it was pretty gay of yuo to step on labs' post like that, man.
I thought we were making fun of the fans of 300 not because they liked a movie that had really naked Spartans in it, but that they were insisting not that liking handsome buff men wasn't gay, but that it was gay and that's NOT WHY THEY LIKED THE MOVIE DAMMIT.
Indeed it was, al. Sorry, didn't see it before I hit post.
And MORE HEGEL: "If [the movie] Point Break is homoerotic, in other words, then so is Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit."
At the end there, you got yourself worked up to a pretty good Opinionated Grandman impression.
Nice.
Yes, this makes me feel so much better. I'd really wanted to see 300 when it came out, but hadn't because I'd heard it was gay. (Thanks a lot, Becks.) Now I'll make a point to watch it.
It's ok, gay brother.
Seriously, this does get 300 wrong. I walked in thinking that it was going to be gay, and it was much, much gayer than I'd thought. The Persian is a big ol' drag queen-- sort of like this blog in that way.
8 - totally. It's one thing to make this argument about Point Break and another about the gay gay gay 300.
I don't get the post's lumping of "homoerotic" in with Narcissistic rather than Homosexual.
But this makes sense.
Ah, I had a long comment that got lost...the point is not that liking 300 makes you gay. It's that the campy gayness of 300 is even funnier because so many people are oblivious to it. It's like being in on the secret code.
At least in literary theory, homoerotic has always been separate from homosexual, along exactly these lines. Journalism conflates them because conflating is what journalists do. Homoeroticism is about admiration and violence, desire mediated through the destruction of the body of the Other or of the woman. Homosexuality is about being gay. They're quite different. I have long been annoyed by the ways movie reviewers fuck this up.
I do think there's something to the post. I haven't seen 300 either, and it sounds like a Tom of Finland cartoon, so probably the argument of the post doesn't apply to 300 specifically, but there's a lot of male behavior in the US that gets policed in the name of homophobia that doesn't have much to do with a desire to have sex with other men.
Pwned by a dozen people saying the same thing.
it sounds like a Tom of Finland cartoon
Exactly why I like it!
Homoeroticism is about admiration and violence, desire mediated through the destruction of the body of the Other or of the woman. Homosexuality is about being gay. They're quite different. I have long been annoyed by the ways movie reviewers fuck this up.
Am I somehow mistaken in perceiving the word "erotic" as relating to sexual desire?
It's that the campy gayness of 300 is even funnier because so many people are oblivious to it.
Are that many people oblivious to it? I mean, this isn't a sort of Star Trek Kirk-and-Spock slash-fic wish-fulfillment "don't they kinda sorta seem to dig each other" thing, this is lots and lots of naked men in leather thongs piling on top of each other. I refuse to believe that anyone but the most closeted, in-denial, ragingly gay fratboy could not see the gay in this film.
Please disregard the confrontational "somehow" in 16.
Not all desire is about wanting a cock in your ass. Some strong desires are about narcissism or aspiration.
No, you horrible person, I will not ignore your so-called "confrontational 'somehow'"!
I thought "erotic" only referred to sexual feelings, not aspiration.
Not all desire is about wanting a cock in your ass
Great line.
This discussion is insufficiently transgressive.
This discussion is insufficiently transgressive.
I should rent Point Break. I've been told that it's a surprisingly good movie.
This discussion is insufficiently transgressive.
I refuse to believe that anyone but the most closeted, in-denial, ragingly gay fratboy could not see the gay in this film.
You'd be surprised. I was talking to a senior faculty member who'd just seen the movie. He's not anti-gay at all, but he's both extraordinarily straight and pretty square w/r/t the ghee. He didn't see the gayness at all-- it just never crossed his mind.
Don't drag clarified butter into this, Labs.
My friends, let me also recommend "homosocial" and its Sedgwickian noun-phrase buddy, "homosocial desire".
(Also, "homonym" never fails to get a chuckle out of the 7th grade English class.)
I should rent Point Break. I've been told that it's a surprisingly good movie.
Lies, all lies.
Let me, in turn, recommend St. Homobonus. He's up in Heaven, ready to intercede on your behalf.
The War Nerd says 300 delights amateur fascists.
Point Break is SO FUCKING AWESOME. The name of Keanu's FBI agent is Johnny Utah, for Christ's sake.
VAYA CON DIAS, BRAH!
And Point Break has the best, cheesiest last line of any movie ever made.
(I just saw it again with my little brother when we were in Australia, right after we'd been to the beach where the finale takes place. [The real beach, not the fake substitute they use in the movie.] It blew his 18 year old mind with its fantastic over-the-top cheeseballness. He loooooved it.)
He's not anti-gay at all, but he's both extraordinarily straight and pretty square w/r/t the ghee. He didn't see the gayness at all-- it just never crossed his mind.
Some people are just that secure in their sexuality.
Of course, 300 wasn't gay *enough*, because the Spartans actually were gay and so was ancient Greek warrior culture. Well, more bi than gay but whatever.
