"Caravaggio's Shadow": As time goes by, the gay Baroque painter becomes more and more straight. With nude Italian men

When my generation was growing up, teachers, reference books, and movies always presented historical figures as absolutely, undeniably straight.  My paperback copy of The Importance of Being Earnest said that Oscar Wilde was imprisoned "on scandalous charges."  I asked the teacher what those charges were. She said she didn't know.

In the 1980s, we started to uncover the "lies, secrets, and silence," reveal the gay men and lesbians of the past who had been denied us.  We collected them like beacons of hope in a homophobic world: Plato, Aristotle, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Gertrude Stein, Michelangelo...and Caravaggio (1571-1610), who introduced the Baroque style of bright, naturalistic color to Italy, who scandalized the art world by using thieves, beggars, and prostitutes as models for religious-themed paintings.  And who was gay.

Everybody in West Hollywood went to Caravaggio (1986), by filmmaker Derek Jarman (who announced that he was gay later that year). We were expecting a lot of cute Italian guys (there are some), and hoping that they would be nude (no). 

We were also hoping that Caravaggio would be presented as gay, but resigned to the likelihood that he would be straightwashed: turned heterosexual, or mostly heterosexual (a few men as trivial dalliances as he pursued the Woman of His Dreams).  

He was straightwashed.

As a child and teenager, the artist (Dexter Fletcher, left), is the victim of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.  This "turns him" gay, or rather pansexual. 

As an adult (Nigel Terry), he is a decadent figure like something out of a Pasolini film, consorting with men and women, although he prefers women.   He seduces both Raduccio (Sean Bean) and his girlfriend Lena.  But Raduccio is just a dalliance; the heterosexual romance is True Love.  Then Raduccio kills Lena, and a distraught Caravaggio kills him.  Gay lives must always end in tragedy.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

"Da Vinci's Demons": An absurdly heterosexual Da Vinci, a bi guy who only likes ladies, two monstrous gay predators, and a lot of penises

 

Last night Da Vinci's Demons, appeared on our Peacock recommendations.  We didn't realize that it was from 2013: Peacock keeps the date of tv series secret.

Of course it would turn gay artist and inventor Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) straight: every historical figure from Shakespeare to Cole Porter gets straightened in contemporary media.  But when I was studying comparative literature, one of my fields was Renaissance Italy.  Plus there were hints of the paranormal, secret societies and such.  So why not?

Big mistake.  It was disgusting.  I can't even bring myself to do a scene-by-scene, but I'll post some of the nude photos.

1. They straightened Da Vinci (Tom Riley) in the most offensive, slap-in-the-face way possible.  He starts out painting a naked woman of "exceptional beauty," then discuss the incredible beauty of the Woman of His Dreams, Lucrezia Donati, over and over and over.  Finally he manages to have sex with her for ten minutes of her boobs.  .  

2. His apprentice Nico (Eros Vlastos), who grows up to be Niccolo Machiavelli, gazes longingly at the bare boobs, too.  It is absolutely imperative to demonstrate that every man on Earth is heterosexual.  

At least Machiavelli was straight in real life.

3. DaVinci's buddy Zoroaster (Greg Chillan) mentions that he's been with men in an offhand comment, then goes into detail about the exceptional beauty of the hundreds of women he's had sex with.  He likes ugly women, too, because they're better in bed.  

4. There are two gay guys.  I know, every man on Earth longs for women's boobs, but these people are not men, they are odious, slimy monsters who have nonconsensual sex with teenage boys.  The first, the Duke of Milan (Hugh Bonneville), is killed immediately after he kicks the boy (Matthew David) out of his bed.  Serves him right for being gay.

More homophobia and some penises after the break

Pasolini's "Arabian Nights": The less well-known tales told with penises and homophobia

Between 1971 and 1974, Italian filmmaker Piers Paolo Pasolini produced and directed three adaptions of famous Medieval stories.  The Arabian Nights (Il fiore delle Mille et una Notte) was the last, and the most ambitious, with filming locations in Yemen, Iran, and Nepal.  

If you've seen the other two (The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales), this one will be familiar; most of the same actors, especially Pasolini's lover Ninetto Davoli (left) and his protege Franco Merli, below, whom he discovered working at a gas station in Sicily.

Don't worry, he's 21 in this scene.

Some of the same annoying bits as in the previous movies: dozens of people sitting around singing for no reason; lengthy closeups of random people with bad teeth grinning idiotically at the camera; stories that merge into other stories, so you're never sure what you're watching.

Pasolini eschews the more familiar stories, like Aladdin and Ali Baba, to concentrate on Nur Ed Din (Franco Merli) who loses his favorite slave girl, and wanders around, crying and having erotic adventures while searching for her.

Inside that story is another, about Aziz (Ninetto Davoli), who depends on his girlfriend for advice on how to win The Girl of His Dreams.  It ends badly.

And a few others.  Prince Tagi (Francesco Paolo Governale) falls in love with a girl through hearing a story about her, but she doesn't like men. 

More after the break

Pasolini's Canterbury Tales: More gay characters and cocks than Chaucer imagined

 

The Canterbury Tales (I Racconti di Canterbury, 1972) is my favorite of Piers Paulo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life (others include The Decameron and The Arabian Nights), maybe because the set-up and many of the stories are familiar from my college claasses, so I don't get lost in the abrupt sedgeways.

And because I saw it last of the three, so some of the cast was familiar: Pasolini's lover Ninetto Davoli, left, as a comic-relief buffoon, Franco Citti as someone morose and frightening,  Although I'm still annoyed by the closeups of random people with bad teeth grinning at the camera for no apparent reason, and the groups of people sitting around singing for no reason.

There is less full-frontal nudity than in the others, but for some reason the penises on display are much more impressive. 

The biggest of the lot -- probably the biggest portrayed in any mainstream film -- belongs to John McLaren.

Pasolini includes adaptions of 8 stories:

More after the break