Too gay?


I felt like they laid on the homosexual relationship between Frodo and Sam a little thick. They could have implied that they were gay together without beating the audience over the head with it. I feel like this is just another example of woke culture shoving super gays down the throats of the public

reply

(for god's sake)

Their comradeship reflected those of British and Allied soldiers in the trenches of WWI, where there was a strong bond of fellowship in their shared duty and plight, and Tolkien was one of them, so he reflected this when he wrote LOTR decades later.

Peter Jackson and the writers of the LOTR scripts knew this as well, and didn't change the spirit of the books in this regard.

It's morons like you who misunderstand all that who see homoeroticism in something so innocent, and you all make me SICK.

reply

It's a shame that your accurate response has to be repeated over & over again on these boards. But there are just so many who don't seem to have the slightest notion of how soldiers bond so powerfully, not just in WWI, but in any war. Or for that matter, just how strongly friends can bond in any dire situation.

reply

Yes

reply

You realize, don't you, that not all of the British and Allied soldiers who fought in WW1 and who formed close comeradships were straight?

That's the thing, war can drive men at risk to both intense friendships, and sometimes a battlefield romance. And someone as innocent as young John Tolkien might not have been able to tell the difference. And Sam and Frodo's relationship reads as extremely gay in both the books and the movies.

reply

Are you sure that modern society hasn't just programmed you to see gay everywhere?

reply

No, I've just read the books and seen the movie, after noting the presence of LGBT people in the real world.

reply

Well we both seem to acknowledge that the Catholic, early-20th-century Tolkien did not actually create the characters to be homo, so let's not ascribe sexual orientations to the characters that the author himself would deny.

reply

I've got about fifty years of Tolkien fandom under my belt, so I'll ascribe what I like, thank you!

It's also true that sometimes, you see things in books that the author did not intend to put there. And it's true that LOTR is totally full of men kissing each other.

reply


You're a lunatic.

reply

Because I read the books and actually noticed all the men kissing each other, I'm a lunatic?

The books ARE actually full of men kissing each other and expressing their love for each other.

reply

Yeah, I read the books too, multiple times. Nothing gay there, at all. In a LOT of cultures, men (and women) kiss each other in a completely heterosexual manner. Even in the bible, there is mention of "a brotherly kiss".

reply

It's also true that sometimes, you see things in books that the author did not intend to put there.

Yeah, that's usually called 'imagining things'.

reply

Any acute reader notices things in books that are there, but which the author didn't intend to be there. Haven't you ever read a book and realized something like "This author has exposed their ignorance about ______" or "Holy crap, the author hates men/women!", "The author is a crashing snob" or "Hey, this is a rewrite of ______, the plagiarist!"?

Even "Gosh, there's a lot of men kissing each other and declaring their love, isn't that interesting?". Any reader who doesn't notice that just isn't paying attention.

reply

Any acute reader notices things in books that are there, but which the author didn't intend to be there. Haven't you ever read a book and realized something like "This author has exposed their ignorance about ______" or "Holy crap, the author hates men/women!", "The author is a crashing snob" or "Hey, this is a rewrite of ______, the plagiarist!"?

Sure, that's reading between the lines... which is still the same as imagining things. After all, you are filling in the blanks with your prejudices. Sometimes this guesswork is accurate, but sometimes - like here - it amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking.

Even "Gosh, there's a lot of men kissing each other and declaring their love, isn't that interesting?". Any reader who doesn't notice that just isn't paying attention.

Different times. Remember when the books were published: those were not good gay times for gay people. And yet no one complained about all this supposed homoeroticism that Tolkien exposed children to. So clearly men kissing each other and declaring their love was not seen as homosexual elements. Remember, it's not exactly French kissing we're talking about here. These are elements commonly found in classic stories, and even the Bible. And lest we forget:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zOD1JKjD3JI/V76JNs9OEwI/AAAAAAAAK3U/Pxq1BkjxcwAhOPwHJrqQO1kMaDepKdXWACLcB/s1600/socialist_kiss_brezhnev_honecker_1979.jpg

That's not a gay kiss. It would be today, but wasn't back then.

reply

"Different times. Remember when the books were published: those were not good gay times for gay people. And yet no one complained about all this supposed homoeroticism that Tolkien exposed children to."

