"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

Gemstones Episode 3.6: BJ swallows a lot, Keefe learns about hard wood, and Kelvin gets a girlfriend. With nude boxer bonus

Previous: Episode 3.5: a gay boy's bare butt, a pukka shell necklace, castration anxiety, and three random cocks

In the last episode (before the interlude), we saw the family shattered, with Judy/BJ and Kelvin/Keefe breaking up and the Montgomery boys plotting against Eli.  Now we're going to see life amid the ruins.

Title: "For Out of the Heart Come Evil Thoughts." Matthew 15:19: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." We don't need to match the Gemstone with the sin: they are all guilty of false witness, lying to others or to themselves.

How to Make Things Right: BJ didn't move out, after all,  but the two are barely speaking. Judy asks what she can do to make things right. He doesn't know.  She is despondent. Remember that in 2000, she worried that she would never find anyone who would love her.  It took 18 years, but she finally found someone, and now it's over.

Gay joke: "I swallow a lot, but this may be something I can't choke down."  You just need a little practice.  Ask Keefe for some pointers. 

The Montgomery Boys Leave:  At Eli's mansion, the Montgomerys thank the family for "straightening them out."   Kelvin suggests that it happened "when we dressed them up."  That sounds like a gay reference.  

Jesse says "They're ready to fuck": their next steps should be girlfriends,  intercourse, wives and kids, the whole heterosexual trajectory.  To start them out, he gives them his monster truck, the Redeemer.

 As they drive away, Kelvin takes off his "wedding ring."  If he leaves it off, the relationship will really be over.  He'll be single again.  He puts it back on.  But maybe he is thinking of a heterosexual trajectory of his own. 

Taryn is Back: We cut to Kelvin introducing Taryn, who we last saw at Keefe's "wieners and ice cream" party, as his new assistant youth pastor.  A kid asks about Keefe, and he gets all bitchy: "He is leaving to pursue other opportunities.  Not even sure why you keep bringing that up!" -- while fiddling with his wedding ring again.  He continues to fiddle -- and look despondent -- as Taryn leads the kids in a dance. 

Paying off the Scandal:  The siblings meet with Stephen, his wife, and their lawyer.  They want $500,000 for "damages and emotional distress," or the affair goes viral.  So it's like the blackmail over Jesse's sex-and-drugs party in Season 1, but this time there's no tape.  Judy could just deny that anything happened.  She could even sue him for slander.

Martin suggests paying the money, along with an apology.  Kelvin must be wondering: if it's worth $500,000 to keep an extramarital affair under wraps, how much damage would he cause the church by coming out  -- or being outed.  He doesn't like Taryn in that way -- he doesn't like women in that way -- but what choice does he have?  

After scenes where Baby Billy and Jesse discuss the hologram Aimee-Leigh idea, and BJ stalks Stephen, Kelvin tries to find out if the relationship is really over.

The First Reconciliation Attempt:  We find Keefe working at Woodpecker's Carpentry.  Wood-pecker, har har, the first of many phallic references in this scene.  His earring, necklaces, and rings are gone -- for safety, or to keep closeted?  

Suddenly Kelvin appears. Looking around nervously, Keefe asks "Brother Kelvin, what are you doing here?" Note that he uses formal titles to reaffirm that they have broken up: they are just pastor and parishioner.  No doubt he's worried that Kelvin will out him by referencing their relationship or just being flamboyant.  Kelvin does try his usual titty-tweak, but Keefe doesn't respond.  You're broken up!  You're not allowed to take liberties anymore!

Gay joke: "Master Bishop has taught me a lot in the ways of hard wood." Tell me more about your...um...hard wood.  The odd title "Master," not used for master carpeters, led some fans to speculate that he and Keefer were involved in a BDSM relationship. 

 Wait -- how long has he worked there?  Surely it's only been a few days since the breakup.

Kelvin asks "Have you found happiness?" An odd question. Why not just ask if he likes his new job.?  Keefe says that he has, but of course he's lying.  He's busy working on a reconciliation rocking chair.  He uses the  punching gesture that straight guys sometimes use to ward off physical contact: a bro-hug would be too painful.

Apparently Kelvin expected Keefe to be crying and miserable, lost without him, like in the Season 1 breakup.  Seeing that his ex is doing ok, he becomes bitchy, denigrating the carpentry job and declaring that he's having lots of fun with Taryn: "everybody loves her...no one misses you at all." The happiness facade fails: Keefe frowns and orders him to leave. 

We cut to Judy asking Eli for the bribe money. He exclaims "Can't you children figure out your lives?" and refuses.  

Then the Montgomery Boys zoom the Redeemer into Peter's new militia compound, claiming that they stole it.  But in Episode 2, he sent goons to kill them.  When did they start working for him again?

