Is dead poets society gay

dead poets society neil and todd relationship

Neil played Puck who’s gender is not identified but is a feminine character (I hate stereotyping) but may often be portrayed as gay. The movie could include any other play, even Hamlet would be more suitable at a completely heterosexual storyline. Neil becomes his truest self over the course of the film and when that truth is discovered by his parents they reject it outright. This could quite easily be swapped out for Neil being gay.

Dead Poets Society relies on patriarchal tropes such as overbearing fathers, contrived brotherhood, and faux-individuality in order to portray its straight white male characters as oppressed. “Dead Poets Society is often portrayed as an allegory for homosexual acceptance, despite it including no openly gay characters or even subtle homosexual behavior.

The trouble with this idea is. The film, especially Neil and Todd's relationship (anderperry!!) has long been speculated to be (at least a bit) gay. It holds an easily aestheticised albeit surface level exploration of American-centric romantic poetry against rigidity and conservative ideals…. What would a 20 something, lesbian, non-male teen know about the agitational and rebellious nature of the teenage boy?

The importance of an older, kind, father figure to adolescent males? Unfortunately for myself, it is common knowledge in my regional country town in so-called Australia, that the uniforms in Dead Poets Society are based off my old school uniform. It is safe to say the parallels between Dead Poets Society and my school do not end with just the uniform.

As poor kid on a scholarship to a private school- I watched the film for the first time at 17 and was enthralled. There were many who latched onto the words of the American Transcendentalists in my English class, I was once one of them. The academic inflation of solipsism is evident in the poets the boys appraise, ranging from Walt Whitman; Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost… you pair this with the classical influence of the catchy and easily bastardised Latin aphorism "Carpe Diem" or "Seize the Day" and you find a recipe for juvenile idealism, something that feels so easy to believe when you are a young, white male with an penchant for words.

You make your own destiny… you only rely on yourself… right? Do what you can to survive, to exist. But we are more than just our individual selves. The concept that begrudgingly attaches itself to queer and non-heterosexual connotations. Pallid academic references and dead language one-liners are not enough to keep Neil alive.

It is not enough to allow the Dead Poets Society to remain intact as it was. The film does criticise the overly stoic, heterosexual masculinity of the past, allows the boys to divulge in lines of poetry, have lyric drip off their tongue like honey, find the meaning of being alive through iambic pentameter, recite topics of love, of sexuality the pastoral white sublime… but it perishes the day that Todd falls in the snow.

An archaic and extremely concerning romance arc featuring Dead Poets member Knox Overstreet and one of the only female characters Chris Noel. In the classic fandom fashion, the candid and poetic representation of Love between Neil and Todd is what many watchers gravitate towards instead. Its fleeting nature, it is an ephemeral rain cloud of societal constructs and social norms that eventually wreaks havoc.

Something I have seen time and time again, through myself, my high-school friends, and stories told by new chosen, queer family. The film itself uses the symbol of desk sets as developing stages of reaction to parental indifference and authority. The scene in which Todd is made to sign a paper which indicts Keating for Neil's death is marked by extreme closeups, the desk and pen an almost noxious transference of phallic power to Mr Nolan, the Headmaster.

It directly contradicts Keating's standing on his desk to implore his students to look at the world differently but also through his classes taught outdoors, both scenes earlier, such is pointed out by Hammond. It is integral to understand the characters who are shown to be hurt by the patriarchy the most, out of all the Dead Poets boys, are Neil and Todd… not heterosexual Knox, or any of the others, but Neil and Todd, once attached to the hip, a dark-academic Dan and Phil of sorts… friends or lovers… perhaps a secret third thing?

However, in Reagan era Hollywood, overtness, in all ways, was not tolerated. Queerness hid behind curtains- tinted through years and years of gay subtext that only those looking, would find. It is integral to keep in mind the era in which this film is set. To be outed was not only social suicide, but completely blacklisted you from potential careers, legal services and other people.

His reaction is the most intense, visceral, human. The emergence of bodily fluids, tears, bile or other, remind us of our baseness as human beings. Behind the well-crafted prose, public images, witty and charming responses… we are human. An unfortunate, common tale for many closeted teenagers, who die dutiful children, who turn to the annihilation of their own selves after an attempted reckoning of their sexualities or gender identity.

They recieve drawback from their family or friends in coming out, and their complex story remains untold.