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"Love that dare not speak its name", Amira Casar, Andre Aciman, Annie Proulx, Armie Hammer, Attraction, Bisexuality, Bret Easton Ellis, Brokeback Mountain, Call Me By Your Name, Elio and Oliver, Esther Garrel, Father-Son Relationship, fathers, Film, film review, First Love, Gay, Gay Literature, Gay Men, Homosexuality, Italy, Literature, Love Story, Luca Guadagnino, Masculinity Studies, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mr. Perlman, Novel, Parents of LGBTQ+ Children, Peach, Queer-Bashing, Sexual Exploration, Sexual identity, Sexuality, Timothée Chalamet, Young Gay Love
I’ve never openly considered using any food for masturbation. I know being of the American Pie generation I was supposed to have stuck my penis in some sort of food at this point. Apparently the Millennial coming of age ritual, apart from eating tide-pods, snorting condoms, and killing virtually every sector of the economy according to snarky facebook posts your uncle leaves on your facebook page, is performing some sort of onanistic ritual with a pie, a piece of fruit, or anything sweet and delectable. This demonstrates a clear divide between the generations because, as Portnoy’s Complaint demonstrated, Baby Boomers had the luxury of getting their rocks off by jerking it into raw liver. There’s almost assuredly a writer out there somewhere who is going to write an essay about generational divides
and the compulsion to fuck food, and it’s probably me, but I’d prefer to write a few more reviews of great films before I tackle food lust.
Apart from my wife, who reminds me everyday that I’m hers and hers alone and then laughs maniacally before adoring her kitty cats, the reason why I could never date another man is because it would almost assuredly end in violence or bloodshed. Now I’m not talking about Days of Our Lives Soap Opera bloodshed, where people are slapped and/or shot and hit the ground without starting to scream or hemorrhage out all over the credenza before Stefano’s evil twin drags the body away to clone the victim. Violence against LGBTQ couples and individuals, often referred to as Queer bashing, is a mode of violence that has unfortunately become almost tropic. If two gay people in a film love one another the ending will almost always imply that they cannot be together because straight people will not understand their love and will enact violence against one or both partners.
Perhaps the best example of this is the novella Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx. A melodrama about two ranch hands for hire who fall in love in the mountains of Montana, the pair are in bed together when Ennis explains why they can’t be seen
together:
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain’t goin a be that way. We can’t. I’m stuck with what I got, caught in my own loop. Can’t get out of it. Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don’t want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich—Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine years old, and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned
tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on gravel.”
“You seen that?”
“Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Me and K.E. Dad laughed about it. Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and was to put his head in that door right now you bet he’d go get his tire iron. Two guys livin together? No. All I can see is we get together once in a while way the hell out in the back a nowhere—” (29-30).
This violence is a threat to existence is often at the root of something in Queer literature often referred to as “Love that dare not speak its name.” Due often to the fact that homosexuality was often listed either as a sin, a vice, or as a mental disorder, homosexuals over the ages have had to bury their sexual and emotional passions, and those of us that were artists had to find a way to express our frustrations and desires through art. Often is two characters in a story were gay, or often as was the case hinted at being gay, then by the end of their story no matter how happy they were there had to be a ending in which they could not be together. Sometimes this resulted simply in heartbreak, but far more often it was the case that one or both partners wound up being killed.
The ‘Love that dare not speak it’s name” is a trope which has haunted queer literature and queer art for decades, even centuries and so when watching Call Me By Your Name I was waiting and expecting for it to happen. And in a way it did, Oliver and Elio did not wind up together, but not because there was anything wrong with their love. 
The film, which is based on the novel by Andre Aciman, explores the life of Elio Perlman, the son of a jewish classical art professor. The family lives in Italy and occasionally hosts graduate students of Elio’s father while he performs his research. One such graduate student, an American by the name of Oliver arrives and very quickly catches the attention of Elio who is a teenager and developing his sexual and personal identity as he is on the cusp of adulthood. Elio explores his sexuality with a young woman who lives in town, but he finds himself more and more drawn to Oliver who appears distant until, over time, the pair of them eventually abandon themselves to a love affair. The story is about falling in love in a Pre-AIDS era and how two men were able to find one another, and for Elio, the story revolves around the discovery of his sexuality and the “first love” of his life. By the end of the film the pair of them do not wind up together, Oliver winds up marrying a woman while never completely abandoning his erotic truth.
