“Homoerotic”, to me, means “erotic images of men appealing to men”, the same way “gay” and “homo” mean “homosexual male”, and are only extended to homosexual women with further clarification.
Yes, strictly semantically speaking, “homoerotic” ought to mean gay male or lesbian. But as it’s usually used, it’s reserved for men.
No kidding! This thread is hilarious. I’m assuming at the very least, that the writer of the OP is gay.
Anyway, as a red-blooded female, I’m with Snickers. If Jake G prancing around with a Santa hat on his dingdong and Gerard Butler being all…oooh, Gerard Butler, is gay, then give me MORE please!
Even though I’ve managed to avoid it for all these years, after this thread I may just have to watch Top Gun one of these days.
What “ugly homophobic crap” was there in 300? I didn’t notice any. Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “hypocritical” in this context. Can you expand on that?
If he is, he’s got issues.
I’d say that the difference between 300 and cheesy early 20th century films of African warriors is that it is highly ahistorical in the case of 300. OTOH, Zulu warriors really did dress like that, at least for pictures. So, the barely-there dress was not used for historical authenticity, and eroticism (homo- or no) is as good a guess as any.
Yeah, the only thing I caught in the movie per se is calling the Athenians “boy-lovers”.
You know how I know 300 is gay? It macraméd itself a pair of jean shorts.
Don’t forget Gladiator.
When I went to see it, a guy sidled down the row I was in and said to me, “can I sit in your lap?”
In retrospect, I did go to see a gladiator movie, by myself, in a gay part of town, but it still took me by surprise.
That’s what I was thinking, but that line is only homophobic if you assume that homosexuals by definition are pederasts. So calling the movie homophobic based on that line is, itself, actually more homophobic than anything in the movie.
Point partially taken, but it’s only been recently that mid-to-early-teens of either sex have been seen as off-limits. I’m not sure what age the Athenians were supposed to prefer, so at the same time their supposed preference could be at the same time be seen as legal but of the “wrong” sex by some.
It’s just like if someone who culturally identified with a homosexually-normed subculture accused all straight small town men of lusting after young teen girls. I would see that as more of a condemnation of heterosexual males than anything else.
Well, Charmed had an endless supply of man-candy guest staring week-to-week, which is part of why I watched it. But I wouldn’t call it homoerotic, no.
The “Athenian boy-lovers” insult didn’t strike me as overtly homophobic. At the beginning of the movie we had images of a scantily clad boy, then a scantily clad boy fighting a scantily clad adult man, then a somewhat guy-guy affectionate scene between an adult and a boy and I figured the homophobes would be pinging on that, and screaming NAMBLA. It’s a shame they felt they had to add the boy-lover insult just so the homophobes wouldn’t think the gay mafia was trying to push some NAMBLA agenda. OTOH, I don’t think they ever used man-lover as an insult. There’s nothing really wrong with insulting someone as boy-lover since we don’t condone that in modern times, even if its ahistoric for 300’s time period.
What irritates me is people don’t differentiate between boy-lover and gay male. It doesn’t bother me that boy-lover is an insult if a boy-lover is what the insultee is. It does bother me greatly to be insulted as a boy-lover because I’m gay, as if the two are synonymous. But as far as I can tell, no one in 300 was insulted in those terms, and homosexuality was pretty much a non-issue in the movie.
On preview, what Miller says.
I’m not interpreting the remark in its historical context (which would be silly in a movie as manifestly disinterested in historical accuracy as this one), I’m interpreting it in the contemporary context in which the screenplay was written. Historically, the Spartan’s attitude towards pederasty was not much different than the Athenians, and likely a good deal worse: part of the indoctrination of young Spartans into the warrior culture involved violent rape.
Frank Miller was called on the “boy-lovers” line when the book came out, since most educated people’s image of Spartan themselves involves a little pederasty. Of course, the histories we have of Greece in that period are Athenian, & I suppose Miller can hide behind the possibility that the Athenians misrepresented what the Spartans were really like.
Oh, & in general, I think using “homoerotic” for any photographic depiction of scantily clad hyperfit men is deeply sexist & offensive. First, it’s not necessarily about eros or sexual desire. Physical fitness is desirable to have & to emulate in itself. Secondly, those who find naked musclemen sexually desirable do so for reasons of their own (the viewers’) sexuality. That doesn’t mean it means anything erotic to those of us without that sexual preference, or that that is it’s primary meaning. But the use of “homoerotic” seems to go beyond, “I’m gay-male & find it hot”–which is fine–to making (often sniggering) inferences about the fimmaker’s intent & the reasons that people watch it.
I confess, there have been times I myself cast those kinds of aspersions on people that were into things I wasn’t. I’m not blameless. But I know what being sexually turned on feels like, & I know what thrilling to a macho display of virility in combat & sport feels like, & trust me, for me, they are very different things. Not mutually exclusive, not contradictory, but as different as a sugar high & the feel of a cool wind.
