"Decline and Fall": Theology student sent down for immorality in 1930s Oxford, with Oxfordian dicks and bums

 

After Brideshead Revisited appeared on television in 1982, everyone thought that Evelyn Waugh was a gay writer, and started buying up the original novel from 1945, as well as his other novels, Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies.  Turns out that he was straight-ish, regretted the gay romances of his Oxford years, and thought of same-sex love as decadent and immoral, or at best adolescent experimentation that you give up once you are old enough for the "real love" of a woman.   So I don't expect the  2017 BBC adaption of his Decline and Fall, streaming on Amazon Prime, to have any gay characters. 

Or maybe not.  Waugh derived the title and central theme from The Decline and Fall of the West, by Otto Spengler, which theorizes that societies inevitably decline into moral decadence.  Including LGBT people.  So maybe there will be some homophobia.

Scene 1: The Bollinger Club at Scone College, Oxford -- har, har -- is trashing their common room.  Meanwhile, quiet theology student Paul Pennyfeather  (Jack Whitehall, top photo) is sitting quietly with his friend Potts (Matthew Beard, left), who wants to go to a church tomorrow and "make some rubbings."  He means rubbings of tombstones, but...har, har.  Paul refuses, whereupon the friend says "I'll make some rubbings for you."  I'll bet you will...

On his way home, Paul runs afoul of the Bollinger Club, who strip him naked and force him to run across the quad.  Although he is not responsible, he is expelled from Oxford for "moral malfeasance."  

Scene 2: Generally men sent down for moral failings become schoolmasters, and there's a position available in Llanaba, Wales, to teach English, French, German, Latin, and coach cricket.  Paul doesn't speak German, but the job agent tells him to fake it.

Scene 3: Paul arrives at Llanaba, finds his way to the school, which is actually quite ornate, and is introduced to Captain Grimes (Douglas Hodge),  just as he is disciplining a student for whistling.  The other students were whistling, too, but "it makes no difference."  He gets 100 lines, and next time a beating. 

Then the Headmaster  and his daughters, whom Paul snubs.  Not into girls, are you?  He's in charge of the fifth form (15-16 year olds), games, carpentry,  and fire drill, and he'll be giving Best-Chedwyth organ lessons.  "But I don't play the organ."  "You do now."

Scene 4: The shabby Fifth Form classroom.  Headmaster advises Paul not to mention why he was sent down, and rushes away.. The students make fun of "Good morning" and role call, lock his desk drawer, and give him trick chalk. 

Scene 5: After the first class debacle, he rushes to the common room, and meets the hard-drinking Prendergast:  "You'll hate it here.  I do.  We all do."  Then to his room to unpack his stuff and be depressed.

Cut to dinner: teachers have to eat with their students. Paul is still depressed, the students still disrespectful, the food greenish slop.  

Afterwards, Captain Grimes escorts him to the pub. They discuss the Headmaster's two daughters; Grimes is engaged to "the haybale," leaving "the male one" for Paul.

About the Fifth Formers: Don't try to teach them anything, just keep them quiet and beat them.  Grimes isn't cut out for teaching; he keeps getting sacked at private schools for "doing things," but fortunately he's a public school alumnus so he always gets another job. In Britain, "public schools" are like the private schools in America.  

During the War, he "did something" that almost resulted in a firing squad, but because he was a public school alumnus, they just transfered him to Ireland, where you can "do things" without penalty.  Same-sex acts?  But they wouldn't get you a death sentence in Britain at the time

The leering Philbrick (Stephen Graham, left) approaches and asks if either of them would fancy a woman tonight. You got any men? They refuse.  Grimes says that he doesn't really fancy women.

More after the break

A Discovery of Witches: Some lesbians, a gay tease, a very important book, and Matthew Goode's goods

 

On to the next of the new paranormal tv series on Netflix, A Discovery of Witches.  

But it's nowhere near Halloween.

Prologue: "It begins with absence and desire.  It begins with blood and fear,  It begins with..." Coffee and bagels?  No, "a discovery of witches."

Scene 1: Nice establishing shots of Oxford.  Matthew (Matthew Goode) complains that this was once a world of wonder, but it belongs to the humans now. Demons, vampires, and witches have all gone into the closet.

Cut to a blonde woman rowing in the Thames, then running through the university, taking a shower -- gratuitous nudity, at Minute 2, no fair! --  eating breakfast, packing up her stuff, and pausing to gaze despondently at a photograph of her and her boyfriend.  Actually, the lady in the photo seems a year or two older, so maybe it's her lookalike sister or mother.  Looking at her makes Rowing Lady extremely depressed, so she must be dead.

Biking across town, locking up her bike -- whoops, her papers fall out and scatter, but she uses her magic powers to retrieve them. Fortunately, no one sees her.

Scene 2: Rowing Lady, Diane, is a Visiting Research Fellow who took her D.Phil. in the History of Science from Oxford, published two prize-winning books, and got tenure at Yale.  In the History of Science? 

In her powerpoint presentation, she theorizes that the Renaissance alchemists were actually describing real chemical processes.  She's going to research the manuscripts of Elias Ashmole , after whom they named the Ashmolean Library. A lady rushes up and offers her a position at Oxford, and wants to know if her book is ready yet.  She hasn't started the research yet, nitwit. 

