Big Eden: a much belated commentary
Aug. 13th, 2018 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I still aten't dead! Though the nearest thing to it, with doctoral academic work and masters academic work and paid academic editing and competitive exams and being at home and everything. It's been a bad couple months. Productive, though, but bad enough I haven't had the time/energy/inclination to write up the things I've been cooking or otherwise consuming. Even the following is just connected-ish stuff from Twitter rather than a proper review.
So a couple weeks back I finally got my piratical little hands on an okayish stream of Big Eden, that beloved gay fairytale I've been dying to watch since White Collar first aired. Reader, I'm glad I waited; while it is impossible to think of 10 y.o Rhea watching something as soulful and lovely as this film, I doubt I'd have fared much better at 19 y.o: that was Peak Cynic Era for me, and this deserves a mellow and hopeful viewership. Really and truly, just watch the trailer if you like me have been living under a rock.
It's a lovely film, sweet without being cloying, full of the sort of community warmth and well-meaning nosiness that looks good on-screen, and ofc an absolutely glowing couple finding love and family.

But I'm not here to coo over how cute they are and how much I want to hug Pike Dexter (so much!). Instead I wanna talk about Dean Stewart (Tim DeKay doing his usual stunning job) and how I believe he's wrongly stuck in the 'Oblivious, Well-Meaning Hetero Dude' category. Rewatching it with T last week made me feel very validated about locating Dean Stewart somewhere along the bi-ace spectrum, just from how she reacted to him big emotional moments.
That Dean is pretty solidly queer was evident throughout, if only because trying to date your gay buddy is in itself a queer act. (4th Man Out, btw, is a really good film dealing with a decidedly straight and sympathetic dude dealing with his bff coming out.) But also he does the same things, performs affection the same way with Henry and Anna, dancing and hugs and all.
And, okay so I've been watching through queer lenses for 20 years, but his interactions with Henry read queer throughout. Not romantic, necessarily. And ofc straight folk do the picking up and swatting and all of it with their close friends. Or. Straight girls. But all the yearning glances and tender hand holding and embracing and just the scene in his truck where he glances at his sons, trying to be brave. Dean tries, he keeps on trying, and he's just so so heartbroken. The scene with him sobbing and Anna hugging him </3. And, this is the important thing: he does the stuff with Anna as with Henry: he instigates affectionate touch, he shares meals, he dances. There's no 'ah, yes, a woman!' moment of relief anywhere. Maybe he'll run up against the same boundaries with her, maybe he won't, maybe he'll work through them slowly. But if he's dating Anna at the end, then he was dating Henry through a fair chunk of the film.
He's as bi, I think, as he could be in a 2000 film that never actually categorises types of queerness. Not just because of the rough-housing or the intense friendship, though lbr that's how queer-coding often works and you can see that in any 90s or early 2000s slash-fave media. But because he tries, says he can't, comes right back in to try again, to patch things up without reverting to the safety of #justfriends. Because it breaks his heart to even see Henry flirting with someone.
Do we do character manifestos like the old ship manifestos? Cause this is my Dean Stewart is bi-ace or bi-demi manifesto, and I've got any number of screenshots of Tim DeKay looking longing to back it up.
So a couple weeks back I finally got my piratical little hands on an okayish stream of Big Eden, that beloved gay fairytale I've been dying to watch since White Collar first aired. Reader, I'm glad I waited; while it is impossible to think of 10 y.o Rhea watching something as soulful and lovely as this film, I doubt I'd have fared much better at 19 y.o: that was Peak Cynic Era for me, and this deserves a mellow and hopeful viewership. Really and truly, just watch the trailer if you like me have been living under a rock.
It's a lovely film, sweet without being cloying, full of the sort of community warmth and well-meaning nosiness that looks good on-screen, and ofc an absolutely glowing couple finding love and family.

But I'm not here to coo over how cute they are and how much I want to hug Pike Dexter (so much!). Instead I wanna talk about Dean Stewart (Tim DeKay doing his usual stunning job) and how I believe he's wrongly stuck in the 'Oblivious, Well-Meaning Hetero Dude' category. Rewatching it with T last week made me feel very validated about locating Dean Stewart somewhere along the bi-ace spectrum, just from how she reacted to him big emotional moments.
That Dean is pretty solidly queer was evident throughout, if only because trying to date your gay buddy is in itself a queer act. (4th Man Out, btw, is a really good film dealing with a decidedly straight and sympathetic dude dealing with his bff coming out.) But also he does the same things, performs affection the same way with Henry and Anna, dancing and hugs and all.
And, okay so I've been watching through queer lenses for 20 years, but his interactions with Henry read queer throughout. Not romantic, necessarily. And ofc straight folk do the picking up and swatting and all of it with their close friends. Or. Straight girls. But all the yearning glances and tender hand holding and embracing and just the scene in his truck where he glances at his sons, trying to be brave. Dean tries, he keeps on trying, and he's just so so heartbroken. The scene with him sobbing and Anna hugging him </3. And, this is the important thing: he does the stuff with Anna as with Henry: he instigates affectionate touch, he shares meals, he dances. There's no 'ah, yes, a woman!' moment of relief anywhere. Maybe he'll run up against the same boundaries with her, maybe he won't, maybe he'll work through them slowly. But if he's dating Anna at the end, then he was dating Henry through a fair chunk of the film.
He's as bi, I think, as he could be in a 2000 film that never actually categorises types of queerness. Not just because of the rough-housing or the intense friendship, though lbr that's how queer-coding often works and you can see that in any 90s or early 2000s slash-fave media. But because he tries, says he can't, comes right back in to try again, to patch things up without reverting to the safety of #justfriends. Because it breaks his heart to even see Henry flirting with someone.
Do we do character manifestos like the old ship manifestos? Cause this is my Dean Stewart is bi-ace or bi-demi manifesto, and I've got any number of screenshots of Tim DeKay looking longing to back it up.