Show notes
It was only a matter of time before we tackled Call Me By Your Name, one of the most influential, and subsequently controversial queer movies of the last decade. Support us on Patreon at patreon.com/thequeermoviepodcast for as little as $5 per month to gain access to perks like queer movie recommendations, Discord access, and watch-a-longs. Thank you for supporting us! We're a serious podcast and have a serious sponsor, Squarespace support us! Help make the podcast profitable by going to squarespace.com/queermovie, and by using the code 'queermovie' at checkout. This is a queer movie watch party for your ears, hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John. Join us as we take a look at the queer film canon, one genre at a time. From rom-coms to slashers, contemporary arthouse cinema to comedy classics - Queer Movie Podcast is a celebration of all things queer on the silver screen! New episodes every other Thursday. Find Us on the Internet Super Highway - Twitter: https://twitter.com/QueerMoviePod - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thequeermoviepodcast - Website: http://www.queermoviepodcast.co.uk/ - Multitude: @MultitudeShows Production - Hosts: Rowan Ellis and Jazza John - Editor: Julia Schifini - Executive Producer: Multitude - Artwork: Jessica E. Boyd JAZZA: Hello, everybody. Before we kick off this episode, just wanted to quickly thank the two patrons who are supporting us on our highest tier rainbow parent, Jennifer and Toby, you continue to be rather awesome. I also wanted to give a little bit of a content warning for today's episode we touch on. Amongst other things, grooming pedophilia, sexual assault and fetishized cannibalism. So some of our conversations get pretty heavy. If that ain't your thing, feel free to skip this one and come back for the next episode in a couple of weeks. Okay, for the rest of you. Enjoy. [theme] JAZZA: Welcome to the Queer Movie Podcast, celebrating the best— ROWAN: —and worst— JAZZA: —in LGBTQ plus cinema. One glorious moment a time. I thought your tone was quite pointed there, Rowan. ROWAN: Listen not to spoil what I thought about this movie, but I'm Rowan Ellis. JAZZA: And I'm Jazza John. ROWAN: And each episode we discuss a movie from a different genre of cinema. JAZZA: This episode genre is— ROWAN AND JAZZA: Queer. JAZZA: Today— ROWAN: That was Autuer for those who needed the translation. JAZZA: Which is French for author. You're welcome. Today we're going to be talking about one of the most renowned and somewhat infamous. We'll talk about it queer movies of the past 10 years. Call Me By Your Name. ROWAN: But before we fuck a peach, I guess. Jazza, what's the gayest thing that you've done since the last episode? JAZZA: So the gayest thing I've done is for once has nothing to do with my sex life. ROWAN: [shocked] JAZZA: I know. I have been playing the role for the past three weeks of the model, queer family member who has just been sitting in the middle of all of the arguments and telling everybody to be emotionally intelligent and love each other again, it is a stereotype that the queers step into I guess. ROWAN: Do the supporting role, the supporting character in the movie of like JAZZA: Of straight—of straight relatives. Yes, exactly. ROWAN: Amazing. JAZZA: And that was just very much my life for the past few weeks. I love my family. I love them sincerely. ROWAN: Yeah, keep—keep yeah, go—what's that you keep— keep saying it, and will believe. JAZZA: I'm just letting the ellipses hang. ROWAN: That's it? JAZZA: Yeah. How about—how about you? ROWAN: Um, so I went on a little writing retreat, and I wrote for like, a week with some friends and I wrote so much of my gay that little, little book that I'm writing. It was very fun, and very gay. I haven't actually read over any of the stuff I've written yet, so it might be bad, but I'm gonna pretend like it's fine. JAZZA: I'm sure some of it is. And I'll tell you in a loving way, though. ROWAN: Yeah, I—I there's a reason why I haven't sent it to you yet. Well, so I also—it's like a sci-fi. So I feel like maybe I'll end up calling a character Jazza just for like the fun vibes, the Sci Fi vibes. JAZZA: Rowan, do you not know this? I—every one of our friends that has written a fiction book. I have done my utmost to make them name a character after me. So if our straight friends aren't going to name their children after me, then all of our queer friends are going to name one of the characters in their inevitable books after me. That's how I'm gonna become immortal. ROWAN: Yeah, and what I might do is you know, maybe try and disguise it by just changing like one letter or something. So maybe the character would just be called Jizzie. JAZZA: I knew— I knew you were so rude, so cliche. ROWAN: Oh my gosh, but yeah, I'll definitely make it an extremely cool, cool character. And not some like lame old man. JAZZA: Great. Love that for us. For me— [theme] JAZZA: As I mentioned before the break this film, though, celebrated has seen its fair share of controversies since its release. We are going to do our best before we dive into the plot to touch on them and provide—provide some well needed context, I