On manly friendships and erotic scenes

By people who certainly did not intend them to be read this way... or did they?

I'm listening to C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, notably his second book Perelandra (1943) where we get this touching description of male friendship. It begins early in the book where the narrator describes how he bids goodbye to Ransom who must undertake a perilous and uncertain mission on the planet Venus:

We laid our heads together and for a long time we talked about those matters which one usually discusses with relatives and not with friends. I got to know a lot more about Ransom than I had known before, and from the number of odd people whom he recommended to my care, ‘If ever I happened to be able to do anything’, I came to realise the extent and intimacy of his charities. With every sentence the shadow of approaching separation and a kind of graveyard gloom began to settle more emphatically upon us. I found myself noticing and loving all sorts of little mannerisms and expressions in him such as we notice always in a woman we love, but notice in a man only as the last hours of his leave run out or the date of the probably fatal operation draws near. I felt our nature’s incurable incredulity; and could hardly believe that what was now so close, so tangible and (in a sense) so much at my command, would in a few hours be wholly inaccessible, an image — soon, even an elusive image — in my memory. And finally a sort of shyness fell between us because each knew what the other was feeling. It had got very cold.

This scene is reader's kryptonite for me. I love these earnest descriptions of deep male friendship and physical affection in older books (also, in fellow Inkling JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, with Sam and Frodo; Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth, with Marcus and Esca).

When I bring this up, there is usually a criticism along these lines: C.S. Lewis and Tolkien certainly did not intend to make these characters gay. That is an anachronistic, later projection upon the text. Intense friendships were just like that. Men touched each other much more than they do now. These characters weren't gay. Also, why would you eroticize everything? Doing so would be Freudian, American (!), or cherry-picking.

And at some level, I agree. Lewis and Tolkien were not LGBTQ rights advocates. Indeed, if we look at C.S. Lewis's views on homosexuality in this letter, it's what you would expect of a Christian at the time. He sees homosexuality as a disability, and he conflates male homosexuality with a desire to wear women's clothes in private.

However, one reason I bring up this specific scene is that there clearly is an intended homoerotic element. C.S. Lewis even makes the comparison with adoring, or loving a woman, “I found myself noticing and loving all sorts of little mannerisms and expressions in him such as we notice always in a woman we love.” So there is clearly a space where the narrator views the main character, Ransom, in that way.

Lewis is a master in describing feelings and contextualizing them. Unlike him, I can't imagine what it's like to see someone you care about go into the battlefield (also notice the publication date, 1943). However, I do know that when faced with situations of high death salience we can see other people we normally would not fall for (e.g., if you are hetero, someone of the same gender) in that way that seems erotic. The moments seem so precious; the person becomes precious.

Sam and Frodo

I take inspiration from Audre Lorde to further think about the erotic. In her broad and creative interpretation of eroticism (explored in her essay Uses of the Erotic (1978), Lorde connects eros to self and feeling.

The erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.

So, in a sense it is unsurprising that the kind of depth of tenderness we feel for people we otherwise would not want a romantic or sexual relationship with (such as a heterosexual man for his male friend who goes off to war) occurs whenever we feel deeply. Existential life-and-death situations break the barriers of custom and whittle away at our scripted interactions: it makes everything feel intense, it brings us into contact with a “spiritual plane,” as Lorde puts it.

We often think of the erotic as of seeing with rose tinted glasses, as distorting in some way. But if Lorde and Lewis are right, we might see erotic love as somehow more truthful because Ransom (and anyone really) is really lovable and beautiful and wonderful in a way we are normally prevented from seeing, and he is beautiful in his specific way with lovable mannerisms unique to him.

Lorde argues that we as a society distrust the erotic, because it is “female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.” And this in part may be the basis for our resistance for recognizing erotic elements in intense male friendships.

Now, let's look again at Sam and Frodo in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The many tender scenes between them, often with Sam as the one who gives and cares, and Frodo who receives are plausibly not intended as queer.

