friendship is a unique and special kind of love that’s at least as important as romantic love. That would have been a worthwhile topic all on its own.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, prompted by BBC's Sherlock. In it, Holmes and Watson have a fast friendship. Watson admires Holmes deeply as a detective, and a genius, and I think Holmes admires Watson as a person although he'd never admit it. So far as I know, this is pretty true to the books.
Watson goes through a succession of girlfriends, and most of these relationships don't work out due in large part to the craziness of being involved with Holmes. One such girlfriend said, in the process of breaking up with Watson, "You know, my friends are all wrong. You're a /great/ boyfriend. And Sherlock is a very lucky man." Which, of course, Watson tries to deny, because as he says many times over the course of the series, he's not gay.
It used to be entirely acceptable, even laudable for two men to be such fast friends that they would support each other through thick and thin, no matter what. It wasn't at all strange for two men to be closer to each other than they were to anyone else, including whatever female companions they might have.
Nowadays if you see a friendship like that, chances are good someone's going to assume they're gay and just hiding it (possibly from themselves). And maybe that's a sort of second-whammy to the popular view of whether men and women can have close friendships without any romance involved.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-02-13 01:31 am (UTC)I've been thinking about this a lot lately, prompted by BBC's Sherlock. In it, Holmes and Watson have a fast friendship. Watson admires Holmes deeply as a detective, and a genius, and I think Holmes admires Watson as a person although he'd never admit it. So far as I know, this is pretty true to the books.
Watson goes through a succession of girlfriends, and most of these relationships don't work out due in large part to the craziness of being involved with Holmes. One such girlfriend said, in the process of breaking up with Watson, "You know, my friends are all wrong. You're a /great/ boyfriend. And Sherlock is a very lucky man." Which, of course, Watson tries to deny, because as he says many times over the course of the series, he's not gay.
It used to be entirely acceptable, even laudable for two men to be such fast friends that they would support each other through thick and thin, no matter what. It wasn't at all strange for two men to be closer to each other than they were to anyone else, including whatever female companions they might have.
Nowadays if you see a friendship like that, chances are good someone's going to assume they're gay and just hiding it (possibly from themselves). And maybe that's a sort of second-whammy to the popular view of whether men and women can have close friendships without any romance involved.