This would at first seem to satisfy the old “Love that Dare Not Speak It’s Name,” henceforward referred to as LTDNSIN, no never mind that’s a terrible acronym, but watching the film and having read the novel I’m not so quick to slap that label on what is arguably one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever watched. Luca Guadagnino has made a visually stunning film that, even when it is not experimenting with camera angles, is just gorgeous to watch. Guadagnino captures the landscape and feel of Italy taking time
to film the peach trees, the ruins that litter the landscape, the pools of cold water in which the characters swim, or even simply the actual Italians themselves that call this beautiful country home. Elio and Oliver exist in a sort of timeless space caught between antiquity and the contemporary period of the early 1980s. And this attention to detail allows for the exploration of sensuality and sexuality of the characters.
In one moment of the film Elio and Oliver are discussing their mutual attraction beside a roman ruin and the camera follows them around the ruined edifice as they talk:
Oliver: Is there anything you don’t know?
Elio: I know nothing, Oliver.
Oliver: Well, you seem to know more than anyone else around here.
Elio: Well, if you only knew how little I really know about the things that matter.
Oliver: What “things that matter?”
[long pause]
Elio: You know what things.
Oliver: Why are you telling me this?
Elio: Because I thought you should know.
Oliver: Because you thought I should know?
Elio: Because I wanted you to know.
Elio: [to himself] Because I wanted you to know. Because I wanted you to know. Because I wanted you to know.
Elio: [to Oliver] Because there’s no one else I can say this to but you.
Oliver: Are you saying what I think you’re saying?
[Elio nods]
Oliver: Wait for me here. Don’t go away.
Elio: You know I’m not going anywhere.
The scene is powerful for the shot Guadagnino uses and the way the music builds the dramatic tension. By the end of the scene, even though it doesn’t at first appear that much of anything has actually taken place, the reader feels that something powerful has happened in the film.
The love affair between Elio and Oliver was beautiful to watch, and I admit that the film made me nostalgic for the days when I was young, discovering myself, and falling in love. But for whatever reason the most powerful moment of the film was not any of the scenes between the two lovers, but a moment between Elio and his father after Oliver leaves the villa. Elio is emotional about the separation and he goes to speak with his father, and what occurs between the pair of them is arguably one of the most powerful demonstrations of affection between a gay child and a parent in recent cinema.
Mr. Perlman offers his son several moments of honest sentiment.
Mr. Perlman: You two had a nice friendship.
Elio: Yeah…
Mr. Perlman: You’re too smart not to know how rare, how special what you two had was.
Elio: Oliver was Oliver.
Mr. Perlman: Parce-que c’etait lui, parce-que c’etait moi.
Elio: Oliver may be very intelligent but…
Mr. Perlman: Oh no, no, no. He was more than intelligent. What you two had, had everything and nothing to do with intelligence. He was good. You were both lucky to have found each other, because you too are good.
Elio: I think he was better than me. I think he was better than me.
Mr. Perlman: I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you. Which flatters you both.
He clears through the suggestions and offers his honest take on the relationship,
Mr. Perlman: In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away. Pray their sons land on their feet, but… I am not such a parent.
He continues,
Mr. Perlman: Right now you may not want to feel anything. Maybe you never
wanted to feel anything. And maybe it’s not to me you’ll want to speak about these things. But feel something you obviously did. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!
And finally he offers his son, with obvious tears in his eyes, one last final offering.
Mr. Perlman: Have I spoken out of turn? Then I’ll say one more thing. It’ll clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you two have. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business, just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you
know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there’s sorrow, pain. Don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt.
Elio: Does mom know?
[long pause]
Mr. Perlman: I don’t think she does.
There were so many moments during Call Me By Your Name, where I found myself “remembering.” When Elio smells Olivers shirt I “remembered” the discovery of the sensual power of your partner’s smell. When Oliver masturbates into a Peach I “remembered” the early experiments with masturbation. When Elio tries to kiss Oliver I “remembered” the early attempts at demonstrations of affection and how some of them failed. Mr. Perlman’s talk with his son however was the only moment of the film where I felt a real emotion to the point that I was actually crying. I wish had I had a moment like that when I was young, and I wish I had had the courage to be myself, and have someone there to offer such a net. I wish I hadn’t been so afraid to just be who I really was, which was gay.
I love my parents, and I do not wish to speak out of turn towards them. I am who I am today because of them because they offered me endless love and support. All I am saying is, there might have been a different man writing this post if I had had someone in the form of a guardian who allowed me the language and space to feel safe acknowledging my attraction.
