Lesbian Subplot
Is there one? I heard there was one which was dropped when they remade it.
shareJust from watching the movie, I wouldn't have guessed it, but I read on Wikipedia that the director said there was (which many people have pointed out here). I didn't even believe it until that. I don't think it's necessary to the story whatsoever (it's not even in the book). It's amazing to me that merely one woman showing affection to another is supposed to lead us to think of lesbianism. Some people show much more affection than that to their friends. The Apostle Paul tells the early Christians to greet each other with a kiss! Even in Godfather II, Michael kisses his brother. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that the affection of Theo really shouldn't lead us to think she's a lesbian. I think the fact that it does reflects badly on us, and the fact that the director intended it that was reflects badly on him.
shareThere were lesbian undercurrents in the book just not quite as obvious as in the film. Listen to the DVD commentary by director Wise and Claire Bloom, they spell it out directly that Theo was a lesbian and Bloom was intrigued to be playing a woman who was interested in other women. Many have said they didn't catch that angle until having it pointed out but once you know about it (I didn't until recently) it is pretty obvious in behavior and dialog. Many plot points aren't "necessary" in films but they can add depth and nuance. I'm more open-minded than you and it's ridiculous to say it reflects badly on anyone if there is a lesbian subplot!
shareNo, you entirely missed my point. I'm saying that it reflects badly on our culture that mere affection is meant to be interpreted as sexual. Whatever happened to love between friends?
shareI dunno, I thought it was easy to miss your point, what with the Apostle Paul reference before it one could infer you were making some kind of moral judgment on the screen writer and director.
As for love among friends, they had just met and hardly knew each other. Again, I think you are off base with the affection/sexual interpretation angle and how it reflects badly on our culture- in this story's case, both novel and film, there is clearly an intended sexual component between Theo and Eleanor (with Theo attracted to Eleanor and it not being reciprocated, by the way- one is gay the other straight) and in fact there are sexual tensions between Eleanor and Dr. Markway (she attracted to him, he not to her) and even Luke the playboy seems interested in Theo. She's an attractive woman so no surprise there. She rebuffs him quite demonstratively at one point when he puts his hand on her shoulder. It's just another clue about the sexual tensions among those folks. This is all I think clearly intended by Shirley Jackson and by the film's screenwriter. Of course times were different and much more conservative so naturally any allusions to anything beyond the "norm" would be done very discretely and in a type of "code" or veiled references. I think it's all there quite obviously when you start analyzing the film from a modern perspective and especially when some of the key actors and the director talk openly and quite matter-of-factly about the lesbian subplot on the DVD commentary! I really don't think a fine director and class act like Robert Wise was interested in spreading titillating subject matter to film audiences. He did that later with The Sand Pebbles and especially The Sound of Music!!! (grin)
Sure I agree we live in a very sexualized time where everything is in your face and discretion is a foreign concept but in the case of this film and story I argue that "mere affection" and "love between friends" was not how it was intended to be interpreted- especially with Theo-Eleanor. If it was/is seen that way by most audiences so be it- the film still works for people who don't see any of this subplot stuff going on. But I'm saying (and others have said in The Haunting boards about this subject) that there is more to the relationships and who these people are than you think. That's what makes it very interesting to me and I think it is commendable how the filmmakers and cast worked it into the film - who cares if Theo is lesbian when it is all said and done.
Forgive me if I beat this poor old dead horse. I'm not sure if others have mentioned this previously. The man who built the house was a fire and brimstone kinda guy, and while the film handled the issue of lesbianism in a respectful manner (Quite the feat for 1963!)the house seemed to feed on the sexual tensions and resulting emotionalism. There is a subtleness compared to the half naked teens in slasher films who are always the next victims.
I still won't make out with my husband in the backseat of a car.
Anyhoo! This films ability to scare the bejeezes out of anyone with the simple bump in the night makes it one of the best movies ever!
Yes some good points there about the sexual tensions and emotionalism going on amongst those folks, and in the history of the house too. The house was replaying some of that history for those willing or able to hear/feel it (Eleanor) and look at the repressed feelings she had from her past- the house and/or opportunity she was given due to that experiment was sucking it all out of her like a vacuum. The lesbian angle involving Theo was handled respectfully and tastefully and maybe Jackson in her novel included it to be a little avant garde and sexy but also as another example of emotions being let out of the bag by the unique circumstances of that experiment in the haunted house. Theo may have let down her guard so to speak by making romantic gestures/flirting with Eleanor in the house when outside she may have been more closeted like most gay people in that period were. Just some dime-store amateur psychoanalysis.(<: What's funny is it's only been just recently that I read in this board about the lesbian subplot, I was totally clueless about it and I've watched and enjoyed the film many times over the years.
I think Theo is an open lesbian, not bi-sexual. ISn't there a scene where Luke tries grabbing her, and she violently pushes him away? This could be the film writers' "coded" way of removing any doubt about her sexuality. In the scene where she says she is afraid of "knowing what she really wants," she looks furtively at Eleanor. Rather than out of confusion, I think she is leading Eleanor on, which would be in keeping with her dialog toward her for the rest of that scene.
shareIf it's "easy to miss my point," then maybe you should read it for what it says instead of superimposing something onto it. For heavens' sake, even Freud referenced Paul.
There's really no point in responding to anything else you said because it's not worth it, especially since you STILL don't understand.
The poster you responded to was in the right. To me, it is about as obvious that there was really spectres there: there is, if that's what you're looking for (as Eleanor had her mother on her own mind etc. and as they became closer all buying into it). I thought it was Theo's bohemianism Eleanor was offended by when she was talking about her partner, and she expectedly asked, "Are you married?"! All the other characteristics of Theo's I thought were meant to evince a ruggedly independent streak. Theo and Luke had previously been shown quarreling (over a game of cards), and there subsequent clashing is reducible to the conflict between their brash and mysterious characters, respectively. The repression is all Eleanor's, and as you pointed out below psychoanalysis is incredibly important to this - at the beginning we're attempting to draw out Eleanor's unconscious, by the end what caused her anguish is merely latent or subsconscious: even though she's explicitly told Markway of her past, this is obfuscated by the others' (primarily his) interpretation of the events as purely supernatural in character. It might even be suggested that this "proof" that Markway grasps is known by him to be false, as he's used the house for psychological experimentation (as someone said above).
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