Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The terrible lesson that 'Is Sherlock Holmes gay?' teaches.

It has always bothered me to no end how pundits and critics go nuts with the 'hidden gay subtext' thing anytime a movie or TV show presents two men as being friends in any way. Be it Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watston, Frodo and Sam, Bert and Ernie, or Batman and Robin, anytime two male characters have a strong bond or genuine friendship, it surely must be some kind of secret 'gay thing'. Sure, some of it is just frat-boy humor, but the serious discussion (including from the star of the project in question), that takes place around the notion is frankly damaging to society as a whole. At its core, this kind of discourse basically teaching males (specifically young men) that showing any type of friendships and/or emotion towards another male makes you 'gay'.

Scott Mendelson

3 comments:

Sabina E. said...

seriously.

Ruth said...

Yes. Thank you for saying this.

Kim in Training said...

A friend once told me that the appeal of Boston Legal was the male friendship between William Shatner's "Denny Crane" and James Spader's "Alan Shore". It's true that you don't see a lot of this, and I wonder if American men somehow miss the "how to" of male friendship.

If so, that is sad indeed. I know many of the men I am closest to don't have male friendships. It makes me sad.

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