There are a great number of people who will insist, usually based on little to no textual evidence, that "No, come on, admit it. Batman and Robin are totally gay!" I have no objection to that reading, per se, and the 'Dynamic Duo' have certainly come to be used by the gay community as a kind of ironic icon (as opposed to Wonder Woman, who is usually a very sincerely employed icon), but the actual textual evidence for a gay relationship there is pretty damn slim.
What there is is a set of ambiguous circumstances that a few generations of gay kids have read as a homosexual relationship, and have taken solace in. That, in itself, is remarkable and interesting and deserves further thought, but that complex and interesting starting point is often dumbed down to "If you can't admit that they're gay, then you're a homophobe."
As for Sam and Frodo, well... Tolkien's narration lets a few things slip that provide the opportunity for a very homoerotic reading of the characters. Four things jump to mind (this was a missing section from my honours paper on Rings by the way). First, there's a long description of when Sam and Frodo are travelling through the dark tombs where Shelob lives of how much Sam loves Frodo, how dedicated he is, et cetera. After a typically long and wordy Tokienesque description (beautiful, but not brief!), it breaks and says [paraphrasing], "Sam would never say it like that, though. If asked, he would simply say, 'I love him!'" It's been pretty well established that Tolkien didn't intend for that to mean romantic love, but the implication is open to interpretation. That's the weakest of the evidence.
Second, there's the fight with Shelob. It is easily, far and away, the most touching and heroic moment of the entire 1,000-word story. I get tears every time I read it. This tiny fat little hobbit picks up what, to anyone else, would be a dagger, and to him is merely a pointy little short sword, and he takes on veritable goddess of blood-sucking spiders. But notice how he does it. He ends up underneath her "hairy and wrinkled" belly [paraphrasing, again], thrusts his little sword straight up, and then she sits down on him. The visual implications here would seem to be clear. He defeats Shelob using a phallic symbol that's thrust into (arguably) a villified vagina. I realize that's a very strong statement, and it's a little ambiguous, but still... holy crap.
Third, when Sam and Frodo arrive back in the Shire, there's a small bit of narrative description about Sam marrying Rosy, but then agonizing over whether to move in with her because he wants to stay with Frodo. He doesn't want to let go of his relationship with Sam specifically to enter a heterosexual marriage union. He's caught. The solution: Rosy and Sam move into Bag End. Yes, that's right. They all live in Frodo's hole.
Finally, the evidence that really convinces me, even before the fight with Shelob, there's a bit of narration (that of course doesn't appear in the film!) that describes Sam rising up [paraphrasing again], "Like some tiny furry animal, with it's tiny teeth bared defending its mate." The narration does not say "defending a member of its pack" (brotherhood), nor does it say "defending its young" (parenthood). It specifically likens their relationship to paired sex partners.
What I think is that, whether intentionally or not, the text makes Sam out to be in love with Frodo, and that love seems to be as intimate and as intense as any romantic love you could name. It is, however, characterized within the narration as sexual love and the discourse of romantic love is employed and implied in several places. The whole thing is very ambiguous, but it's a hell of a lot more warrented by the evidence the Batman/Robin pairing. Batman comics are an open set of narrative details with decades and decades worth of evidence produced by dozens of writers and artists. It's easy to cherry-pick, and very difficult to make a solid case about anything, therefore also easy to make a weak case about everything.
Posted by orion at February 8, 2007 2:56 PM