More BBM

[gaedhal]

This grew out of a discussion of BBM among some
"Queer as Folk" fans, as well as a few general slash
fans.

Comments

[dorset77]

Interesting. I heard a reviewer say he felt the message of the film was to promote gay marriage. His contention is that given the change to do what they wanted, they would have gotten married and accepted. Needless to say, the guy is full of shit.

I read this story years ago and I'm really looking forward to the film. I am intested in how they are going to fill out the story to take it to a two hour film.

The story touched me when I read it but not as a "gay" romance but as a unfullfilled love between two people. It could have been married hetro couple, women, it didn't matter to me, that they were in an impossible situation was what got me caught up in the story. Meeting through the years (much like the film "This Time Next Year") are two people in love with each other but hiding.

[ladooshka]

I think to say that it's not homosexual kind of relationship or not gay will not help to change the core of the relationship, it will be still the same sex relationship. To name it male friendship is the same way to try and avoid to name it as it is in reality.

When I was reading Liquor by Poppy Z. Brite the publisher on inside page of the book put the information about the novel that it is about male friendship, but it actually goes deeper, both young men love each other and sleep with each other. Is it the same way to try and close eyes on existence of the same sex relationship?

I believe that people have to stop be hypocritical, they have to accept it and openly say that same sex love exists how hard we would not try to use religious beliefs to deny it, it's still there and always will be!

Thank you for the interesting post!

[shadownyc]

While I'm still awaiting the movie, I have read "Brokeback Mountain" and I totally agree with all that you expressed. The time period of the '60's and '70's (especially in the regions illustrated) were impossible for gay men to imagine acceptance and tollerance. While "free love" was a catch phrase on the west coast and the Stonewall Riots ushered in the '70's on the east coast, much of everything in between was a dark patch for homosexuals. In fact one of your fics takes place during this time--The Outsiders (I think). You're characters expressed the need to be cautious in public.

Thanks for the excellent analysis.

[xunre]

European men and women in Australia did not reach numerical parity until around 1850, nearly 3 generations after the first European settlement. Colonial governments spent a lot of time and money trying to encourage immigration by marriageable women. So there's a similar history except that distance played a hugely greater role in the society's make-up than in the American West. There's a big difference between the land journey to the West and an 18 month voyage to Australia. The presumption is there must have been a lot of same sex relationships, although the direct evidence is incredibly scant. The evidence for the other solution, forced sexual contact with indigenous women, is sadly extensive.

Apart from women's colonisation schemes, the other policy colonial governments adopted was rigid enforcement of gender distinctions. Arthur Phillip, the first governor, announced publicly that sodomy was the only crime he thought deserved hanging. One of my favourtite quotesfrom the period, by Tim Flannery:

As with the Hansonite imaginings

[gaedhal]

The British Navy was amazingly tolerant of
buggery, as they called it, because they
understood that their entire policy of
exploration and colonization would be
impossible without it. I believe it was
Churchill who said that British colonialiam
(and the navy) was built on "rum, sodomy,
and the lash"! Not to mention the entire
British "public" school system that provided
the leaders of the Empire (including Churchill
himself, who was known to have had affairs
with men in his younger days, including with
matinee idol Ivor Novello!)

[xunre]

Actually, I looked into the Royal Navy thing. It's a bit of a furphy and all that Hornblower slash is deeply anachronistic.

Article 29, Buggery
If any Person in the Fleet shall commit
Buggery or Sodomy with Man or Beast,
the sentence of a Court-martial.

There are extensive records of Article 29 being brutally enforced.

[odietamo_nescio]

Very interesting, xunre. I'm very fond of Peter Carey's novel Jack Maggs, in which he imagines the convict's journey.

Did you happen to see the Channel 4 documentary on Nelson's War? There were some interesting things in the press when it was shown in August.

Andrew Lambert, a professor of naval history at King’s College London, noted that Churchill got it wrong. He was a child of the Victorians, and the Victorians saw the royal navy through their own prism.

The Victorians decided that women had no place on board warships and, with customary zeal, actively wrote them out of the history of the 18th-century navy. However, a significant number of women did go to sea, although they never appeared officially on crew lists. Usually they were the wives of petty officers - older women who were unlikely to excite the passions of the younger sailors. They often acted as nurses, but at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, several women served in the ammunition-handling parties, one was killed, yet another gave birth

[schizojuc]

I wonder what Gale thinks of the movie. I mean he was the first straight actor to take a risk playing a gay guy who actually had blatant visual sex week after week. Now Heath does it once and gets nominated left and right for awards.

[lucinda428]

It's totally not fair, given that Heath wasn't even doing anything unusual by Australian standards. I know it's said to be risking one's US career to play gay in Hollywood, but as I've said elsewhere, I can't think of a prominent Australian actor who hasn't played gay. Hugo Weaving just won our local Best Actor award last month, for smooching Sam Neill (actually he didn't win it for that, but he did it in the course of an excellent performance). Ironically (if it's true it's a risky career move), Guy Pearce and Hugo were both "discovered" by Hollywood while playing gay in "Priscilla".