i’m getting rly repetitive here, but i genuinely find the decision to make filip homophobic, especially having him direct that hostility toward lovro, a very interesting writing choice - to have lovro’s presence as an unmasculine homosexual boy disturb their male homosocial friendship and threaten-render the masculinity within it. this whole arc tethers itself to larger looming questions of masculinity and male violence and aggression within this season. and idk. maybe this needs to be said more plainly but lovro has reached a point in his life where he is afraid of other men, afraid of what they might do to him. he understands that being perceived as insufficiently masculine renders him vulnerable, placing him at risk of aggression and harm. and jakov and mario dismissively suggesting to just talk things out with filip only reinforces this notion, that lovro occupies this very special position his other male friends don’t*. there’s also the repeated language of disgust that goes through so many conversations throughout this season, finalising itself in that cucumber joke - boys are gendered as inherently sexual and homosexuality disrupts or duplicates that sexual marker - gay boys specially become figured as excessively or improperly sexual & are cast as objects of hypersexuality. this is where the disgust originates from. and this is why the threat and the joke appear at the very same site, in the lockers room of a gym class, where lovro was called a slur right at the beginning of the season.
and then of course there is lovro’s father, whose alluded behaviour seems to oscillate between being outright abusive and simply emotionally inadequate and difficult. even with very little of what we know of him, the most crucial and influential male figure in lovro’s life, whose said behaviour has shaped lovro into a boy we know and see today, is portrayed as someone who should stay unaware of his son being gay…….none of these cases presented in the show seem incidental…..right?
*oomf (@mikanpeel) also very gracefully pointed at the scene where lovro and mario stop jakov from beating up filip in response to his threats, which makes jakov fire back and call his friends, lovro included, “grannies” and “wussies”, (as in powerless, weak, unmanly). huh!
to add: one of the more forceful examples of this reversed mirroring (masculine/unmasculine) happens in this clip
we watch another play at masculine competence and lovro slowly dissolving from the frame, ultimately exiting the scene altogether after receiving a text from ivan.
then it goes like this: lovro reminds him of the risks they’re putting themselves in (surveillance > judgment > danger), only for this posture of control to collapse at the first touch, which basically initiates the dismantling of masculinity - ivan takes his hand, then kisses him, lovro breaks the kiss, only to kiss him again, as of reassurance and assurance. this progression is just so….carefully constructed & marks each of these moments into gestures of no return, gradually making them bigger and carrying more significance (and repercussions) - he’s not in the safety of underworld now. he’s behind the school canteen. hiding. whispering. and this is what, allegedly, led them to being outed btw.
ps. to quote a very good book on this subject and why the rituals of touch are important here:
The use of touch (especially between the sexes) maintains a “social hierarchy”. Just as same-sex touching puts boys at risk for becoming a fag, cross-sex touching affirms heterosexuality and masculinity……boys usually touched each other in rule-bound environments (such as sports) or as a joke to imitate fags. And cross-sex touching often took the form of a ritualistic power play that embedded gender meanings of boys as powerful and girls as submissive, or at least weak in their attempts to resist the touching. Touching, in this sense, becomes a “kinesic gender marker” producing masculinity as dominance and femininity as submission.
