So was sebastian raped as well?
When Elizabeth Taylor character said he was devoured by those youngs boys was it an eupheusim for rape, could they not say the word it self or was it to do with the censorship during that period?.
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MovieChat Forums > Suddenly, Last Summer Discussion > So was sebastian raped as well?
No, I do not think he was raped; I think it was worse. I believe that Catharine was speaking literally: that Sebastian was killed by being sliced open by the gang of boys with those tin instruments. She said they "cut off pieces of him" and it "looked as though they had devoured him." I believe she meant that they had cut off his genitals and had also (possibly) disemboweled him. If that is so, he would indeed have appeared to have been partially eaten.
Poor Sebastian; all that just to have some sex!
Times have changed so much!
Poor Sebastian my ass. He should have left those young guys alone. Thats what you get when you sin.
shareAnd you've never sinned in your life, I suppose.
shareHmmm, sounds like someone is fighting temptations of his own. No worries, its common to hate in others what we hate in ourselves! One day you'll realize its far easier to chill than contain such animosity.
shareI agree with kurowilen - and precioustj? I'll bet you have a GREAT collection of movies filled with sin! ;o)
shareA sin in time saves nine!
shareI am pretty sure they ate him alive. They were starving street kids.
Pretty gruesome!!
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"watching him get ass-raped by a pack of feral young men"??? Is it absolutely necessary to speak that way in order to make a point , ctomvelu? I would almost welcome a return to the golden age of cinema, if only for it's use of the "provocative" as opposed to the downright (in-your-face) "vulgarity" you've displayed...and heaven only knows, I'm no prude!
"What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?" Liz Taylor
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hard to tell just what Williams really meant.... I never understood how Hepburn could be the decoy. If she is the decoy, the one who lures the boys, how does Clift get them for sex? I would think HE would be the gay lure. So there seems to be some "editing" here of just what went on. If Taylor's tits hanging out of that too-small swim suit are the NEW lure, then how does Clift get sex from them? I don't think Clift gets ass-raped because he probably didn't ass-rape the boys. Clift's character is all bottom. So we're probably talking his being EATEN because hr did oral on the boys (a form of eating). But it's anyone's guess.
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well Clift played Sebatian as well as the doctor..... Still make no sense to me that men/boys lured by Hepburn/Taylor would be sexual fodder for Sebatian.......
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i don't think it works that way.... maybe he just PAID the hetero boys who were starving.... in which case you still don't need a female LURE since the MONEY is the bait....
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"hard to tell just what Williams really meant.... I never understood how Hepburn could be the decoy. If she is the decoy, the one who lures the boys, how does Clift get them for sex? I would think HE would be the gay lure."
These are third world countires and this is a man with an agenda. I always thought that Sebastian had his straight female lady lure boys with the prospect of prosperity (and with prettiness), and then he stepped in for the finishing stroke.
"It is a tradition among many gay men who buy young teen hetero flesh to first give the boys porn--they want the boys to be sexually aroused before they engage them in sex."
Eeek! I've never known any gay man to do something like this. My gay friends call what they do behind closed doors "being gay". They call baiting young, straight boys into sexual encounters "pedophilia".
eeew. Every gay man I know would be totally grossed out by behavior like that.
Then again, in the 1950s, any behavior that didn't result in two kids and white picket fence was labelled as deviant, so why wouldn't preying on young boys be so wrong?
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<<"It is a tradition among many gay men who buy young teen hetero flesh to first give the boys porn--they want the boys to be sexually aroused before they engage them in sex."
Eeek! I've never known any gay man to do something like this. My gay friends call what they do behind closed doors "being gay". They call baiting young, straight boys into sexual encounters "pedophilia".>>
Eeek! The previous post was talking about "gay men who buy young teen hetero flesh", not your average gay guy. Besides, there are two types of gays, a feminized one and a Machiavellian one (think Richard Hatch). You know that two femmes don't go together, that truly would be Ewww! Rosie O'Donnell didn't go with another butch lesbian, did she? No, a lipstick one.
The sexual role playing of feminine and masculine is always present, even in the gay community.
Oh no, did I give the secret away?
So I decided to put my two cents into this converstaion because I just love this film and I quite agree that they just don't make movies like this anymore.
