not to discredit the extremely valid take that hamlet is just another misogynistic dude / probably would be a modern day incel or belittle his actions and also not to eliminate bi hamlet as a perfectly reasonable interpretation of his sexuality but
like my lit teacher is one of the “hamlet has an oedipal complex” people that make me want to scream and he thinks hamlets shitty actions and speech towards women is a result of his sexual frustration bc of his mother and the difference between him and i is that i do believe its partially because of sexual frustration but its actually a result of his attraction towards other men. and anyway bi hamlet is a perfectly fair conclusion but heres why i think hes gay and why that makes sense and is important as hell to some chunk of the stupid shit he does:
ill get into the second part of this in a second but first the important thing is dividing hamlets motivation for his frustration towards the NUMEROUS amount of both two (2) women in the play. The fact that one is his mother Is Important but not in the “i read freuds analysis of hamlet once so now im convinced he wanted to fuck his mom the whole time because i dont have an ounce of creative thought in my brain, why am i teaching english” way. nah, more like hamlet has so many issues he tbh just wants love and support from the only parental figure left but shes too busy shagging claudius to pay attention to her sons neurotransmitter imbalances. I have Thoughts about hamlets feeling towards ophelia but ill get into his thoughts about her later. but anyway his motivations are divided into a given reason and an underlying reason, or reasons. now you might be saying “hey, casper, i know this shit already because thats how humans operate, idiot” and youre right ! but the point i want to make here is that both of these reasons are actually major players behind his actions, and thats important because usually in stuff where the writer likes to pretend they know how to write complex human action, inaction, thoughts, feelings, etc. they don’t have that balance and want to rely more on the reader figuring out the underlying reason. but william, william is different. in hamlets case the given reason for being frustrated with women is so convincing that hamlet manages to live on with the delusion that thats the only reason behind it. The given reason, obviously, is the big gross incestuous problem: gertrude married claudius, gertrude married claudius fast, and at some point in the play hamlets worried gertrude might have been in on the alleged regicidal/fratricidal action so that she could marry claudius. the thing that makes it very obvious theres a fun little underlying reason is the fact that hamlet then extends his frustration towards his mother to womankind as a whole, and that pours into his interactions with the undeserving ophelia.
Anyway i love ophelia, but in like an “i would love to be her best fuckign friend i would die for her” kind of way, like i would love to be as close with her as a gay man (me) and a flower-loving bi queen (ophelia) can be. the problem with hamlet is that his feelings towards ophelia are exactly what mine would be if i were suddenly and violently thrust into the halls of elsinore to play his role. that is, entirely platonic, but in a frustrating way. he wants to love her, because, and i truly believe this, shes in love with him (she deserves better honestly) and you know, theres social expectation, hamlet has to be straight, hamlet has to find a girl to marry, and ophelias right there and she loves him why cant he love her back ! he loves her, but he doesnt love her, not in the way hes trying and failing to force himself to. and hes angry at himself and hes a mess and when he finally gets a chance to come a little unhinged he silently confronts this without even realizing, and i always read the part where ophelia relays hamlets dishevled look and odd actions with her as an unspoken acknowledgement of this whole thing. not that he cares about it for long, haha !
anyway the point is what the fuck hamlet? well to this i ask: have you ever encountered a cis gay (mostly bottoms, and yes i Am implying hamlet is a bottom) who was just brimming with misogyny ? if you answered no i would love to room together in the rock youre living under. to me, hamlets got two big Things that specifically point to him being gay as hell: one, his interactions with men, and by men i mean horatio thanks, are far more obviously soft, gentle, and warm than his interactions with, say, ophelia (even though i read the “get thee to a nunnery” scene as nonviolent and containing legitimate concern for her wellbeing, its at its core more aggressive than fucking anything hamlet says to horatio ever), and two, hes very obviously insecure about his own “femininity.”
wow, pause. “casper, how is hamlet ‘feminine’?” hi blind, im dad.
first of all, i firmly believe his inaction and indecision and a large part of his frustration with those are because of mental illness and a lack of understanding of mental illness. i also believe a large part of the third thing up there, his frustration, is because inaction and indecision are seen as weaknesses, and Weaknesses are seen as Feminine because thats fair sure (yikes). hams other ‘feminine’ traits include: emotional outbursts, frustratingly unfiltered displays of affection including but not limited to rambling about being in love with horatio for like twenty lines, being a drama queen overall, loving his mother (sigmund freud dont interact), still feeling Sad about his dad even though its reasonable, being emo, etc etc. the point is theres enough in there for hamlet to recognize these qualities in himself and hate them so much that he lashes out against the group usually associated with these qualities. add desperately wanting horatio to top him to the list and suddenly theres a hamlet whos both frustrated with a gender he cant be attracted to and frustrated with a gender he desparately wants to push away from being associated with.
now of COURSE with all of that you can go “well, hey, using that same logic, you can argue that hamlets nonbinary or binary trans or asexual or you can remove the ‘gender hes not attracted to’ part and then hes bisexual, or pansexual, or something.” and youre right! but realistically, knowing what shakespare knows, experiences, and the time period, hamlets probably just a raging homo, and thats great.
