#if izzy sucks a dick and admits he likes it and it made him happier we... beat patriarchy?

[knowlesian]

so: the closet scene! i’ve been mad at this stupid closet scene for SO LONG. i still don’t entirely know how i feel about it, to be honest. whenever i do, i find a new angle i hadn’t considered and have to think about it that way. i’ve got a couple things i’m fairly steady about and a whole heap more that sound out there even to me, because my whole brain gives up on linear thinking and goes all-in on muppet-esque leaps of logic when i try to sort out any given thought. 

i need to acknowledge the visual joke here before i even deal with taking it seriously. it’s so broad it’s like... i don’t know, a visual gag version of taking a pie to the face. this takes the implied knocking boots joke by the throat and says “i can do better.” stede 10000000% literally takes ed into his secret closet of fancy gay things. this sweet, sad little man who is so metaphorically closeted at the moment he’s in fucking narnia, is taking ed into his actual factual closet to hang out. and then they stay there even longer so they can be gay together away from izzy, #1 pooper of parties.

i mean, what am i supposed to say? that’s funny. it just is, i don’t make these rules. it’s really, really fucking funny. 

then it’s not, because oh wait: what leads up to this moment in the closet makes the obvious “hah hah, two gay dudes in maybe the gayest closet the good lord ever did make” joke into something a lot more textured. they’re very good at this! i have said it before, and i will say it again. i will meet these writers in the parking lot of a denny’s!!!! 

stede’s never been told anything he loves is right for him. none of it matters. it’s all soft and silly and frivolous and weak. worst of it: it’s fucking girly. because of some very stupid rules a bunch of dead people made up in part to make sure the generational wealth that gave stede these nice things stayed the fuck put where it was already at, he can’t get caught enjoying them or risk being shamed for it. 

there’s something really sad and complicated and fucked up about that that won’t stop eating at me. maybe it’s the way they’re digging into the complications that arise when privilege and marginalization beat in same breast, maybe it's all the juicy class stuff, maybe it’s the nodding at toxic masculinity and the way patriarchy likes to stab a knife into its own emotional guts while reaping practical/systemic benefits at once thing. (i guess if the patriarchy had emotional literacy i wouldn’t need to know the word patriarchy, because it wouldn’t be such a fucking problem! love to live in a society, i really do.) i don’t know what i think it all actually means now, but maybe someday.

what i do know is the way stede says “rather exquisite cashmere” is unfair. because that’s what it is: cashmere that is rather exquisite. he’s describing the world as he sees it, and up until now every single response he’s gotten to saying anything like that has been “fucking... christ with this one, and his gay little scarves and shit.” sometimes they phrase it more kindly, but nobody ever gets it.

so stede holds his breath there, hoping he’s not going to be mocked, but his face when it’s even better than that kills me. ed doesn’t just nod and take stede’s way of expressing himself in stride; he repeats the words back to him. he decides he likes the way they feel in his mouth, far better than izzy’s demands he stick to harsher, guttural tones.

the way this show deals with communication and words as a method of love or shelter really does kill me. the jim and olu of it all is literally always killing me softly, and this just kicks my feelings up a notch. 

on this show, to love someone is to find out you had the same words in your heart all along, you were just waiting for someone to understand them. that’s pretty fuckin’ rad.

anyway, then ed rubs the rather exquisite cashmere on his fucking face and the music gets all lighthearted and “this is the scene where they start falling in love, you know this cue, let’s ROLL, we are DOING THIS.” i mean... come ON.

and stede is so HAPPY! he loves his pretty things, his soft beds and fine fabrics, and he’s never had a single person reflect that back to him. and here ed is, not just listening, but agreeing; he does fancy a fine fabric. (the fact that at this point in the narrative stede’s self-concept is still pretty tied to his material goods and here ed is like “yes. fine fabrics. i like them. and since you feel as though your personhood is coupled with these fabrics, i also like you.” is Very Nice.)

