Gay? Hahahah!

When I was little, I can remember there being a skit on MadTV that involved two 'heterosexual' men watching football. They were both very involved in the game, and whenever their team made a point, they went wild. At one point, they just started making out, and the audience laughed. My sister laughed, too. I didn't; I thought it was love at the time. In our society, and in other society's in the past, same-sex attraction has been seen as a threat to the norm(Two men cannot produce a child, two women cannot 'properly' consummate a marriage, etc.). Since this has been a problem for an ongoing period of time, there's only one way for homosexuality to be seen as 'acceptable' in the eyes of the heteronormative public: as a punchline in a homophobic joke. For example, in 'Twelfth Night', the situation Viola is in is comedic, rather than tragic. Most people see it as, 'oh, how funny! Olivia, a woman, loves Cesario, who is actually another woman! How funny!' I see this situation as tragic. Olivia has fallen for someone she can never have, both by law and Viola's wishes. I feel as if Shakespeare is using this 'joke' to get people to understand homosexual attraction, but they just don't get it. Nowadays, homosexuality is used as a punchline in too many heteronormative comedies. In the Kevin Hart movie that I refuse to look up because I do not want it to have any more attention than it deserves, he pretends to be the best man at a guy's wedding. In a scene, Kevin teaches the guy to ballroom dance, but they end up doing the Douggie instead. An older woman watching says to her friend, 'Oh, those gays are just so talented.' This is degrading to me as a homosexual man. It's a stereotype that is overused first of all and it's boiling down my sexuality to a joke. All in all, I'm just ranting about a problem that probably doesn't exist and I'm over it.

What Qualifies as Homo-erotic?

In Twelfth Night, the attraction between Duke Orsino and Viola-as-Cesario can be interpreted as homoerotic pretty easily. The duke takes an instant liking to Cesario, noting the "young man's" beauty and even taking pains to describe it. He tells Cesario that "Diana's lip / is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe / is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound" (1.5.30-32). He clearly admires Cesario's looks, and describes them as more beautiful than Diana. Orsino does emphasize Cesario's feminine traits, but this desire can still be categorized as homoerotic since he believes himself to be attracted to a man. In fact, even in the end of the play, when Viola's plot is revealed, Orsino refers to her as "boy" and leaves the stage with Viola still in drag. Her true "women's weeds" are never shown, leading us to believe that the desire here, at least from Orsino, is homoerotic and homosexual.

I find this attraction very interesting. In Shakespeare's day, homosocial bonding was the norm; men had relationships with other men that they simply did not have with women. Male friendship was certainly idolized, but I would argue that it was often homoerotic as well. This is certainly the case with Cesario and Orsino's relationship; there is an underlying homoerotic tension throughout every interaction.

What I thought was interesting was how this has changed. Today, the terms "homosocial" and "homoerotic" are fairly uncommon, even unknown to some. However, I would argue that the underlying culture has not changed. Homosocial bonding is still very prevalent, even flaunted and celebrated as the highest level of friendship.

I think the idea of underlying homoeroticism is very interesting when applied to ideas of masculinity today. What came to mind immediately were Men's Health covers. Here is a magazine marketed towards men and largely written by and for men, with health, dating, and sex tips. Here's an example of a recent cover featuring Shaun T, fitness guru known for his Insanity and T-25 videos.

This feels incredibly homoerotic to me. All of the covers are similar; men set up to be admired for their physique. However, I'm willing to bet that were we to throw out the word homoerotic, most of  the "Men's Health" audience would recoil. Interestingly, Orsino is attracted to Cesario for his boyish, feminine traits, while chiseled, muscular men frequent the cover of Men's Health. Regardless, I view both situations as homoerotic, and I would be interested to see what you all think about this and how our views of homoeroticism have changed since Shakespeare's day.

Lesbihonest… Are there really any boundaries to friendship?