think. ROWAN: We will then be reviewing the plot as always, splitting the film into three acts, of course we always do. If somehow you've managed to not see this movie since it came out. You know, go and watch it before listening to rest of the episode, unless like me, you had zero plans of watching it until your podcast co-host like, physically wrestled you into it. In which case just what—just listen to this episode instead. JAZZA: I think it a—I think it was—it was—it was just about time, you know. The first one back in the new year I felt like it was a good time. ROWAN: I guess. JAZZA: Exactly. So, without further ado, let's maybe read a book a bit, then listen to some fall asleep by the pond, and then maybe contemplate my own way before having sex with my childhood friend on a dusty mattress and review, Call Me By Your Name. ROWAN: Wow. [theme] ROWAN: Okay, so the first bit of context that we—I want to talk about is a contexes of something that's within the movie itself, which is the age gap, I'd say in inverted commas, romance. So this is kind of part of the controversy around the movie. I will confess that I have basically, the reason why I hadn't seen the film was because just the very concept of this really icks me out. And so I was I am particularly want to watch this happening on screen. And so I also haven't looked at a lot of like the discourse, commentary and stuff on it. So this is—what I'm about to say is some information from the film, and then my thoughts about it. So the information from the film is one of the characters Elio play by Timothy Chamalet,is 17. And the other character, Oliver played by Armie Hammer is 24. When they were playing those roles, Armie Hammer was a lot older than 24, he was in his 30s. But similarly, Timmy was 20/21, depending on reports, the age that he was when he filmed this varies, but he was wasn't a teenager. However, it is also I think, sort of, we need to point out that, in terms of how it looks, Timmy does look like a teenager, he looks like a boy. And Armie Hammer does look his 30 something years old. So there is the knowledge within the summary of this movie that one of them is 17, one of them is 24. And then there is the visuals that are presented in the movie, as well. And both of these things, I think probably have a—will have an impact on the people who are watching it and how they interpret the movie. And this is at the age gaps scene in queer movies is a thing. I don't think there's any denying that. At age gaps and queer relationships are also a thing. And so I think that on the one hand, you can say, well, age gaps in general in relationships happen, showing them on screen, it's just showing something that happens in reality. So gay movies, like Blue Is the Warmest Color etc, etc, have this as a trope. And it to such an extent that there are almost more lists of queer movies without age gap in like letterbox and recommendations and they are with, it seems like a lot of people are trying to escape from it. But I think the reason why this movie in particular has that controversy element to it, is the 17 year old element that one of them is like a minor. And although you—I'm sure could argue that technically, legally the age of consent do,do,do and for my understand it was 14 at the time in 1983 in Italy, that a lot of these age gaps that we talked about in other movies are between adults who have an age gap, who might be more than this, but they are two adults. And therefore I think a lot of people would say that there are some differences between the relationship and like the favor for example, between Emma Stone's character and uh— JAZZA: Olivia Coleman. ROWAN: —Olivia Coleman. Yeah. JAZZA: My god. ROWAN: Dear Lord. The memory issues really going— JAZZA: Cancel her now. ROWAN: Cancel me. Yeah, between Olivia Coleman and Emma Stone, for example, will probably be seen in a different way because of that. Because I think with age gaps, it's not just the arbitrary idea of like, those are just two numbers with numbers in between them, I think it is the idea of a difference in experience as well as age, that can heighten an age gap into an area that might feel predatory. And I think that that is especially interesting to discuss when we're talking about queer relationships uh in media, because predatory stereotypes are such a huge part of the kind of stereotypes around queer people, right? It's like, if you look at back, with section 28, or with Anita Bryant, the idea of like, queer people are inherently predatory and dangerous to have around children. And all this kind of stuff feels like it adds an extra layer of complication on to this kind of story. I would say that from my point of view within this film, and I know that the book is from Elio's point of view. And I think the movie also gives the story to us from the point of view of this teenager. And so I can understand there being an element of like, the music, it's very romantic, for example, because we're in this character's point of view. And from his point of view, it's like the most romantic thing to happen. And it's this like, clandestine relationship and he's—it's because his burgeoning sexuality and all this