However, one thing to note is that the eroticism in the book has been toned down significantly in the scenes in the movie. Apparently Ian McKellen, the actor who plays Gandalf and who is a great advocate for gay rights, tried in vain to “gay up” the scenes, but Jackson refused. It does show that, regardless of Tolkien's intent, there was a worry, rooted in homophobia, about making the scenes so tender and explicit. In 2000 when casting decisions were announced, there was backlash against a gay man and activist for gay rights being cast as Gandalf.

Lord of the Rings is plausibly part of our modern canon of literary works in English, so our engagement with it is always updated. You simply cannot read LOTR the way it was read when it first came out. It is impossible. Obviously, you need to be mindful of the literary context, which can enrich the interpretations of this work, e.g., the military context and relationship between soldiers in World War II which Lewis hints at above, and which probably also underlies Sam/Frodo as can be seen in this interesting and nuanced video on the topic by Verity Ritchie:

But, we are also free to creatively engage with works, as e.g., creative re-interpretations of Shakespeare's works Othello or Merchant of Venice show. A lot has happened since C.S. Lewis wrote that letter on homosexuality.

Recognizing the erotic element that sometimes occurs in friendships, especially in deeply existential moments of great peril, does not mean we cannot value friendships as such. It is not desirable to squeeze all physical affection and sensuous attraction between consenting adults into the spheres of romantic love and of sex. Conflating the erotic in this broad sense with the sexual and with sexual relationships in a sense flattens human experience (Amia Srinivasan, for instance, is careful to point out that while teaching may sometimes have an erotic dimension, professors should never sleep with their students).

Hopefully, this reading of LOTR and other works allows us to recover elements from them that help us to think in a nuanced way about love and about seeing each other. The erotic is a power, in Lorde's view. Echoing Nietzsche (and perhaps also Spinoza, in Deleuze's interpretation of him), when we live in the morality of customs we live “outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and need” as Lorde puts it. But when we abandon those and listen to our inner self, we can recognize the other, see them in a new way, and become empowered.

Consider this scene near the end of LOTR. It comes at a moment of high death salience in Mordor where the quest is nearing its completion, and so the intensity of emotions can come to the foreground.

He was naked, lying as if in a swoon on a heap of filthy rags: his arm was flung up, shielding his head, and across his side there ran an ugly whip-weal.

‘Frodo! Mr. Frodo, my dear!’ cried Sam, tears almost blinding him.

‘It’s Sam, I’ve come!’

He half lifted his master and hugged him to his breast.

Frodo opened his eyes. ‘Am I still dreaming?’ he muttered. ‘But the other dreams were horrible.’

‘You’re not dreaming at all, Master,’ said Sam. ‘It’s real. It’s me. I’ve come.’

‘I can hardly believe it,’ said Frodo, clutching him. ‘There was an orc with a whip, and then it turns into Sam! Then I wasn’t dreaming after all when I heard that singing down below, and I tried to answer? Was it you?’

‘It was indeed, Mr. Frodo. I’d given up hope, almost. I couldn’t find you.’

‘Well, you have now, Sam, dear Sam,’ said Frodo, and he lay back in Sam’s gentle arms, closing his eyes, like a child at rest when night-fears are driven away by some loved voice or hand.

Sam felt that he could sit like that in endless happiness; but it was not allowed. It was not enough for him to find his master, he had still to try and save him. He kissed Frodo’s forehead. ‘Come! Wake up, Mr. Frodo!’ he said, trying to sound as cheerful as he had when he drew back the curtains at Bag End on a summer’s morning. Frodo sighed and sat up. ‘Where are we? How did I get here?’ he asked.

Because consent is important, it is crucial that Frodo (who is weighed down by the One Ring and therefore in the position of the receiver of Sam's affections and care) consents to being seen this way, and in the process, the tender affection of Frodo is empowering.

Or as Lorde puts it, “In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.” — and so, Sam's affection throughout the book is an anti-dote to Frodo's despair. By recognizing Sam's love for him and seeing how Sam sees him, Frodo can recover a sense of feeling value for himself too.