Gothic themes of DMC
- Thread starter berto
- Start date
I'll have to pin this to watch later but straight off the top of my head, using Bram Stoker's Dracula as an example, that piece has elements/subtext of homoeroticism that is just straight up text. Things like Dracula throwing one of the female vampires off of Jonathan and claiming Jonathan was "his", and such. Biting the neck being popularly analogous to a sex act in most vampire media. Dracula trying to dominate and possess Harker is there on purpose. Plus it being Jonathan's Point of View makes us privy to his inner feelings including terror and vulnerability whereas a purely masculine view the way people conceive of it now would eschew those types of feelings.
The fact that Stoker started writing Dracula a month after Oscar Wilde (notably gay) was jailed specifically for being gay, and Stoker wrote love letters to Walt Whitman using such terms as wanting to be "wife to his soul" is just... there as something to consider. The story comes directly from the author so their mindset bears some influence on what they put into paper, even unconsciously.
Gothic Horror is unconventional by definition and tends to use the set-up of "The Other" to shine a light on cultural fears and rigid structures and in that sense it's social commentary.
With that in mind, Devil May Cry being also Gothic lends itself to tackling similar concepts: Dante being rather flamboyant/showy, powerful male characters seeking to dominate him, etc., his engagement with these other men via combat is described or depicted as perverse but also pleasurable, Dante feels a full range of emotion and has moments of emotional and physical vulnerability (at least he does in the first game!) instead of being an unflappably "cool" and unfeeling automaton who only exists to roflstomp the opposition and nothing ever fazes him.
So, sure. I can see why someone would say it's kinda gay. And it's the writer(s) of DMC that included such lines as "How about a kiss from your little brother?" from Dante to Vergil, as well as the bit in DMC4 where Nero straddles Dante's waist in midair when they should've already known the imagery was suggestive (compare it with Gloria straddling the Scarecrow in her debut scene) and that the characters were uncle and nephew. That's on them. Those bits didn't happen by accident.
That being said, I'll watch this later and I'm hoping it doesn't go on about how Dante is *incestuously* gay because I'm tired of that. There was enough of that in DMCV. I still don't like that Dante's character going forward is a man who barely functions as a human being unless his estranged brother is present in his life, who's been more dead than alive in the timeline, and Dante abandons his found family in favor of that man who is explicitly described as his "reason" for fighting, when originally Dante's reason was to uphold his mother's memory and his father's legacy. F*ck that.
The fact that Stoker started writing Dracula a month after Oscar Wilde (notably gay) was jailed specifically for being gay, and Stoker wrote love letters to Walt Whitman using such terms as wanting to be "wife to his soul" is just... there as something to consider. The story comes directly from the author so their mindset bears some influence on what they put into paper, even unconsciously.
Gothic Horror is unconventional by definition and tends to use the set-up of "The Other" to shine a light on cultural fears and rigid structures and in that sense it's social commentary.
With that in mind, Devil May Cry being also Gothic lends itself to tackling similar concepts: Dante being rather flamboyant/showy, powerful male characters seeking to dominate him, etc., his engagement with these other men via combat is described or depicted as perverse but also pleasurable, Dante feels a full range of emotion and has moments of emotional and physical vulnerability (at least he does in the first game!) instead of being an unflappably "cool" and unfeeling automaton who only exists to roflstomp the opposition and nothing ever fazes him.
So, sure. I can see why someone would say it's kinda gay. And it's the writer(s) of DMC that included such lines as "How about a kiss from your little brother?" from Dante to Vergil, as well as the bit in DMC4 where Nero straddles Dante's waist in midair when they should've already known the imagery was suggestive (compare it with Gloria straddling the Scarecrow in her debut scene) and that the characters were uncle and nephew. That's on them. Those bits didn't happen by accident.
That being said, I'll watch this later and I'm hoping it doesn't go on about how Dante is *incestuously* gay because I'm tired of that. There was enough of that in DMCV. I still don't like that Dante's character going forward is a man who barely functions as a human being unless his estranged brother is present in his life, who's been more dead than alive in the timeline, and Dante abandons his found family in favor of that man who is explicitly described as his "reason" for fighting, when originally Dante's reason was to uphold his mother's memory and his father's legacy. F*ck that.
berto
I Saw the Devil