And this emotion isn’t just limited to myself, as Bret Easton Ellis points out on his review of the film, commenting first on Michael Stuhlbarg’s final speech,
And yet Stuhlberg sells it with a hushed technical virtuosity that makes every word land and vibrate even though at times he overdoes the saintly Jewish-Daddy thing. Stuhlberg makes this the real climax of the movie—it becomes a primal scene—and in the packed theater I saw the movie you could hear the gay men (at least half the audience) barely holding back muffled sobs. Call Me By Your Name is the movie generations of gay men have been waiting for: the fullest, least condescending
expression of gay desire yet brought to mainstream film. It ends with a nearly wordless four-minute shot of a tear-stained Chalamet staring into a fireplace, a myriad of emotions subtly morphing over his face while the credits roll and which reminds us: there cannot be love without pain, the two are intertwined and intractable, and that the boy might be destroyed but a man will emerge and survive.
Mr. Perlman’s speech to his son can at times be just that, a speech. And speeches are, by their nature, a one sided affair where one person delivers their thoughts, sentiments, philosophies, and opinions with an understanding that this is a passive affair for the listener. What felt different while watching it was how the man seemed to be not just lecturing his son, but honestly trying to communicate to him. Mr. Perlman is a man who has obviously experienced great frustration in his life, but just as likely he’s a man who’s starved for desire.
Growing older is a sensation that is often defined by such starvation of spirit. I find myself wondering more and more “what do I want out of life, and shouldn’t I have figured it out by now?” And looking back only feeds such hunger as one feels the advantages of maturity and personal agency and wonders “why didn’t I take advantage of that? Why did I choose not to pursue this?” And this desire tends to feed a bitterness of spirit that can sap one dry. Sexuality especially can starve the soul and leave one often wondering, why was I not more ambitious, spontaneous, more confident, and Mr. Perlman’s speech offers a kind of closure for such pain.
But as Ellis points out, Call Me By Your Name wasn’t an opportunity to mourn the loss of
love, but to recognize that love. Too often the “first love” of our lives are encouraged to be forgotten or cynically dismissed as foolish or naive, but such a recommendation is not only barbaric it’s false. That first love is real because it is felt with such profound passion that will never be repeated in our lives, and while some are fortunate enough to turn that love into a lasting commitment, often such passion just cannot last. What’s important about the film is not simply that the film is a “gay movie,” but that it’s a film which explores the first love of homosexuality and does not dismiss it as something obscene, foolish, or doomed. It’s instead portrayed as the first part of a long and beautiful life.
Call Me By Your Name is a film gay men have been waiting for for decades, centuries even. And like the sexual grace carved into the hellenistic statues of Greek Gods, it’s a sexuality that cannot be denied, nor ignored, long after the men who experienced and recorded it are just the dust beneath the treads of bicycle wheels.
*Writer’s Note*
All quotes cited from Call Me By Your Name were provided by IMDB.com. All quotes taken from OUT’s review of Call Me By Your Name were provided by their website. If the reader is interested in reading the full review I’ve provided a link below:
**Writer’s Note**
I’ve taken the liberty of supplying a few reviews of the film and novel Call Me By Your Name below in case the reader would like a few more opportunities to read about the film instead of just taking my biased opinion.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/call-me-by-your-name-an-erotic-triumph
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/call-me-by-your-name-2017
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/call_me_by_your_name/reviews/
***Writer’s Note***
In case the reader was curious, I really didn’t have any rhyme or reason for including the image below into the essay. I just typed in “supergay” into Google Images and I got this wonder. I used it as the temprary “Featured image” while I waited to get around to editing this one, and by the time I had everything ready I didn’t need it anymore, but I didn’t want to give up this guy because, he’s, well, perfect.
So, please enjoy this supergay photo because lord knows I certainly do.
Brian was charged by Peter to get Chris (the teenage son) to become more intelligent so that he doesn’t become a big dope like his father. Brian exposes Chris to culture and naturally Chris becomes more intelligent. He even joins Brian at a book club at some nameless coffee shop. It’s during this small scene though, where I managed to flex a bit of my intellectual muscle, because Chris introduces the book The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, and when Brian compares it to Portnoy’s Complaint Chris realizes what every regular viewer of Family Guys knows at this point: Brian is a fraud and a moron.
the book. We had a copy at the library, but I needed to mark in the book and libraries tend to frown upon that. In fact, let me be clear as a library employee, most librarians would like to hire Seal Team Six to track people who mark in books down and destroy them. Just, so the reader knows next time they return a book with dog-eared pages.
that cowboys had in fact, always been gay, or at least gay in the sense that they exhibit homoerotic tendencies. When Brokeback Mountain came out in theatres, pun not intended, it caused a bit of an uproar and not just because it was one of the few watchable Jake Gyllenhaal movies made at that point, but because it was a mainstream film which featured openly gay, or at least bisexual, characters as the center point of the plot rather than as quirky side characters. An unapologetic gay love story, while not unprecedented, hadn’t reached mainstream audiences in such a way. The fact that Ang Lee dared to make a movie about honest love between two grown men in an atmosphere that satisfied the typical qualities of a Western, a film genre that is looked upon often with reverence despite the fact no film director since Sergio Leone has managed to make one worth watching (unless you count Django Unchained and I do), created a controversy for the reasons I just stated. Brokeback Mountain challenged the masculinity of the Western because it placed two gay, or at least bisexual men, alongside men like Clint Eastwood, Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglass, and, my hero at the time, John Wayne.