(personally, i want to consider horatio as gay as well mostly because i love to compare myself to him as both a scholar and the ride-or-die-wait-slow-down friend myself, but really horatio can be anything vaguely mlm and i think it works. sorry, but i cant accept horatio and heterosexual in the same sentence unless its “horatio cannot possibly be heterosexual.”)
lastly lets delve into the legend himself: Wilhelm Shaxper. my english teacher LOVES to pull the “theres evidence shakespeare may have been not straight but does it really matter ? separate art from the artist uwu” thing but heres a hot take: hes wrong, it does matter, and it matters because I Said So. because the biggest factor that plays into a character either being consciously written or unconsciously coded as gay is the author. and if an author has any idea what its like to live in 16th century europe and not liking women exclusively, id imagine thatd lead to very weird feelings very fast, and how else to get it out but with a readily available creative outlet? also also both williams son and fathers deaths were after he began working on hamlet, so not to speculate too much but i think he had to have some other motivation for initially including the father and son theme the way that he did (of course, i dont doubt he put more of an emphasis on it after these events) and the only conclusion i can come up with is this: i dont think the whole “if only my dad knew, what would he think?” fear appeared in the twentieth century, i think its way, way older. it may have started in shakespeares mind as more of a thought towards general society (and that is also a Thing i keep thinking of in hamlet, i think ive discussed it before tho :-/) and then funneled down to familial fears. of course, attributing modern ideas of Coming Out and Explaining Labels is stupid here so im thinking more like, homosexuality is widely regarded as a sin and being outcast isnt fun, hello im william shakespeare and i like women and men wouldnt it be cool if there were a term for that, anyway best shut that up lest it spreads to the church and also ruins my career typa thing. the point is, if william “bi icon” shakespeare actually knew what it was like to live in europe at that time and be, for lack of a historically accurate term, Not Straight, and all the angst that comes with it, he would know roughly how to write hamlet as Also Not Straight.
what a long, convoluted way to say hamlet wants to get dicked down by horatio, right? WRONG. remember that the way hamlet treats women is stupid and nasty and he has hella room to grow and that was the Whole Point of this thing (alas, if only that growth werent stunted, but he is the titular character that we must bid adeiu). hamlet plus women is a way of shakespeare expressing his own insecurities probably regarding sexuality as connected to femininity. like, i know women werent treated Great at the time (not to say they are now o shitttttt) but come ON hamlet.
“I like this one too,” whispered my mother, coming up alongside me at a smallish and particularly haunting still life: a white butterfly against a dark ground, floating over some red fruit. The background—a rich chocolate black—had a complicated warmth suggesting crowded storerooms and history, the passage of time.
“They really knew how to work this edge, the Dutch painters—ripeness sliding into rot. The fruit’s perfect but it won’t last, it’s about to go. And see here especially,” she said, reaching over my shoulder to trace in the air with her finger, “this passage—the butterfly.” The underwing was so powdery and delicate it looked as if the color would smear if she touched it. “How beautifully he plays it. Stillness with a tremble of movement.”
I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love
I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on
‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.
I had to look at this like FIVE TIMES to register all the layers of symbolism going into the piece by Patterson.
The hoodie as a veil.
Weisman cigarettes
Each of them is haloed by an advertisement sticker.
No Vacancy sign on the motel.
Dove sticker over Maria’s head.
Neon sign with a star symbol also over Maria’s head.
The crown over the ‘Dave’s City Motel’ sign. “New Manger.”
The sign behind Jose’s elbow likely says ‘Herod.’
The wee little plant growing through the cracks at their feet.
It’s like a New Testament ‘I Spy.’ I love it!
Ugh.
New favorite interpretation of the nativity.
Ezekiel 34 15-16 on the phone
I looked up that verse and
15 I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord.16 I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.
Wow. The amount of detail that’s put into this piece is amazing.
More things I found…
The Herod sign has his full name “Herod Antipas”
The newspaper on the ground is advertising “Shepherd Watches”. And also “Glad” & “Tide”. (“Glad tidings of great joy…”
“Gloria” sticker on the telephone pole.
The graffiti under Mary says “Word” on one side & “Flesh” on the other, referencing John 1:14 “And The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us….”
Sticker on the window says “Good news!”
Maria’s hoodie says “Nazareth High School” (also a good age nod)
Stickers behind José and Maria are both classical halos (bonus: Maria’s also has the word “save” i.e. savior)
Maria is seated on a horse, i.e. the barn animal nativity presence
Elizabeth “Bessie” MacNicol (1869–1904) was a Scottish painter and member of the Glasgow Girls group of artists affiliated with the Glasgow School of artists.
#52filmsbywomenasks something very simple: watch one film written or directed by women every week for a year. In 2018, I watched 74 shorts or features that were written or directed by women; this video compiles one second from each film.
