#gaycoding

Sam Rohdie on homosexual subtext in Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (1960), from BFI Film Classics: Rocco and his Brothers (Rocco e i suoi Fratelli).

it’s just interesting because heteronormativity has its tendrils in so much art, it’s basically inextricable from it, but this phenomenon has also somewhat opened up avenues to explore lesbian-coding in female/female character dynamics of the past. it’s sort of ironic, but there you go.

Idk it’s frustrating as hell and I really want people to stop doing it. I’m so tired of it lmao

that is all.

* okay so first off this isn’t really evidence but eddie is described as being small, quiet, repressed, and has a very overbearing mother that leaves him with no real room to explore things related to growing up maybe the way the other boys have. * at the beginning of the novel, king discusses the murder of adrian mellon as he is out with his boyfriend don haggardy. adrian is one of the only lgbt characters in the novel along with don. adrian mellon is described extremely similar to the way that eddie is described: being smaller, but also fiestier. adrian and eddie are both also THE ONLY asthmatic characters in the novel. they’re ALSO both killed by pennywise. i personally believe king did this purposefully, showing eddie and adrian as foils of each other. * also, in a passage when the losers reconvene in derry as adults, mike talks about how adrian mellon was killed, and describes him as “the victim was a gay and rather childlike man Adrian Mellon. He had a bad case of asthma.” Then, “Eddie’s hand stole out and touched the side of his aspirator.” this COULD be eddie sympathizing with adrian because they’re both asthmatic, but who feels a sense of community or sameness with others because you’ve both got asthma? i feel like it’s something else mike said that made eddie do that… * another BIG thing is eddie’s fear, or what It transforms into for him. it’s different in both the 1990 and 2017 movies, but in the book, the leper speaks to eddie, and the things he says are all sexual, showing that eddie’s fear isn’t just uncleanliness, it’s also sexual interaction (with a MAN). which would make sense, seeing as when this is set, in the 1950s, in a small town, it would be impossible for eddie to be proud of his sexuality in a close minded atmosphere, if he even realized his feelings. it is/was common for gay people to feel afraid or angry at themselves for their sexuality - internalized homophobia. some things that the leper says to eddie: “Come back here, kid! I’ll blow you for free. Come back here!… Want a blow-job for a quarter or a dime? COME BACK ANYTIME!” * another thing is eddie’s relationship when he’s older. eddie marries a woman named myra and king compares her again and again to eddie’s overbearing mother. it’s a loveless marriage and relationship. eddie married someone that was comfortable, familiar, who was the same as what he grew up with, not someone he loved. * on the other hand, as they’re growing up as kids, eddie and richie have an extremely close relationship, even as it’s mocking and humorous most of the time, and in one of my favorite passages, “Eddie hated when Richie called him Eds. But he kind of liked it, too.” * eddie also has a sort of “hero-worship” type relationship/looking up to bill in the book as kids. he assumes anyone else sees bill the same way, and while the other losers definitely all admire bill, i don’t think it comes close to eddie as a 10 year old saying he would easily die for bill. * one of the biggest reasons he’s headcanoned as gay in the book is the way that stephen king wrote his death. going back to his relationship with richie growing up… as eddie’s dying in the sewers, richie holds him in his arms and eddie holds richie’s face. richie assures eddie that he isn’t going to die and calls him “eds”, and eddie says the ever famous words: “for the last time, don’t call me that, richie. you know i…” and dies before finishing the sentence. this is a CLEAR ambiguous and purposeful ending to eddie’s life that keeps the possibility of eddie saying something more open by stephen king. and it’s the ultimate tragedy, because eddie dies before he’s able to tell richie WHAT he truly felt IF he truly felt a certain way about him. * there is definitely more but that’s all that i can think of off the top of my head!

okay, so that was a lot. but anyway. eddie is gay, and there’s so, so much gay coding for his character throughout the book and miniseries. it frustrates me that people want to use one flimsy crush on gretta bowie to invalidate that. 

Mr Keene/Pennywise: Beware, little Eddie. Beware! Girly boy!