(god, i can’t wait for s2. what's the version of this scene where stede is the one validating ed’s Whole Thing going to look like, i don’t know but god i need it.)

the little gasp stede lets out after “i think i do, yeah” is... mean. it’s mean. what if i never do anything but obsess over the little details of this insanely talented cast acting their faces off? that feels like a valid choice. the way rhys does this adorable little lean and looks like a kid about to show off his ant farm to the first person alive who also finds ants as interesting as he does, equally mean. 

and the purple shelving in the closet? FUCK THIS CREATIVE TEAM. JESUS. the use of purple as ed grows more comfortable just being ed is fucking next level.

honestly, i know this level of textual analysis isn’t for everybody and a lot of my dear, dear friends are largely like “that’s nice, sarah, we don’t give a single fuck about the use of purple” but when a show like this comes along, it feels like a sin not to appreciate all the hard work they put into the little stuff.

speaking of: time for izzy to rock up and take things into the fucking thematic stratosphere.

there’s something really fascinating to me about the casting on izzy, and the general choice to make our one Homophobic Gay the white guy who looks and acts most like the fulfillment of patriarchal power fantasies but is actually a sad little gremlin idiot who wants to fuck other men so bad it makes him look stupid. izzy never heard the good word about how you can be a monster and a lighthouse if you want, depending on the day, because as discussed: he’s from a canon where the dicks don’t touch.

less flippantly, there’s also a lot to be said about how his dynamic with ed is exploring some pretty intense thematic waters re: the intersection of race and sexuality, the long and so-very unavoidable history of white people divebombing in and fucking up indigenous cultures and their understanding of gender and sexuality with weird repressed jesus shit, and how izzy who is a white man even while being gay and ed who is not have wildly difference lived experiences of the same sexuality. i need to rewatch izzy and ed’s scenes with that in mind to sort out any more eloquent thoughts other than ‘oh shit, they went there?’ and ‘holy shit, they go HARD’. not mentioning it’s in the mix feels wrong, though, so i want to at least point it out as something the show is doing really, really well.

i like it even more because we’ve got stede and lucius and pete knocking around also being super gay white guys, so that marks izzy out as particularly in denial and out of step with the times.

the whole 'and now we’re not just checking out your fun little room, we are officially hiding in the closet from izzy’ kicks into high gear when you think about it that way. the obvious “yes, we see they’re hiding from the one character who doesn’t understand the show he's now on”, literally closeted metaphor works there, but it’s not a despairing or fearful scene.

just the phrase “in the closet” is something that brings up a lot of weird baggage for some of us in the soup, especially those who have Been Around A While; there’s a vague sensing of shaming to the way I’ve most often heard it used throughout my life. we tend to heap our scorn or pity and Hot Takes on the person still lingering behind the doorway, because they’re a coward. they’re not being authentic. they’re weak, and they’re not to be trusted. 

(and don’t even get me started on people inside our own fucking clubhouse outing people. the fact that perez hilton is still wandering around, pretending he’s all cute and refusing to reckon with the damage he did bothers me every single fucking day.)

why we do that shit to each other sometimes is a whoooooole thesis i’m in no way qualified to write, but: we do! we tear at each other, trying to yank open the door before someone else is ready.

so here these two men are, hiding in a closet; stede already spends most of his time in here, and ed doesn’t want to deal with izzy, striding around telling him it’s time to man the fuck up and Do A Toxic Pirate Masculinity. but since izzy needs ed to be the same as him so badly he’ll die trying to make it happen if he doesn’t get some fucking therapy and stop trying to enforce his rules on other people’s lives, ed hides in stede’s gay little closet with him and they enjoy the stuff they’re not supposed to enjoy, together.

i really like that. it’s not the more-familiar “it Doesn’t Matter, we are all Just People, so you should live your life in secret, being honest is shoving it in our faces so just be quiet and let us pretend you aren’t withering away” (which is the other nasty little barb we swallow on the whole scorn for the closeted thing; we don’t blame the team who built the damn house, we blame the person trapped inside it) but instead it’s allowing that sometimes you need these softer, secret spaces where people speak your love languages on instinct and you can figure out who you are while being sheltered, not locked away.

the whole “stede’s closet is accessed by a secret passage and when you think about it, this whole dumb ship is his closet, gayass unicorn and all so maybe NONE of this is happening in a closet, it’s a liminal space instead” angle feels like i’ll die if i attempt to parse it out with that spin in mind, so i’ll just say: jesus fuck. jesus fucking fuck, with this show.