Cowboys for me were figures who answered the faults in my own masculinity because I was the young man often presented in cartoons and movies on the sidelines of the game, either my nose stuck in a book, or trying desperately (and pathetically) to talk to girls. Growing up John Wayne was the answer to my masculinity problems, because he seemed to exemplify everything that a man was supposed to be. Men were strong laborers and heroes while gay men were prissy fairies.
out to a friend and my wife respectively, and began to read more and more about male same-sex intimacy.
does stand to reason that both of these men are not exactly literate and so the nuances of sexual behavior and identity, or the idea that they could experiment sexually before anal sex occurred, would not be developed. Proulx even goes so far as to write this out herself:
point my contester emerges wondering why they should care? I’m not gay and I don’t care how gay people fuck, that’s none of my business. Why should I care about a novella about two gay guys who bang each other in Montana? Where’s the relevance?
and anyone from Texas can attest to the fact that Texas itself captures a mythos. Mentioning to someone that you’re from Texas usually creates a strong of questions running from “Do you ride horses to school” to “Is it true everyone has an oil well in their backyard?”
definitive narrative of the United States. The important idea that emerges after Brokeback Mountain is that “The Cowboy” is no longer only straight. Although there are some who would argue the cowboy never was truly straight in the first place.
It ain’t her fault. You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas. You and me can’t hardly be decent together if what happened back there”—he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment— “grabs us on like that. We do that in the wrong place we’ll be dead. There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me.” (27).
When I was actually writing my original Brokeback Mountain paper I cited heavily from it largely because Tompkins is a damn good writer, and partly because she opened my eyes to many of the tropes of standard Westerns I’d been watching and then reading for years.
grew up, and when I made my discovery there was some part of me that felt that lacking again. Brokeback Mountain checks that resolve however, for it in effect levels the playing field. While the novella may be a melodrama about the tragedy of being gay, Ennis and Jack do queer the Western genre by their very existence. Looking over articles and academic books about the genre I became more and more aware as well that cowboys weren’t the sole property of white male heterosexual audiences. There was a queer behavior embedded in those mythic men who defined the identity of Americans to peoples all over the world.
Anyway, I could wax poetic for days about the man, but the reader should listen to the song My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys at least once. If you’re interested follow the link below:
populace short. The only problem with a book like Homos is it’s an academic work and right off the bat that means the readership dwindles to a handful of intellectuals working in an even smaller handful of universities. To be honest if it wasn’t for Brokeback Mountain I never would have even heard of the book. But I just realize you’re walking in on me mentally masturbating and my isn’t that a pleasant image that will get stuck in your head while your partner is busy talking about her day.
colons but multi-line subtitles, Homos is like a breath of fresh air. However before my reader rushes off to buy a copy and bask in its warm glow of gay academic script I should probably make sure they are aware of something: This is an incredibly academic text. Take one sentence from the introduction:
diversity, share a strong sexual interest in other human beings anatomically identifiable as male (5-6).
suspicions they have of the writer, I wanted to return to the idea of intimacy between men. This is a topic I’ve explored before, but since this is an academic work as opposed to a general non-fiction history or philosophy, Bersani is able to really explore how society has intellectually processed the act of anal penetration. In the past this has manifested in the question I’m sure many gay men have had to smile through, “So which one is the girl?” This question may alter in terms of language, but the sentiment remains the same. Bersani notes this perception and elaborates upon it while quoting David Halpern’s observations of male-male desire:
homosexuality is complicated because the gay behavior of the Greeks is really more pederasty than it is homosexuality, but the idea has continued throughout human society resulting in the term “invert” that rose to prominence during the late 1800s, early 1900s. Even after the Civil Rights movements in the 1960s that gained recognition of homosexuality, gay men still are asked whether they like getting fucked in the ass. It’s not just the barbarically rude curiosity that exists in this question, the larger concern is for men on the receiving end, for once the act of intercourse is complete they may compartmentalize this public perception and begin to question their own virility.
