Homosocial Tension

No, I'm not talking about the homophobic guy at work. This is a less uncomfortable, and actually more common, topic.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick wrote a book called Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. It's a study of popular Victorian fiction, and it's absolutely fantastic. For those who don't know, Victorian fiction in general went like this: there is a lady, and a man who wants to marry the lady. There is also another man who wants to marry said lady. There are many dinner parties (if the characters are rich) or festivals (if they're the other kind of people). Eventually there is a marriage. Throughout, all parties are very British. Victorian fiction, for the most part, sucks.

Sedgwick's a smart cookie and picked up on something interesting during her readings of such things, however. In these books, the female characters were ideally Victorian indeed; they didn't especially "do" anything, mostly sitting around being terribly prim while the men did things to try and woo their unimpeachable (repressed) Victorian hearts.

In the wealthier demographic of characters, this might amount to competing presents, increasingly flamboyant carriage rides, or even a duel with competitively snazzy pistols, if they got crazy. In the poorer sector, all sorts of things could go wrong, from bouquets of competing size to a proper impromptu boxing match, complete with rolling about on the ground. All the events are catalyzed and participated in by the male characters. All the emotional content is related to the competition between the two men; another common theme involved the two men being friends, and having their friendship strained by the tension of their competition for the same lady. Lots of heavy conversation between these two men, lots of loaded stares at dinner. Lots of tension.

That, Sedgwick claims, is pretty gay!

According to Sedgwick's theory, the reason for the excessive focus on the male characters is not simple male narcissism, but is evidence of repressed "homo-social" desires. Gay was not the best thing to be in Victorian England, as homosexuality was still regarded as abhorrent and unnatural, and something to sweep under the rug. The tension between the two men is a displaced sort of craving; the female character is a shallow excuse for the two men to have intense feeling toward each other. The feelings in question are usually negative, true, but not unambiguously; the two men are often friends, and the competition springs from ostensibly pure motives and faith in their own manly capacity as manly men with manly aspirations.

Now, armed with this knowledge, the subject of the post. It is my contention that this Victorian phenomenon was by no means strictly Victorian. It's distinctly alive and well.

Take, for example, one of the rallying points, no, one of the great classics of our generation, the monolith of our literary achievement. I'm referring, of course, to the Twilight series.

Edward and Jacob are two men, possessed of great (supernatural) power and tremendous good looks, competing to claim the same woo-mon. The young lady in question, in the books, is a little ambiguous. The best analogy I can think of for her is a red 4x2 LEGO brick; she is without features, but ever-present and intentionally ubiquitous. Most opponents of Twilight say this is a psychological manipulation aimed at young girls, allowing them to easily project themselves into the place of the character. Well, I cry nay! 'Tis gay, I say!

In my opinion, the Twilight series is not bad; indeed, it's fantastic. It's just a spectacular anachronism, dislodged from its proper time and place of writing. To karmatically balance the pretense of that sentence, demolition derby, Burger King, "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."

Twilight is a wonderful piece of Victorian fiction, complete with strong, attractive male characters vying for the companionship of a perfectly bland female for absolutely no reason other than the fact that the other wants her. They fight and wrestle passionately, dragging their friends and supernatural family into their conflict to increase the height of their passion to a dizzying apex. Perhaps most importantly of all, Twilight is absolutely. Loaded. With stares.

TL;DR Read Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; England was a big closet.