Brothers. It's a word.

[johnnypurple]

I was writing a comment to thimpressionist and thought maybe I'd make a post about this because I've been thinking about it a bit and was wondering what anyone else's thoughts were on the matter. (Also, I should be doing the dishes and also my bit for the tg-crack round robin, but instead I'm doing this. Anything to procrastinate!)

Brothers. A discussion in which I

Comments

[rhosyndu]

It would not appeal to the masses - the masses who I like to (optimistically) think are not homophobic (though maybe a chunk of them are), but who might not watch a show about two same-sex attracted guys.
Oh, undoubtedly; mention sexuality and it suddenly becomes the main focus of the thing, whether you mean it to or not. And as for putting people off the thing, I've heard more than one person say that they think that that's why Hellbent wasn't very big - it's a gore movie with gay main characters - which probably put off the usual young male audience.

There's only one show I can think of (Taggart) which plays its gay character without any fuss over his sexuality; he's a copper, and he's gay - and that's it. It comes up in the odd episode, but you could see several without knowing that about him.

Why aren't men allowed to be close, just men, no qualifiers? Why is this so problematic?I would love to have a more complicated reason than this, but I suspect it's just that people attribute virtually everything to sex. [The worst part

[johnnypurple]

Oh, I've not seen Hellbent - for some reason in my head it's one of those superhero movies with someone like the Hulk who's red not green. But that's not right, is it? ;-) ... ooh, i'm reading the plot of it on Wiki. It sounds nice with lots of 'punish the gays' violence. "The killer attacks Eddie yet again, this time sucking Eddie's artificial eye right out of his head and knocking him over a railing." - hahahah! :D

Ahem. Anyway, I've not seen much of Taggart - not enough to notice that gay cop (or even remember much of the show).

I suspect it's just that people attribute virtually everything to sex. Yeah, I do wonder if, as a slasher, I can't really complain about this or I'm contributing to that factor? As in, that people can't be close without there being some sexual attraction there - which I totally don't believe is true. But I guess with the lack of same-sex couples depicted, part of the appeal of wearing slash googles is that you create more same-sex couples by reading them that way. Maybe if there wasn't such a lack, then

[wolfy_writing]

If they weren't brothers, you really couldn't have any John Winchester-equivalent. Because you'd get some older guy who trained them in this, who Dean chose to follow and Sam didn't, without the childhood stuff, and with a totally different dynamic of why Sam would get drawn back in, or have gotten drawn into hunting in the first place.

You could definitely do a different show, with a broadly similar premise (two guys traveling the country and hunting demons), and have that be interesting as well. But it would be different.

[johnnypurple]

Oh yes, of course. But what about Boondock Saints? (do you know it?) Did they have to be brothers? And if they weren't brothers... then probably you wouldn't have all the touching and nudity that goes on in that film. Because that would have been just a bit too gay. But it's ok because they're brothers. ;)

Now, seeing your icon, I'm thinking about Ewan McGregor and Charlie Whatsisname on their epic bike ride of slashy glory acround the world. They were two pretty close friends.