Hunks, History, and Homophobia: Masculinity Politics in Braveheart and Edward II

Ray I Hunks, History, and Homophobia: Masculinity Politics in Braveheart ana Edward Il Sid Ray Pace University Hunks, History, and Homophobia: Masculinity Politics in Braveheart and Edward II MeI Gibson (center) playsWilliam Wallace leading Scottish warriors againstthetyrannyoftheir English oppressors in theOscar-winning Braveheart[Wo). 22 I Film & History The Medieval Period in Film | Special In-Depth Section The Oscar-winning Braveheart (1995) claims from the outset to offer a fresh perspective on medieval Scotland's struggle against English oppression. "I shall tell you ofWilliam Wallace," the narrator begins . "Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes." Immediately the director, Mel Gibson, identifies his film as a post-colonial text, one that exposes the imperial ruthlessness and incivility of the English toward their northern neighbors.1 Gibson's enthusiasm as a storyteller, however, soon overwhelms his obligation to history, and the film suffers from myriad anachronisms and falsities. Some degree of inexactitude is to be expected from the film. After all, the point seems to be to articulate a parallel history that records the post-colonial struggle for freedom rather than to adhere slavishly to chronology. The trouble with the film's claim to chronicle the "truth" of that post-colonial struggle is less the film's bold manipulation of events than its development of character, specifically its blindness to the historical filiation of two marginalized peoples: colonial subjects and homosexuals . Ignoring recent histories that claim homosexuality is not a universal and monolithic "essence" but a contextual and dynamic construct,2 Gibson's film about Scottish clansmen seeking independence from England encourages homophobia, promotes negative stereotypes, and valorizes gay-bashing. More important, the stated purpose of the film is at odds with the message because, in his attempt at post-colonial filmmaking, Gibson perversely ratifies the tyranny he claims to oppose. This article analyzes the relationship between history and homophobia in Braveheart, examining in particular the way homophobia troubles the film's post-colonial politics. To illustrate the ways in which homophobia operates in the film, this article juxtaposes Gibson's efforts with Derek Jarman's in his film, Edward II. Unlike Braveheart, Jarman's Edward II (1991) claims no allegiance to history but protests the history of oppression with less hypocrisy and more selfawareness than Braveheart. In this earlier film, Jarman offers a provocative portrait of Edward II, the scandalous monarch notorious for his liaison with Piers Gaveston, and updates the story so that it resonates with twentieth-century struggles against gaybashing and AIDS. Jarman adapts Marlowe's infamous play to the screen, and in doing so radically alters the ending, an ending that Marlowe took from Raphael FJolinshed's Chronicles ofEngland, Scotland , and Ireland compiled in 1577. In the film, Jarman spares the monarch his terrible death, which is described so graphically in Marlowe's play and in other histories. As Holinshed describes it, Edward's assassins came suddenlie one night into the chamber when he laie in bed fast asleepe, and with heauie featherbeds or a table (as some write) being cast vpon him, they kept him down and withall put into his fundament an home, and through the same they trust vp into his bodie an hot spit, or (as others haue) through the pipe of a trumpet a plumbers instrument of iron made verie hot, the which passing vp into his intrailes, and being rolled to and fro, burnt the same, but so as no appearance of any wound or hurt outwardlie might be once perceived ....3 Jarman's retelling of Edward's story does not pretend , like Gibson's of William Wallace, to chronicle a parallel history. Rather, it saves Edward from such an excruciating death and projects a guardedly hopeful future for men who have suffered gay-bashing and for those stricken with AIDS.4 It is this same Edward II, still only Prince Edward in Braveheart, who comes off so stereotypically when filtered through Mel Gibson's lens. Slight, fashionconscious , tremulous, impotent, Gibson's Edward is a ridiculously flat character who stands in contrast to Jarman's multidimensional and more credible Edward . The irony of the distinction between these two Edwards lies...