Wired reports that The Man from U.N.C.L.E is “already overloading critics’ gaydar.”
By way of example, they quote Richard Lawson’s review for Variety, which intimates that there’s a “surprising abundance of teasing homoerotic innuendo” between Henry Cavill’s Solo and Armie Hammer’s Illya.
The article then points out there’ homosexual subtext in all of Guy Ritchie’s films — but then suggests we shouldn’t “be having this conversation to begin with.”
Every time we say Guy Ritchie’s guys are “gay” for each other, we actually set the conversation back. Many straight men (see: Watson) are scared of being perceived as not-straight, a kind of gay panic that doesn’t belong in 2015. Back to The Man from U.N.C.L.E., why must Solo and Illya’s relationship be described as “homoerotic”? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Regardless, they should be able to say—and do—whatever they want to each other.
