St. Sebastian is a homosexual icon and Tenessee Wiliams was gay but not able to say so at the time, because of society's opinion of homosexuality at the time.
I watched a snail crawl along a straight razor
mmmmmm beer
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I'm fairly certain by the time Suddenly was produced Mr. Williams was all the way out of the closet--he began his exit in the 40s. He was one of the original champions of gay rights, long before Stonewall.
shareI'm fairly certain by the time Suddenly was produced Mr. Williams was all the way out of the closet--he began his exit in the 40s. He was one of the original champions of gay rights, long before Stonewall.
by - theairburns on Sun Aug 7 2005 14:32:35
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- Being comfortable being flamboyant (Charles Nelson Reilley), and
- Being comfortable camping/swishing it up (Paul Lynde), and
- Not caring to hide that you're effeminate (Capote, Bruce Villanch, Cecil Beaton) and,
- Knowing that Rock Hudson was gay today and that he had all-male pool parties back in the 50s, and
- Everyone figuring out you're gay but taking decades to admit it (Richard Chamberlain, George Michael) and,
- Creating a body of work that overwhelmingly dances around homosexuality (Williams)
are all NOT the same thing as "being out."
You could also argue that being out to your social circle but no-one else is not "being out." (Williams)
However,...
- Declaring that you are gay to the world at large, and
- Declaring that you are a man who sleeps wth men, and
- Declaring that you are gay and you deserve to be treated like everyone else
Those are being out.
I have never heard of the heroic stance you are crediting to Williams before, and the vague language you use ("fairly certain") makes me think you are a) under thirty (and thus ignorant of the era), and; b) making crap up to project onto topics you are not educated about. Williams drank himself to death in part due to homophobic self-loathing ingrained into him by the era in which he was raised.
I can name noone who was "out" prior to the fifties and sixties. The only person I know who was out that early was Quentin Crisp, in another country.
Sorry, I absolutely hate when people (sitting in front of the world's most powerful research device) make shlt up.
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/williams_t.html
Conflicted over his own sexuality, Tennessee Williams wrote directly about homosexuality only in his short stories, his poetry, and his late plays.share
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Williams's gayness was an open secret he neither publicly confirmed nor denied until the post-Stonewall era when gay critics took him to task for not coming out, which he did in a series of public utterances, his Memoirs (1975), self-portraits in some of the later plays, and the novel, Moise and the World of Reason (1975), all of which document, often pathetically, Williams's sense of himself as a gay man.
Tennessee Williams's work poses fascinating problems for the gay reader. At his best, Williams wrote some of the greatest American plays, but though homosexuals are sometimes mentioned, they are dead, closeted safely in the exposition but never appearing on stage.
In his post-Stonewall plays, in which openly homosexual characters appear, they serve only to dramatize Williams's negative feelings about his own homosexuality. In the 1940s and 1950s, Williams presented in his finest stories poetic renderings of homosexual desire, but homoeroticism was always linked to death.
These contradictions are not presented to damn Williams for not having a contemporary gay sensibility but to say that his attitude toward his own homosexuality reflected the era in which he lived. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the McCarthy era, during which Williams wrote his best work, homosexuality branded one a traitor as well as a "degenerate."
but though homosexuals are sometimes mentioned, they are dead, closeted safely in the exposition but never appearing on stage.
I haven't made anything up. You should perhaps read Williams' Memoirs before you cast aspersions on a person who is not 30, but 62 (and investigating the real life of Gore Vidal would help, too): that's right, I was around and deep inside the gay culture before all the revisionist dogma to obfuscate gay culture started spinning out into mainstream culture. And it was Williams himself who wrote that it was in 1940 when he “had finally come thoroughly out of the closet.” Sitting in front of the world's most powerful research device I was finally able to find what I have known about Williams for over half century: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/theater/24gene.html
Good luck with the all the revisionist literature that keeps you in the dark about gay history. Supposedly this is going to help gays find real freedom, but is freedom really discovered separate from truth?
As far as Williams drinking himself to death; again, check out the NY Times piece I reference above. Is it not possible that what Williams was going through was not unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald, Malcolm Lowry and going back as far as Edgar Allen Poe?
To take great artists like Williams, Fassbinder and Oscar Wilde and hammer them into a gay ideological box wouldn't be so tragic if people could actually catch on to the absurdity of gay ideology.
I don’t think any of Williams’ plays goes as deep into his personal experiences like Suddenly, and why I consider it his greatest play, his confessional play (again, read his memoirs concerning his going after children for sex, and perhaps from there a door might be unlocked for you to venture into a darkness of gay culture that no other artist dare go, especially now in a rabid, politically correct culture.)
Yes, absolutely. Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca used to talk about St Sebastian as a sort of code for their complicated relationship, according to a book I'm reading. In the same book, it says that it's all about the symbolism of the arrows piercing through him. Figure.
shareWow ! was there really a gay saint ? I wonder what pope cannonized him ?
shareI understood he wasn't gay, he only results attractive for gays because of the arrows symbolism (do I need to explain that *winks*), and his physical beauty. Though there must be gay saints, only that it will be a snow storm in hell before they admit such thing.
shareCome on eva_rosen16, I can totally see the pope in his cardinals in their little red dresses with fine Italian shoes making the announcement. They could even have a disco mirror ball drop from the ceiling for the occasion.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Oh yes, there are. ^-^
http://www.pnc.com.au/~voyager/voyagerfiles/saints.html
And on the 'not quite saints, but still relatively important, biblically speaking', there's always David and Jonathan (possibly, depending on how you choose to read it).
Not that the church would ever -address- that, of course. *grins*