Look, it's pretty obvious that homosociality and an admiration of masculine prowess is central to straight male culture, and the more macho the subculture the more homosocial it is. It's probably for that reason that the idea actually having sex with other men is so threatening, because it threatens homosocial bonds that apparently have to stay asexual to work properly. An interesting thing about Greek warrior culture (and the Spartan "army of lovers", etc.) was that for whatever reason they combined certain forms of homosexuality with macho homosociality. But even then there was probably fairly strict regulation of homosexuality in Greece. Modern macho culture doesn't want any part of that though.
Point Break is totally great. Katherine Bigelow is totally under-rated as an action director.
I dunno, I found that article annoying, in the typically Slate way - claiming too much relevance for its modestly contrarian premise, some nobody looking down his nose at some group of allegedly hidebound experts, etc.
Also, I'm pretty sure that, for his argument to make sense, he has to deny the real-world existence of the concept of homoeroticism. Because what he's saying (I think) is that what looks like homoeroticism is actually just how (certain) men relate to each other. But the idea of homoeroticism is (I think) that an awful lot of normal male behavior has underlying physical/sexual/emotional issues the expression of which traditional homophobia prohibits.
IOW, the writer says, cigars are always just cigars. I don't think you have to be a committed Freudian do doubt that claim, and you don't have to be a queer theorist to think that there's an awful lot of (repressed) gay in both 300 and the NFL.
Or to map all this into Unfogged terms, homosocial desire is when the guys all sit around longing for the good old days before there were women and feminist dudes here to muck up their jokes. Homosociality longs for a freedom from the other gender so you can "really" "be" "yourselves."
Homoerotic desire is when one admires someone of the same gender very intensely in a way that causes one to desire closeness and intimacy with that person. I think 300 fits the bill by being about the physical and emotional intimacy of conflict. Conflict with Others usually mediates this intimacy and keeps it from being:
Homosexual desire is when one consciously longs for physical intimacy with one of the same gender.
That is, homosociality requires the absence of the Other, homoeroticism is mediated by the presence of the Other, and homosexuality is like, "What Other?"
you don't have to be a queer theorist to think that there's an awful lot of (repressed) gay in both 300 and the NFL.
But the point is that homosociality and admiration of strength in macho cultures doesn't necessarily need to be sexual. The assumption that all forms of intense interpersonal bonding are necessarily sexual, or indicate a sexual urge that is being repressed, is a very narrow and culture bound one.
You're right that Slate and its "contrarian" fetish is annoying, though.
42 and 43: awesome, AWB. The difference between a professional cultural theorist and an amateur.
Thanks, AWB. Apparently the word "homoerotic" does not actually imply anything erotic. You can understand people's confusion.
46: Eroticism is about desire for physical closeness, not necessarily about sex. Most children have obviously erotic relationships with their parents, but it doesn't mean they're fucking their parents.
The use of scarequotes in 42 rawks.
44: But isn't it also a problematic -and culturally bound - claim that intense male interpersonal bonding is never sexual? That's all I'm saying - the author's argument amounts to "Nope, nope, no gay here. Definitely no gay. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm 200% straight."
I might also add that the Classical Greeks clearly thought that sexual desire had a role to play in male bonding. We're working with the same psychology and physiology, so I'm not really willing to accept that, 2500 years ago, teh ghey was part of homosociality, but now it plays no role. Because, um, it just doesn't, OK? Now shut up about it!
But homoeroticism and homosexuality are linked via narcissistic admiration. Joe Orton said that everyone wants a big cock, but sometimes it has to be someone else's.
Is 300 gayer than Top Gun? Or just more tawdry?
54: that's like a Nicklaus/Woods comparison. 300 benefits from our advanced training techniques and better gay technology, but is it really gayer, in itself? Who can say, really? We will ponder this since the dawn of time.
So even "erotic" doesn't necessarily mean sexual? I've never heard it in any other way.
I guess my presence in this thread has been pretty pointless.
Trying to deny homoeroticism in the American context -- especially that of the aesthetic of "Occidental, Republican military glory" -- is patently absurd. It's hardly random that the constituencies for that kind of militaristic filmmaking and for homophobic rhetoric overlap so heavily, and that homophobic rhetoric (especially in Republican America) customarily describes gay sex as something you shouldn't mess with because it's as sinfully addictive as crack cocaine. (Or meth, I guess.)
I'm sure repressed homoeroticism doesn't explain the entire 300 phenomenon, but it's pretty dubious to claim there isn't a hell of a lot of it going around.
"my presence in this thread" s/b "everyone's presence in every thread."
We will ponder this since the dawn of time.
Beautiful.
16: Am I somehow mistaken in perceiving the word "erotic" as relating to sexual desire?
My understanding was that the misconceptions about the word "homoerotic" came from the first part, not the second. You aren't mistaken to think "erotic" relates to sex. You're mistaken to think that "homo" is limited in meaning to gayness. It just means "same" or "within the same group," right? Self-erotic. Attracted to yourself, or maybe idolizing or idealizing your own eroticness. Admittedly, though, I formed that opinion before people who actually know stuff about things started commenting, so go with the experts if you want.
