by Connor Elmore
The rules
Don’t touch me. Don’t lean against my shoulder. Don’t hug me for too long. Don’t hug me too tight. Don’t confess something. Don’t tilt your head and say something nice. Don’t look at me too nicely.
Sometimes my boundaries for male friendships sound like that of a homophobic middle schooler, terrified of even an implication of intimacy.
Close
Watching Lukas Dhont’s 2022 film, Close, felt like intruding on something private, something I wasn’t meant to see. We’re only given short glimpses into Rémi and Léo’s friendship, but the few ones we do see are incredibly intimate.
And then, the unavoidable question arises about twenty minutes into the film.
[Classmate [in French]: Can I ask you a question? Are you together?
Léo: No. ]
I found myself wondering the same thing. This is the only explicit reference to a romance between the two boys, and yet that question lingers. It floats around the rest of their actions and it opens the rift in their friendship.
The two react quite differently to the increasing forces of teenage masculinity: while Rémi brushes off demeaning comments and upholds his side of the friendship, Léo pulls away. He joins an ice hockey team, emblematic of the ‘real man,’ of a place where Rémi cannot fit in. Léo responds to the weight of others quickly, more acutely. He is the perfect participant in masculinity: malleable at his core, willing to trade his wants and needs for a greater feeling of belonging.
I can’t claim to perfectly understand the masculinity that Rémi and Léo experience. There are infinite differences across cultures, micro and macro, that shape every face of the system. But I guess that’s why Close was so striking. To see these two boys, thousands of miles away, living through such similar experiences to mine was touching. It was heartbreaking. I found Lukas Dhont’s screenplay to translate extremely well to my own views of contemporary masculinity.
Men
I’d argue that my perception of the contemporary ‘masculine man’ is completely incompatible with intimacy. See, intimacy relies on vulnerability, showing a version of yourself that includes weaknesses and failures, but in the current state of masculinity, vulnerability is generally unacceptable: the boy with a scraped-up knee who won’t let himself cry, the father who can’t say “I’m proud of you,” let alone “I love you.” Since intimacy necessitates vulnerability, it too is unacceptable. Philosophy professor Robert A. Strikwerda argues that “to be intimate with another person one cannot be loyal to that person as a mere abstract other” (116). But to be a man is to remain abstract: to avoid specifying yourself and your weaknesses. Now, we see a large portion of men unable to be vulnerable or intimate with one another. One could argue that men are simply born with this avoidance, but from multiple social and historical perspectives, this is simply wrong.
1: Boys
Boys’ performances of masculinity kicks into high gear in their teenage years. This interferes with displays of vulnerability, and subsequently, intimacy. Niobe Way, a researcher focused on teen boys’ friendships, argues that as they face growing external pressures, many withdraw from the deep friendships they’ve built, or at the very least put up barriers to intimacy. In her book Deep Secrets, Way cites an interview with a freshman in high school: “I can share my secrets with my best friend and he won’t tell anyone” (Way 221). But he’s much colder junior year. And as a senior, he responds that while he’s okay with gay people, he’s not gay himself (Way 221). The conversation of friendship evolves from affection to distance to defensiveness. As masculinity and queerness enter the equation, the standards for boys’ internal relationships begin to change. Many pull away, and continue to avoid forming those bonds indefinitely.
This sentiment reminds me of the ending lines of Stand By Me, a coming-of-age film that details the friendship of four boys trying to find the body of a dead teen. As they trek through the forest, the film takes gentle pauses for intimate vulnerability, and although much of it is shaded by early impersonations of masculinity—
[Chris Chambers [in tears]: I guess I’m just a pussy, huh?]
—they’re there for one another. But by the end of the film, the narrator leaves the story on a difficult note: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” This sentiment, that no man has as deep of connections as they do in childhood, is no coincidence. This echoes the trend that Niobe Way discovered—in certain cultures, as boys grow up, they lose the social ability to form or maintain deep connections.
