Notes on Frank and Bill

03/11/2023

Notes on Frank and Bill

This week was cold, but flowers are starting to bloom.

I think a lot about how plants spend all their time outside, living and growing out of the ground, and I feel like we don't give them enough credit.

Stephen refuses to watch 'The Last of Us' because I made him watch 'The Walking Dead' for way too long after it got bad, but I've been slowly getting up to speed. I wanted to see the gay episode that everyone (on Twitter) was talking about. [Spoilers ahead.] If you haven't seen it, Nick Offerman plays a survivalist who in the wake of the zombie apocalypse happens to have a house full of ammunition that allows him to create a fortress; one day, Murray Bartlett wanders onto the property and falls into a hole. Nick takes pity on him and feeds him, and Murray, after figuring out that Nick is secretly gay, moves in. The two men fall in love and spend the next twenty years fighting zombies and bandits, gardening, and painting. They both love Linda Ronstadt <3. Eventually Murray gets sick and the two men, after spending a final day together, kill themselves with painkillers and wine in a double suicide.

The episode was far from perfect. It relied heavily on stereotypes about masculine and feminine roles that are instantly tiresome, the wigs and makeup were horrible (but no worse than the usual fare), and of course there's the problem of introducing gay characters just in time to kill them off. Did they marry each other on the day they died? I can't remember. It doesn't matter. Overall, I liked the episode and found its depiction of gay life compelling in an important way that is so rarely done with gay characters, namely these men were able to create a very satisfying life with each other (and some arts and crafts) with almost no desire to assimilate into the society from which they had fled. (Murray Bartlett *does* make some connections over the radio with another community and they have lunch with a few people, but that's about it.)

Admittedly, the society they refute is terrifying and broken and infested with zombies and criminals -- not to mention completely unwelcoming -- but is that so different than reality? You tell me. Metaphorically, it worked. I could relate to them, is what I'm saying, which almost never happens when I watch television, except in very attenuated ways that I'm sure are familiar to most gay people, given that we learn from a very young age to never see more than a tiny slice of ourselves in popular books and movies.

Anyway, I would like to see more gay characters who do more refuting and less assimilating, but this was a good start. Refuting is our greatest strength, and it's rare for the mainstream industrial complex to acknowledge it.

It's hard to believe that another spring is here, but I welcome it.

Posted at 05:03 PM in Expression, Reaction | Permalink

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Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine

Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.

Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past

Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.

Video: The Chaos Detective

The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.

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Expression//Reaction//ScienceProjects

03/11/2023