<<SPOILERS -- ALERT! ALERT!>>
To answer the question that has been addressed in this converstation, Violet was able to procure men for her son because she was and is charasmatic. Violet was no great beauty (at least not at the time that Sebastian took Catherine on his last summer excursion). As Catherine explained, Violet became ill shortly before the last summer trip Sebastian took. Up until this point, it is my belief (from the direction the story was going) that Sebastian had intended to take his mother with him on that trip. He very well might have wanted to take Catherine as well, but I believe that he would have taken his mother with him if she had been healthy. The problem was that when Violet became ill, Sebastian finally saw her as being old and thereby unattractive. The moment that he realized that she was old and frail, he paniced and brought his naive but beautiful cousin along with him to be his procurer.
However, Violet had something that Catherine did not, which is a main reason why Catherine could not succed where Violet had done years prior. She had a personality that attracted people to her. Look back through the movie. Everyone she encounters absolutely adores and reveers her. The head of the psych ward, Catherine's mother and brother, Violet's personal assistant, etc. all reveer her and speak of her like she is a larger than life. Hell, even Dr. Cukrowicz watches her as if in a trance. (And no it was not solely because of Monty Clift's disfigured face.) In the beginning of the film, the doctor is fascinated as he talks to this woman who is grieving for the loss of her only son. By the mid portion of the film, his focus on Violet becomes one of perplexion as he desperately trys to find out the truth about what is haunting Catherine and his growing suspicion that it has something to do with Violet and her fascination and devotion to her dead son.
Now one can argue that the reason everyone gave a damn about her was because she was filthy stinkin rich, but I don't think that was it entirely. When she spoke everyone listened. The look on the actors faces said it all. They were mesmerized by her personality, wit and charm. It didn't matter that she was older or not the stunning beauty that Catherine was. She was confident, intelligent and knew how to charm people to get what she wanted out of them. All she really had to do, if you think about it, was find people whom she believed would attract her son; talk about their common interest (because, after all, what interested Sebastian, interested Violet) and casually suggest (after a few hours of conversation) that this person should meet her son. Its as simple as that. She and Sebastian were intelligent enough and had been doing this sort of excursion long enough to know how to manipulate people into doing what they wanted them to do. As Violet said, her son and her enjoyed manipulating people to see what their reactions would be.
Just remember, the whole theme of Suddenly Last Summer could be summed up in one statement. "Looks are deceiving." Nothing in this movie is what it appears to be and everyone is pretending to be something other than what they are. Don't assume that just because Violet wasn't necessarily physically attractive, that she was not attractive in other ways.
"Don't assume that just because Violet wasn't necessarily physically attractive, that she was not attractive in other ways."
I agree. The difference being that Violet attracted a different breed of people for her son, sophisticated people of a higher class, intelligent, artistic. She attracted them with culture and money and conversation.
Catharine (as TW spells her name in the play) didn't have that. She had physical beauty, that raised a carnality in the men, and even brought down men of a higher class to a state of savageness (i.e. the guy at the ball who took advantage of he). And Violet knew that Catharine would attract a different type of person, someone less "safe" and less restrained, someone that operated on the basic physical needs, rather than on the mental/cultural needs- someone who would hurt her timid son. She even said that when Sebastian left with Catharine, she knew she would never see him again.
This movie reminds me of vampirism, as everyone preys on one another, for money, for sex, for food, for accceptance. Even the venus fly trap, a plant, preys on something that is inherently abhorrent for most types of plants. These people are all deviant in the darkest of ways, and yet they're human....like every single one of us.
Very well said Joeboxxer. Good analogy. I see this movie as a huge level of people using each other. If you think about it, everyone is using everyone in this movie. Sebastian uses the men for his own personal gain. Violet is constantly manipulating people through out the film for various reasons. Catharine, in the beginning, used Sebastian to gain a foot hold into a "better class" than the one she was born into. Hell even Dr. C used Violet to try and gain financial backing for the asylum.
This film is all about Human manipulation and the price one pays when the manipulation gets out of control.
"Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned"
Eeek! I've never known any gay man to do something like this. My gay friends call what they do behind closed doors "being gay". They call baiting young, straight boys into sexual encounters "pedophilia".
by - namrehs
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Thanks for going to bat for the home team. You are spot-on about many of your clarifcations, except one. There is not always a male and female role in gay relationships.
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"These are third world countires "
Spain a third world country...? My ass!! Spain was in the midst of its Civil War, so it's very unlikely that a pair of americans went there on vacation. Apart from that, Sebastian was a bottom sissie metaphorically castrate by his manipulative mother. Together they managed to have some fun, but without her, he was lost and failed to suck those boys off, because they wanted tits and pussy and money wouldn't do the trick; not for them, so they bullied him around for being a manipulative *beep*
Sebastian's death was an act of performance art.
"My son, Sebastian and I constructed our days. Each day we would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer. "
His manner of death is similar to a Tibetan sky burial. He spent time in Tibet with his Mother.
In the events of he play, I believe the cannibalism is literal, but it has a symbolic purpose. At the time the play was written, Williams was in psychotherapy, attempting to work through his own masochistic impulses. Like many people -- straight/gay/men/women -- his attraction to youth and beauty over sincerity and mutuality was often a source of pain to him, which helps to explain why his depiction of homosexuality in his plays and short stories is invariably pained and tragic.
In Suddenly Last Summer I believe the cannibalism is an inversion of a false erotic ideal, where by loving youth and beauty one "becomes one" with the object of love, when in fact loving youth and beauty holds no hope of transformation for the old and plain.
Instead, the would-be acolyte at this altar of worship is merely consumed, made a human sacrifice to that which he worshipped -- a martyr to the false ideal, like the mythical St Sebastian (often depicted as young, beautiful, and penetrated by arrows, Sebastian is unofficially viewed as the gay patron saint) that the play references.
The following is quoted from an online gay encyclopedia:
Sebastian's extraordinary success as a "gay saint" is related to his status as an updated replacement for other culturally resonant "homosexual legends"--Hadrian and Antinous, Jonathan and David, Ganymede--whose narratives were reducible to narratives of love.
But the essence of Sebastian's tale resists such sentimentalization, standing as a modern emblem of radical isolationism, both a homoerotically charged object of desire and a source of solace for the rejected homosexual.
Since the advent of AIDS, St. Sebastian's historical position as a saint with the power to ward off the plague has been given a new sustenance, inspiring artists, such as the late David Wojnarowicz, to incorporate the martyr into their works. In painting, literature, film, music, theater, performance art, and recently, a video for the rock group R.E.M., St. Sebastian remains the most frequently renewed archetype of modern gay identity.
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/sebastian_st,2.html
It's interesting to note that two women figure prominently in the life of St. Sebastian. Sebastian was shot by arrows when he "came out" as a Christian to fellow members of the Roman Imperial Guard, and was subsequently nursed to health by St. Irene, herself the widow of a martyr. Once he'd regained his health, Sebastian publicly protested the cruel treatment of Christians and for his trouble was cudgeled to death; his body was retrieved and placed in the catacombs by a woman named Lucinda.
Violet, who shelters Sebastian and cultivates his poetry is parallel to St. Irene; Catharine, who witnesses Sebastian's demise, parallels Lucinda.
more on this aspect here:
http://www.utpjournals.com/product/utq/693/693_parker.html
Clift isn't gay in this film, he clearly likes Catherine.
shareI'm a lot older than you, I suspect. I was 10 when this film was released.
Back in the day, they couldn't make a movie about a gay character. But believe me, everyone who was halfway-literate knew something about the play, knew that the Sebastian chracter was gay, and knew that the Hollywood nod in the direction of heterosexuality was obligatory, and there to be ignored.
I did not know this at ten, but when I first saw the film in the 1960s (on network TV!), I was aware that Sebastian was written gay by Williams.
Clift's character surely isn't gay but Clift himself was.
shareSebastian was gay ... that was made perfectly clear in the movie. As for the doctor ( as played by Clift) ... it's apparent that there is an attraction between him and Catherine and that they end up together at the end of the movie.
On the other hand through out the movie comparisions are made between the doctor and Sebastian, perhaps giving a gentle nodge towards the fact that the doctor himself may be more then meets the eye ... but that's just speculation.
ask the spokesperson, I don't have a brain