Don't Mention Cum: BJ bursts into tears while working at his Church Welcome Center job. Jesse and his crew sympathize: Stephen has cuckolded him, taken away his power.  He needs to fight the guy, "knock his dick in the dirt, show him who is the man."  

They take him down to the basement for punching-bag training.

Top photo: Michael O'Hearn works out with boxer Paulo Costa. 

Left: Punching bag

Crash! BJ complains that he broke his wrist on the punching bag.  "It was limp already," Jesse says: his first homophobic slur ever, again suggesting that Kelvin will have trouble coming out.  The family certainly knows, but they do not want the whole church to know. 

As BJ practices his trash-talk, Jesse tells him to: "Stay focused, don't talk about cum, and show him who the fuck you are."  Good advice for a first date.

More advice and boxers after the break

Shane Michael Parker: Soldier, stunt cock, wolf fan, gay BDSM performer?

Shane Michael Parker was "proudly born" in 1994, grew up in Ohio, spent time overseas in the military, and moved to South Carolina in 2016, at the age of 22, to pursue an acting career. Why, was Los Angeles full? 

As Shane Miclette, he worked as a production assistant on the horror movies Separation and Scream (2022).  He filmed an appearance as Matthew in the second season of Outer Banks (2021) but his scene was cut.

As Shane Michael Parker, he played a Confederate soldier in Lessons from Ebenezer Creek, (2021), about a massacre of recently enslaved African Americans in North Carolina in 1864.

His most impressive role to date is in  Righteous Gemstones Episode 2.1, a flashback to 1968, when Young Eli, the Maniac Kid, bests his opponent in a huge wrestling arena, then goes back to the locker room to talk to his manager, Glendon Marsh.   

A muscular naked guy walks from the showers across the scene. Glendon says   "Nice cock, Ernie."

There is no "Ernie" in the cast list. Either Glendon is talking about someone off-stage, or the naked guy's name was changed to Jason, played by Shane.

Glendon's son Junior gawks at Jason's dick, so overwhelmed that he trips, then catches himself and turns to peek at his bare butt.  

The gay/bi coding continues when the elderly Junior shows up in Charleston to reunite with his old friend or boyfriend Eli.

Of course, I wanted to learn more about this guy whose dick is so instrumental in establishing the gay-subtext Eli-Junior friendship in Season 2.

Shane doesn't have much of an online presence,  so I haven't found out much about him except that he has one or two kids, both girls, and he lives in a small town about two hours from Charleston.   

There are some photos online of Shane with a wife or girlfriend, and on a visit to Wolf Country USA in Palmer, Alaska, which closed in 2011 after the owner was fined for owning and selling wolf hybrids. So Shane was about 16?

Shane himself was arrested in November 2022 for telephone harassment: "repeatedly contacting and threatening the victim by phone."  He also had a felony fugitive warrant from Ohio.So maybe the name change has to do with the fugitive warrant?   

A search for nude photos on dating sites yields only a blurry butt pic.  And this:

Naked Shane, probably, after the break

The homoerotic hijinks of Skyler Gisondo's crew, with at least four gay and three nude dudes

Skyler Gisondo was born in Florida and grew up in California.  He was home schooled for several years to give him free time for acting; then he attended Milken Community School, a Jewish high school, graduating in 2014.  He was deeply involved in Jewish activities, including Temple Beth Am (Conservative Judaism), USY (United Synagogue Youth) and Camp Alonim.  In 2015 he began attending the University of Southern California, a semester at a time to make room for Santa Clarita Diet.

In high school and college, Skyler found some hunky friends who enjoyed homoerotic horseplay.  Some have remained part of his crew to this day.  

1. Top photo: Joshua Tree.  Skyler is the one pretending to be a top.

2. His friend Ben in Israel.

3. Skyler and his roommates.  What happens in the apartment, stays in the apartment.

4. In Costa Rica.

5. Skyler is the one attached to a guy instead of a girl.

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 3.5: A gay boy's bare butt, castration anxiety, a pukka shell necklace, and three random cocks

Previous: Episode 3.4 Continued: Mistaking dependency for love, two breakups, Kelton's butt, and some Cantonese cocks

Episode 3.4 concludes with the family in disarray. Both BJ and Keefe have broken up with their partners in the aftermath of a betrayal, Jesse and Pontius are sparring, and the Montgomery Boys are secretly planning a violent retribution. 

Title: "Interlude III." The interludes are meant to build suspense by postponing the action for two weeks, plus give us some background on the major characters.  Interlude I centered on Jesse, and Interlude II on Kelvin, so I imagine that this time it will be Judy.

