BY STEVEN D. GREYDANUS, The National Catholic Register
“How to Train Your Dragon’s Gobber the Belch Comes Out As Gay,” headlines screamed in the weeks prior to the release of DreamWorks’ animated sequel How to Train Your Dragon 2.
Voiced by Craig Ferguson, Gobber — the tough old trainer with a peg leg and interchangeable prosthetic arm devices — was one of the best characters in the original How to Train Your Dragon.
In a standard-issue “Junior Knows Best” plot with an imperious, disapproving authoritarian father — Stoick the Vast — who didn’t understand his scrawny but thoughtful offspring Hiccup, Gobber was a sympathetic authority figure who gratifyingly didn’t fit the anti-patriarchal narrative. As I wrote in my 2010 review:
And he is … or is that “was”?
Does Gobber “come out” in the sequel? Not exactly. At least, that phrase is misleading, on more than one level.
First, the idea that Gobber is gay is a new addition to his character, not something the filmmakers intended from the start. “Coming out” implies revealing a previously secret reality; if the filmmakers have now decided that Gobber is gay, that’s a newly invented fact about him, not a previously secret one.
Second, Gobber makes no proclamations about his sexuality to anyone in How to Train Your Dragon 2. He has a throwaway line in which, watching a married couple quarreling, he quips, “This is why I never married” — and then adds that there’s “one other reason.”
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“How to Train Your Dragon’s Gobber the Belch Comes Out As Gay,” headlines screamed in the weeks prior to the release of DreamWorks’ animated sequel How to Train Your Dragon 2.
Voiced by Craig Ferguson, Gobber — the tough old trainer with a peg leg and interchangeable prosthetic arm devices — was one of the best characters in the original How to Train Your Dragon.
In a standard-issue “Junior Knows Best” plot with an imperious, disapproving authoritarian father — Stoick the Vast — who didn’t understand his scrawny but thoughtful offspring Hiccup, Gobber was a sympathetic authority figure who gratifyingly didn’t fit the anti-patriarchal narrative. As I wrote in my 2010 review:
[Hiccup’s] chieftain father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler in full-on Beowulf/Attila mode), is an unreconstructed exemplar of that tiredest of negative parental stereotypes: the overbearing patriarch who doesn’t understand his offspring and regards him with nothing but disappointment. I admit the inevitable third-act rapprochement had me misty-eyed, but can’t the father be a little humanized before the very end?
Happily, Stoick is somewhat offset by Gobber the Belch (Craig Ferguson), the peg-legged, one-handed old tough who trains young Vikings in the ways of dragon slaying. Hiccup’s peers are mostly loutish Viking jocks, and Hiccup’s misadventures in dragon training may take some adult viewers back to dark hours in high school gym class — but Gobber himself is far from the gym teacher–drillmaster sadist stereotype.
Gobber may not quite understand Hiccup either, but he looks out for him and tries to mediate between Stoick and Hiccup. In a flick like this, it’s nice to have a sympathetic adult figure, especially an old-school man’s man like Gobber, just to be clear that brawn isn’t bad.Yes, I called Gobber an “old-school man’s man.”
And he is … or is that “was”?
Does Gobber “come out” in the sequel? Not exactly. At least, that phrase is misleading, on more than one level.
First, the idea that Gobber is gay is a new addition to his character, not something the filmmakers intended from the start. “Coming out” implies revealing a previously secret reality; if the filmmakers have now decided that Gobber is gay, that’s a newly invented fact about him, not a previously secret one.
Second, Gobber makes no proclamations about his sexuality to anyone in How to Train Your Dragon 2. He has a throwaway line in which, watching a married couple quarreling, he quips, “This is why I never married” — and then adds that there’s “one other reason.”
Read more..
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