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2:17 PM
Truthfully, the one thing that got me through my week was when Josh Hartnett won his guy-on-guy stripes on my new favorite TV show, Penny Dreadful. This show seriously engulfs my past life DNA senses, at least the ones that belongs in Gothic literature/the Victorian era.
"But B, you fan-girl hard over any two guys that make out!"
That may be very true, but, contextually this is (as I mentioned on the Penny Dreadful facebook page TWICE!) "the reason that I write." After Brona (Doctor Who's Billie Piper) breaks up with our wolf man, American gunslinger Ethan Chandler (Hartnett) who else is to pick up the pieces than the Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney). It seems Gray didn't feel like flirting with Chandler's employer (Eva Green's Vanessa Ives) as he has been but it has been mostly out of fascination of her other worldly powers. He takes the brokenhearted American to an underground gambling club where Ethan is only triggered by the sight of rat blood and animal/human love of carnage. Within the trigger and getting into a brawl, Gray takes him to his home.
Now see, a lot of people would think that Carney's Gray would be literally trying and eager to hard to get a guy into his bed but strangely, this portrayal of Dorian is probably more bored than Ben Barnes or Hurd Hatfield put together. But this Dorian feels nothing but empathy for Chandler and tries to console this the only way men can -- drinking. But not just drinking anything, we count Chandler having least three glasses of absinthe and under the influence of Wagner's "Liebestod," I like to believe he becomes triggered by the murders he possibly has committed yet is soothed by Dorian's empathy which results in a wonderful confrontation. "It's the Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde. Literally translated it means love-death. It's the very end of the opera; Isolde's lover is dead in front of her. They're on a beach, the waves are rolling in and out. You can hear that in the music, can't you? And her heartbreak, you can hear that."
I like to think that Hartnett's Chandler is trapped between hating and feeling humbled that Dorian strangely gets it, hence initially choking him and willingly kissing him either taking a little of Dorian's immortal bored confidence or simply being magnetized by the immortal. Chandler begins to cry and you can see the tears under his eyes whether it is alcohol-induced after he shakes his head, giving into either Dorian's "spell" or his own inabilities to accept the killer or Wolf Man (which fans are speculating) within him. But then again, there is no indication of Gray's powers as he looks at Chandler solemnly as if saying with his eyes, "You and I both know what death and heartbreak means." Even Gray seems amazed and humbled when they talk about art and Chandler's love for primitive etchings in a mountain. "They're honest" Hartnett's character says and I think that is what hooked Gray that for once, he doesn't want this guy -- he has possibly seen more in his short life than what Dorian has seen in his longer youthful immortality.
Even after I got over the initial lady wood of the scene, Hartnett is a little surprised at himself for kissing him -- but how else does one person try to retrieve something they want out of another? In Michael Cunningham's masterpiece "The Hours" (the book, not the movie!), Mrs. Brown and Kitty share a kiss together because "They are both afflicted and blessed, full of shared secrets, striving every moment. They are each impersonating someone. They are weary and beleaguered; they have taken on such enormous work." So we can say that both of these instances are the same; even before this climatic scene, Gray talks about all of his colognes. "Each produces a different sensation, a different you I could carry away." So there is no doubt that he wants to be a different person and finds something humbling about Chandler's love for the honest.
The sad thing is, is once the episode is out there and for everyone to see, no one is going to analyze this down to it's bare bones as something sad yet empathetic. The LGB community will hoorah Hartnett and Carney for being better actors to flex a sexual ambiguity into their repertoire and bringing LGB characters to the forefront and those who are homophobic or deny the male species of affection towards another with sexual intention or not, will keep doing what they're doing and add this as fuel to their bonfires of dislike. Because, damn it, gayness matters! And this scene is nothing more but two guys kissing with no literary device behind it, right? *sarcasm*
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