the-lions-mouth - Tumblr blog

[the-lions-mouth]

ROBERT DE NIRO The Deer Hunter (1978) | dir. Michael Cimino

[the-lions-mouth]

blondie gender thoughts

these are sort are a combination of headcanon and analysis, so i’ll start with the former. some of this is under the cut as this got rather long.

if you’ve seen me rambling on here you know my feelings about supernatural blondie & his weird relationship to his own humanity. and i feel like he doesn’t want to be a person and doesn’t fully think of himself as a person but rather as a sort of mythic figure. so, while i understand where people are coming from when they say all his weird bullshit is like a masculinity thing or an internalized homophobia thing, i don’t think it’s quite that–i think it’s something that’s very personal and specific to him. his thought process is not “if i do xyz, i won’t be a proper man,” it’s “if i do xyz, i will be dead.” i figure he probably doesn’t think about gender like at all. and iirc we never even see him interact with a woman onscreen (in gbu, i mean), so he is defined entirely by his relationships to other men, and i think that results in something like this: he’s a man in that he is among men, and he is treated as a man, and he does the things that a man does (in the new mexico territory, in 1862). he is a man by relation and a man by narrative function, but there’s nothing under there, nothing that goes all the way down–which is how he is with just about everything. he’s all gender role and no gender identity; after all, he has no identity at all, really, so why should he? and i think that gender role (or at least the primary one) is more specifically “gunslinger” than it is “man.” the gender binary that exists in blondie’s head is closer to “liable to shoot me” and “not liable to shoot me” and these do not necessarily map onto man and woman. do you see what i’m saying. agender blondie. at least a little bit.

furthermore, i think there’s something interesting about his relationships to tuco and angel eyes specifically. the weird homoerotic subtext. the way they fight over him. the fact that angel eyes basically kidnaps him and dresses him up and tries to force a partnership like some kind of dracula’s bride type bullshit. the fact that blondie implicitly asks tuco for help killing five dudes and for some reason tuco interprets this as blondie wanting him to kill all five dudes himself, as if blondie is a damsel in distress that tuco has to rescue–when he thinks it’s just angel eyes he literally even says “i’ll kill him and be right back.” as @the-lions-mouth pointed out to me awhile back, angel eyes saying “i want the blond alive” as if blondie is a hot girl. narratively, blondie is a drifting, gunslinging man, but narratively he is also (in some weird sense) the love interest, the girlfriend in the love triangle. he is also, narratively, tuco’s guardian angel, and angel eyes specifically refers to him as a “golden haired angel,” which strikes me as having some kind of weird subtext that i can't quite pin down. so to the aforementioned gender roles i shall also add "girlfriend" and "angel", and also "obligatory white guy in a western," but that's another post entirely.

and again: never do we see this man flirt with a woman or even, if my memory serves, interact with one (in gbu specifically). so far as straight romance goes he's essentially a sexless character, and yet there's definitely some sexual subtext especially with the guns (the way it zooms him on him holstering his gun when talking to angel eyes, the holster shots in the final duel). which is not necessarily entirely relevant to the gender thing but it is interesting to note, and (getting back into headcanon here) i think would be an aspect of the way he relates to the men around him–sometimes he sleeps with them, or at least he think about it.

additionally: blondie is rather visually distinct from the men around him. (obligatory disclaimer that clothes don't equal gender; i am talking about a character from a movie made in the 1960s and the significance of the visuals to the audience, you understand). he has a rather soft silhouette–with the iconic poncho, certainly, which is extremely distinguishing–but also with some his other outfits, especially the dark shirt he wears he wears at the beginning. observe:

that shirt is huge on him. i've marked up the image a bit to draw your attention to a few details (yes i know this is a pepe silvia moment but just bear with me). first of all: the distance between what appears to be the actual point of his shoulder and where the seam for the sleeve lies. it's hanging off him, which both significantly softens the line of his shoulder and also makes him look like a kid who got into his dad's wardrobe. second of all: note the fold of fabric hanging over his belt in the second image i have circle as it's a little hard to see behind his sleeve. it's at the very least way too big around and quite possibly too long as well, though that's hard to tell with it tucked in. third of all: the distance between the cuff of his sleeve and his actual hand, marked in the first image–granted it appears his cuffs are unbuttoned which would make them wider, but still, the sleeves are billowing off him. note also the deep folds everywhere in the fabric; he is absolutely swimming in that shirt. (yes, the fact that eastwood is very tall and rather skinny makes it unsurprising that most shirts long enough would be too wide, but this is a movie set; the choice not to tailor it feels deliberate). it looks like a hippie shirt, almost a blouse, not to mention the pattern, while not actually floral, is close. there's also the silk scarf he wears, which stands out rather dramatically from the usual neckerchief and even from the one angel eyes wears; i still think it's meant to resemble a noose. i'm not saying this is meant to look feminine so much as unique, in a way that signals to the audience (to use a clichéd phrase): "hey! this one's not like the rest!"

there's also the second duster he has, the one he gives to the dying soldier:

the lapels are hanging fully off his shoulders–once again softening his silhouette–and the sleeves, while not terribly loose, are long enough he's had to roll them at the cuffs. the costume designers for this seem to love putting blondie in oversized clothes. again, not so much feminine so much as different.

this isn't even all i could talk about but i'm beginning to sound obsessive. all this to say: blondie is very distinct from the men around him, both visually and in terms of character. he is among men but he is not necessarily the same as them. what i'm getting at here is that i feel like blondie does manhood like a job rather than something that has any real emotional significance to him like it does to tuco (but, ah, that's for another time). assigned male by narrative.

[the-lions-mouth]

harvey keitel: all my fans are gay

harvey keitel movies: mean streets, copkiller, the last temptation of christ, reservoir dogs

okay but who did you think your audience was pal

[the-lions-mouth]

hello gonchheads.

cast and tagline from this poster

[the-lions-mouth]

absolutely obsessed with the fact that every single character in copkiller is gay. a movie that just said what

[the-lions-mouth]

rude that i can’t think of another movie in which robert de niro looked like johnny boy. i wanna see what johnny boy looks like if he gets to grow up :(

[the-lions-mouth]

this makes me so fucking bonkers crazyinsane is anyone else seeing this shit look at them theyre giggling kicking their feet twirling their hair like a teenage girl but theyre middle aged men in a coffeeshop

gif credit to @pearl-bastard

[the-lions-mouth]

I'm looking...

[the-lions-mouth]

when will viktor @fredoesque write a 15k fic that’s just dragging nick the entire time. rip into him. go off. toast emoji

[the-lions-mouth]

what has frank sheeran ever done wrong except for like, the atrocities. 

[the-lions-mouth]

never be over the absolute tour de force of shitty boyfriend behavior that is nick cheating on linda with the mike mirror, knocking her up, not marrying her, not even admitting it’s his kid, not telling linda he cheated, asking linda to marry him, giving mike a bj 4 hours later, and then never calling linda again

[the-lions-mouth]

what has frank sheeran ever done wrong except for like, the atrocities. 

[the-lions-mouth]

what has frank sheeran ever done wrong except for like, the atrocities. 

[the-lions-mouth]

what has frank sheeran ever done wrong except for like, the atrocities. 

[the-lions-mouth]

love watching movies with u guys that would get us all cancelled on twitter for liking

[the-lions-mouth]

marty scorsese: there was only one bed

everyone watching his movies: there actually was another bed

marty scorsese, louder: and there was only one bed

[the-lions-mouth]

ROBERT DE NIRO The Deer Hunter (1978) | dir. Michael Cimino