#the gay subtext is there! the gay subtext is there and very ripe for picking!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hakasims · 3 years

Text

The Most In-depth Analysis of Luca Marinelli’s Characters You’ll Ever Need

You’d think I was done with classifications, but I’m not! There’s so much more I can say about Luca Marinelli’s oeuvre and his magnificent roster of characters. And yes, I’ve made this post before where I highlighted specific tropes that show up in a lot of his movies, but that was surface-level shit. This is an actual exploration of what makes a Luca Marinelli character besides being a kinky little whore. And don’t worry, it’s still in that user-friendly question-answer format because I love you.

Here’s the thing: Luca is a chameleon but he also has a type, and this type is:

✨ a (likely) queer repressed addict with daddy issues ✨

That’s the skeleton. Let’s see how many of his major roles possess that skeleton at all and what flavors they add to the picture.

Disclaimer: I excluded characters with little screen time and Joseph from Mary of Nazareth because he doesn’t deserve rights. Also, instead of going in the boring chronological order, I’m gonna start with the least typical character for Luca and end with the crème de la crème. The results may not surprise you.

Nicky (The Old Guard)

Is he queer? Undeniably.

Is he repressed? No.

Does he have an addiction? No.

Does he have daddy issues? I know we’re all deeply affected by our shitty father figures but I would genuinely question Nicky’s sanity if he were still on that shit at the ripe age of 951. A little tip for daddy-hating immortals out there: just do what Angel did and kill your shitty dad. Problem solved.

Is he violent? Despite doling out tons of violence, he doesn’t have a violent nature and seems uninterested in hating his enemy or delivering retribution.

Does he need a good night sleep? I’m sure nothing helps one sleep better than a Joe-shaped big spoon.

Does he need a good cry? Doesn’t seem like it.

Flavors: A perfect immortal warrior bean in a healthy relationship.

Conclusion: Ironically but unsurprisingly, Nicky is the least Luca-like character.

Guido (Tutti i santi giorni)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so but who knows? If someone told me he’s demisexual, I’d believe it.

Is he repressed? The movie may disagree, but I say yes, obviously.

Does he have an addiction? Not unless you count his romantic relationship.

Does he have daddy issues? His family is so supportive and wholesome it’s almost parodic.

Is he violent? He’s the opposite of a toxic macho dude, but then he has a violent outburst out of nowhere because the movie is bad.

Does he need a good night sleep? He doesn’t like sleeping at night.

Does he need a good cry? Naturally.

Flavors: An adorkable awkward nerd with flowery speech.

Conclusion: I can forgive straightness and wholesomeness but I can’t forgive lack of complexity.

Martin (Martin Eden)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so.

Is he repressed? Yes.

Does he have an addiction? No.

Does he have daddy issues? Not to my knowledge.

Is he violent? When he deems it necessary to be.

Does he need a good night sleep? Sure.

Does he need a good cry? Cry your little heart out, Martin!

Flavors: An arrogant, pretentious, politically confused writer.

Conclusion: A little too straight for your typical Luca, but he makes up for it with being complex and complicated.

Loris (Il mondo fino in fondo)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so.

Is he repressed? So fucking repressed!

Does he have an addiction? Nothing beyond his savior complex.

Does he have daddy issues? He has a shitty dad he’s spent his whole life trying to please, and also his mommy left, so like yeah, obviously.

Is he violent? He has his straight dude moments.

Does he need a good night sleep? Definitely.

Does he need a good cry? Oh yeah, let him cry, it’s good for him.

Flavors: A casually homophobic mother hen.

Conclusion: Ruined by heterosexual agenda.

Lui (Ricordi?)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so.

Is he repressed? Very.

Does he have an addiction? No.

Does he have daddy issues? A big sack of them.

Is he violent? No.

Does he need a good night sleep? Oh yes. To sleep, perchance to dream about anything other than his traumatic memories.

Does he need a good cry? So much.

Flavors: Up-his-butt and pensive.

Conclusion: Leave it to Luca to take a guy who would be an absolute nightmare in real life and turn him into someone I actually want to watch for two hours and see happy by the end.

Gabriele (Waves)

Is he queer? There’s evidence he might be gay.

Is he repressed? I’d bet on it.

Does he have an addiction? Doesn’t seem like it.

Does he have daddy issues? Nobody knows.

Is he violent? No.

Does he need a good night sleep? He probably will with how the movie ended.

Does he need a good cry? At least one.

Flavors: A sweet introverted guy who loves boats.