Girlfriends, circa 1600s 

Like Antonio and Bassanio of Merchant of Venice, Rosalind and Celia portray the liberal love between two (usually) heterosexual friends. These two women of As You Like It exemplify the loyalty of true friendship. We see their relationship and admire the ways that they look out for each other and partake in mischievous schemes together. If we look a little closer, though, we might detect some homoerotic or homosocial behavior in their relationship. Some people would say that the "friendship" between Celia and Rosalind is actually a true love affair. Whether or not there is any actual homosexual desire between the two women, it is undeniable that they are at the least very devoted friends: 

   "The Duke's daughter [Celia] her cousin so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together, that she would have followed her [Rosalind's] exile, or have died to stay behind her…Never two ladies loved as they do" (1.1.93-97)

   "If [Rosalind] be a traitor, / Why so am I [Celia]. We still have slept together, / Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together, / And wheresoever we went, like Juno's swans / Still we went coupled and inseparable" (1.3.66-70)

Girlfriends, circa 2000s

But let's be honest, is their relationship that much different from best friends' today? Think about some of those Buzzfeed lists you see on social media and immediately forward to your friends, with titles like, "19 Signs Your Best Friend is Actually Your Soulmate," "16 Times You Realized You and Your BFF Have No Boundaries," "18 Female Friendship Truths, as Told by Bridesmaids." We admit to all the really weird things we do with our best friends: peeing, sleeping, and cuddling together, swapping clothes and personal items with each other, inadvertently dressing and acting the same, etc. You've probably seen your best friend naked, experienced her most personal habits, learned every nasty detail about her life, and maybe even (drunkenly?) made out with her. Also, you've probably responded to such incidents with some kind of brush-off "No homo" remark. But it is pretty "homo." And it's also okay.

The problem is that we strive to label everything as black and white, straight or gay. Maybe critics are genuinely shocked by the relationship of Celia and Rosalind because they find the liberality of such a feminine relationship of that time strange. Or maybe they are oblivious to how homoerotic or homosocial their own relationships and the relationships of people around them actually are. On the other hand, maybe there is something deeper between Celia and Rosalind. Celia could be in love with Rosalind, but we'll never really know. Personally, I read their relationship and mischief as Sex and the City-esque: two friends sticking together with the idea that "maybe our girlfriends are our soul mates and guys are just people to have fun with."



Here are the links to those lists… In case you need to gush about them with your BFF.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinharris/21-signs-your-best-friend-is-actually-your-soulmate#.dcMvBKd9V
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kirstenking/no-boundaries-with-my-gal-pals#.denZ8AnPw
http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/18-female-friendship-truths-as-told-by-bridesmaids#.yaGLkxZlp

Sneaking Around the Censors

Perhaps the funniest part of As You Like It, to me, is the way it screws everything up so badly that Hymen, the literal god of marriage himself, has to swoop in just to make heteronormative sense of everything again.

It’s hard not to come away from As You Like It with the impression that Shakespeare was taking on the task of accessing homosexuality, or at least, homoeroticism of some sort. In the world of comedy, Shakespeare can slip in depictions of love between characters of the same gender, because it’s all a joke, right? All he has to do is make sure the higher-up governing officials of London – his era’s dreaded Network Censors – are pacified by the onslaught of heteronormative marriage at the end.

Shakespeare’s specific vehicle for accomplishing this mess is through crossdressing, and perhaps “cross-acting” in a sense as well. Ignoring the boy actor playing her for the moment, Rosalind’s triple nature makes her the perfect way to draw everyone in.

Dressing as Ganymede, Aliena’s companion on the road, Rosalind seems to act more as a lover than a brother to Celia in her new identity, even they're called ‘cousins.’ The way their relationship is described as “dearer than the natural bond of sisters” makes me think more of the Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune version of cousins, though. As Ganymede, Rosalind also finds that Phoebe falls in love with her, and towards the end of the play she says to Phoebe, “I would love you, if I could... I will marry you, if ever I marry woman,” showing some degree of requitedness in that relationship. Then, she begins to act as Orlando’s “Rosalind,” adding a third identity to the mess, and allowing Orlando to act like a man in love with a man, Ganymede... Because he’s acting in love with Rosalind.

And all of this homoeroticism going around is allowable because of Rosalind’s crossdressing. These romances can occur and Hymen can detangle them at the end, combing them out into four neat male-female couples just like that.

In the modern world, devices like crossdressing aren’t always necessary any longer. While queer representation on TV is still flawed, it exists – an impressive step forward.

However, children’s television has yet to catch up to the crowd. There have been a few recent strides forward, such as a kid on Disney with two moms, or the eventual romance between Korra and Asami, but for the most part the censors won’t allow even hints of queer relationships to slip through. Not even five seconds of a literal Love God doing his thing. Not even a couple of unnamed characters kissing briefly in the background. That’s a pair of recent examples out of many. Ouch.

So, like Shakespeare, some creators of children’s television have resorted to more covert means, hoping to get some queer representation out in the world. Recently, the show Steven Universe has done a pretty impressive job of it. Shakespeare imagined women dressing as boys to cause a stir. Steven Universe takes the idea of messing around with gender and identity to produce queer relationships a step further.

