Sexuality and homosexuality in the film

Why should you feel that because the film was made in 1959 that these things are incredible? Do you think that people in 1959 didn't know about them or didn't know how to use inuendo? My guess is that you were not alive in 1959.

It seems every generation thinks they invented sex, but actually, it has been around for quite a while. Yes, there was sex, and intellegence, and inuendo, and many other things before both you or I were born. Let's give the old folks a bit of credit. I am sure that today we are all very wise, and it is true that we know some things that they didn't. But they also knew one or two things back then. They just didn't think they had to make things so obvious as we do today. They may even have known some things that you don't.

bchace's interpretation is legitimate.

That is very observant of you. I will have to watch out for these when I watch it again. I noticed a few, but not all. Thanks for sharing.

Bchace, nothing prevents you from taking a personal reading of any film. Pay no attention to the posters, who cn't bear anyoen to detect an unoffical, unapproved take on a movie.

I think you should go for less obvious symbols (powerhouse) and try to work up a coherent system of meaning you've found. How do the symbols you've found work as a complete set? What meaning do they offer together? What evidence supports your reading?

Sidenote: Perkins himself was gay, and later in life a major drug user.
His widow was killed on 9-11.

...Are there any bogies on our stern?"
"Negative, sir. But we could use some shore leave, even if it is in a radiated San Francisco."

I agree that there is a lot of overt sexuality in the film, but it is people using sexuality for comfort and redemption, not sexuality as rage or lawlessness, so it's a wistful and sweet sexuality we see. Even though Moira is said to have been having a series of meaningless affairs, the sex that is represented indirectly in the film is all in the context of expressing love, however late and dispairing that love is.

The only despairing raging ugly sexuality you see is represented symbolically by the voilent car race. The film doesn't want to deal directly with the kind of ugliness that humans in their furious desperation might wreak on each other in end times like this.

The butt-patting that's been listed certainly has a homo-social, possibly even a homo-erotic quality, but I don't read any of it in this film as homosexual or consciously gay. While it's possible that there is a buried meaning there, the more likely explanation of the butt-patting affection you see in the film shows people trying to come to grips with their loved ones dying.

But the twist in this film is that the loved ones who die are not only the specific loved ones who always die in film plots. Here it is all the loved ones on earth; it is the beloved human who is dying. The film asks us to imagine what it would be like to say goodbye to human beings in all their beauty vitality and promise. (Another reason the film doesn't distract us much with the ugly behavior we might expect at end times.)

The film attempts a quietly realistic picture of how humans would express this. Put aside human folly and ugliness for a moment, and think of the beauty and good that humans have accomplished; think how beautiful people are. Now imagine that all disappearing. How would you acknowledge that if it were happening?

Sailors and officers on a navy submarine aren't going to directly express this goodbye. They are going to behave according to their usual rules for expressing affection for each other which is mostly going to be macho and wryly dismissive, and in reality would verge on the homophobic. When Dwight slaps the guy on the rear as he climbs through the hatch to explore San Diego, Dwight is using one of those few gestures of affection, care, and concern that men allow each other, especially in the claustrophobic confines of a submarine.

You see the same affection for humans in the scene in the officers' mess where the curious but non-reflective American officers ask Julian, the "egghead," who started the war. There is both quiet concern and care for him as he breaks down as well as a subtle jocularity the officers share, after he leaves, that re-affirms their comraderie and mutual care. That care is really affection and love for one another, shown in a realistically muted way.

Having read the book decades ago, and having seen the film a few times, the impression I have after this viewing is how affectionate the film is for humans, how forgiving it is for what they did to destroy themselves, and how conscious of the loss of promise and potential.

Contrast this to other end times films that punish and scold humans for their folly and selfishness, or like the recent War of the Worlds, which ends with chastened humans who learn they are smaller and less wonderful than they think they are, less brave, less capable of beauty or truth.

Good lord. In the fifties, it was communists everywhere, and now it's homosexuality. Amazing.

What I had in mind was boxing the compass.

Homosexuality was openly "hidden" in a lot of early films but this wasn't one of them. There is a vid out there that explores them and some of the references were surprisingly quite open. The only thing I can think is that most people were so in the dark they didn't pick up on it, but I'm sure gay people did. I can't remember the name of the vid but it's available on DVD from Netflix. Quite interesting and in some cases darn funny.