Conclusion: While not particularly complex, Gabriele has layers and nuances. Also give him a big muscular daddy.

Fabrizio (Fabrizio de André - Principe libero)

Is he queer? I don’t believe so.

Is he repressed? He was before music became his only career.

Does he have an addiction? Alcohol, cigarettes, sex, cheating - take your pick.

Does he have daddy issues? Not as bad as some of the other guys here but he’s heard his fair share of “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” speeches.

Is he violent? He’s soft.

Does he need a good night sleep? He’s an artist, what do you think?

Does he need a good cry? He’s an artist, what do you think?

Flavors: Fabrizio de André is the flavor.

Conclusion: Even though it’s a biopic, there are still many Luca-isms there. He’s just that kind of actor.

Milton (Una questione privata)

Is he queer? It could be argued that he is bisexual.

Is he repressed? Do you even need to ask?

Does he have an addiction? About half of the breaths he takes are filled with cigarette smoke.

Does he have daddy issues? He seems to have a good and loving relationship with both his parents.

Is he violent? Not by nature.

Does he need a good night sleep? Yep.

Does he need a good cry? He certainly does.

Flavors: A repressed bisexual feeling powerless in a horrible world.

Conclusion: This is proof that Luca can carry a whole entire movie on his sexy shoulders, alone. Also Milton needs a safe and loving triad.

Mattia (La solitudine dei numeri primi)

Is he queer? I personally read him as asexual. Though assigning asexuality to characters who are traumatized is a dangerous path so don’t quote me on this, okay?

Is he repressed? Just the most repressed.

Does he have an addiction? It’s debatable whether self-harm and eating disorders can be considered addictions, but they’re part of his character, and I thought you should know.

Does he have daddy issues? His parents played their part in messing him up which then led to the big thing that really messed him up, though other than that his dad is barely a presence.

Is he violent? Not at all.

Does he need a good night sleep? At least 17 hours.

Does he need a good cry? Oh, so much. He needs all the cry.

Flavors: A quiet genius with lots of guilt.

Conclusion: Can you believe this was his first film role? Our boy is talented af!

Fabio (Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot)

Is he queer? Undeniably.

Is he repressed? You could argue that he is repressed by being limited in his place in social hierarchy.

Does he have an addiction? Amazingly enough, no. He has fixations, though.

Does he have daddy issues? Thinking his father was a loser and not wanting to end up like him is textbook stuff.

Is he violent? Very.

Does he need a good night sleep? Yes please.

Does he need a good cry? He needs to purge his soul from all the bottled up stuff.

Flavors: A campy psycho.

Conclusion: Luca’s most iconic character, so of course he scored high on the list.

Paolo (Il padre d’Italia)

Is he queer? Undeniably.

Is he repressed? I can’t even start listing all the ways in which he’s repressed.

Does he have an addiction? He smokes a lot.

Does he have daddy issues? His issues are more of a mommy variety.

Is he violent? Not in the slightest.

Does he need a good night sleep? He’s the poster boy for needing a good night sleep.

Does he need a good cry? A good cry, a good weep, a good sob, a good bawl, *googles more synonyms* a good wail, a good squall...

Flavors: A self-loathing gay orphan in need of some life goodness.

Conclusion: What can I say about Paolo that all of you aren’t already thinking? Decent film, great character, excellent portrayal.

Mickey (Die Pfeiler der Macht)

Is he queer? Undeniably.

Is he repressed? It’s Victorian England, you guys.

Does he have an addiction? He smokes casually but other than that... eh. And don’t tell me he has sex addiction. He uses his body strategically.

Does he have daddy issues? If what he has isn’t daddy issues, I don’t know what is.

Is he violent? He’s got tons of bottled up aggression.

Does he need a good night sleep? It would be great if he could use the day’s darkest hours for sleeping.

Does he need a good cry? Undeniably.

Flavors: A conniving slut extraordinaire.

Conclusion: A major player in the book (says me who managed like 50 pages), Mickey Miranda was turned into such a nothing character in the miniseries that they needed a truly extraordinary actor to make him memorable. And guess what, Luca delivered.

Cesare (Non essere cattivo)

Is he queer? Not explicitly, but come on.

Is he repressed? Lethally.

Does he have an addiction? He’s an addiction textbook.

Does he have daddy issues? *Jake Peralta voice* Yeah, the guy without a daddy is the one with daddy issues. Explain that logic.

Is he violent? Oh yeah, he’s a rabid little trash goblin.

Does he need a good night sleep? So much.

