As Vito Russo showed in his classic book "The Celluloid Closet," Hollywood contributed to the sissy-boy panic by inventing the stereotype of the Effete Killer, who consumes high culture with a vaguely Continental air.
Verbal hyperactivity of the sissy-Assisi sort nudges the hip reader on page after page: "appalled by his charm, by the erotic proximity of his snappy crackle of power"; "as graceful in his movement as the incomparable Max"; "The city was a cliff and they were its stampeding lemmings.
** Verbal hyperactivity of the sissy-Assisi sort nudges the hip reader on page after page: "appalled by his charm, by the erotic proximity of his snappy crackle of power"; "as graceful in his movement as the incomparable Max"; "The city was a cliff and they were its stampeding lemmings.
I sometimes wonder whether literature isn't still scared of being a "girly" subject - and to make sure of it, the big boys are applauded, while the sissies are told to hush up.
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the movie a "C-plus" grade, writing: "As staged by Lurie, the drama has all the subtlety and surprise of a showdown between the sissy-bully son of Captain Queeg and a hero who's like a fusion of Brubaker, Spartacus, and Norma Rae".
