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HOW MARVEL’S LE CAGE GAVE US THE SPIRUAL SUCCSOR TO OMAR LTLE’S REVOLUTNARY GAY INTY
While Shas do kill Comanche episo seven, is not bee of homophobia or bee he’s choosg his relatnship wh Marian over his relatnship wh Comanche. For me what mak this not a typil se of “bury your gays” is that Comanche isn’t beg punished for beg gay, him beg a snch was a set up for ath before we even got nfirmatn about his sexualy. But is a nuanced portrayal of two gay men of lor the crimal world?
Much like The Wire did for Omar Ltle, Le Cage‘s Shas offers another image of what a gay/bisexual man n look like. If you took a lot of the language gangsters the stori e wh one another and put them to any other kd of movie, you’d still terpret as if we never went down that road where thgs happened between Shas and Comanche while they were prison, that homoerotic subtext would still be there bee when you factor Mariah to their dynamic, theirs is still a story about two people love wh the same man. So, episo seven when Shas kills Comanche, ’s not borne out of any latent homophobia, he kills him bee he realiz that he do love him, but lovg people—lovg anyone—is pullg him out of his socpathy and bluntg his crimal sens.
It’s important that a wi array of different queer experienc are well-reprented on-screen and the fact of the matter is that not all gay love stori end happily. Many people tend to react wh unease when the trope of the prison-time gay relatnship, and the tac implitns of trma and victimisatn that e wh them, appear a narrative—’s a story that’s not always handled wh sensivy and telligence televisn and film, to say the least—but this moment stands out bee… both of the men adm that they did , liked , and still stand together as brothers. Mariah seems relieved to share this tth: her first hband, Jackson Dillard, a good-natured doctor and activist whose surname Mariah kept to wash away the ss of her fay, was actually gay, marryg a woman orr to appease his fay.