Lord of the Rg Taps a Gay Archetype - The Gay & Lbian Review

Contents:

• LORD OF THE RG TAPS A GAY ARCHETYPE
• MAKE AMAZON’S LORD OF THE RGS GAY, YOU COWARDS
• ‘LORD OF THE RGS’ IS STILL GAYER THAN EVER
• 25 OF THE GAYT STRAIGHT MOVI EVER MA

LORD OF THE RG TAPS A GAY ARCHETYPE

The bate over jt how gay Lord of the Rgs really is will no doubt still be ragg another hundred years – there’s a fascatg say wrten om a queer perspective here – given the gild posn JRR Tolkien’s high-fantasy novel holds English lerary history. What’s no longer doubt is that Peter Jackson’s team for the Osr-wng trilogy were perfectly well aware of their epic tale’s homoerotic unrton. Note: This say ntas discsn of homophobia and mentn of suici.

Outsi of the safe darkns of the theater, the Mordor-like wasteland of middle school, the movi were synonymo wh the favored sult of the time — “gay. Early-2000s preteen Ameri was a time of gay jok, of “no homo, ” of mockg voic and slurs, and secret, punive vlence enacted the locker room agast anyone who had a whiff of otherns. He never would have wrten about gay people!

He faced a urt-martial 1918 after one of his letters scribed “homosexual relatns wh men his pany.

MAKE AMAZON’S LORD OF THE RGS GAY, YOU COWARDS

Two years before The Lord of the Rgs was published, war-wng breaker and geni mathematician Alan Turg stood trial for “homosexual acts and gross cency” — that is, beg ught his own home wh another man.

Lewis wrote a letter to Sheldon Vanken (later reprted Vanken’s tobgraphy) that Lewis had received a letter om a “p male homosexual [... The only mentn is a bland reference his bgraphy by Humphrey Carpenter: “As to homosexualy, Tolkien claimed that at neteen he did not even know the word.

Tolkien wrote of the openly gay poet W. As scribed by thor Reynolds Price, at least one member of Tolkien’s iend group, the Inklgs, “separated om his wife and lived a quietly homosexual life. She beme an in the gay male muny for wrg sympathetilly about same-sex relatnships ancient Greece.

‘LORD OF THE RGS’ IS STILL GAYER THAN EVER

Bilbo and Frodo’s home of Bag End is scribed by other hobbs as “a queer place, and s folk are queerer” — an adjective which had a strong nnotatn of homosexualy by the late 1800s. It’s tricky to apply morn labels to people that they did not claim life — but morn labels clu “straight” and “cisgenr” jt as much as “gay” or “transgenr.

One of them was Geofey Bache Smh, a poet whose work is nsired homoromantic by morn rears.

25 OF THE GAYT STRAIGHT MOVI EVER MA

“Homosexualy the First World War. THE LORD OF THE RINGS giv a signifint purpose and meang to endurg male-male partnerships that many more overtly gay narrativ do not. The homoerotic aspects of this motif of male partnership are strikgly evint Tolkien’s novel, which Sam is portrayed as much more than jt a close iend to Frodo.

While ’s te that Tolkien had a wife and raised a fay, extremely close male iendships were the primary foc of his social life, and ’s clear om his poignant pictns of male pannship that somethg eply homoerotic if not homosexual stirred his soul, somethg that was perhaps both aroed and cshed the trench of World War I.

This same-sex nfiguratn of self-actualizatn echo closely the dividuatn procs for gay men scribed by gay-centered psychologist Mch Walker, who has brought a much-need homosexual perspective to Jungian psychology and elucidated the signifince of “a special, erotic, tw ‘brother’ who is felt to be the ‘source of spiratn’” a gay man’s psyche. Walker has termed this ner archetypal figure the “Double, ” who appears the unnsc ner world of all men, straight or gay, as the unrpng for ego inty and the source of “brotherly love. ” Yet for gay men, Walker explas, this archetypal beg is erotilly charged and be the primary “soul figure, ” exactly the role that Sam plays for Frodo, as “a soul-mate of tense warmth and closens” who n “unlock creative procs” and lead to “signifint self-realizatns.