Tag Purvis' 2000 film always irritates me and always draws me in and always moves me. Southern Gothic. Image and sound. Homoerotic. I am always sorry when it ends.
The mysterious drifter Lee Todd, played with real male fire and edgy containment of raw and tender feeling by Walton Goggins....
The blood-brother ceremony in the dark. Swimming in the river. The meeting in the cemetery.
"I don't want to live my life knowing I loved someone so dearly
but feared so much more."
but feared so much more."
_________________________
2 comments:
I suspect our (western) aesthetic restrictions on touching and affection between males do far more to dam up libido in the homosexually oriented (and even somewhat in the heterosexually oriented) than do merely religio-moral prohibitions of sex between males for example in Araby and Persia. Again I'm reminded that pictures of ordinary closeness between males signifies 'homosexual' e.g, two guys swimming in near proximity and talking. In Muslim, a guy can go swimming ONLY with other guys!
In this movie's marquee there are more directly homosexual images too: I'm saying only that the pictures of 'ordinary' male closeness are never seen but in the context "Sex Between Males." For instance, I remember a photo used to illustrate an article on homosexuality in "Christianity Today" -- two guys sitting on a step talking together. Not that in daily life the sight of two guys talking together this way would be supposed gay. But when a camera puts two guys sitting close and talking into a context of "image," the image suggests homosexuality for us in the West.
Maybe the strictures on ordinary closeness between male and female in Araby and Persia dam up libido in males toward heterosexual release -- a damming up that occurs especially in heterosexually oriented guys, and to some extent in hetero women, but also in homosexual guys to some degree (thereby proving that homosexual orientation is a Western vice, doesn't occur in Islam, because in Islam guys have sex with each other only when women aren't available just now, or because it's a passing phase that doesn't need to be given lifestyle rights, etc. Lawrence of Arabia and his band chose to slake each other's thirsts (some lingo like that) because they fear'd contracting diseases from prostitutes (cf his "Seven Pillars of Denial"). -jpm
I've always enjoyed Red Dirt. And Walton Goggins... wow.
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