Scene 4:  Diane has coffee with an old friend from Oxford, who gazes at her -- ex-girlfriend?  She was trained in classical history, where there are no jobs, so she's just an adjunct.  And there are jobs in the history of science? 

The friend invites her to the coven tonight, but Diane isn't comfortable around magic after what happened to her parents.  Witch burning?

Scene 5: In another building, a guy -- maybe Matthew?  -- is praying with his rosary.  Um -- Oxford is Anglican.

Left: Matthew's butt.  

And his cock.  It's not much, but he's an upper-class straight white man, so he'll be in a position of power regardless.

Cut to Diane in the Ashmolean Library, ordering books from the hunky library guy, played by Ezra Idun.  But the book whispers at her, and some pages have been cut out.   And the Praying Guy hears a heart beat!  In other news, her needy friend drops by to flirt with her some more.

As Diane types her notes, the lights flash and everybody hears the whispering.  Praying Guy gets a call from a woman, who explains that their blood is reacting to something.  They must be vampires.  Catholic vampires who go out in the daytime.  He uses his super-hearing to locate the disturbance

Meanwhile, Diane finds that touching the pages burns her!  She returns the book and rushes out of the building, bumping into a passerby who looks like her dad! Praying Guy is watching her suspiciously.

More after the break

"Ripley": A slow, artistic version of the gay-subtext con artist/murderer, with Tom's bum and Dickie's dick

 

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) stars Matt Damon as the charming con-artist Tom Ripley, who has a gay-subtext romance with Jude Law's Dickie before murdering him and adopting his identity.  The 2024 version is a tv series, and reputedly overtly queer, taking the gay subtext into text.  I reviewed the first episode.

Scene 1: Rome, 1961, atmospheric black and white.  Having just killed someone, a man with his face obscured puts on his shoes and hat and starts dragging the body down a palatial staircase.  

Scene 2: Six months earlier, New York. Tom (Andrew Scott) gets up in his run-down room in a residential hotel, walks the mean streets, steals someone's mail, and writes out a fake "payment overdue" notice

Then he goes to a bar and starts one of those highly-closeted 1960s hookups with a guy named Al (Bokeem Woodbine) Whoops, no, Al is a private detective, hired to find him and hook him up with the wealthy Mr. Herbert Greenleaf.  Tom refuses, then leaves to ride the subway and walk the mean streets some more.  

Back home, someone left his business card: From the IRS!  

Scene 3: Tom continues his scam: he steals payment checks, then calls or writes the sender, claims that it was lost in the mail, and has them send a new check to his own post office box. Nice establishing shots of the art deco post office and bank.  

Uh-oh, the clerk thinks something is wrong, and goes to consult the manager. Tom has to run away, and close down the whole collection agency scam!  What to do next?  Maybe Herbert Greenleaf's job won't be so bad...

Scene 4: Greenleaf Shipbuilders.  Tom is escorted past the big ships to the office, where Herbert Greenleaf tells him about the job: his son Dickie,  Tom's old acquaintance, has been living in Italy for years, pretending to be a writer or a painter, but really just goofing off.  Greenleaf wants Tom to convince Dickie to come home.

Why Tom?  They didn't know each other well.  Because none of Dickie's other friends wanted the job. Why would someone on the bottom of Dickie's friends list, who he doesn't know well and doesn't care about, be able to talk him into leaving Italy?  Tom must have a really big dick.

Scene 5: While he's considering the job, Tom has dinner with the Greenleafs. Back story dump: He went to Princeton. When he was young, his parents drowned. Uh-oh, maybe he killed them. Then they look at some photos of Dickie when he was young, in college, and now, in Atrapi, with Marge -- "girlfriend, friend, who knows?"  So Dickie is gay.

Scene 6: Tom at the tailor's, inspecting the clothes the Greenleafs bought for him. He gets his passport, signs travelers' checks, throws out his scam checks, and we're on the Orient Express!  In the Swiss alps; I guess in those days you flew in through Paris?   

He writes to his Aunt Dottie, who is getting a dental procedure -- which we see, for some reason: "You're free of me now, and I of you." I like the slow, moody structure, with the beautiful, weird shots of fire escapes, catwalks, and sculptures, but it's a little too slow.  How much time do we need to devote to Tom brooding?.

Scene 7: Naples. Tom gets off the train, changes some travelers' checks, and asks for a bus to Atrapi.  He is pushed into a cab instead, and arrives at a darkened station in the middle of the night.  Nothing to do but wait until morning, then get on the real bus -- for a trecherous drive through the mountains!

Atrapi, finally!  He asks someone, in bad Italian, for Richard Greenleaf, and is directed up endless stairs, through arches and corridors, up more stairs. to a villa.  Where he is told that Richard is down on the beach!  Is this supposed to be a comedy?

Scene 8: Tom at a shop, trying on a very bulging swimsuit, while ladies giggle at him. He asks for something a little less revealing. 

The beach is deserted -- oh, there in the distance is Dickie, lying down, fully clothed, with Marge's head on his thigh.  Tom wakes them and introduces himself, pretending that this is a chance meeting. Dickie doesn't remember him, but invites him to go for a swim.  Uh-oh, Tom is afraid of the water, since his parents drowned.  He won't set foot into the water.

More Dickie after the break

Revisiting Brideshead Revisited: Does the groundbreaking portrayal of (temporary) gay love hold up after 40 years? With bonus dicks.

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. 

 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?

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: