The Power of Homoerotic Subtext

Please, read this well written and valid article before saying "wtf, I don't see it at all!"
to quote one of the users comments below:
People’s reaction to Reservoir Dogs is a nice little study on heteronormativity. If Orange and White were a man/woman pairing, I’m pretty sure everyone would automatically assume there were romantic feelings there. Since it’s a male pairing on an “action” setting, it gets ignored.


I also suggest you to read the original screenplay





Trivia: although there is no definitive answer to what Mr. White whispers to Mr. Orange, in the French release of the film he says “You don’t want a blow job by the way?” and in the Italian dubbed version he says “Do you want me to give you a hand job, too?”

I've done lots of research around the net about this one, and I've noticed that the people around this topic split in two sides: the skeptics, and the ones who seem to support the theory (well, it's always like that in the end). So I really don't know what to think - aside from that though, it's fun to analyse the parallels and the undertones.



Please do NOT continue reading this if you still haven't seen the movie!
From what I read, the film literally starts with Tyler holding something (a gun), at waist level, that goes in the narrator's mouth. It is a film about people who feel that their identity and masculinity is challenged. Nevermind all the men beating each other throughout the movie, or the scenes where Tyler literally kisses the narrator on the hand, there's also the fact that the narrator becomes very jealous of the time Tyler spends with Marla. Also, the author of the book is gay, but I don't know if it means anything. (source)





in this article it says that the reason this would work is for one main reason that would link to the overall sexual themes of the film and also would help the audience work out the plot twist, and that is masturbation. If, for example, up until meeting Norton had Durden been heterosexual, but became strangely attracted to Durden (he is certainly infatuated with the idea of him in the film) this could suggest something was a little strange about his character. Added to this the fact that when Norton and Pitt fight in Fight Club, Norton is in reality just punching himself… how about the realization that when Norton and Pitt have sex in the film, in reality Norton is just masturbating.

well, feel free to add your opinion. I personally am neutral.

This movie was inspired by the murder of a child committed in 1924 by Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. and Richard A. Loeb, a pair of young homosexuals. The crime shocked America for its absolute gratuitousness (the victim was chosen randomly and the crime had the sole purpose of committing a crime for the aesthetic taste to do it)



What was curious to me was that Rope was obviously about homosexuals. The word was never mentioned. Not by Hitch, not by anybody at Warners where it was filmed. It was referred to as ‘it’. They were going to do a picture about ‘it’. - Arthur Laurents (screenwriter)

it's more text than subtext, but since the movie doesn't explicitely tell that they're a gay couple, I shall put it anyway.

I'd like you to read this exhaustively well written article for more informations about T.E Lawrence's sexuality. Here's an extract: [...] he was captured by Ottoman Turk's in Deraa in 1916 and subjected to humiliating beatings and sexual assault at the instigation of Governor, or Bey. [...] Homosexuality was a taboo subject at that time, same sex rape was even more taboo. The suspicion Lawrence was homosexual is likely to have been a natural by-product of his shocking disclosure, some readers finding a homo-erotic undertone to his retelling of events.

pretty interesting, uh?

Gore Vidal claims to have inserted homoerotic subtext into the script of Ben Hur, treating two male characters as former lovers. The characters otherwise appear straight, and Charlton Heston later claimed complete ignorance of the subtext. (Heston's ignorance was a case of Enforced Method Acting. Vidal told Stephen Boyd privately to act as if his character was in love with Ben Hur.) (source)

you need just one word for this movie: pederasty.
chiaro il concetto?
the entire existence of the protagonist, von Aschenbach, starts rotating obsessively around Tadzio, a symbol for him of a youth gone, but the kid is also the subject of homosexual impulses that Aschenbach was not aware to own or maybe had up then repressed, without, however, want to realize the shocking sexual attraction.



Same as Rope, it's hardly a subtext here.

a perfect example of homoerotic subtext is this movie. After its release many people noted its strange homosexual subtext. Years later the scriptwriter revealed that he intentionally added these elements to the story, but the entire rest of the production crew, the director included, simply never noticed. Robert Englund has gone on record saying that he thinks that Freddy in this film represents Jesse's repressed homosexual desires. Mark Patton (who played Jesse) came out as openly homosexual after the film was released, and thinks that his self-doubts about his sexuality at the time when the movie was shot carried over into his performance. (source)

In "The Celluloid Closet", a documentary on portrayals of gays in film, Rebecca is specifically mentioned as an example of the closeted, but steretypically dangerous and deranged lesbian of that era.



Mrs. Danvers seemed totally obsessed with her in ways that can't be just a healthy admiration. As for Rebecca being disgusted by the advances of men, I wouldn't necessarily call that evidence of her being a lesbian.

as said here, the relationship they both kind of share with Katherine Ross is alright, but she never gets the time in the film to be truly interesting, as the film spends most of its time focused on the two wonderful male leads. But even the fact that they almost share a girlfriend in the film suggests some sort of threesome dynamic, and I for one would have found this element, especially in a film from the 60s, very brave and very engrossing, no matter how unlikely it would have been.
I mean, they even watched each other have sex. You can find more info about this film and gay subtext in western movies here

just how gay this movie is?!











"I can't even get close to a girl -- I'm allergic to face powder, perfume and lipstick. If I get too close to a girl, my uvula becomes edematous, which means inflamed, and if it becomes inflamed it swells up and I can't breathe. And if I can't breathe, that could become fatal."

STRONG lesbian vibes