All that said, if 300 were a little “homoerotic” in that it would be about love (rather than sex itself, sex is not combat, combat is not sex) between soldiers, it would make sense. But I think it’s supposed to be virilist.
For scientific accuracy, we should probably quantify the degree of homoeroticism in a picture. From the movies mentioned already, I think the best unit would be “gladiators”.
Wait…what about LOTR? 
Ha, as I was saying…
Funny, that struck me more as typical city rivalry rhetoric, at most one step beyond what, say, citizens of Chicago routinely say about New Yorkers, especially in the context of Leonidas posturing in front of his inner circle and a Persian messenger.
In ancient Greece – Athens and Sparta – pederasty was the only socially acceptable form of homosexuality. Homosexuality between adults was considered ridiculous. (You had to be Alexander the Great to get away with it.)
Sexist? How on Earth is it sexist?
True to a point, and if we were talking about, say, Pumping Iron, or another film which was primarily about physical fitness, you’d be arguing from firmer footing, but 300 went out of its way to display the (mostly) naked male form. Spartan’s didn’t march to battle wearing nothing but a helmet and a pair of leather speedos. They usually wore actual armor when they fought. It was a conscious decision on the part of the contemporary creator of the story to make the Spartan’s fight almost totally nude. It’s very difficult to read the film as saying anything other than, “Look how incredibly attractive these musclebound hotties are.” The eroticism (homo or otherwise) is inescapable and, I think, clearly deliberate.
I don’t get your point here at all. Obviously, half naked men are only going to be attractive to people who are turned on by half naked men. And the half naked chick who played the oracle is only going to be erotic to people who are into half naked chicks. What of it?
So, when I say I think 300 was homoerotic, or when lissener says it, is it still “sexist and deeply offensive?” How about when Equipose says it?
I think we’re all pretty clear on what it feels like to be sexually turned on, and what it feels like to watch a macho display of virility. For you, they’re two different things. I’m more than willing to trust you on that score. Will you trust me when I say that not everyone feels the same way you do?
I think it’s a much harder to sell 300 as being about “love.” It’s an intensely carnal film that revels in the raw physicality of its characters in every frame, with only a passing mention of the emotional states of the characters.
Excellent! Let’s do it metric-style. Brokeback Mountain is set at an arbitrary baseline of 100 gladiators. Proceed from there.
Maybe I misunderstood the quote, but it read like Snyder purposefully made the “villain” stereotypically gay because he knew that the target audience is uncomfortable with homosexuality and this way they could easily identify and despise him.
While watching the film I thought he just made Xerxes appear to be such an “other” from the Spartans so as to emphasize the differences between the two groups, but now it seems as if his intent was to have the teen male audience say “That guy is gay. Gross.”
To me, the portrayal of Xerxes didn’t seem so much to be homophobic, although the meeting between him and the Greek leader was, somewhat, but like Eyebrows said, mostly to emphasize the foreignness of the Persians (albeit in a non-historical way,) and also, to emphasize their effeminacy, which was an actual historical perception, valid or no.
OK, I can understand that if you’re gay, any celebration of raw male physicality is subjectively “erotic.” That’s understandable. A woman just standing in a loose sweater breathing is subjectively erotic to me. (A plain woman, with no interest in me at all, who’s a total butch dyke in her actual sex life, even.) Well, not necessarily all the time, but you can see my point. That doesn’t mean it’s intrinsically or objectively “erotic.” (Note that by “erotic”, I here mean what is more carefully termed “sexually arousing,” “sexy,” or maybe “attractive.”)
When you use the word “homoerotic,” it sounds like an objective descriptor to the ears of straight men & lesbians–for whom it’s not automatically erotic just because there are oohh, boy body parts exposed & stuff. I’m sick to death of gays talking as if their subjective, totally projected “subtext” is more important than the actual text of every movie in the world. The world does not revolve around you personally nor gay culture in general.
Real eroticism, in a literary sense involves more content than just a body that’s an idealized version of my own body (obviously not to you, gay boy, but to the rest of us). Your sense of this film, which is about virility & the glory of violence, as erotic, is eroticism only on the most superficial level. And it’s not the primary sense of the film. (I feel like a feminist trying to explain to a man that women in art aren’t just sex objects.)
But mainly, when you use the word “homoerotic,” it’s sexist because you’re acting as if only male eyes look at these pictures. Sexy men being sexy, being virile, aren’t to be assumed to be doing it for desirous male eyes. They can be playing out there sexiness in the normal fashion, as the male half of heterosexual sexuality. But “homoerotic” implies that they are gay, which attempts to steal from heterosexuality, male & female, much of the spectrum of sexuality, eroticism, & appreciation of the male form (whether as one’s own or the opposite sex).
“…Men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living will return to a grey civilization. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in it, and fight for it, and fight in its name against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal.”
Leslie Charteris,** The Last Hero**