straight men trying to make Serious war dramas and accidentally making incredibly tender homoerotic cinema is the funniest thing
In his essay, “Masculinity as Spectacle,” Steve Neale seeks to extend Laura Mulvey’s work on the male gaze and to challenge her assertion that the male or male-identified spectator can never look upon the male body as an erotic object. To challenge Mulvey’s assertion, Neale identifies the mechanisms mainstream Hollywood cinema uses to represent the male body as erotic. One way of doing this, Neale argues, is by making the male body the target of violence. In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy – as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh – as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege – as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover – as long as he is riddled with bullets. Violence makes the homoeroticism of many “male” genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability.
really love imagining a bunch a kids and teens on their pokemon journeys staying the night on the couches and floors in the lobbies of pokemon centers, having long talks about their experiences and feelings sharing funny and scary stories and myths about legendaries and trading items and sharing TMs along with sugary snacks and pokedex chargers all while their pokemon are out of their pokeballs and all bundled up in blankets sleeping soundly next to their trainers while they stare up at the stars shining through the glass ceiling over their heads
