More parallels!!! This time, to Angels in America ( A Gay Fantasia on National Themes)
I thought this shot reminded me of something — and finally, I know — a scene from Angels in America (2003) between a closeted homosexual and (drum roll) his wife.
After thinking some more I realized that there are a lot of parallels between Harper&Joe and El&Mike relationships. Let’s have a closer look at some, but first - more text, sorry.
(The content below is from the article that can be checked here).
For context, Angels in America is a 2003 American HBO miniseries based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning 1991 play of the same name by Tony Kushner. Set in 1985, the film revolves around six New Yorkers whose lives intersect. At its core, it is the fantastical story of Prior Walter, a gay man living with AIDS who is visited by an angel. The film explores a wide variety of themes, including Reagan-era politics, the spreading AIDS epidemic, and a rapidly changing social and political climate).
One of the characters, Joe Pitt, a young, ambitious Mormon law clerk, is offered a chance to work in the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. When Joe proposes this idea to his pill-popping wife, Harper, Harper is reluctant to leave New York. She has long hallucinations about her imaginary friend, Mr. Lies, a travel agent who takes her around the world.
In one of Harper’s hallucinations, she crosses paths with Prior (another character from the series), who is dressed as a woman. Prior tells Harper that her husband (Joe Pitt) is gay. She later confronts Joe and accuses him of being homosexual:
There are quite a lot of scenes in this episode that remind me of Mike and El...
Joe first denies everything, but later yells that it makes no difference whether or not he “was” gay—provided that he’s worked very hard to be “decent and correct.”
Later Harper tells Joe that she’s thinking of “going away,” but Joe insists that he can fix whatever problem they’ve been having.
They have a quiet conversation, and Joe is finally opening up a bit. He tells her about a book of Bible stories that he read as a child. In one story, there was a picture of Jacob wrestling with an angel. The picture—the only thing about the story that Joe remembered—shows Jacob as a beautiful young man, touching the angel’s golden hair. Joe still dreams about the angel and thinks of himself as Jacob.
The homoeroticism of this story is painfully clear: Joe has had homosexual feelings ever since he was a child, despite belonging to a religion that strongly forbade these feelings.
So do we expect similar stories from Mike in S5? Or did we already see the hints in s1-s4? Dragon poster and One Way sign, I am looking at you.
Anyway, Joe assures Harper that he won’t leave her.
Aaaand her response is...
Then our characters go on their separate journeys.
Joe, for instance, is finally embracing his sexuality by starting a complicated relationship with Louis, Prior’s ex-boyfriend. I will not go into details, but the thing between the two does not work out, and when they separate, Joe is trying to go back to Harper.
Okaaay, Duffers. Let’s go back to Joe.
But Harper's response is... well
At the end of the story, Harper leaves, as she promised before.
Joe is feeling especially lonely right now. He’s flirted with the gay community, but finds himself alienated from it because of his politics. He comes out of the closet, but finds that he’s lonelier than he was before. Perhaps this is meant to suggest the unpredictability of the social climate during the AIDS crisis—coming out of the closet was a big risk, and it would be dishonest for Kushner to suggest otherwise in his play.
I really hope this is not what happens here.
And Harper’s off on a glorious quest to San Francisco. The future holds a lot of danger and uncertainty for her, but Kushner presents this as a good thing.
Is El going to do the same?
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