Are neil and todd gay in dead poets society

Spoiler and Trigger Warning: One of the main characters dies by suicide because his father doesn’t fully accept him. Something I have seen time and time again, through myself, my high-school friends, and stories told by new chosen, queer family. But we are more than just our individual selves.

Queerness hid behind curtains- tinted through years and years of gay subtext that only those looking, would find. It directly contradicts Keating's standing on his desk to implore his students to look at the world differently but also through his classes taught outdoors, both scenes earlier, such is pointed out by Hammond.

You make your own destiny… you only rely on yourself… right? The film itself uses the symbol of desk sets as developing stages of reaction to parental indifference and authority. It holds an easily aestheticised albeit surface level exploration of American-centric romantic poetry against rigidity and conservative ideals….

On contrary to Neil’s welcoming attitude, Todd is shy and kept to himself, which earns a few side comments from his roommate. Neil wants to pursue a career in acting, and his dad disapproves and essentially forbids him. Yet it’s carefully chosen. The film, especially Neil and Todd's relationship (anderperry!!) has long been speculated to be (at least a bit) gay.

There were many who latched onto the words of the American Transcendentalists in my English class, I was once one of them. Pallid academic references and dead language one-liners are not enough to keep Neil alive. Todd’s sexual orientation is never confirmed in the film, though he is frequently compared to Walt Whitman, a very famous queer poet, hinting at Todd’s own queer identity”".

Do what you can to survive, to exist. Neil played Puck who’s gender is not identified but is a feminine character (I hate stereotyping) but may often be portrayed as gay. Unfortunately for myself, it is common knowledge in my regional country town in so-called Australia, that the uniforms in Dead Poets Society are based off my old school uniform.

Todd and Neil had a serious conversation earlier in the movie where Todd admits he is different and that he was a quieter sort of fellow than the others and then suggested perhaps Neil would prefer Todd not be in the group. Anderperry is the slash ship between Neil Perry and Todd Anderson from the Dead Poets Society fandom.

It is integral to understand the characters who are shown to be hurt by the patriarchy the most, out of all the Dead Poets boys, are Neil and Todd… not heterosexual Knox, or any of the others, but Neil and Todd, once attached to the hip, a dark-academic Dan and Phil of sorts… friends or lovers… perhaps a secret third thing?

Realizing his life will be controlled by his dad and feeling like he will never be able to live authentically causes him to kill himself. Neil encourages Todd’s writing and Todd admires Neil’s pursuit of acting. It is not enough to allow the Dead Poets Society to remain intact as it was.

In the classic fandom fashion, the candid and poetic representation of Love between Neil and Todd is what many watchers gravitate towards instead. The movie could include any other play, even Hamlet would be more suitable at a completely heterosexual storyline. The scene in which Todd is made to sign a paper which indicts Keating for Neil's death is marked by extreme closeups, the desk and pen an almost noxious transference of phallic power to Mr Nolan, the Headmaster.

Todd and Neil first meet as roommates when Todd comes to Welton Academy. The importance of an older, kind, father figure to adolescent males? However, in Reagan era Hollywood, overtness, in all ways, was not tolerated. Cantwell then comes to the conclusion that “it’s clear to me that Robert Sean Leonard’s character Neil is certainly gay.” This might come across as reading too deeply or as heavy speculation.

The film does criticise the overly stoic, heterosexual masculinity of the past, allows the boys to divulge in lines of poetry, have lyric drip off their tongue like honey, find the meaning of being alive through iambic pentameter, recite topics of love, of sexuality the pastoral white sublime… but it perishes the day that Todd falls in the snow.

The academic inflation of solipsism is evident in the poets the boys appraise, ranging from Walt Whitman; Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost… you pair this with the classical influence of the catchy and easily bastardised Latin aphorism "Carpe Diem" or "Seize the Day" and you find a recipe for juvenile idealism, something that feels so easy to believe when you are a young, white male with an penchant for words.

An archaic and extremely concerning romance arc featuring Dead Poets member Knox Overstreet and one of the only female characters Chris Noel. As poor kid on a scholarship to a private school- I watched the film for the first time at 17 and was enthralled. It is safe to say the parallels between Dead Poets Society and my school do not end with just the uniform.

Its fleeting nature, it is an ephemeral rain cloud of societal constructs and social norms that eventually wreaks havoc. The concept that begrudgingly attaches itself to queer and non-heterosexual connotations. What would a 20 something, lesbian, non-male teen know about the agitational and rebellious nature of the teenage boy?