kind of stuff. And I also think that just because something is in a film, or in a book, it doesn't mean it's being endorsed necessarily by the author or the writers or the director. However, I do think that all of the marketing and a lot of the framing around this movie does want to paint it as this big romantic journey for this character and this big relationship. So that includes the music, that includes the marketing, that includes like the conversation with the understanding parent to kind of like lampshade the idea of like, hey, audience, you might think this is relationships a bit dodgy, but this parent, his own parent says it's fine. So actually, I think you're fine, it's fine. So yeah, I kind of came into this thinking, trying to look at it with an open mind, but kind of thinking like, at the very most it's going to—I'm going to just find it a bit icky. But I have to admit, when I was watching the movie, I like actively were seeing stuff that looked like grooming to me, or that had issues with consent on both sides. And so for me, it was like, less of just the age gap as a general concept and more of specifically, like a minor and an adult in a relationship in which it was very unhealthy, but was being portrayed as this like, sort of Romeo and Juliet, like secret beautiful love, like fleeting, one summer, you know, vibe that I didn't necessarily—didn't necessarily vibe with in that sort of way. I was seeing it more was like, oh, this is like everything this—this character is doing is—is clearly he is a child. And he's like cuddling with his parents. And he's like shaving his non existent mustache. And he's like, being really bratty. And then there's, like, this adult character who's very confident and very, like self assured and, and it just felt very strange to me. I don't know how you felt about that element of the film Jazza. But that was—we sort of assign ourselves to listen, I think we've mentioned this before, sort of elements of the context that we each want to dive into, and then the other one kind of probably presented to each other in the moment. So I don't know how you felt about this Jazza from your perspective. JAZZA: Yeah, I remember, this was the second time that I have watched this movie. And I remember the first time having a very similar reaction to the one that you just did. So I was a little bit fed up with the like yet another large age gap representation. One where it was a like, Chalamet's character is very codified as kind of like a young child especially at the beginning of the movie. We've kind of like all of the things that he does, like his brattiness as well as like the—like the—the shaving the mustache, I think is kind of like one of the—the clear things of like this really segments his boyhood. The visuals as well I will go with you of Hammer and Chalamet, as the—I don't care what the says, this is a romantic movie.seeing those two as romantic leads, it is quite jarring with the way that they look because it looks like a fully grown man and a boy. That said, a lot of the—a lot of the background work that I did on thi, on Call Me By Your Name, span off of a really great video essay that Lola Sebastian did, which I will link in the show notes. And I will encourage anybody who really, really wants a thorough, thoughtful, nuanced, deep dive into this movie and its context. And the way that kind of like all of these, especially the controversies intersect, how the Internet has talked about them, I'd encourage you to go and watch that video essay. She was really, really good at articulating the way that this film seems very much to be. And I think one of the intentions of it, and you can see it in the way that a lot of the artistic shots and the way that it's filmed and the—the score as well, how this is meant to be an idealized version of a memory that Timothy, Timothy Chalamet. That Chalamet's character is having. I think when you read this as the memory that Chalamet has of this romance that he had, as he was growing up, I think that that contextualizes what I think it is in lots of different ways. I—I wouldn't go as far as saying that it looks like grooming because I think that Hammers character has a lot of vulnerabilities and in many ways seems a lot less, like even less experienced than Chal—than Chalamet's character in many—in many ways his innocence. ROWAN: I don't think that, that precludes grooming, right? Because there's a load of stuff he does. Where it's like this is I think—I think as well if you're going to argue that it is a rose tinted, like version of the memory. You can also say hey, there isn't behaviors that he's exhibiting where he's like getting him alone and taking them on special trips, that only they get to go on. And then like all of this kind of stuff that's like textbook grooming, that then I could—I could just as easily see that being twisted to be like okay, so all of those things where he's like, no, we shouldn't, it will be too naughty of us. Like seen by him as this like, oh, you know, he was just—he was looking out for me. He—he said we could wait until I was 16. Like he said, we would wait until I wa…
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