Homosexuality In Tennessee Williams's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Great Essays
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Elia Kazan created a film adaptation in 1958 of Tennessee Williams’s original play titled Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This film overall offers an expanded role for Big Daddy, and one scene in particular that clearly shows this extended role is the basement scene (interpolated just for the film), that proves to be very incongruent with Williams’s thoughts on the topics of homosexuality, communication, and narcissism seen throughout his play.
Homosexuality, a topic evident in Williams’s original work, is brought about by the conversation Brick and Big Daddy share in act two of the play; for it is here that he states his belief that homosexuality is a natural and pure emotion that (due to society’s opinions on it) is encouraged
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In fact, it attests Big Daddy’s and Brick’s dysfunctional relationship to being more about his “daddy” issues rather than about his sexuality issues as Kazan’s Brick states to Big Daddy “Can’t you understand I never wanted your place or your money, I don’t want to own anything. All I wanted was a father, not a boss; I wanted you to love me” (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). While this indeed expresses Brick’s lack of interest seen in the play and additionally, brings up another issue he has towards his father (that being that he felt Big Daddy was never a true father to him), it fundamentally distorts the persona William’s created for Brick (whose whole characterization is predicated on the events involving Skipper, not by the lack of a father’s love). Along with completely omitting the topic of homosexuality that plays a major role in Williams’s …show more content…
As Brick from the basement scene stated “You don’t know what love means, to you it’s just another four-letter word … [You didn’t love anyone] not me, not Gooper, not even mama” (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Furthermore, based on the persona of Williams’s Brick he shouldn’t be able to talk so truthfully about the things that bother him because of their lack of communication and mendacity that has caused their distant

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