55 is a masterpiece.
The jackassery in the article begins with But sophisticated critics routinely dismiss this sort of quasi-heroic cinematic friendship as "homoerotic," and they do so with such offhand certainty that it's easy to miss how doltishly unimaginative this interpretation is, I think; as AWB notes, one of the reasons that action movies are so fucking gay is their relentless efforts to totally displace women and all aspects of the feminine (sorry, Lori Petty! I still think you're kinda hot!). It's triangulation without the mediating female presence -- whether Johnny wants to fuck Bodhi (and, really, if you saw Roadhouse, how could you not) is immaterial to the gayness of the movie, which is what distinguishes the homosocial action movie from the gay camp of something like Johnny Guitar.
I agree with cryptic ned that the homoerotic/homosexual distinction that AWB is making isn't right. Erotic things are things related to sexual desire. People can have a strong attraction to or admiration for a person of the same sex but it isn't homoerotic unless it is a sexual attraction.
so go with the experts if you want.
If you do, the terrorists will win.
I think Ned is right about what the word "homoerotic" means for the vast majority of people. The meaning used here at unfogged is more narrowly academic. It is ok for us to use a more nuanced definition, but you need to acknowledge ordinary language and allow that people will use it.
Look Ned, you have a groundswell of cross posted support!
Huzzah for lowest-common-denominator interpretations of words that in certain circumstances are terms of art meaning different things!
AWB: I never thought of children as having erotic relationships with their parents. At least not relationships of which I approve.
I would disagree that the "erotic" in "homoerotic" can be about physical closeness that has nothing to do with sex. It's about a certain charge that is related to sex, even if it doesn't actually seek out sex qua sex. You can find something erotic without wanting to fuck it, but not without it somehow turning you on or playing on something in you that is related to the sexual impulse: Thunderstorms are erotic (for some people). Relationships can have an erotic element without any literal sexual desire, but there's got to be some kind of sex-feeling in there somewhere, something with that frisson that originates in the same place or a neighboring one.
At the same time, (homo)erotic isn't the same as (homo)sexual, contra People can have a strong attraction to or admiration for a person of the same sex but it isn't homoerotic unless it is a sexual attraction. It has to have a sexual-tinged element, but it doesn't have to be straight-out sexual attraction. Compare the weird erotic component of the feelings lots of girls apparently have towards horses, though I'm sure that a vanishingly small fraction of them actually want to fuck or be fucked by the horse. It's just that horses... turn them on.
70: have read Freud. You know what I meant.
Yeah, what is with the girls and horses thing?
Whereas, girls and the family dog, that's completely understandable.
They're hipposocial, not hipporotic. I read it in Slate.
72: I guess I don't know what you meant. Were you just joking and I missed it? It seems to me in watching friends with young children that there's a significant level of eroticism in their interactions, although nothing on an icky level of eroticism. A desire for physical closeness. A mother nursing her child is a good illustration.
I find women being turned on by horses extrememly erotic. I'm not sure why.
I knew this dog in high school that jerked off a horse.
I'm sure that a vanishingly small fraction of them actually want to fuck or be fucked by the horse.
I've heard that 90% of high school girls engage in sex play with their horses.
Don't make me link to that video of that guy getting it arseways from a horse. Don't think I can't.
You know, until this article, Feeney was one of my favorite writers on Slate, and I found myself agreeing with him over and over. But I think he's pursuing a naively conservative line of thought here. There's certainly a casual tendency to conflate the homosocial with the homosexual, but to back away from it all and relate it to a classical tradition is the kind of gesture that makes classicists over-the-top doth-protest-too-much GAY. That casual tendency references numerous lines of thought that Feeney would have been wise to go into. Every action hero wants to fuck his action hero buddy is a strawman; there's a sexual element to buddy movies and war movies is not as easy to refute.
One of the problems is that we read sexual as wants to fuck. As many better commenters have explained, it means more than that (though also more than wants to touch.)
I got the feeling that he either ran out of room, or opted for the provocative over the careful.
Maybe Feeney's point is to be found in the "most ... dismiss" rather than the "as homoerotic."
Am I the only one who read Michael Wood's review of 300 in the LRB a few weeks ago?
People don't call 300 homoerotic because it offers an "idealised portrait of heroic masculinity. They do it because it contains countless scenes along the lines of the unbelievably camp Xerxes coming up behind Leonidas, clasping his shoulders and saying: "It's not the whip they fear".
Did I forget to mention that line comes shortly after "I require only that you kneel"?
I knew this dog in high school that jerked off a horse.
88 identifies possibly the greatest moment in all cinema.
90: No, that's when Toshiro Mifune cuts down Tatsuya Nakadai in Sanjuro. Happy to help.
90: Actually, that's when Jim Carrey makes his butt talk in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
It could happen.
Holy shit. Maybe *that's* how we learned to walk.
I still am very unclear on the terms being used here, and why academics have to go and muck up conversation with things like saying "'sexual' just means you want to touch someone."
The sexual includes in it the erotic. The erotic does not necessarily include in it the sexual. Eh?