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Tom Brown's Schooldays and other stories  [message #23281] Sun, 02 January 2005 11:20 Go to previous message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13828



We had a new production on TV here last night. And I watched it, though I never actually ever liked the tale. My excuse is that we have a houseguest who wanted to watch it.

The casting was interesting. Stephen Fry was little known worldwide until he was cast as Oscar Wilde in the relatively recent film. He was Dr Arnold. It amused me that a gay actor was cast as a headmaster in the school. Alex Pettyfer was cast as Tom.

Now this interested me more because Alex is handsome in an unpretty kind of way, and is very blond in a head turning kind of way (and is also tipped to be in Pirates of thre Caribbean 3). I was interesed becuase it struck me how many boy heros are cast from very good looking boys. I could list many, from Freddie Bartholomew in Dickens (aeons ago) through Mark Lester as Oliver, and the list would be endless.

It struck me that period (and other drama) seems to be populated by not just homoerotic elements, but that, when there is a chance to use a gorgeous young boy in the cast it becomes very much an adult/youth droolfest.

The excuse is always Mums and Grannies. But something tells me there is far more behind this than the M&G factor.

Yesterday we even had a shot of Alex's naked rump, with makeup showing cane marks. Though I somehow suspect, since he winced very realistically during a graphic caning scene, that they may not have been makeup [personal memories of being caned here]. It was a subliminal flash, and was a delightful rump. But it was not necessary to the plot to see it.

So I am back to the alomst paedophilic casting of gorgeous youth in perido and other dramas, and wondering why this goes on. Of course it is to sell tickets or the show to other channels and stations, ut it still seems to me to be inherrently homoerotic and paedophilic.

Of course it would not be less paedophilic if the child were ugly, but the erotic would not be so present. The only place where it was necessary to have a beautiful boy was in Death in Venice, a very boring film about obsession withy a very beautiful boy.


Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
 
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