Does he need a good cry? He’s had his fair share of good cries, but he could always use more.

Flavors: A aimless junkie.

Conclusion: The quintessential Luca. Beautiful.

Primo (Trust)

Is he queer? Listen, just because we don’t see him fuck a dude on screen it doesn’t mean he isn’t a motherfluffing queer icon. It’s not subtext; it’s TEXT.

Is he repressed? Where do I even fucking start?

Does he have an addiction? Oh yeah. And a coke nail to prove it.

Does he have daddy issues? I would need a whole separate post to unpack his daddy issues.

Is he violent? So very violent.

Does he need a good night sleep? Yes, please. On an actual bed in an actual bedroom.

Does he need a good cry? You can just tell.

Flavors: A ruthless criminal with a strong mafia boss potential.

Conclusion: The pièce de résistance of the Luca Marinelli filmography. Not only does he tick every box, he gets bonus points for the excellent wardrobe choices that emphasize Luca’s best features. Primo Nizzuto is everything great you want from Luca, except singing. (Though in my headcanon that whole white car in a snowstorm monologue was a musical number.)

#luca marinelli #the old guard #tutti i santi giorni #martin eden #il mondo fino in fondo #ricordi?#waves 2012 #fabrizio de andré - principe libero #una questione privata #la solitudine dei numeri primi #lo chiamavano jeeg robot #il padre d'italia #die pfeiler der macht #non essere cattivo #trust fx

229 notes · View notes

nibblesofflesh · 7 years

Text

Henry Higgins is Eliza’s gay adoptive dad

This is a series of meta exploring my new perspective on the relationships in My Fair Lady. Though many people, previously including me, interpret it as a love story between Eliza and Henry Higgins, the film actually seems to encourage another reading entirely – Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering are Eliza’s adoptive parents. I’ll go into how I think this queer reading of My Fair Lady is supported by the text and subtext, and how it actually allows Eliza and her gay dads the happy ending they all deserve.

Part 3: Henry Higgins is as straight as Sherlock Holmes

In Part 2, I discussed how Higgins and Pickering’s first meeting qualified as a meet cute. Incidentally, it was upon studying this meet cute that I noticed something (before reading several articles on the subject) as a queer Sherlock Holmes fan: Higgins and Pickering seemed very familiar. Let me summarize their meeting again for perspective:

A veteran who just came back from a stay abroad meets an eccentric who is a genius in a very esoteric field. The eccentric DEDUCES where people are from based on tiny nuances in their speech patterns that no one else would notice (and is mistaken for a detective, HA). The veteran likes this man instantly despite his eccentric behavior, and immediately moves in with him. He’s an eager student in all of the eccentric’s ways, is very quick to praise, and enables a lot of the eccentric’s worst behavior, never giving more resistance than a “Be reasonable!”

The similarities are suspicious, but what really clinched it for me was this description of Higgins from the screenplay:

When the lights go on, as they will in a moment, HIGGINS in the morning light is seen to be a robust, vital, appetizing sort of man of forty or thereabouts. He is of the energetic scientific type, heartily, even violently, interested in everything that can be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about himself and other people, including their feelings. He is, in fact, but for his years and size, rather like a very imperious baby “taking notice” eagerly and loudly, and requiring almost as much watching to keep him out of unintended mischief. His manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a good humor to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong; but he is so entirely frank and void of malice that he remains likable even in his least reasonable moments.

Henry Higgins is Sherlock Holmes, and that makes Pickering his Watson – and that immediately leads to questions about just how straight Higgins could possibly be.

To start, both Holmes and Higgins have their potential feelings concerning women addressed and dismissed. Watson will frequently say (and most notably in “A Study in Scarlet,” concerning Irene Adler) that Holmes has never shown love for a woman, because it goes against his logical nature. For Higgins, aside from an entire song about all the qualities he supposedly sees and completely despises in women, there’s another lovely tidbit from the screenplay:

(…But as to HIGGINS, the only distinction he makes between men and women is that when he is neither bullying nor exclaiming to the heavens against some featherweight cross, he coaxes women as a child coaxes its nurse when it wants to get anything out of her)

At this point, assuming Higgins sees Eliza romantically because she commands his respect is akin to assuming Holmes sees Irene Adler romantically because she outsmarts him. No, really; the idea is dismissed in both texts, and yet the assumption has prevailed for practically as long as the texts have existed – neither Holmes nor Higgins can escape it.

