You are presumably familiar enough with the story of Saul and David that I do not need to recount it for you here! The gist, for those of you unfamiliar, is that Saul was the big butch king of Israel in the long-ago, whose various misdeeds made him unfit for kingship, and God, via the prophet Samuel, selected the young and ruddy David son of Jesse to replace him, but in an incredibly gaslight-y and passive-aggressive way, namely by sending David off to Saul’s court as a musician to calm the king’s panic attacks and pretend he’s not already planning on replacing him. Which, can you imagine? “I don’t know why you’re so stressed, Saul…No one in this room is planning on killing and supplanting you. You’re crazy, Saul. You must be just going crazy. Anyhow, here’s ‘Wonderwall.’” Or whatever.
Anyhow, even though the relationship between David and Jonathan (Saul’s son) is much more overtly romantic, it gets fairly short shrift among Western artists (probably because it was more overtly romantic). David and Saul, though! That’s a horse of an entirely different and homoerotic color! People loved painting a strapping, snappish Saul with a smooth-cheeked kinglet trying to knit up his raveled sleave of care, and who are we to judge them?
Kindly find my case snugly enfitted in point:
Royal ladies of the court, you are right to shrink back in awe; this strapping youthbeast is here to shirtlessly play the harp at Saul until he knows joy again! Could he be a more wholesome Boy Scout of a nymph, strutting up to a Saul I can only describe as “sexy land King Triton”? “Hi, I’m, uh….I’m here to soothe you.”
Could Saul be sulkier? Could David be, I guess, uke-er? (Alternate titles for this tableaux include: The Hand of the King, Soothing The Royal Beast, And The Band Played On, Mr. Kingface And Toppy, Pulling Strings, Plucked)
“The music isn’t working anymore,” Saul snarled.
“There are other manners of relaxing, my liege,” said the boy-harpist humbly. And then build from there.
THE CAREFULLY PLACED SPEAR. THE ANGELIC EXPRESSION SO OVER-THE-TOP BEATIFIC THAT IT IS CLEARLY A PUT-ON. THAT’S THE KIND OF FACE LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS MAKES. What movie was it that said whoever your feet point toward, that’s who you want to have sex with? I want to say it was actually…an episode of New Girl? As true in ancient Israel as it was in Zooey Deschanel’s loft, I guess.
That gaze! That’s…this fanfic writes itself! The INSOLENT HARPIST, the SULLEN KING with an ATTRACTIVE DRINKING PROBLEM, the difficult-to-remove sandals, the whoever that wonderfully bitchy-looking woman is slinking around angrily in the corner! Everyone saying things roughly and speaking with cruel mouths. Wearing pelts, and whatnot.
THE SCIENTIFIC TERM FOR THIS IS “UNNNNF.” Saul is lounging exactly like Hedonism Bot does in all of his scenes. He knew one day the boy would be his undoing in more ways than one.
“I don’t need you – and you’ve never needed me!”
Saul something something how could he not realize how much he’d always needed him, too much pride, something something, “Then go!”
Do I have to insert a snappy “lol bye” here? It captions itself. That is the most “lol bye” face I have ever seen in my anachronistically-captioning days. “And stay out! Never call me again! In fact, forget you ever knew my number!” You know the kind of fight this clearly is.
[Images via]
#2. The earring! The mullet! My ability to even, it is gone hence.
I would also like to add that in the last one, Saul’s armor seems to be made of leotard material, as there are clear nipples and belly button.
What was that about? That type of armor/clothing seems to come up in paintings a lot. Anyone know?
My understanding is that sometimes metal armor had fake belly buttons and nipples on it, Schumacher-Batsuit-style. I guess it’s an aesthetic thing – evoking the beauty and virility of a bare chest and all that.
But Saul’s armor is clinging to him, lovingly outlining every curve. It’s like he’s a superheroine or something.
Maybe that’s what a king wears when he wants to listen to a little harp music and feel sexy?
I’m no art historian, but it totally looks like the painter decided at the last minute that maybe Saul should be wearing clothes.
Also my inexpert call.
But no pants for either of them! What they were doing doesn’t require pants.
Muscle cuirass! For when you can’t decide between a cuirass and a muscle shirt, I guess.
What’s more, the red paisley headband!
Michael from The Lost Boys? Is that you?
Pretty much came down here to say the exact same thing. Bravo.
