Is Macho-ism Homoerotic?

[grysar]

A Slate critic argues no in The Surf Also Rises: How macho movies get misread as homoerotic.

Key Passage:

The frisson of attraction that abides in the Johnny-Bodhi standoff is erotic, all right. But it isn't homosexual desire. It's narcissism, the delight of seeing one's rare magnificence in someone else. The fact that Johnny and Bodhi operate on different sides of thelaw only highlights their mutual identification. Johnny is drawn across that line not because he wants to have sex with Bodhi, but because he wants to be Bodhi—or, more accurately, because he isBodhi. If this isn't obvious enough, Johnny's new girlfriend, Tyler(Lori Petty), who is also Bodhi's ex-girlfriend, says it repeatedly.
...
Now, 300 has earned more than $200 million in America alone,from an overwhelmingly male audience. What more plausibly accounts for this? That 20 million closet cases snuck off to see an illicit fantasy about bare-chested men in Hellenic Speedos, or that young men from the vast heartland of this very conservative, Christian, pro-military country flocked to see an unabashedly heroic tale of Occidental, republican military glory? To believe the latter, all you have to accept is that, in imagining the sort of heroic figures they themselves would like to be, straight men would project onto them not just excellence but physical beauty. Shouldn't a guy be able to do such a thing without being called gay?

I'm not really buying this argument. I think a male "project[ing] onto [idols] not just excellence but physical beauty" onto other males does have elements of homoeroticism. Think of the equivalent scene with a male and a female action hero. Having a male-female fighter come to respect each others' fighting skills often ends at very least a fling.

This is not to say that fetishizing action heroes is a homosexual rather than a heterosexual trait. However if most of your action heroes are male as is most of your audience, it can end up that way. Similarly, this doesn't make people who are doing this physical beauty projection gay. I'm not even sure if it would be more common among homosexual males. However, it is a same sex attraction. The narcissism aspect doesn't negate that by any means. I know I'm more attracted to females that compete with me and have skills I want to have. The problem here is that the author is treating gay and homoerotic as if they're pejorative term. Neither should be.

As a side note, I think it is important to maintain a space for friendships. Friendship doesn't have to be erotic and can be both male-female, male-male, and female-female. However, friendship isn't about physical beauty.

Finally, as a side note, I've been told I have consistently terrible taste in male action heroes. I believe this.

[Update: Some edits to fix grammar mistakes.]

[Addendum: I think a great example is once scene between two cops in Hot Fuzz. It's not really a beefcake scene, but it goes with heroic recognition/male bonding while very obviously playing with homo-eroticism. In most cases, I don't think it's intentional though.

Comments

[schneeble.livejournal.com]

I think I see where you're coming from, but what I read while in Skim Mode was...

Slate: 20 million male fans of 300 went for the violence and heroics, not because they wanted to see oiled manflesh.

Grysar: No, they really did go for the oiled manflesh.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

::snickers::

[ninjadebugger.livejournal.com]

YOU! I WANTS TO TALK TO YOU. Also, THIS IS CAKE TOWN!

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I forgot about the cake-eroticism.

is this gay?

[ninjadebugger.livejournal.com]

Re: is this gay?

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Well, these don't seem to be direct heroic/narcissistic admirations scenes, although the black leather guy/Emperor relationship could certainly qualify. Also the outfits are very much beefcake, so they it seems like the kind of series that could fit the mold.

The dialog is highly suited to double entendre, so that can qualify. There's a scene in Hot Fuzz that very much plays up double entendres that I thought qualified. I don't think it would be controversial to say that double entendre rich scenes, if successful, are typical comedic and/or erotic. The degree of comedy/eroticism is probably mostly subjective or context based.

Re: is this gay?

[millenia.livejournal.com]

I think any call of this being homoerotic would be based solely on a really shallow read of the word "love"; I would emphasize that the key wordpart of "homoerotic" is "erotic" and not "homo". But that's me.

Re: is this gay?

[ninjadebugger.livejournal.com]

I was actually joking, I just love posting those pages.

Re: is this gay?

[grysar.livejournal.com]

So what is that, Fist of the Northstar?

[millenia.livejournal.com]

What began as a comment on this spiralled out of control and is now a post of its own in my LJ, as a heads up.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Righto, I shall go comment on that once I've read it a bit more carefully.

[korgmeister.livejournal.com]

I say it's all about the desire to be more awesome. Being incredibly beautiful is part of being awesome. Plus, I don't know about you, but I know I find a person way more intimidating if they're incredibly good looking.

So all else being equal, a badass is even more of a badass if he's beautiful, even if there's no other women around for hundreds of miles.

Women are able to want to look pretty just to impress/intimidate other women without it being a homoerotic thing. Why is it homoerotic when men do it? Are we that unable to separate beauty and sex?

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Well, let me put it this way. Do you find awesome sexy in a woman? I know I do.

Anyhow, women looking pretty to impress/intimidate is more of a status competition thing I think. Status competition in and of itself doesn't qualify as the heroic connection the article is talking about. As a parallel, competition over having the most expensive car wouldn't necessarily qualify.

As for seperating beauty and sex, let me be clear. I tend to think that sort of badass competition will tend to have homoerotic or heteroerotic connotations. This does not mean that they are primarily sexual. It just means it's there. When you do things like throw in hordes of beefcake or skin on top of the connections, it becomes more prominent.

[korgmeister.livejournal.com]

Do you find awesome sexy in a woman? I know I do.

Fuck yeah. But then, I will admit to having man-crushes on guys who are awesome (such as David Bowie, for instance. He's made of pure awesome).

So I guess if you're sexually attracted to awesome, I guess it would be a little homoerotic. But I'm not sure that sexual attraction to awesome is that common. I see an awful lot of guys who are into women whose levels of awesome are (in my opinion, at least) undetectably low.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Well, some of that goes to whether you want a partner or a subordinate. I think people who aren't looking for an equal might find awesome the awesome more threatening than alluring. However, I'd suspect most people have at least some level of attraction to it, it just gets outweighed by other factors.

Also, are these guys awesome? Because if they aren't the awesome women might just prefer not to be with them.

Awesome maximisation paradigm.

[korgmeister.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they're usually not that awesome.

So you think awesome is mutally attractive?

It depends. I mean if I'm in a situation where I can't attract chicks with awesome, I figure the solution is to try and develop more awesome, rather than go for chicks without awesome. But then, maybe there are guys out there who would rather go for chicks without awesome.

This strikes me as a distinctly not-awesome plan of action.

Re: Awesome maximisation paradigm.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm thinking awesome is mutually attractive. Also, if you don't see much awesome you might not know what you're missing.

Re: Awesome maximisation paradigm.

[korgmeister.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how on earth you go without knowing what awesome is, but my sympathies go out to any poor bastard in that predicament.

Now, to sorta go back to the matter of homoeroticism. I'm in an interesting bracket, being sexually attracted to the opposite sex, but same gender. Most of the women I've seen who display awesome are tomboys and in my experience, awesome is associated with masculine behaviour.

There's just not that much in typically feminine behaviour that makes me go "Oh yeah! This brings the AWESOME!". But I'm not sure how that necessarily translates into teh gay, since I've always associated homosexuality with finding the same sex attractive, which isn't the same thing as finding the same gender attractive.