of castration during sex. The next quote in paperback copy is a big pink highlighted brick because, to be fair, it’s without a doubt the most entertaining and intriguing passages I’ve ever read in an academic book:
often, and has often, been thrown at people like a knife. William F. Buckley’s televised debates with Gore Vidal possibly being the most poignant and perfect example that springs to mind. Being a Queer theorist myself and bisexual to boot, I feel Bersani’s point to be a little troubling. I understand his concern as a gay man and wanting to find solace as a gay man, but does it seem he’s trying to stop Same-Sexual desire from changing generation to generation? I’m not sure he does for he says later:
understanding how the human subject is, or might be, socially implicated” (73).
effects of Kramer’s novel is to give us the impression of the male homosexual mindset at this time. Before the brave souls at Stonewall fought back against social dictatorship, and the rise of the homosexual political movements that helped gain most of the civil liberties (not nearly enough but the fight continues) gays enjoy today actually occurred, there was perception of self that lingered on in the gay man’s memory. Before these movements and socially defining moments, homosexuality was a disease. Those considered homosexuals were perceived as being less than human or else insane. Any interested in indigestion of the intellect should research the appalling “treatments” to the disorder of homosexuality which included electroshock therapy and chemical or physical castration. As such, the weight of self (I don’t trust the word identity, it possess too many philosophical implications) was burdened by the idea if one was a homosexual there was something inherently wrong about them. This of course does not even begin to consider the religious implications. The fear of homosexuality was often manifested 
Anti-semitism though they did play their hand in that ongoing game), Eugenics, the entire institution of slavery, the imperialist system of Africa, India, China, South America, and North America,the anti-Muslim sentiment that dominated this country following the September 11th attacks, the Internment camps of Japanese-American citizens following the attack of Pearl Harbour, the cultural imperialist and near genocide of Native Americans, nearly every Christian denomination subscribes to their paradigm insinuating and suggesting damnation for those outside the “know,” and in fact the student of humanity quickly discovers that the concept of the “other” is an undying institution for our public consciousness. As long as there is an alternative party to our society, there will be an “other.” Take note of Boo Boo Bronstein’s reaction to his own self discovery, “I’m going to be a faggot! I’m going to be a faggot!”
has little social meaning other than homosexual, however, as demonstrated through the long eloquent “fuck-fest” of the novel, it becomes clear that a “fag” is a sexually obsessed, self depreciating, borderline psychotic, druggie that is too concerned with satisfying physical needs than emotional or intellectual ones. Rather than try to build themselves as contributing and productive members of society, the faggots instead choose to fuck until they cannot walk. In which case The Gnome merely has to find you a bump and you may return to your rimming.
have, over the years, accumulated a gathering of friends and acquaintances who’s sexual habits and open-mindedness has forced me to confront my own sexual demons and ignorance. Where once there was a locked door bolted shut with rusted nails and paranoia that prevented further introspection, there is now an open closet door. Somewhat. I am not homosexual but becoming aroused or interested in others of the same sex for non-intellectual reasons no longer terrifies me as implication. I wanted to know what all the damn fuss was about. To this day I have never seen the film, and in some ways I do not want to. The writing is brilliant enough. Proulx’s pen works a magic of prose that I never tried of while reading through the whole of the text. Allow me a moment of weakness as I sample a passage for you.
like that. We do that in the wrong place we’ll be dead. There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out of me.”
this tendency of society to create the “other” to reveal the conflict of modern gay men. Throughout the text Ennis and Jack carefully avoid the word “gay.” During the passages describing the initial, and note the only detailed account of their physical actions, we see a resistance even to touch upon this.
list of historical facts, that can be easily checked by scanning your local history books. Even today the concept of “others” is employed for odious justifications. The most recent example appears in the case of Scott Esk, a prospective representative from Oklahoma (why must they always be from the south, it’s becoming embarrassing) who has listed among his political ambitions to make divorce in his state more difficult, abolish gun licenses, disregard necessary organizations such as the EPA or FDA, punish abortionists for “murder,” but the most odious of this man’s claims is his consideration that homosexuals should be executed. Citing Leviticus, one grows tired of constantly rolling one’s eyes after hearing that phrase; Mr. Esk believes that he would be “totally within the right to do it.” It becomes clear as one reads about simple minded idiots like this, one who somehow finds supporters as pathetically minded as them, that the idea of the “other” for the homosexual community is alive and strong. Within America today there exists a cultural battle in which those who feel 
text to find love, as the saying goes, in all the wrong places. In Turkish bathouses, in a bar called the Toilet Bowl, and finally on Fire Island where the faggots of the greater New York Area converge for a massive love-in. The effort of Fred Lemish ultimately fails, yet despite the failure Fred achieves a kind of satisfaction.