#ow ow ow ow
I know the joke about Izzy is “human dropped into a muppets movie” but the tragedy is that he’s a queer-coded character from some 1940s or 50s popcorn flick dropped into a pride parade in a floating gayborhood & he flat out has no idea how to deal with it. We learn he’s a great swordsman in the most homoerotic way possible when he uses his skills to cut open a man’s shirt. We see him react more openly and with less inner conflict when Ed slaps him on the back and says “I need you here” than when Ed implies to him, a minute earlier, that he could be a captain. When he’s part of an overtly queer scene where other characters get the romance & he just gets the subtext, Con O'Neill’s body language stands out even more—go back to the scene where Izzy tells Stede that Ed adores him, the way he strokes his fingers down the curtain dividing him from Stede. There is literally no straight explanation for this choice, but there is also no explicit acknowledgement that the character is queer; in a different, older show or movie, that body language would be the acknowledgment. He imbues the character with the looks and pauses that you would see in, like, Ben-Hur or something, where everyone knew a character was gay but nobody could say it out loud. Keep in mind that in the comedies where these characters would exist, the subtextually gay man would sometimes be best friends with a Strong Leading Man who got the girl in the end.
We hear him say outright that there’s no retirement for people like Izzy & Ed, only death, which is itself a hugely loaded analogy next to the title statement “our flag means death” when you consider our history & our use of flags throughout. And Izzy’s so focused on pure survival that he ends up nasty, manipulative, violent—the only way men like him can survive in his mind, or in the genre he’s from, if they don’t have a Strong Leading Man best friend like, say, a Blackbeard to protect him from the narrative. When Ed starts to live in Stede’s world, Izzy is both losing his subtextual boyfriend and also acting as though Ed’s going to get himself (and Izzy) killed if he keeps going down this path.
I will never be sane over this. Izzy is a Celluloid Closet case study who’s been dropped into a Logo TV original, and so much of the conflict of his character comes from his trying to use the coping techniques from that world (including techniques used by queer coded villains! He’s not healthy!) in a world where these techniques are actively harmful rather than a way to survive.
#GOD when you frame it this way there is something so desperately sad about his character(via@fuckyeahisawthat)
To be honest I think he’s possibly the most tragic character on the show.
Ed & Stede are going through it right now, and it’s bad bad, but their happy ending has been telegraphed: steal some identities & ride off into the sunset after faking their own deaths. I’m pretty certain they reconcile & get the happily ever after (& I’m equally sure that they can only do that if Lucius is alive). The rest of the crew are happy under the co captaincy, Jim has made peace with their past to some degree & has Olu as well, etc. And very importantly, even though Ed also comes from the same place as Izzy, he lucked out and got a guide to the new world in Stede. He is starting to escape Izzy’s fate & likely will succeed, all because he has Stede.
Izzy? Izzy is on the other side of a glass wall, he can see the gay romcom but he’s under strict orders to never mention his own homosexuality. The references to masochistic tendencies are all he’s allowed—and to add insult to injury, he’s not even allowed to enjoy and embrace that part of his existence, a part that is in no way inherently bad as long as you’re engaging in it sanely and consensually. It’s just yet another case of coding with no fruition that in any other media would let straight audiences know he’s a Bad Gay Man.
It’s why I’m hoping the show continues to defy convention & figures out a happy-ish ending for Izzy. Even after (maybe even especially because of) everything he’s done, it would be exceptionally tragic if he didn’t get some way out of this hell, & by extension didn’t get to be part of the LGBTQ community that’s on the other side of that glass wall, on a show that’s a deliberate statement that we can live, thrive, get happily ever afters, and that our flag doesn’t actually mean death no matter what has been done to us.
I did a lot of heavy lifting today and I feel like a beached squid, please send snacks x_x
okay!! but i don’t know what squids eat, hang on
okay so
fish
all my problems would be solved if I could just lift my arms far enough to check out my sushi order….
I would very much like to not have a back that seems to have the structural integrity of a slinky.
