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

January 18th, 1982, 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.  Tonight the only options are two boring movies, MASH (doctors during the Korean War), and 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:

Gemstones Episode 1.3: Kelvin outs himself, Baby Billy gets naked, and Scotty shoves his wiener into Gideon's face.. With some bonus wieners.

Previous: Episode 1.2: Eli catches a snake, Christian poses nude, and Kelvin sees the Devil's Testicle

In Episode 2, we saw problems in the developing Kelvin/Keefe and Judy/BJ relationships: Kelvin is too hesitant, and BJ too eager.  But the main takeaway was Gideon: Jesse's estranged son is one of the blackmailers!  Episode 3 will develop the Gideon/Scotty plot arc further, postponing Kelvin/Keefe to their centric episode, "Wicked Lips."  But first we need Kelvin to out himself a few times.

Title: "They are weak, but He is strong."  From "Jesus Loves Me," a hymn by Anna Bartlett Warner published in 1862, but based on 2 Corinthians 12:10, NIV: "When I am weak, then I am strong."  You can't get much weaker than these guys.

Baby Billy's Cock:  The childhood home of Eli's late wife, famous Gospel singer Aimee-Leigh. A poster advertises the "Sing for Joy" concert tour, featuring the Freeman's Gap duo, Aimee-Leigh and Baby Billy.  Two children on the cover of a single album, "Misbehavin'."  They must have been a brother-sister act as children, before Aimee-Leigh became a serious gospel singer.  A young woman yells that Baby Billy's hot milk is ready; she brings it to him as he bathes outside.

We see the back of his head -- now white-haired -- as he describes the satellite church his brother-in-law Eli is giving him -- "in the middle of everything -- fun chain restaurants, name-brand clothing stores."  We see his face -- fans of Danny McBride's work will recognize him as Walton Goggins of Vice Principals in old-age makeup. 

He stands -- a huge cock fills the screen!  Objectively it's not very big, but we've never seen a close-up of a cock in any tv show before, and rarely anything at all, so it is startling and highly erotic, underscoring that Baby Billy is a creature of prodigious sexual appetite. 

Although Walton Goggins has been nude on camera before, in this case they hired a stunt cock belonging to an unidentified 80-year old man from town,  

Trivia note: Baby Billy is actually 66 or 67 in this scene, and Walton Goggins is 51.  

Baby Billy promises Tiffany, his new wife -- Number Four, plus a number of boyfriends -- a world of "riches and glamour" with the Gemstones. 

Eyes on the Prize: Gideon meditates on the Tao te Ching as the family prepares for church: "Eyes on the prize. To the still mind, the entire universe surrenders."   I don't think the Tao te Ching advises anyone to blackmail their parents.

On the way to the Salvation Center, his brothers ask about the celebrities he met in Hollywood.  Well Vin Diesel (left). Jesse tries to one-up him by claiming to have met Telly Savalas, star of Kojak (1973-78). Jesse was not born until 1981, so he couldn't have watched in real time.

The Satellite Church: Judy, BJ, and Kelvin are scoping out the dying shopping mall where they opened the satellite church: "All around America, capitalism is dying," Kelvin points out. "That's when we step in."  He will never display this insightful knowledge of economics, or anything other than muscles, again.  

Queer code: First Kelvin does a little femme flutter and hand-on-waist.  Then a hot girl walks past: an opportunity for him to demonstrate that he is heterosexual with a double-take?  No,he  looks the other way. 

Baby Billy is greeting the congregants in front of gigantic photos of himself and Kelvin.  Why Kelvin, in particular?  Maybe to indicate that they're both outsiders, struggling to be taken seriously by the family.  Or because they both have huge cocks.

As Baby Billy begins the service, the siblings watch from offstage.  Gideon tunes up his guitar.  Judy comments that he's "looking tasty. Staying in shape." Kelvin agrees; "He is. That's showbiz, right?  You to to keep a tight physique."  You just outed yourself to your sister, Kelv Baby.

Jesse disagrees: lots of people who work behind the scenes are "fat as fuck,."  But, Kelvin insists, if you want to be a star, you have to be a "specimen...a straight unit." According to the Urban Dictionary, a "straight unit" is a guy who is tall, strong, muscular, and well-hung. How much farther out can Kelvin get?

Afterwards the siblings meet Tiffany.  They disapprove of her countrified lack of refinement, her teeth, and her insistance that they call her Aunt Tiffany, even though she is younger than 

More wieners after the break