Judy's Back Story: Rogers High School, 2000.  High school-aged Judy tries to flirt with her crush, art student Trent (Braxton Alexander), by throwing her hair over his desk.  He asks her to stop several times, but she says "You know you like it, Stud," embarrassing him in front of the class.  Finally he gets even by cutting her hair. Wait -- why isn't the super-rich Judy in private school?

She doesn't notice until the girls in the restroom laugh at her.  Then she storms into band practice and smashes his saxophone, yelling "I liked you, asshole!  I loved you!"

Some fans wonder whether Trent is gay.  Of course, lots of straight guys would reject Judy's vulgar come-ons, but Trent wears a pukka shell necklace: according to my research, around 2000, that was a queer code, a way to identify other gay people while leaving the straights oblivious. Plus he's an artist and a musician.  "Artistic" and "musical" are  often code for "gay."

Y2K is Real:  Remember the Y2K panic that Eli and his wife Aimee-Leigh profited from?  A reporter from Time Magazine shows Eli the commercial, telling folks that God wanted them to buy Gemstone Brand survival buckets, first aid kits, commode liners, and so on.  "So...do you think it's ethical to scare people and then benefit from that fear-mongering?" 

"I was trying to help."

"You said that Jesus told you that Y2K was real.  Who was wrong, Jesus or you?"

Wait -- most evangelicals are pre-Dispensationalists, believing that all of the Christians will be caught up to heaven in the Rapture prior to the various seals, trumpets, and bowls of the Tribulation.  Why would they need survival supplies?

Kelvin's Little Tiny Doll Pecker: College-age Jesse brings his girlfriend Amber home to meet the family. Is she pregnant?  Gideon is going to be born in a year or less.

At dinner, Judy criticizes her for coming from a poor family.   Jesse says "Suck my dick!", and she responds "I want a meal, not a snack."  

Left: not a tiny little doll pecker.

Kelvin laughs: "That was good.  She means you have a tiny little titi" (pronouncced tih-tee).  Jesse then criticizes Kelvin's "tiny little doll pecker."  It is probably perfectly normal for a prepubescent boy, but Kelvin doesn't know that.

Presumably the adult Kelvin is the same size as the well-hung Adam Devine, yet the siblings continue to disparage his penis into adulthood. How, exactly, do they see it?  My sister has never seen mine.  The result is a paralyzing fear of sexual intimacy that jeopardized every potential romantic connection before Keefe.  And only Keefe's superhuman devotion kept him by Kelvin's side as he vacillated between withholding sex and demanding it constantly.

Background Note: "Titi" is a type of shrub, a type of monkey,  your aunt, and an unattractive drag queen. Apparently the writers invented the "penis" meaning to bring to mind the adult Kelvin's obsession with "titty meat."

The Snake Handler. After a scene where Judy bullies Amber and steals her ring, setting up their squabbles in the present, we cut to a service at Peter Montgomery's Pentecostal-like snake-handling church.  Actually, he's the only one playing with a snake, while his sons play the guitar and violin, and his wife May-May goes into a filled-with-the-Spirit ecstasy. 

Background note: Snake-handling, based upon the injunction to "take up serpents" in Mark 16:17, was introduced by the Church of God with Signs Following during the Great Depression, and spread throughout Appalachia.  Today the practice is illegal in most Southern states, including South Carolina, and there are no more than 100 snake-handling churches left.  

In Them That Follow (2019), Walton Goggins (Baby Billy) plays the pastor of a snake-handling church.

Gemstone-Montgomery Tensions: At the Gemstone Compound,  May-May complains about having to identify herself at the security station, just to put flowers on her father's grave. "You can visit the grave whenever you want," Aimee-Leigh assures her. "We'll have security flag you right on through." But she's not satisfied. Geez, he's been dead since 1995. Haven't you figured out the visitation schedule by now?

Later she bosses Peter around and rejects every effort of Aimee-Leigh to be friendly, suggesting a long-standing feud.  We can see parallels in Amber and Judy in the present.

Gay boys and bare butts after the break

The Family Responds to Keefe's Fire Dance

During Cousins' Night (Righteous Gemstones Episode 3.3.), Kelvin's boyfriend Keefe, a former Satanist, performs a highly erotic fire dance for the family.  Their reactions:

Jesse: "I am not turned on, I am not turned on, I am not..."

Chuck: "So this is what my brother does in the bedroon?"

Karl:  I wish I had a guy to do that with in the bedroom.

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 3.4 Continued: Mistaking dependency for love, two breakups, Kelton's butt, and some Cantonese guys

Previous: Episode 3.4: Wieners, betrayals, a burning a-hole, and Kelvin at his jerkiest. With a nude Steve Zahn bonus

Earlier in this episode, Stephen stepped up his harassment of Judy and BJ, Jesse sparred with Pontius, and Kelvin refused to accept responsibility for the Smut Busters Scandal.  Now things are getting worse.

