Wake in Fright : Gay bar?

Gay bar?

That bar full of sweaty men was some kind of gathering place for local miners, right?

It was like a scene from 'Cruising' when the main character walked into that place. I didn't see any women except for that cutaway to a table of old ladies. Then some of the men even just flat out checked the sweaty, young main character, right before the cop lit his cigarette for him and chatted him up. I wouldn't blame people if they mistook this entire scene for taking place in some kind of outback gay bar, and get very, very confused as the film goes on.

Great film though, very tense.

Re: Gay bar?

I agree that the film has homoerotism it uses for poetic expression, and I wondered why it was mainly men and only a woman or two minding the bar, but the reason for the bar only containing men was simply because the town is a Mining town, which would make a great majority of the locals to be men from other towns who are here exclusively to work, and others are locals. And it seems pretty old fashioned there when it comes to things like gambling and separation of females.

There is a homoerotic subtext to the film for sure, almost as though in this backwards part of the outbook, they are so transfixed on masculinity and disregard of the female nature that the imbalance leads to the death of the self, not that one thing is better than the other, but the over indulgence in masculine spirit as opposed to the feminine spirit can only do more harm than good.

I believe the zenith of this fixation is portrayed when he engages sexually with another man in his haze of uninhibited embrace of the environment around him. They make jabs at the man's masculine validness, even writing him off simply as "school teacher" as though his yearning for culture and altruistic nature makes him less of a man. The film sort of has a way of showing a feminine spirit who's just as unbalanced as the town that contrasts it, he feels suffocated in this boring yolk of nothingness and underwhelmed stirring outback nowhere, and even more revolted when the consumption-based masculine spirit is saturated in the town of The Yabba.

But due to his imbalance, he lacks the will to stop what is happening to him, and he too becomes part of the culture, stooped in the brutality, almost as though he were being seduced by what he receives as brute, destructive and elementary activities up until a few hours ago.

Sorry to go off, I just watched this movie today and thought it was really good, and wanted to talk about it. But yeah I think the seduction and marriage of consumption vs creation, in that he works so hard to try to give birth to things in the world like education, artistic, and scholastic contributions to the world, as opposed to all of them who just look to consume, and work off of pleasure and other hedonistic impulses. They don't even carry most of the things they kill, the act of killing is the prize in itself, it's pleasure without creation.

Sort of like how sex between men is pleasure without creation, this may be an archaic and offensive way to look at homosexuality, but then again, this could just be the fleeting act of insincere sex, coupling without sincerity, without need, without creation. In a way them having sex with eachother was more of way of showing that act of love making without love, the two men surely disagreed with eachother and were only with eachother for the simple act of pleasure, from drinking to hunting to talking, they serve eachother no other purpose but to occupy the mind and kill some time with entertainment and consumption.

They didn't truly care about eachother the whole time they hanged out, in fact you could say without the haze of alcohol, he wouldn't have had anything to do with this crowd of people, let alone stay with them, eat with them, drink with them, and kill with them. So in a way it was how he was being coaxed into an insincere gesture of sex & pleasure without love & creation.

Re: Gay bar?

This is an interesting interpretation and my view of the film jives pretty well with everything you said. You said that the disregard of female nature was so prominent, aside from sexual impulse (the two miner's make sexual jabs at Jeanette when they arrive). Well perhaps because the school teacher arrived, with such a feminine nature compared to this overtly masculine male dominance, he confused the other men of the town in that he triggered their sexual urges while at the same time registering a lot of aversion or anger (kind of like how intense homophobia is believed to be a result of inner confusion of one's own homosexuality). Inwardly, he represented feminine passiveness and restraint but had a male exterior. They didn't know whether to fight or *beep* with him. Doc ends up doing both.

Re: Gay bar?

That's what came to my mind too. A few shirtless guys and almost all male crowd, the people checking John out. Not that I blame them he is one good looking guy. The camera seemed to love him the nude scenes, the closeups of his lips, butt, chest... there was a definitely a homoerotic subtext - which wasn't that subtle -to the film.

Re: Gay bar?

I don't think that it's 'gay' as such. It's more that it's hyper-masculine, and fundamentally primal. This is where the homoeroticism (along with pretty much everything else) comes from.

Re: Gay bar?

There generally aren't a lot of women in those mining towns. Not much work for them and probably not safe either.

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