The Increasingly-Fine Line Between Text and Subtext

[pica_scribit]

A few years ago, when Prince Caspian hit the theatres, I was struck with a thought. The creators of the film made the interesting decision to invent a bit of a romance between Caspian and Susan which was not present in the source material. And no one really batted an eye. (Well, hardly anyone.) As someone who grew up reading the Narnia books, and

Comments

[barbara83]

Why have you not seen Sherlock? I hope that you just haven't gotten around to it yet. It is wonderful and very slashy. OMG, last night's episode! I also quite liked the latest Guy Richie film (Game of Shadows) as well.

I doubt ACD was aiming for what we would consider a slashy overtone, although Holmes and Watson are very close in the books. I just take it as the way relationships between men differ now and then.

[jademg]

I really agree with your last sentence there. I was watching the Lord of the Rings movies the other day (I've read the books as well) and seeing how close a friendship Frodo and Sam had is so endearing, and to some it may have seemed a bit slashy, but I really do think that men were OK being close with other men back in the day. It saddens me to think that a close male friendship these days could only be explained by them being "gay".

[pica_scribit]

I suppose there are a couple of ways to look at this phenomenon (probably more). First, there's the idea that comes from our culture that any emotional closeness between men is "gay". This is not a good thing AT ALL. It is bad for men, who have emotional needs for close friendships. But another way of thinking about it is that, back in the day, mainstream lit didn't have room for gay characters, and so if authors were thinking along those lines, they had to code it into the subtext pretty deeply. Now, we are free to have teh ghey in anything we want, which is a good thing, I think!

It makes me think of Sal Mineo's character in Rebel Without a Cause, who was clearly meant to be gay and crushing on James Dean's character (with a side order of daddy/abandonment issues), but you could not come right out and say so in 1955.

[barbara83]

I think the fact that at the moment men in more homophobic societies (e.g. Arab countries and even the Med') are much comfortable holding hands/kissing other men than in more (officially) liberal societies suggests it's the former.

If it's unthinkable that two men would be sexually attracted to each other, then physical and emotional closeness must be platonic. If there's a chance they could conceivably be gay (i.e. if it's accepted that this is a common practice but still has a bit of stigma as in Northern Europe/the US etc) then men may feel the need to strongly avoid such behaviours.

At least, that's always been my theory of why Arab men hold hands!