Well, that's because the mainstream was almost completely unaware of homosexuality or gay rights issues, or the fact that homosexuals can be genuinely in love, or that they could be the heroes of sagas or good guys. IF the mainstream thought of homosexual men at all, it was as "perverts", criminals, people suffering from a mental illness, or child molestors. Like you said, bad times.

IMHO if "LOTR" was submitted to a publisher today, all that stuff would be taken out, now that we're living in an era when everyone is aware that if an officer and his batman are absolutely devoted to each other... it's not necessarily a platonic friendship.

reply

Well, that's because the mainstream was almost completely unaware of homosexuality or gay rights issues, or the fact that homosexuals can be genuinely in love, or that they could be the heroes of sagas or good guys.

There was no ignorance about what did or did not constitute homosexual acts. And none of the same-sex kisses in the book is remotely sexual. There isn't anything inherently sexual about kissing. See for example the Brezhnev kiss above - which is much more intense than any same-sex kiss you'll find in Lord of the Rings. LotR is overall very low-key when it comes to romance. There is likewise no homosexual "tell" between Frodo and Sam, because Tolkien was no more informed of such "tells" than anyone else at the time. If there was anything homosexual in the book, his contemporaries would have picked up on it.

It is only with the passing of time that a man cannot kiss without sexual connotations. Women may still kiss without anyone thinking there's anything lesbian about it, but sometime during the '70s or '80s - as homosexuality became legal - people grew very conscious about such things, and all male-on-male physical contact became more restricted with the resulting homophobia. This regression occurred later in Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia, hence no one thought there was anything homoerotic about two guys embracing and kissing each other with open mouths. Google "fraternal kiss red army" for some juicy examples.

IF the mainstream thought of homosexual men at all, it was as "perverts", criminals, people suffering from a mental illness, or child molestors.

Or people like Oscar Wilde or Alan Turing.


IMHO if "LOTR" was submitted to a publisher today, all that stuff would be taken out, now that we're living in an era when everyone is aware that if an officer and his batman are absolutely devoted to each other... it's not necessarily a platonic friendship.

Why would it be taken out today? Homosexuality is openly celebrated in books today.

reply

"...you see things in books that the author did not intend to put there."

If the author didn't intend it, then it doesn't exist in his story. It's just you imagining your own story. It's irrelevant. You can read gay into any close male friendship in any book or movie, if you're inclined to do so, but if the author didn't intend it that way, your interpretation has no validity. It's just a reflection of your hangups.

reply

You saw what you wanted to see

reply

So in other words....GAAAAAY!

Lol na I'm just kiddin

reply

When watched back to back with Conan the Barbarian (1982) Yes it is.

reply

It was never intended to be gay, it was supposed to be a friendship. Heck in the novel from what I remember they even tell each other they love each other.

reply

Exactly. The old culture loyalty. Modern gays project to it and label the movie as having a gay subplot even though there's no such thing.

reply

THIS POST IS ENTIRELY EMBARRASSING.

reply

Not the right board for your gay fantasies. That wasn't the narrative of the story at all.

reply

I blame the gayness on the casting of Elijah Wood as Frodo. His look was much too soft and feminine and he played Frodo as a passive character which Frodo wasn't in the books. In the books Frodo had firmness and resolve. And in the books Frodo was the kindly Master and Sam was his dutiful servant.

reply

I don’t blame the topic creator. Male friendships are typically subtle and understated with makes it hard to depict them in movies. They tried to use obvious cues such exchanging looks and smiles, and that isn’t how males interact, so it comes off as if they are in love with each other.

reply

You don’t blame the fey OP. I do. Stop trying to paint an agenda that does not exist. It’s clear that the OP never breached the hundreds of pages of source material but just jumped into his own agenda.

reply

lol if this isn't sarcasm, then what a bad take it was 😄

There's nothing woke about Jackson's LOTR trilogy. Sam's straight, he married a woman and had kids with her. No gays in these movies or the books.

reply