subtext

— पांच हजार दो सौ निन्यानवे — Not a lot to tell you today; my socializing took a nosedive this week and I'm totally fine with that, after twelve days straight of social engagements between the 11th and the 22nd. (Confession: I am including the night I went to the bathhouse in that stretch, but that's social, is it not?—it certainly involved the companionship of others.) I watched two movies last night, at home by myself. I have long heard about the gay subtext in the 1985 horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge and was always curious about revisiting it for that reason. I've even run it past two different friends to suggest watching it together; one immediately had no interest and the other basically responded with indifference. I figured, what the hell; it's horror movie season right now, and I have the time. Plus, I could then watch the 2019 documentary about the gay lead actor from the film, called Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, which, as it happened, was available for free on Tubi, which I discovered to be an app already installed on our TV. It broke several times for commercials but I could live with that. Anyway. The 1985 movie: maybe it was actually scary in 1985, but holy shit, it is not scary now. It didn't even have any effective jump scares. Setting the gay subtext aside—and although there is a good amount of that, I was honestly disappointed there wasn't more of it—the movie has not aged well at all, has literally laughable practical effects (miniature bus alert!), and beyond schlocky writing. I actually found sitting through the entire thing a bit of a slog. The documentary about its star, Mark Patton, was far more interesting, even though I had my issues even with that. As in, I feel for this guy who suffered genuinely damaging homophobia that basically derailed his acting career, but the degree to which he held onto certain things, for fully three decades—such as a desire for an apology from the admittedly kind of clueless writer of the film's script—I found to be a bit much. I feel the same way about the way people characterize A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 as "soooo gay," as if the subtext of the movie were straight up text, which it absolutely was not, especially to 1985 viewers. People act like the director, a straight guy named Jack Sholder, is some kind of idiot for not seeing the subtext, but I was gay myself and didn't catch any such subtext when I first saw it in the eighties. I mean, come on. If you don't know to look for gay subtext in a movie like this, it's very easy to miss, and to suggest it isn't is to be disingenuous. Highlighting costar Ron Rusler's statement that he knew it in his audition doesn't really change that. Some people saw it and some people didn't, and it's easy to see how it would happen in either case. The documentary features queer film festival showings of the film with drag queen hosts and Mark Patton making guest appearances at them. I don’t begrudge them having fun with it at all, but I feel like there are far more glaring examples of gay subtext in film, like Alfred Hitchcock's Rope or Spartacus or even Interview with the Vampire (another one whose gay subtext I completely missed upon first viewing). It's also worth noting that all of these are far better movies than A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. And how "glaring" its subtext is (okay, he screams like a girl . . . who gives a shit? he's a teenager) seems more aligned with that of Top Gun. Which is to say: not anywhere near as overt as people make it out to be. Although admittedly I think Mark Patton's characterization is more overt than any in Top Gun. — पांच हजार दो सौ निन्यानवे — — पांच हजार दो सौ निन्यानवे — So anyway, that was basically my evening last night. I made a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner again—bleu cheese for the win! what a great choice—and spent a bit of time petting the cats, who lounged on the couch behind me. I didn't get on Skype with Shobhit this time, mostly because I'm increasingly frustrated with how often the weak signal on his end drops the calls. We did text briefly though, and he let me know he has checked in for his flight leaving tomorrow my time, and super early Friday morning his time. I'm taking the afternoon off on Friday to go pick him up at the airport. The original plan had been for me to pick up him and his mom, but he has officially canceled her ticket. He's now hoping maybe she can visit in the spring if she's feeling better, but I have my doubts. This is the closest she has come to returning after many, many attempts to convince her since her last visit in 2008—the first time he actually went so far as to buy her plane ticket—and still in the end she's not coming. When I thought we would be driving her around the neighborhood on Halloween to see all the decorations, I made a plan to walk with Alexia tomorrow night. Now, plans have been altered: Alexia and I (and, presumably, Shobhit) will walk on Halloween evening, and tomorrow night Alexia and I will watch the last of our 11-movie Star Wars marathon, finally finishing up with The Rise of Skywalker. We'll see if I still think of it as so much of a disappointment as I did upon its initial release. — पांच हजार दो सौ निन्यानवे — [posted 12:30 pm]