The fag: Stephen plays pickleball with BJ, who doesn't know about the affair.  He describes sex with the girl he's seeing in disgustingly graphic detail, including something that I have never heard anyone but Judy mention.  But BJ doesn't get it, merely objecting to the disrespectful talk. 

Stephen counters: "You're a weak little fag."  No, BJ protests, he is a straight cis male, "but I don't believe that queer people should be referenced in that way." 

BJ here displays an up-to-date knowledge of gender/sexual identity, even identifying as cis instead of cisgender.  So why does he inaccurately balance fag (gay men only) with queer (all LGBTQ people)? Do the MAX censors object to the word gay? 

 Stephen's fag and the earlier "trash talk" are the only homophobic references since the first episode of Season 2.  While neither refers specifically to Kelvin, they are structurally placed to draw attention to the "rumors swirling around" him, and the effect that coming out may have on his career. 

We cut to Eli and May-May in the garden, joking and bonding.  She tells him: "I was never jealous of your riches, but I'm jealous that your kids still love you."  Eli: "Don't mistake love for dependency."  Remember that Kelvin and Judy have never been in romantic relationships before, and aren't sure how to go about it.  Are they really in love with their partners, or using them for power, control, social status, and sex?  It's time for Kelvin's descent into the darkness.

Church leaders got to think about the optics: This scene is very difficult to read.  It seems to go in three directions at once. We begin with the Siblings and Martin in the executive board room.  Kelvin is still wearing his virginal-white sweater: this is shortly after the food-court parents meeting. Jesse states that they are here to discuss  "When people think people are molesting people." 

Wait -- Jesse, Judy, and Martin know all about the Smut Busters.  They discussed it at a family dinner.  They know it was Kelvin's idea.  

And no parent has accused Keefe of child molestation.  This is a kangaroo court.

They announce that they are moving Keefe into Immigrant Outreach.  It sounds like a great job -- doubtless with more money, more responsibility, and duties more closely aligned with Keefe's interests.  And it seems quite benevolent. They could have hidden him away in a file room somewhere, or just fired him.  

But are they responding to a pedophilia accusation?  Martin tells Kelvin that "this is not the hill to die on": it is trivial, purely cosmetic. Keefe will still play a valuable role in the church. That sounds more like a response to him being outed as gay.

Judy agrees: "Church leaders have to think about the optics." Kelvin cannot stay closeted with an assistant youth minister who is "openly gay."  So what if they're separated during work hours?:  "You need to suck it up."  A gay joke, har-har.  Kelvin replies: "Like you sucked it up on tour?"  

After that dig at Judy betraying BJ, Kelvin run away, proclaiming that he's voting "no" on everything else on the agenda.  Next up: funding a battered women's shelter.  "I vote no!"  Wait -- I thought they were meeting specifically to discuss the rumors.  Was this a regular church board meeting?

We switch to BJ and Judy having sushi, perhaps later on the same day.  BJ notes that he ran into her guitarist Stephen at the pickeball court, but got turned off by the explicit descriptions of his girlfriend's...you know. But he still doesn't catch on that Stephen was talking about Judy.

Meanwhile, Jesse is at the Zion's Landing resort, discussing Baby Billy's idea for turning the church around: performances by a hologram of his dead mother, Aimee-Leigh!  Sounds morbid. 

Geography problem: Zion's Landing is in Florida.  Did Jesse take one of the Gemstone airplanes, or did it move? 

The Dining Room Tomb: At home, Kelvin is looking for Keefe.  He tries the bedroom, then comes downstairs. Notice that one of the pictures on the wall depicts a stylized naked man.

 Keefe is sitting at the dining room table, wearing a BDSM sub outfit, cutting out crosses for the youth group bulletin board, but they all turn into daggers.  I get it - - the church has betrayed you.

 This must be the same day as the parents' meeting and the board meeting, but Kelvin has changed from his virginal-white sweater into a ridiculous plaid poncho with a super-exaggerated top wave.  He has never looked more unattractive. Will being unattractive make things easier?

Check out the room decor: dark, oppressive, tomb-like.  Does it even have windows?  In this depressing, troubling space, Kelvin says: "I have to talk to you about something, and it's not easy to talk about." "Sexual stuff?" Keefe asks, thinking that he wants to discuss their less-than-satisfactory sex life.

No, it's about the job offer.  Kelvin tries to get him excited about it - "you can use your Cantonese!" -- but he can't put a positive spin on something that he introduced with "it's not easy to talk about" rather than "I have fantastic news!"  Keefe thinks that the job offer is a slap in the face, caused entirely by Kelvin refusing to take responsibility for the Smut Busters scandal.

The breakup after the break