Can We Just Put The ‘There Will Be Blood’ Homoeroticism Issue On The Table Already?

[Warning: Some spoilers ahead.] There’s been an ongoing There Will Be Blood debate over here at Defamer HQ, with one faction having emerged from the P.T. Anderson masterpiece convinced what we had just witnessed wasn’t just a searing allegory encapsulating the epochal struggle between American capitalism and religion, but also some very kinky oil-prospector-daddy on boy-of-the-cloth goings-on. (OK, fine. That faction was us.)The other faction didn’t see the film’s homoerotic undertones as quite so glaring, even after we patiently sat them down to inquire whether they found nothing the least bit fishy about an oil man who over a period of decades demonstrates virtually no interest in the opposite sex. Instead, the man chooses to spend his life surrounded by other men, with one in particular–the only thing really standing between him and a satisfying gusher–becoming the obsessive object of his domineering tendencies. Along the way, the young preacher is subjected to gleeful, orally fixated taunts about milkshake-slurping, among other verbal and physical humiliations, all of which he submits to with a surprising, almost capitulatory ease.

Then there’s the matter of the photo above: Gotta keep things fresh!

We rest our case.

• paramountvantage.com/blood/