The Gay Manly Men of Film – Part 1

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“Beowulf is both politically and sexually unsure of itself. Like 300, this CGI-enabled parable drenches its young-male target audience in PG-13 homoerotica. Star Ray Winstone’s rippled abs and marble p­ecs dominate many scenes, and the script is a steamy bathhouse of macho staring contests, ribald jokes and tender but tense moments between friends-to-the-death. The undercurrent of gay sexual tension is so loud and proud that it’s hard to see how anyone could deny it.”

Certainly, the film’s homoeroticism has been noted (mostly in passing) by other critics, like Film Freak Central’s Walter Chaw (http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/beowulf.htm):

In essence, it’s the old “homophobia as a means to hide secret gay longings” saw. Only there’s more going than Zaitchik’s complaint suggests on its surface. The problem lies with the interpretation of “homoeroticism” within the film, namely, why films like Beowulf and 300, with their grand displays of hyper-realized manly physiques, invite homosexual connotations. To be clear, the issue isn’t homosexuality, whether it’s really “there” or is merely an interpretive construct, but something best illustrated by a comparison with the interpretation female bodies are subjected to. When a film features female nudity or anything that emphasizes a woman’s body, if a criticism is made, it’s that the film is objectifying women. Note the discrepancy: A woman’s body is objectified, a man’s body invokes homoeroticism. Presentations of the female body are not accused of lesbo-eroticism just as presentations of the male body are not considered to be objectifying. Thus, male friendships, like that of Captain Kirk and Mister Spock, are subject to homoerotic speculations, while female friendships tend to be interpreted in terms of sisterhood. It’s a double-standard that ultimately undermines not only gender concepts, but sexuality and human relationships.

Before developing that point, it’s worth asking whether it makes sense to throw around words like homoeroticism and homophobia when examining films like Beowulf. Let’s start with homophobia. The first question, of course, is whether or not an entire film is homophobic because one or more of its characters are homophobic. I’d say no, for the simple reason that a single character does not a film make. Was Schindler’s List a Nazi propaganda film because some of its characters were Nazis? Of course not. In this vein, “When one of Beowulf's soldiers accuses another of being gay,” we don’t have a symbol for the entire film, but a specific incident involving specific characters in specific situations. In other words, the cigar is just a cigar. Besides, with Angelina Jolie’s digital near-nudity, not to mention gratuitous cleavage views of other female characters and an emphasis on the male characters’ sexual prowess with women, there is a strong, albeit admittedly juvenile, focus on heterosexual lust that arguably marginalizes the homosexual elements.

So what about homoeroticism? The homoerotic interpretation of a film can itself be homophobic, oddly enough, in that the need to point out, examine and use homoeroticism as critical ammunition is a discriminating tactic that implies philosophical and essential, rather than merely practical, differences between sexual orientations. It plays a part in the need to classify and categorize, with the result that sexual orientations become part of a normative system of control – a fancy way of saying cultural conformity. As to whether Beowulf is actually homoerotic, the answer is more a matter of interpretation and subjective response rather than an objective quality of the film.

To be continued…