Contents:
- MARK SCHULTZ ATTACKS 'GAY RELATNSHIP' WRTLG BPIC FOXTCHER
- FOXTCHER’S GAY SUBTEXT BRGS “ROUGH TRA” TO THE MOVI
MARK SCHULTZ ATTACKS 'GAY RELATNSHIP' WRTLG BPIC FOXTCHER
In the film, ’s heavily implied that he and his brother’s killer had a homosexual relatnship and, when Dave saw the fal cut of the film, he explod on Twter, wrg to the director:. Mark Schultz mounted an angry social media asslt on Miller after crics reviewg the film suggted there may have been homosexual unrton to the relatnship between the on-screen Schultz, played by Channg Tatum, and multi-lnaire wrtlg imprar John DuPont, played by Steve Carell. Fally, US journalist Christian Caryl lambasted send world war breaker drama The Imatn Game the New York Review of Books for pictg Bra’s Alan Turg, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, as a “dour Mr Spock who is disliked by all of his -workers” and “jt the sort of mythologil gay man, whey and weak, that homophob love to hate” ntradictn of what the cric said were historil facts.
Foxtcher’s Gay Subtext Brgs “Rough Tra” to the Movi.
To unrstand the disfort that many gay viewers are undoubtedly feelg screengs of Foxtcher—the dreary b of Osr ba jt out om director Bent Miller—you need to unrstand a few thgs about gay archetyp and how they have historilly functned. This is important, bee I nnot thk of another recent movie that so clearly reli on homo-anx, dog-whistle shorthand for both s characterizatn and plot; and yet, save for Armond Whe’s sthg piece OUT, the film’s largely posive reviews have avoid real examatn of the issue. To be fair, some crics have wonred aloud about the film’s “hts” at homoeroticism, but they have ultimately shied away om gog further.
FOXTCHER’S GAY SUBTEXT BRGS “ROUGH TRA” TO THE MOVI
Those elements are probably there somewhere, but ’s the gay subtext— this se, the age-old story of a wealthy, effete fairy gog after rough tra—that feels most central, most necsary for the movie to make whatever narrative sense do. But then, none of the read as crypto-gay eher. Schultz wr his memoir that “I had my spicns [that du Pont might be gay], but I never observed … anythg that would e me to say he was a homosexual.
The term will be faiar to many gay rears, but perhaps ls so to others, so here’s a quick troductn. Tra is a slang word om Polari, a gay English dialect popular the 19th and early 20th centuri that’s mostly died out now save for a few exprsns. The term generally refers to a mascule-prentg man who is not gay-intified, but who will have sex wh gay men for money or social stat.
Even if you didn’t nscly know about the fairy/tra dynamic before, you’ve almost certaly picked up along the way as a cultural trope, a lazy way of reprentg gay male relatnships as predatory—and there li my problem wh this movie. But what really soured Foxtcher for me (asi om disverg that so much of this stuff arose om artistic choice rather than historil fact) was Miller’s sistence that the te st of this gay drama was not to du Pont or even Mark, but to the heterosexual fay. The more I reflect on this movie, the more I feel like reli on a particularly sid—and troublgly effective—kd of homophobic suggtn for s allure.