RARA-AVIS: homophobia in HB

From: Carrie Pruett ( pruettc@hotmail.com)
Date: 18 Nov 2001


Kevin wrote
>Considering Marlowe's rampant homophobia....

Y>eah, we've all heard the theories about Marlowe, but rampant? I think that tag's pushing it a little.

>Okay, Marlowe doesn't like gays, particularly those he saw as less
>than "manly," but who did, in the pulp fiction of the time? Look at
>how Hammett sneered at and tormented Wilmer and Cairo in THE MALTESE
F>ALCON, for example.

perhaps poor word choice, and I wasn't making any suggestion that Chandler was any worse than anybody else, just that I couldn't see the guy who wrote that "a sissy could never throw a good punch" or something on those lines as getting a kick out of writing a veiled gay love story. There are also a lot of urban legends of dubious veracity to this effect about other films (Gore Vidal, I think, has made similar comments about Heston in Ben Hur which Richard Roeper disputes in his book on Hollywood urban legends; not claiming to know the final word on this). But if you'd like, I withdraw rampant and say simply "obvious." I hadn't thought "Falcon" was quite as bad as Chandler, but then I only recently found out what "gunsel" meant :)

Carrie

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