Da Vinci's Demons

[katikat]

Starz's new show Da Vinci's Demons... Well, it looks good, doesn't it? The cinematography, all the action. And it has Alexander Siddig (AKA Siddig El Fadil from the ST:DS9 fame) which is always a plus. So... why am I not more excited about it?

Because Leonardo Da Vinci is a GAY ICON, yet so far, all the trailers have portrayed him as a womanizer. This interview - link - gives me hope but... In a series about Leonardo Da Vinci, the fact that he fucked men - pardon my French - shouldn't be just a BTW. I hope that the actor playing Leonardo is right, that they won't shy away from it, that it's a part of a bigger arc and thus they can't spoil anything. And yet.

If they turn his gay encounters into dalliances only and give his het ships a deeper meaning, I will hiss like a cat. Because there are very few people in history that the gay community can be proud of. To take that away... That's why I hope it will be the other way around, that his encounters with women will be meaningless and that he will actually fall in love with a man. That I could accept and wholeheartedly support. But until I actually SEE it, until I SEE how they handle it, I won't get my hopes up.

Comments

View about this part of Da Vinci's Demons

[besoaria]

Although Da Vinci has been perceived as gay, no research has proved anything about his sexuality. He was accused of sodomy with a young male prostitute, and possibly had a long-term relationship with his pupil and maybe others later on. Yet no one knows if he was gay, bisexual or sexual at all. He never spoke of his relationships or sexuality himself. It was actually very common to have male relationships and young "toy boys" among the upper class folk in Renaissance Italy.

Da Vinci's Demons depicts Da Vinci as (somewhat) bisexual - at least in the first series. I fully understand that the gay community has taken Leonardo "under it's wing", and see him as an icon, which I think is just fine. Certainly it's not an irrelevant part of his life. But this is a cheesy (but exciting) fantasy/action, modernized mash-up series, not a biopic. As stupid and liberty-taking as those scenes might seem, it's just that the conversation about few sex scenes is out of proportion, considering it's not a definite fact he was gay at all.

After reading quite a bit about him, to me Da Vinci has seemed suprisingly uninterested about sex and human sexuality in general, noting that he was interested in pretty much everything. I don't really care HOW gay he actually is in the series (as long as they at least touch the subject). It's the other parts of his life that are much more widely known, and much more intriguing.

Re: View about this part of Da Vinci's Demons

[katikat]

Unfortunately, your words "(somewhat) bisexual" basically tell me all I need to know about the series in that regard: he'll be sleeping with women, possibly plenty of them, with a bone thrown here and there in a "*winkwink nudgenudge* we know he slept with men too, see?" way. And that feels like charity, a pandering of creators who refused to make him gay yet were afraid to turn him entirely heterosexual, using his gayness to accentuate his oddness, not as a real part of him, not giving it the same importance as his hetero love life.

If they wanted a swashbuckling hetero guy, they had so many to choose from, like Byron or Marco Polo, hell, even Jules Verne and they could've turned it into a steam-punk fantasy show. That they chose the one man the gay community looks up to and turned him into a womanizer is, frankly, insulting. Since this is, as you say, fantasy/action show, not a biopic, there was absolutely no reason why they couldn't have kept him gay. Hell, even Assassin's Creed portrays him as gay. And in his own show it's just a footnote? No, just no.

I understand that some people simply don't care either way. But gay people have few historical people to look up to and be proud of. Taking that away feels simply wrong.

Re: View about this part of Da Vinci's Demons

[besoaria]

I don't know how bisexual, gay or straight he is going to be in the show. All they've said he likes both ladies and gents. I'm pretty the makers will receive a lot of swipe for the decision of making him this straight, since there's already a lot of discussion about it. I do wish they will change that fact if the show gets a second series or more, and give him serious male romance. I'd like to see a gay action hero in general. But still, it has not been proved he was entirely gay to begin with.

[ravenela]

Ooh...Dr. Bashir. You have my attention. :)

[katikat]

He was my favorite part of DS9!

[ravenela]

Mine, too. Him and Jadzia.