originally posted on tumblr, August 21st 2021
green knight still in my brain and i need to rant about it lololol
just saw a review about queerness in both the new movie and the original story, and that the movie has a rather homophobic view on the Lord’s and Gawain’s relationship and the changes weren’t exactly good.
Iiiii don’t really see it that way.
Mostly cus Arthuriana has been reread and repurposed and retrofitted so many times over so many centuries, and especially now with all these modern fantasy versions of the characters in books and cinema, and I feel that this was a really fresh and relevant way of telling the story. As for removing much of the scenes with Bertilak and Gawain and their game, and changing how and why they part ways was necessary for how Gawain is portrayed in this one version.
Gawain is terrified of making choices and taking responsibility not just for his actions but for his entire life. He sleeps in brothels instead of going to mass and lies to his mother’s face about it. He sits with the knights of the round table and drinks and laughs cus this is where he belongs as nobility, but he himself has no tale to tell for himself and has never earned the title of knight, or was even acknowledged by Arthur until the beginning of the story. He rides out in the shadow of a decaying kingdom of legend because it feels like his chance at greatness is already gone before it even came.
Then the Green Knight comes and he bites more than he can chew.
Fast forward to the Castle of the Lord, my man Gawain allows himself to be seduced by the Lady. She brings to him not only the offer of release of responsibility for his oath through the green sash, release from accepting death, but also release from tension, from chastity, from the responsibilities of being the knight that he always wanted to be. “You’re no knight” she says, and he realizes what he did. He runs off from responsibility (again), but gets spotted by the Lord. When the Lord kisses him, Gawain knows that a kiss is not all the he received in the house, and he knows that the Lord knows too. Admitting that he has the girdle is admitting that he has no honor, no courage to face what is ahead. So he doesn’t, and instead tells the Lord off.
I don’t read his cageyness as disgust of the kiss, but rather his usual bravado in the face of his own weaknesses. It was the same shaky upper lip stance of when he begged for a sword, and when he cut off the head of the Knight, when he said searchingly that he wanted to have honor and the Lord asked “you’re asking me?”. Gawain is a mess of a man, full of doubt and fear and holding on to life when he doesn’t even know what he’s holding on to at all. He knows what he should strive for but he doesn’t have the courage to do his own ideals justice.
Also reminder that earlier in the movie, before he leaves for his quest, Essel mentions that he can’t get it up anymore. That morning with the Lady was probably the first time that he could got sexually excited, and it was the same time he had the sash since his mother gifted it to him, as he was leaving. The link of the green sash with Gawain’s ability to enjoy sex, and the dialogue of green as life as well as decay, isn’t by accident.
Ultimately this movie feels very asexual despite showing and speaking about sex plenty of times. Sex in this movie is less about one’s preferences and sexuality, and more about the utilitarianism of it. Sex is either pleasure without responsibility (Gawain laying with Essel constantly and not even responding to her actual confession and proposal of her feelings for him) or sex is for producing heirs (Gawain and his royal wife in the ending vision). Sex itself is never the focus, but rather a means to an end. Besides, Gawain never shows romantic feelings towards anyone, regardless of gender, cus romance would imply having to take responsability of his own feelings and attitudes, and we all know how he is with responsibility.
Was it the best choice? No, god I wish we had gotten a nice queer Arthurian movie, and we can never have enough representation these days considering how often media miss more than they land on the good side of things. Are fans of the source materials wrong to be uspet? Absolutely not, you guys would know better than I, I’m still new to Arthurian stuff. And I think the director could afford to be more direct when faced with these questions and properly explain why he decided to tell this particular retelling, considering the queerness of it. That’s also something worth critiquing.
These changes are a major step away from the source material, and trust me I love my queer knights as much as anyone, yet I still think they were relevant for the ending we got and the story being told in this version. The queer lens on it isn’t very flattering and I agree on that, but I don’t feel like the allosexuality lens is the best queer lens to look at it.
