“As a Mother Cuddles a Child”

Anthony Easthope, commenting on The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978), observes:

In the dominant versions of men at war, men are permitted to behave towards each other in ways that would not be allowed elsewhere, caressing and holding each other, comforting and weeping together, admitting their love. The pain of war is the price paid for the way it expresses the male bond. War’s suffering is a kind of punishment for the release of homosexual desire and male femininity that only the war allows. In this special form the male bond is fully legitimated.

(1990, 66)