2: Penpals and Bedmates
We can take a historical angle, too. E. Anthony Rotundo’s essay “Romantic Friendship” describes how different men’s standards for intimacy were in the nineteenth century by analyzing archived mail between lifelong friends Daniel Webster and James Hervery Bingham. In one letter, Webster assures Bingham after a romantic failure: “We perhaps shall never be rich; no matter we can supply our own personal necessities. By the time we are thirty, we will put on the dress of old bachelors, a mourning suit, and having sown all our wild oats, with a round hat and a hickory staff we will march on to the end of life, whistling as merry as robins” (4). He sees a future for them together, unmarried and happy. Rotundo argues that Webster saw his friendship as “occupying the same ground as marriage—to the point where the two seemed to be mutual contradictions” (4). The vulnerability required to place marriage and platonic friendship as equals shows comfortability in expressing intimacy.
These were private letters—at least when written—so they can’t fully reflect expressions of masculinity on their own, but there’s even more evidence in the media of the period. Herman Melville’s 1851 classic American novel Moby-Dick features a budding friendship between Ishmael and harpooner Queequeg. As they’re forced to share a room together, Ishmael writes, “there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair” (Melville 96). Author Herman Melville is comfortable with publishing intimacy between men, flowery language and all. He goes so far as to relate Ishmael and Queequeg’s friendship to a heterosexual marriage.
To a modern audience, this all might seem a little . . . gay. But although queer people have always been a part of society, it’s important to remember that nineteenth-century America had completely different frameworks not just for gender, but also sexuality. The modern words for “homosexual” and “heterosexual” were coined in 1868, seventeen years after Moby Dick and sixty-three years after Webster’s letter. Rotundo’s essay later describes how homosexual acts fell under the umbrella term of sodomy, which also included sex with an animal or oral sex between straight people. He argues that the usage of the terms “sodomy” and the “crime without a name” indicate that nineteenth-century Americans viewed homosexual acts as simply that—acts, independent of social identities. Rotundo connects this back to platonic friendship: “This set of attitudes threw a blanket of ambiguity over the private acts of physical affection between men, and left them, in some ways, freer to express their feelings than they would have been in the twentieth century” (Rotundo 9-10). These sources remind us that men have historically shown vulnerability and built deep connections with one another.
Yet today, an incompatible masculinity chips away at it, whittling men down to the bone, to a skeleton. One that can only speak of the weather or a job or a favorite football player. One that may try to build around himself, but is whittled away once more.
Who’s responsible for this? Who needs to change? I mean, obviously, it’s the drunk man on the sidewalk yelling the f-slur at two men with their arms around each other, but that feels like too easy of an answer. There’s something more.
Dying Poets and Ship Culture
From my perspective, Dead Poets Society has attracted a disproportionately queer audience in recent years. The film follows Neil Perry and Todd Anderson as they navigate the pressures of life at a prestigious boarding school. At the center of this film is the mutual support and care Neil and Todd foster as they grow closer. Although never explicitly stated, a romance between the two is one of the main topics of discussion around this film, especially in queer circles. I used to think this ‘shipping,’ where people imply that the two were in love or dating, was harmless. But something changed my mind.
Around three years ago, I was speaking with a friend who I assumed to be gay about Dead Poets Society. He was gushing over how the film resonated with him as a queer person, and I assumed it was because he saw Neil and Todd as gay representation. But in fact, it was the opposite. This friend explained that it was a rare occasion of two men deeply, intimately caring for one another, with no conversation or questioning of their sexualities. My friend was asexual. For him, Dead Poets represented a hope that men could show deep care for one another and not be romantically involved, nor have their closeness questioned.
Now, all of the ‘ships’ and comments and fan-made edits seem odd. Not just for Dead Poets Society, but for Sherlock Holmes, The Lord of the Rings, Supernatural, Star Wars . . . . The list goes on. It seems weird to be constructing a narrative of romance around depictions of platonic friendships when we’re experiencing a renaissance of queer media—of really good queer media. Historically, queer people have lacked representation, but I find it hard to believe that Neil and Todd’s friendship is the closest thing to representation the community has today. And I find it even harder to swallow that we’re contributing to a problem that actively hurts us.
It might be easy to place the blame on the obvious participants, but I’ve realized how much perpetuation comes from those who directly suffer from the system of masculinity, those who would never consider themselves as part of the problem in the first place. I’ve realized that’s where oppressive systems thrive.
