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The point of such remakes is to bury the excellence of the past beneath the salient and more spectacular mediocrities of the present. There's no need to censor the old movie's "offensive" nudity when you can simply usurp its interpretation of the novel and direct all attention away from the not-so-subliminal eros that courses through the blood of the story and the original film. Totalizing forms of power don't always require complete obliteration of the past, only its burial, its occlusion, its reduction to impotent liminality and guilt-by-association with whatever bugaboo (in this case, patriarchy, masculinity). In fact it can be good to keep some of the old structures around for future co-optation or scapegoating. This was the logic behind the Nazis not demanding or expecting that everyone join the Party: even they recognized the power of "diversity." This is the form of disappearance forced on BLs now: total obliteration may be threatened, but it's not necessary, given that we gulag (or "concentration-camp") ourselves. Admittedly, the novel is not superlative, but it is interesting, and the original movie even more interesting, and I'd say excellent, especially given the story of how it was made and the effect its making had on the boys who acted in it. One can easily see how the theme of "toxic masculinity" can be extracted from it. I haven't seen the recent remake, and I don't intend to; please let me know if I'm missing anything. |