Are neil and todd gay in dead poets society
Dead Poets Society Shines Brighter Through a Queer Lens
Plenty of films have homosexual subtext. Whether it be intentional or unintentional the subtext can seep into a film in a variety of ways and extend some interesting understanding into the production and its characters. Sometimes it can be as uncomplicated as some homoerotic tension in a buddy action flick and other times it can recline in the more minute details of themes or presentation. Like any lens you can submit to film, a queer lens simply offers us another dimension in which we can grill a film and its meaning. But some films are suited to this kind of examination more than others. And if one were to seek some queer motion picture theorists about films with noticeable same-sex attracted subtext, you wouldn’t have to inquire many before you hear about Dead Poets Society.
Dead Poets Society (1989) directed by Peter Weir is a motion picture that needs petite introduction. The production is widely acclaimed for both its story and performances. The story follows John Keating (Robin Williams), a recent English teacher at the prestigious Welton Academy with a different approach to teaching. Keating is a breath of fresh air in the oppressive halls of Welton. With his encourageme
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Anonymous asked:
hi, so i view a lot of posts talking about how dps is queer-coded, but i’m confused as to why. i never interpreted it as a metaphor for being gay or anything like that, so i was wondering exactly why many people call it a queer-coded film
hi! express gratitude you for asking! apologies for how long this post is going to be, i just finished finals and i’m an english major with too much time on my hands. take everything i say with a grain of salt, this is just how i approach analyzing the film.
to preface, i don’t think that reading dps as a queer-coded movie (or as a metaphor for entity gay) is the only way to read the film. i think there are many, many diverse perspectives on the movie that hold validity and importance.
that being said, let’s talk about queer-coding in dps, and why a lot of people (including myself) feel like the film has queer themes!
the most important part of this (for me at least) is understanding the difference between authorial intent and a reading of a film. it’s objectively true that peter weir and tom schulmann didn’t intend for dps to be gay (unless someone is lying, lol). i think that here is where some folks obtain confu
In Defense of Dead Poets Society
I hadn’t seen this movie since my freshman year of high school—watched it in English class, of course—and I barely remembered it. I vaguely remembered that one of the kids killed themselves at the end, but I couldn’t remember if it was Robert Sean Leonard or Ethan Hawke.
I also thought there was a scene at the end where the parent of one of the kids who didn’t kill themselves had a tearful moment of realization with his son and said something like “I never want anything like that to happen to you,” which then steer to an elevated level of reciprocal understanding between youngster and father. Apparently, I completely invented this scene, and in retrospect I’m glad it wasn’t in the film. More on that later.
As I started watching, I had a fleeting feeling that this motion picture was suspect in many intellectual circles, and that many of its remarkable parts were seen as cliché or trite.
Let’s go deeper. I’m going to mention that I’ve always had a subconscious dread or haunted feeling about the actor Robert Sean Leonard