This realization has helped me turn inward.
(Me)n
Writing so much about men has brought to my attention my strange way of speaking about masculinity: I speak of men, of them, using third-person pronouns. I speak of masculinity as if I’m far away from it.
And I’m sure the roots are in my childhood. I mean I wasn’t heavily bullied, but as I grew older, I could feel myself being pushed to the edge of masculinity. I could feel a hand on my back, ready to push me off.
When middle school began, it was clear that my sexuality would raise questions about my friendships with other men, so I distanced myself. One by one, I tapered off my male friendships, because I knew what they were thinking. I knew what my classmates were thinking. I knew what I was thinking—maybe I did want to kiss him, because what else would I want? What else could we be?
The more I think about that time, the more sense I find in my male friendships today. I don’t like being touched. I don’t like getting close. When it happens, I get angry—I feel like I’m being toyed with. I feel like I’m being led to humiliation.
So, after living through all that negativity, the last thing I would want is to fuel the machine that’s hurt me. But it’s become clear that I did exactly that; I’ve sexualized my friendships with men, and that reaction was a perpetuation of the norms that caused me so much harm in the first place.
My Prying Hands
[Nathalie [in French]: Come with me.
Léo: What’s going on?
Nathalie: Come.
Léo: Why? . . . Tell me.
Nathalie: It’s about Rémi. He has . . . .
Léo: Is he at the hospital?
Nathalie: He’s no longer here, Léo.]
Watching Close for the first time, Rémi’s death not even halfway through the film completely blindsided me. I had expected so much more time with him, more time for Rémi and Léo to navigate their relationship. But Close doesn’t offer that consolation, that clarity. It offers something unresolved. Some things are left obscured on purpose.
Nearing the finale of the film, Rémi’s mother asks Léo a question:
[Sophie [in French]: Léo? What happened between you two?]
By the end of the film, it’s still unclear—to Rémi’s mother, to the audience, and maybe to Léo himself—were they best friends? Were they in love?
The question of queerness is never answered, because to Lukas Dhont, it’s not what matters. What matters is that two humans were pulled apart by the ugly, prying hands of others. Two boys were robbed of a lifelong connection. What matters is that one child has died, and the other blames himself for it.
I’ve realized what haunts me about this film: my speculation, my queer reading of their friendship, was parallel to what pulled Léo and Rémi apart, what led to Rémi’s death. I acted as a whisperer in the crowd. A conspiratory romanticist. A judgemental onlooker. An agent of masculinity. All without knowing. I wonder how many times I’ve done that before, in films like these and beyond that.
Close exploits our projections as an audience. It reflects them back, in a radiant beam of pain. We as an audience have played our part. We have pushed our hands between them.
At first, I thought the deep reds of Close simply represented intimacy . . . maybe even love. But something else was laid under it the whole time, something I neglected to see: danger. Blood.
Closer
I’m tired of feeling so far away. It’s time for a change.
[Connor: Willem?
Willem [over the phone]: Hello!
Connor: [Laughs.]
Willem: How are you?
Connor: I’m good! I wanted to call and tell you that I miss you and I love you.
Willem: Aww, I miss you and I love you too, Connor.]
Works Cited
Close. Directed by Lukas Dhont, Lumière and Diaphana Distribution, 2022.
Dead Poets Society. Directed by Peter Weir, Touchstone Pictures and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 1989.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. 1851. New York, NY, Acclaim Books, 1997.
Moby Dick. Directed by John Huston, Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and United Artists, 1956.
Rotundo, E. Anthony. “Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United States, 1800-1900.” Journal of Social History, vol. 23, no. 1, 1989, pp. 1–25. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3787562.
Stand By Me. Directed by Rob Reiner, Columbia Pictures, 1986.
May, Larry, and Robert A. Strikwerda. “Male Friendship and Intimacy.” Hypatia, vol. 7, no. 3, 1992, pp. 110–25. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3809875.
Way, Niobe. Deep Secrets: Boys, Friendships, and the Crisis of Connection. London, Harvard University Press, 2013.