![]() ![]() He has large, round eyes, which, to many who have grown up with Disney, harkens back to princess eyes. The book Frodo sounds like a buy who’s sturdy and up for challenges the movie Frodo looks and acts like a little dandy-ish. But these qualities get exaggerated once we get to the movie. It gives us the sense that Frodo’s unusual qualities have almost made him predestined to have the Ring and go on this fantastic journey. Gandalf describes Frodo as “a stout fellow with red cheeks, taller than some, and fairer than most,” and that he has a lively personality, which is cool. Some of Frodo’s coded femininity simply comes from being part of the gentry and growing up in an environment in which he’s never had to strain himself for anything he doesn’t have to carry his own bags because he has Sam, the servant, to do it for him.īut, Jackson seems to blow Frodo’s appearance up to a grander, and much more queer-coded scale. Nowadays, everything’s out in the open, so people just call stuff for what it looks like now.Ģ) In the movies, Frodo is always shown as having feminine qualities, while Sam is generally shown as having the more traditional masculine qualities. Back in the day, you’d have to couch same-sex romance with pseudonyms such as “idealized love” or whatnot. It’s not really Jackson’s fault that Frodo and Sam appear to be in a soulmate-type romantic relationship it’s Tolkien’s, and it’s also due to the changing times. Peter Jackson seemed to have taken this theme of intense love and turned it into something that could be seen as a sweeping romantic epic, if there wasn’t tons of fighting and killing in the way. And also, the Victorian idea of idealized love is very much one rooted in homoeroticism. If Sam was a woman, there would be no question that the woman was in love. What did surprise me was that this particular passage could easily be read as not just homoeroticism, but a full statement of love, including not just an examination of bonds forged between brothers-at-arms, but a true realization of all-encompassing love that involves actual romantic feeling. Tolkien grew up and lived during the early part of the 20th century, participating in the First World War and experienced intense loyalty with his compatriots, it’s not surprising to me that a statement of filial bonding is an overriding theme of the books. The book was written during the ’40s, but even during that time, the lingering Victorian idea of idealized love between same-sex friends was still in existence. Of course, the historical context of this quote has to be examined. He’s like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: “I love him. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. Frodo’s face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiseling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within but now the light was even clearer and stronger. ![]() In the second book, Sam does say he loves Frodo. But when watching Frodo and Sam interact, there always seemed to be a lot more there than just friendship, and that’s not even counting the master-servant relationship. I think most people know what friendship is. I think when arguments start about whether or not Frodo and Sam are gay, one of the things that gets brought up is friendship somehow being “tainted” and twisted into gay fantasy. How are they queer-coded, you ask? Let me count the ways:ġ) There’s strong friendship, and then there’s loud subtext. It looks like that engagement photo you get that you immediately want to shred to pieces because the couple that’s getting married is that couple, the one always showing PDA when you’re just trying to eat your sandwich or walk to the store or something. That thought process (and perhaps my passive-aggressiveness at PDA and my love-hate relationship with the idea of weddings) led me to create this foolery a couple of years ago:īut in all seriousness, Frodo and Sam are quite queer-coded (whether Sean Astin wants to believe that or not). It’s like the person behind the camera had an agenda. were successful in making Frodo and Sam the hottest couple of 2003, even though they probably never intended for the relationship to be interpreted that way.įirst of all, as a Frodo/Sam geek, I love this picture that was apparently used for press purposes. But if the large amount of fanfiction is anything to go by, along with some forums and the reactions my former classmates had to the scene at the end of Return of the King when it looks like Frodo’s about to kiss Sam before he goes to the Undying Lands, then it would seem that Peter Jackson et al. Yeah, Frodo and Sam are queer-coded too, at least, to me, if not to everyone else. ![]()
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