If I had to engage my brain to search for a reason, I guess you could mark it as a particularly gross manifestation of the trendy “bromance” thing.
This just feels surprisingly retrograde, in a Hangover franchise sort of way, and I don’t get why any of these talented folks are partaking in it. If any of these actors were really gay, as you point out, we’d have a very different, and likely hostile, media reaction-because gay men are supposed to keep their paws off the straight boys, you know? While the history queen in me smiles at your recuperative reading of all this as a challenge to the doxa, I fear I can’t really go there with you in this case. Lowder: I think you’ve summarized the … structural? … problem at play here really well-this is cute and funny and titillating because WE ALL KNOW that Garfield doesn’t want to take Reynolds back to his place and have anal sex with him.
