girlie type become firm friends with the top beardy man; we get practically no actual girlies at all; and there’s all kind of mention of rings and shots of big taaaalll towers and deep, deep crevasses and flaming vaginas and nasty sticky, dank holes and big hairy scary females… in short, don’t blame Tolkien, blame that man Jackson and his madly camp visuals. (And I love ‘em all. Even the flaming vaginas.)
Let me clarify something. In Spectre’s post he made the comment;
He was not saying gay people aren’t aware of the existence friendship or that it was all the gay people’s fault that everyone was making that assumption and neither was I. I wonder why it can’t just be seen as a friendship and be as simple as that.
As for the Aragorn/Arwen thing, they were presented as a romantic couple so why would we assume anything else? Frankly, I dislike the assumption some people make that Aragorn and Eowyn had something going on, too. She loved him but it was unrequited, he admired and respected her and that was that. Why does it have to be assumed to be more than presented?
As for literature and movies in general, one sees or takes what one wants from it. If the author or director do not state that “this is the way it is and that’s that” and someone wants to see a certain subtext in there and that adds to one’s enjoyment then that’s fine. If someone else prefers to see it another way, that should be fine too. It’s all in the individual’s perception. What I don’t like is when people insist that it can only be seen their way and if you don’t agree you have some sort of prejudice against their view.
Someone asks what it would be like if we didn’t have belly-buttons. That would upset you? Why? Such a discussion may not produce much debate, but it would be interesting nonetheless, IMO.