all my sons
Waffle related to Merlin and Shelter follows. Read at your own risk.
Thanks (belatedly) to true_enough, I have discovered a lovely film, Shelter - an artistic working-class boy just out of his teens, with a lot of family responsibilities, falls in love with an incredibly good-natured and patient slightly older man. Some conflicts and insecurities later, they begin to head for a hopeful future, which includes raising the boy's young nephew.
Thanks to slashweaver, sarren and a lot of fiction writers, I am in the process of discovering Merlin. I cannot love it unreservedly (plot holes and inconsistencies galore, uneven scripts) but I *am* delighted by the relationship between Merlin and Arthur: protectiveness and loyalty inevitably mixed with deception on one side, protectiveness mixed with irritation and (I think, after watching all of season 1 in a 2-day marathon) determined denial on the other.
And all four of the men in question are, give or take a couple of years, my son's age, early twenties. They have the same mixture of confidence and klutziness and sarcastic humour used to hide other emotions. So no, I don't have the slightest desire for any of them.
Identification, then? Possibly. My real-life self looks, sounds and acts female (although gerald, to whose judgement I tend to defer, used to define me as essentially butch). I do, however, admit to having what Daphne Du Maurier cleverly called a "boy in the box", a part of one's identity that is less developed, less mature, and male. My "boy in the box" would, I think, be in his late teens or very early twenties, and would be gentle, geekish and impulsive: Merlin rather than Arthur, Shaun rather than Zack.
And there's also a component of longing, for the sort of confidence that comes of men's entitlement to being visible and adventurous in the public sphere. All these young men have it - and they have a loving partner to boot. Of course my real-life self is, and has been for a long time, determinedly visible and active in the public sphere, but there still is a sense of implicit lesser entitlement to visibility and adventurousness.
I am not trying to make any sweeping generalisations here. Just trying to work out why I am investing some deep emotions in the fictional adventures of fictional men young enough to be my sons. So there.
Thanks (belatedly) to true_enough, I have discovered a lovely film, Shelter - an artistic working-class boy just out of his teens, with a lot of family responsibilities, falls in love with an incredibly good-natured and patient slightly older man. Some conflicts and insecurities later, they begin to head for a hopeful future, which includes raising the boy's young nephew.
Thanks to slashweaver, sarren and a lot of fiction writers, I am in the process of discovering Merlin. I cannot love it unreservedly (plot holes and inconsistencies galore, uneven scripts) but I *am* delighted by the relationship between Merlin and Arthur: protectiveness and loyalty inevitably mixed with deception on one side, protectiveness mixed with irritation and (I think, after watching all of season 1 in a 2-day marathon) determined denial on the other.
And all four of the men in question are, give or take a couple of years, my son's age, early twenties. They have the same mixture of confidence and klutziness and sarcastic humour used to hide other emotions. So no, I don't have the slightest desire for any of them.
Identification, then? Possibly. My real-life self looks, sounds and acts female (although gerald, to whose judgement I tend to defer, used to define me as essentially butch). I do, however, admit to having what Daphne Du Maurier cleverly called a "boy in the box", a part of one's identity that is less developed, less mature, and male. My "boy in the box" would, I think, be in his late teens or very early twenties, and would be gentle, geekish and impulsive: Merlin rather than Arthur, Shaun rather than Zack.
And there's also a component of longing, for the sort of confidence that comes of men's entitlement to being visible and adventurous in the public sphere. All these young men have it - and they have a loving partner to boot. Of course my real-life self is, and has been for a long time, determinedly visible and active in the public sphere, but there still is a sense of implicit lesser entitlement to visibility and adventurousness.
I am not trying to make any sweeping generalisations here. Just trying to work out why I am investing some deep emotions in the fictional adventures of fictional men young enough to be my sons. So there.