A Monday night, the second week of classes in the spring semester of my senior year. I'm lying on the bed in the attic room my brother and I share, reading a book for my Advanced Spanish class. Significantly it's Ciro Alegria's El mundo es ancho y ajeno: Broad and Alien is the World.
I always watch tv while studying, and tonight there's something called Brideshead Revisited on PBS. It turns out to be an adaption of the Evelyn Waugh novel about 1920s Oxford undergrad Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons) falling in love with the flamboyant, decadent, teddy bear-toting, alcoholic Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews).
They run away to Venice together. They go slumming in Soho, along with Sebastian's sister Julia. Then Ryder begins a romantic entanglement with Julia, and the outraged Sebastian dumps him and runs off to Morocco.
You can't go home again. Rewatching today, I strongly dislike Brideshead. Sebastian is a decadent, flamboyant stereotype who ends up dead. Ryder may fall in love with him, but then he moves on to Julia. Evelyn Waugh, like Freud, believed that gayness is a phase -- adolescents, newly potent but forbidden access to the opposite sex, turn to each other. Their brief period of quasi-romance ends when they move on to "mature" heterosexual love.
In 2008, the BBC aired a new version of Brideshead, with Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder and Ben Whishaw as Sebastian. This time there's no subtext: Sebastian is gay. But there's also no romance: Ryder is heterosexual but pretending to be interested in Sebastian to gain access to his vast wealth.
Jeremy Irons (recdent photo)
Later Sebastian hooks up with a sleazy German guy named Kurt (Jonathan Coy), and later still he dies. Ryder can't marry Julia because she's Catholic and he's an atheist, so they just live together. Later he becomes Catholic.
I'm mesmerized. In 1982, surrounded by the hetero-horniness of workplace sitcoms, my parents demanding "What girl do you like?", and the preacher at church bellowing about homa-sekshuls, just seeing two men involved in a romance is a revelation. Sure, no one says "gay," Ryder turns straight, and Sebastian dies, but they walk arm in arm, cuddle, even go nude sunbathing! And everyone around knows! Even Sebastian's mother. Even Julia, who tells Ryder that "all our loves are hints and signals," leading us to God. A same-sex romance leads us to God? Hear that, Preacher?
I'm mesmerized. In 1982, surrounded by the hetero-horniness of workplace sitcoms, my parents demanding "What girl do you like?", and the preacher at church bellowing about homa-sekshuls, just seeing two men involved in a romance is a revelation. Sure, no one says "gay," Ryder turns straight, and Sebastian dies, but they walk arm in arm, cuddle, even go nude sunbathing! And everyone around knows! Even Sebastian's mother. Even Julia, who tells Ryder that "all our loves are hints and signals," leading us to God. A same-sex romance leads us to God? Hear that, Preacher?
40 years have passed. I've studied a lot of LGBT history and literature, and watched a lot of gay movies, published a lot of books and articles on queering fictional texts, and recently I decided to revisit Brideshead Revisted.
You can't go home again. Rewatching today, I strongly dislike Brideshead. Sebastian is a decadent, flamboyant stereotype who ends up dead. Ryder may fall in love with him, but then he moves on to Julia. Evelyn Waugh, like Freud, believed that gayness is a phase -- adolescents, newly potent but forbidden access to the opposite sex, turn to each other. Their brief period of quasi-romance ends when they move on to "mature" heterosexual love.
In 2008, the BBC aired a new version of Brideshead, with Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder and Ben Whishaw as Sebastian. This time there's no subtext: Sebastian is gay. But there's also no romance: Ryder is heterosexual but pretending to be interested in Sebastian to gain access to his vast wealth.
It's more honest -- and there's a lot more nudity -- but nothing can match the joy of seeing same-sex romance on screen for the very first time.
Bonus dicks after the break:
Jeremy Irons (recdent photo)
Matthew Goode
Ben Whishaw
I somehow missed the 1982 version when it was first broadcast- might have to look for it now- a friend who loves it told me it was the clear inspiration for Saltburn
ReplyDeleteCertainly an inspiration, butt Ryder is a more positive character. He has no hidden agenda; he actually likes both Sebastian and Julia.
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