chunchomunos:

“The emblematic significance of the firearm is likewise established and then upended in Quién sabe?. Two guns are significant: Niño’s rifle and Chuncho’s machine-gun. The first is discovered by Niño in the home of an overthrown landowner. Chuncho watches as Niño examines and caresses the gun, the young man showing more sensual rapport with the rifle than with anything else in the film up to that point – including the flirtatious Adelita. Chuncho, meanwhile, dreams of finding a machine-gun and, when one is discovered, he abandons his new girl to go and inspect the exotic weapon, cooing, “It’s more beautiful than any woman.” Following the acquisition of the machine-gun, the formerly lustful Chuncho loses interest in his girl, saying of her sensual demands, “She bothers me with that nonsense.” The machine-gun becomes identified with Niño, both of them exotic visitors from a technologically more advanced land. When the gang choose to leave the town of San Miguel, taking Niño and the machine-gun with them, Chuncho dutifully stays behind with his brother to protect the people. However, finally tiring of town life – and the absence of Niño – he deserts both the town and his brother to track down the gang. On rejoining them, he leaps aboard the wagon transporting the machine-gun, and frantically tears aside the canopy to gaze on it. He looks reassured, at which point Niño smiles and asks him knowingly, “Are you happy?”, as if Chuncho’s recovery is not so much of the gun as of Niño himself. In this way, the gun becomes not symbolic of Chuncho’s virility, as it might in an earlier buddy movie – Winchester ‘73being a case in point – but, on the contrary, of his sexual confusion and abandonment of moral principle – the townspeople, without the protection of Chuncho or machine-gun, are slaughtered by government forces.

The assassin’s rifle serves a similar purpose for Niño’s character, symbolizing the sublimation of his libido into the achievement of his professional goal: the assassination of the revolutionary General Elias (Jaime Fernández) for the reward in gold. Hence, the golden bullet he uses for the job. Niño is not overtly homosexual; he is just more interested in wealth than in people. Chuncho says to him, “You’re not interested in women; what are you interested in, Niño?”, to which the young man replies emphatically, “Money.” Thus, his sharing of the reward money with Chuncho at the end of the film is more expressive of his affection toward him than any words, and answers Chuncho’s own sacrifices for Niño up to that point. It is significant, therefore, that Chuncho should decide he must kill Niño at the very moment their mutual attraction is most apparent. When the bewildered Niño asks his friend why he must kill him, Chuncho replies, “Quién sabe?” This can be translated literally as “Who knows?”, but perhaps more properly, as “Who can say?”: this surely is what is meant by the phrase, “The love that dare not speak its name”. That Damiani chooses to call the filmQuién sabe? foregrounds the mysterious tension between the two men, lending it primacy over the film’s more overt political themes – Niño representing the capitalist corruptor of Chuncho’s proletarian revolutionary – and emphasizing the cryptic nature of their bond.”

-Jason Mark Scott (“When men, even unknowingly, …”: Quién sabe?,Love is Colder than Death, Le Cercle rouge: The Buddy Movie Becomes Romanc")

chunchomunos:

“Van Cleef has a well-groomed, high-cheek-boned androgyny which is accentuated by his designer handgun that comes with its own extra-long handle for greater accuracy (heh!) This is a gun, by the by, which Eastwood’s character attempts to diminish by claiming he’d be ashamed to possess such a weapon. Their partnership in For a Few Dollars More is built on an interesting contrast—Eastwood is young (van Cleef calls him “boy”), masculine, cigar-smoking rugged, pre-verbal man of action, while the elder (Eastwood calls him “old man”) van Cleef is more elegant, feline, verbose, refined, pipe-smoking man with a plan. This is the sorta mentorship relationship that juiced up a lotta those Greek philosopher’s sex lives, and it seems rather transparent that this pair is the western’s version of the romcom’s feuding love puppies.“”

— Dan Jardine (Sex and the Single Gunslinger)

we-kant-even:

socrates: Guy In Philosophy Class Needs To Shut The Fuck Up

plato: Man Born With Face You Just Want To Punch

diogenes of sinope: Area Man Expected To Work With These Incompetents

aristotle: Here Are All Of My Opinions

pythagoras: Nation’s Math Teachers Introduce 27 New Trig Functions

epicurus: Grown Adult Actually Expects To Be Happy

cicero: It’s Terrifying To Think That In 1,000 Years, All Of Us Will Be Forgotten Except For Me

seneca the younger: New Robot Capable of Unhealthily Repressing Emotion

epictetus: Universe Crueler, More Uncaring Place Than Previously Thought

marcus aurelius: Annoying, Well-Adjusted Friend Even Fucking Meditating Now