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Brideshead Revisited Is a Vibe
Aug. 19th, 2024 11:42 amHello!
Long time since I posted last. I am trying to get more in the habit of posting by depositing whatever random thoughts and feelings I have on books and such.
I just read Brideshead Revisited in full, and watched the first episode of the 1981 BBC miniseries starring two favorite British actors, Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. (Irons also read the audiobook. Immaculately.) I am now mildly obsessed!!!
So, my first encounter with Brideshead Revisited was over a decade ago, when I was first starting to check out every BBC adaption of a classic I could get my hands on at the library. I started watching the mini-series with my mom, she immediately was like "hm Jeremy Irons sounds gay, huh." We abandoned watching about 20-30 minutes into the first episode because my homophobe dad might take issue with it. 1981 and this adaption was so firmly in THIS IS HELLA GAY, OLD SPORT that we had to jump ship. (This was the theme of my childhood: I had to stick to classics and read/watched them VORACIOUSLY. Classics were the only genre I could run wild without my parents worrying it would be inappropriate for a good Christian girl. Brideshead is one of the few exceptions that could not hide safely behind its classic shield.)
I always meant to go back to it, someday. Now someday has arrived. And hoo boy, both the book and the adaption are even gayer than I anticipated. Jeremy Irons is PINING ITSELF. I have not seen pining of this magnitude in ANY western TV or movie adaptions to come out in the last few years, aside from Bridgerton--which I haven't watched, just seen various clips--and Across the Spiderverse--Miles' pining for Gwen is freaking adorable. I only see it in k-drama and j-drama and c-drama now (special nod to Cherry Magic because it's not only Peak Pining, but Peak Ace-coded Pining).
I read briefly on the reception BR got, when it first released and how modern audiences view it, and had to abandon that ship faster than I stopped watching the mini-series the first time around. It was and is BAFFLING to me that there is the slightest bit of discourse or disagreement on Is This Book One of the Gayest Things You've Ever Read.
Charles Ryder is so clearly a bisexual mess with a consuming infatuation with a beautiful man, no argument to the contrary makes sense to me. His entire reason for having an affair with Julia Mottram nee Flyte, a married woman while he himself is a married man, is this: she is the sister to the man he loves and cannot have. In real life and in books, we all recognize instantly the trope of the heterosexual man to pursue the sister of the woman he can't have. Why can we not see it mirrored in a queer man as well? How can pursuing the person society and family will permit him to pursue cancel out his queerness? Oscar fucking Wilde himself had a wife and two children. I feel the book, while not explicitly, implicitly expresses that the Flytes pretend not to see the affair SPECIFICALLY because well at least Charles is hanging around the daughter instead of the son now. They may be adulterers but at least it's heterosexual adultery.
I also adored the commentary on religion and Catholicism in particular, and cannot mention the book without bringing it up. But I feel the scholarly discussion on this aspect of the book is far more sensible than the queerness, which is a shame since the commentary on each intertwines throughout the book.
I will revisit (hehe) this more here once I finish the mini-series, and have more time to let my thoughts drift into coherent currents.
Long time since I posted last. I am trying to get more in the habit of posting by depositing whatever random thoughts and feelings I have on books and such.
I just read Brideshead Revisited in full, and watched the first episode of the 1981 BBC miniseries starring two favorite British actors, Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. (Irons also read the audiobook. Immaculately.) I am now mildly obsessed!!!
So, my first encounter with Brideshead Revisited was over a decade ago, when I was first starting to check out every BBC adaption of a classic I could get my hands on at the library. I started watching the mini-series with my mom, she immediately was like "hm Jeremy Irons sounds gay, huh." We abandoned watching about 20-30 minutes into the first episode because my homophobe dad might take issue with it. 1981 and this adaption was so firmly in THIS IS HELLA GAY, OLD SPORT that we had to jump ship. (This was the theme of my childhood: I had to stick to classics and read/watched them VORACIOUSLY. Classics were the only genre I could run wild without my parents worrying it would be inappropriate for a good Christian girl. Brideshead is one of the few exceptions that could not hide safely behind its classic shield.)
I always meant to go back to it, someday. Now someday has arrived. And hoo boy, both the book and the adaption are even gayer than I anticipated. Jeremy Irons is PINING ITSELF. I have not seen pining of this magnitude in ANY western TV or movie adaptions to come out in the last few years, aside from Bridgerton--which I haven't watched, just seen various clips--and Across the Spiderverse--Miles' pining for Gwen is freaking adorable. I only see it in k-drama and j-drama and c-drama now (special nod to Cherry Magic because it's not only Peak Pining, but Peak Ace-coded Pining).
I read briefly on the reception BR got, when it first released and how modern audiences view it, and had to abandon that ship faster than I stopped watching the mini-series the first time around. It was and is BAFFLING to me that there is the slightest bit of discourse or disagreement on Is This Book One of the Gayest Things You've Ever Read.
Charles Ryder is so clearly a bisexual mess with a consuming infatuation with a beautiful man, no argument to the contrary makes sense to me. His entire reason for having an affair with Julia Mottram nee Flyte, a married woman while he himself is a married man, is this: she is the sister to the man he loves and cannot have. In real life and in books, we all recognize instantly the trope of the heterosexual man to pursue the sister of the woman he can't have. Why can we not see it mirrored in a queer man as well? How can pursuing the person society and family will permit him to pursue cancel out his queerness? Oscar fucking Wilde himself had a wife and two children. I feel the book, while not explicitly, implicitly expresses that the Flytes pretend not to see the affair SPECIFICALLY because well at least Charles is hanging around the daughter instead of the son now. They may be adulterers but at least it's heterosexual adultery.
I also adored the commentary on religion and Catholicism in particular, and cannot mention the book without bringing it up. But I feel the scholarly discussion on this aspect of the book is far more sensible than the queerness, which is a shame since the commentary on each intertwines throughout the book.
I will revisit (hehe) this more here once I finish the mini-series, and have more time to let my thoughts drift into coherent currents.
