After watching the movie Hostel, directed by Eli Roth I thought that the movie was excellent scary or horror movie. I do not find much interest in movies like that, but Hostel is one of my favorite movies. One scene that stands out to me is when Josh played by Derek Richardson and he is begin torture and one of the surgeons cuts the back of Derek ankle, this part of the movie make me feel so squeamish. But the scene that I want to look at, is that there was a scene that I thought I was very interesting. It has to do with the one of the scene towards the end of the movie where the character Paxton played by Jay Hernandez where he follows the Dutch business man into the bathroom.
In a way it reminds me of a event where a U.S. senator of Idaho named Larry Craig. In where the senator was at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport bathroom and he got caught by undercover sting trying to pick up another man, to have sex with in the bathroom. I see the comparison this to Paxton roll in the bathroom scene because it was in a public place where allegedly a lot of gay men pick each other up in public bathrooms. In the movie there also a scene where he meets an American Client that is ready to kill someone, and he compares the act to sex. The reason that I think that Paxton might be a bi-sexual is because in one of the begin scene of the movie it looks like he is having a three some with one of his friends.
So to me it seems that he could be exploring with some homo-sexual tendency even though thru out the movie he might seem he is not a homosexual. So I can see the connection that Paxton is having a gay experience by doing this act in bathroom. Because he is getting he revenge and is begin satisfied with the enjoyment of killing the Dutch business man, because if he just wanted to get even then all he had to do was caught the man fingers of but he went on a step further and killed the man and he is not relieve till the man is dead and lying in his puddle of blood. Just like a man might dehumanize a person after sex.
The connection you have made between the main character, Paxton, and his possibly repressed homosexuality juxtaposed against U.S. Senator from Idaho Larry Craig (being arrested in a airport men's room allegedly attempting to pick-up another male), is a very interesting concept involving his character development and the ending of the film. Paxton throughout the film uses the phrase, "that's gay," anytime he finds a problem with something that is not American enough. This outward misogynistic and homophobic utterance could certainly be interpreted as repressed latent homosexuality. Moreover, the fact that the movie does end in a men's room with a violent act is easily connected back to sexual pleasure. Therefore, you have illuminated a view I did not take into consideration. The idea that Paxton is violently struggling with his own sexuality and the pressures associated with the societal status quo, ultimately to come face-to-face with his own homosexuality.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think you are onto something interesting here. There are so many queer references in the film (as there is in so much US popular culture), and you are right to attend to them. Queer theorist Eve Sedgwick has talked about the idea of "homosociality," male bonding that occurs over the bodies of women--the primary relationship is between men, and women are used to mediate (or cover up) that relationship. I do think we see this in _Hostel_, and I suspect you are right that the final murder scene is as much as sex scene as it is a death scene. But you might be reading the queer material too literally in coming to the conclusion that Paxton is gay/bisexual. This seems a bit reductive. Maybe the film is speaking to the role that homophobia plays in our culture (something else Sedgwick writes about--she argues that the homo/heterosexual divide is central to understanding many aspects of Western culture), how it forces homoeroticism underground, and what the violence implications are of this homophobia?
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