In the world of Steven Universe, there are alien characters called “gems.” Steven himself is half-human, half-gem, and has many of the abilities of other gems. One such ability is fusion: the ability to combine himself with another person to create a bigger, stronger person made of their combined identities. At first, Steven doesn’t know he possesses this particular ability, but when he tries in the episode “Alone Together”, he finds that he can fuse with his female friend, Connie.

The first time they meet, Steven accidentally uses his gem powers and they get trapped in a bubble.

The result is Stevonnie, an individual of unknown gender, seemingly in their teenage years, and absolutely gorgeous.

Stevonnie likes to dance.

In fact, Stevonnie is so gorgeous that when they go to get a donut at the local shop, both Sadie and Lars, a teen girl and a teen boy, are equally stunned and start blushing everywhere.

Maybe the humor of Lars and Sadie both finding Stevonnie attractive makes it okay, like the comedy in As You Like It?

And the censors are fine with this! After all, Sadie’s attracted to the boy part of Stevonnie, and Lars is attracted to the girl part of Stevonnie, right? Or at least, that’s the excuse you can give to any nosy execs who might think you’ve gone too far. Since the Stevonnie episode, the creators of Steven Universe have even used gem fusion as a smokescreen for queer content a second time, revealing in “Jailbreak” that the character of Garnet is the fusion of two gems who are pretty obviously in love, but still just sneaky enough to get past the censors.

But not that sneaky.

Shakespeare had his crossdressing, and here in the future, we have our… uh… strange alien power combination identity analogue. Hopefully at some point these kind of tricks for pulling off romances that aren’t straighter than a block of wood won’t be necessary, and queer kids can see themselves in their media without this kind of hassle. But, even so, it’s still entertaining to see how ways of sneaking queer content in have evolved over the past centuries, expanding into new genres with new smokescreens. Pushing the boundaries seems like an important part of writing that will never change.

Queering Shakespeare

Any interpretation of Shakespeare's canon will inevitably be, at least in some small way, unique. And with plays that have been in circulation as long as Shakespeare's have, interpretations will evolve and transform in relation to the circumstances of their staging; staging choices that would seem natural to an Elizabethan audience will change utterly for a 21st century production, and sociopolitical phenomena at the time of the performance will influence the symbology on the stage. The choices made by directors and actors speak both to their personal opinions about the play and to the nature of the society contextualizing the production.

One of the most recent large-scale productions of Coriolanus had its run in London, headed by director Josie Rourke and the Donmar Warehouse. The play starred Tom Hiddleston in the titular role, with an equally strong cast to back up his fantastic performance. The production, which aired a filmed live performance in cinemas around the world, does an incredible job of melding the world of the play with the political and aesthetic context of modern London, and makes a number of choices that feel simultaneously congruent with the source material and the world outside the theater.

A good example of this melding of influences is the dynamic between Coriolanus and Aufidius, particularly the scene depicting Coriolanus' arrival at Aufidius' home and the ensuing formation of an alliance. Even to the play's original audience, the homoerotic undertones (arguably overtones) between the two characters would have been hard to miss; their conversations are littered with innuendo and passionate declarations of a hybrid of love and hate. Their relationship is integral to the story, and Shakespeare, apart from a few wry nods to sexuality, treats their feelings for one another with earnest attention.

Rourke's production embraces this textual dynamic and runs with it, emphasizing the two men's simultaneous loathing and admiration of one another with impassioned delivery and overlong stares across the stage. Two moments typify the production's treatment of the relationship, and both are markedly physical; the first is a long moment of eroticized asphyxiation during a battle early in the play, and the second is a kiss in the middle of Aufidius' monologue accepting Coriolanus as an ally.

It's unlikely that earlier productions of Coriolanus would have added such a blatant physical dimension to this already homoerotic relationship, particularly one where the interactions have clear sexual connotations. However, nothing in the text precludes the possibility of physicality between the two characters, even the kind of sensual intimacy evident in their kiss; this production simply happens to have been directed in a cultural moment where the exploration of a queered dynamic is not just acceptable, but topical.

Much of the enduring magic of Shakespeare's body of work comes in the plays' ability to morph to suit the social atmosphere in which they are performed. The text is malleable; Coriolanus and Aufidius can exist both in ancient Rome and in the 21st century, and the latter can permit them a little more freedom to outdo Aufidius' memories of his bedchamber.