I know authorial intent is to be taken with a grain of salt, but here’s an interesting little bit of history: George Bernard Shaw, the author of Pygmalion (from which My Fair Lady is of course based), was outraged when the first stage production put Higgins in a more romantic light. He actively fought for productions to dispel any notion of romance between Higgins and Eliza from 1914 to at least 1938, when the film was made – that’s almost 25 years of saying no and still not being listened to – and that’s before My Fair Lady was even conceived.

But, even when paying the author no mind, each text does a perfectly good job of demonstrating that their male heroes are very much not straight. At this point, the argument becomes a bit more nuanced, because it’s very possible that Higgins is, like many read Holmes to be, asexual. That reading is completely supported by the text. I’d also say, however, that there is some subtext in My Fair Lady that lends itself to read Higgins and Pickering as being a couple, and much of it is for the same reason we read Holmes and Watson as being together.

One of the little tidbits you learn from queer study of Sherlock Holmes is that the word “bachelor” is thrown about quite a bit in the Holmes stories, and the term has been used in popular culture as a euphemism for a man being homosexual. “Confirmed bachelor” is even stronger, because it insinuates he’ll never marry.

Additionally, Holmes is often described as bohemian, and a lot of the gestures and movements he makes can be interpreted as flamboyant and are often portrayed that way – the most prominent of which being his expressive, “nervous” hands.

On top of that, though Holmes sometimes seems a bit at odds with social mores involving contact with other people, it’s always clear that he is incredibly physically comfortable with Watson, touching his shoulder or looping through his arm. He in fact seems more comfortable touching Watson than just about anyone else.

(Okay, the similarities are almost getting silly now.)

Honestly, of the few ways Holmes and Higgins do differ, the most glaring of which to me is that, while Holmes is often uninterested in talking about his feelings, Higgins likes to wax poetic about his, especially when he’s completely contradicting himself. It’s actually a good thing, though, because instead of small glimpses into how his mind works, Higgins bares all like he’s kicking through a pair of double doors.

He rants about all of the reasons he dislikes women in the beginning of the film, which is bad enough, but it gets even worse – or should I say better? – at the end, when he sings what I affectionately call his “I like men” song. It starts out with the line: “Pickering, why can’t a woman be like a man?”

HIGGINS. Yes … why can’t a woman be more like a man? Men are so honest, so thoroughly square; Eternally noble, historically fair…

This goes on for a bit. Not only is this song absolutely hilarious characterization and one of the best bits of verbal irony I’ve ever seen (though the irony is lost on Higgins because he believes every word of it), it’s also… not very straight. This song is basically one big flashing neon sign saying “I like men,” and Henry Higgins is twirling it like a baton. But wait; it gets so much better:

Why can’t a woman take after a man? Men are so pleasant, so easy to please; Whenever you are with them, you’re always at ease. Would you be slighted if I didn’t speak for hours? PICKERING. Of course not! HIGGINS. Would you be livid if I had a drink or two? PICKERING. Nonsense. HIGGINS. Would you be wounded if I never sent you flowers? PICKERING. Never. HIGGINS. Well, why can’t a woman be like you?

At this point in the song he elegantly drapes himself down next to Pickering on the couch, and “addresses” the few, small issues some men may possess, discussing how they are most definitely the exception to the rule. Pickering is so amused.

And then Higgins goes on:

Why can’t a woman take after a man? Because men are so friendly, good-natured and kind. A better companion you never will find. If I were hours late for dinner, would you bellow? PICKERING. Of course not! HIGGINS. If I forgot your silly birthday, would you fuss? PICKERING. Nonsense. HIGGINS: Would you complain if I took out another fellow? PICKERING. Never. HIGGINS. Well, why can’t a woman be like us?

And there you have it. Not much to say after a song like that. When you view this film through a heteronormative lens, you tell yourself that this is Higgins listing all of men’s apparently amazing qualities just because he thinks he has all of these qualities – narcissistic projection at its worst. And, though I still think there’s an element of that, if you allow a queer reading of the song, it’s all there, ripe for the picking. Honestly, is it even subtext at that point?

So, in conclusion, Henry Higgins is an archetype, and a very famous one at that – and if he’s based on Sherlock Holmes, there is a very strong possibility that he is not very straight.

@oddcomoddity @tremendousdetectivetheorist (If anyone else wants to be tagged for the rest of the series, let me know in the comments!)

#higgins is eliza's gay dad #henry higgins #sherlock holmes #my fair lady #meta #rex harrison #colonel pickering #queer reading

65 notes · View notes