YOU FORGOT THE HEADBAND
David #2 is clearly singing “Working For the Weekend.”
It’s best not to read too deeply into the old testament, lest you stumble onto a throbbing nest of man-boy love.
More than one bush burned with a fiery passion… for the Lord.
I pissed off my sister so much over Thanksgiving by insisting that Naomi and Ruth’s relationship went beyond that of an affectionate mother-and-daughter-in-law.
Good times.
(Also I may have laughed so hard at Lizzie_Sidds comment that the water I had been trying to drink went up my nose instead.)
All that “no homo” on YHWH’s part? Total reverse-psychology, man.
That is 100% the only reason to read it, what you talking ’bout.
David in the second painting would be right at home at an Indigo Girls concert in the 90s. That is all.
The spears. And David’s lovely curling . . . harp.
Just as in New Girl, Saul is visibly uncomfortable around youths
“Uke”……It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve had to remember yaoi terminology.
I live on TVTropes.com, so I am full-to-bursting with its lingo. The other day I had to define Expy in a sentence and I was just like…EXPY. It’s an Expy!
But which painting of Saul best demonstrates the phenomenon of Yaoi Hands?
Wow and I have just learned so much.
oh thank you, because I was like, there are no ukeleles in that image
Clueless. The movie with the sexual foot signals is Clueless. This means that from now on I will be picturing Saul as a young Paul Rudd. Wish I’d had that mental image back in my days of more intensive Bible study.
(Let’s find ways to work Jonathan into this scenario as well, please?)
DID SOMEONE SAY PAUL RUDD
Here I go again, daydreaming about a world in which everyone is Paul Rudd
BRB–my next romance novel will be THE CROTCHETY KING’S TREACHEROUS VIRGIN HARP BOY.
I trust you will post a link where we can all buy it when it’s ready.
I would read that.
This just makes me really sad that Kings never got a second season.
IT WAS A REALLY GOOD SHOW
Ian McShane got to chew so much scenery. It was glorious.
SUCH A GOOD SHOW! Never forget that time they clearly implied Silas was an inch away from performing cunnilingus on his queen.
Goodness, that sounds frustrating for the queen.
Oh, she actually strategically stopped him from going there, because she wanted to use his lust to manipulate him for an ulterior motive. THAT PRETTY MUCH SUMS UP THE SHOW. It was so good.
JINX! But also I miss it so much.
saaaame
Thanks for reminding me to do my yearly re-watch.
I LOVE THAT BEAUTIFUL BROKEN BOY SO MUCH. Oh thank you for posting this gif and for reminding me again about how great Kings was.
I came here to see if anyone remembered Kings! Oh, I miss that show…
I am eternally sad Kings never got a second season. SebStan was perfection, so broken and beautiful and uuunnf. Feels, y’all.
This post is reminding me that I’m still mad at NBC for canceling Kings.
I don’t know how anyone could want less Ian McShane on TV.
Same NBC that cancelled Hannibal. Homophobic weasel farts. Only good thing is that it freed SebStan to be the beautifully suffering Bucky Barnes. unf indeed
somehow everyone sounds like they have just been smoking and speak from slightly inside personal space boundaries, indolently aware of the social convention they are flouting.
I reject readings of fur costumes as anything but boxer shorts
《Anyhow, even though the relationship between David and Jonathan (Saul’s son) is much more overtly romantic》
Oh, “David and Jonhatan” is the name of a Christian homosexual association in France! So that’s where the name come from.
Jonathan loved David as his own soul, after all.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear David & Jonathan is “est-ce que tu viens pour les vacances ? Moi je n’ai pas changé d’adresse”.
Culture, you either have it or you don’t.
I used to be good friends with a David who dated a Jonathan for a year, although he was known as Jonny. Another time he dated another David. He was Orthodox Jewish, incidentally.
THE SCIENTIFIC TERM FOR THIS IS “UNNNNF.” Indeed.
All jokes aside, that painting actually made me gasp. It’s spectacular. The light in it is just glorious.
Yes — and the subtext is really jaw-droppingly hot. Saul is ready to POUNCE, and David’s body language is an open invitation.
I was confused by the harp and thought David had a large fish in his lap and was spearing it in unexpected ways.
And then I fell in love with the harp, once it resolved from fish to musical instrument.
This. This was exactly what I needed as a palate cleanser to Trump.
Lo, those many years ago in the dark ages of the mid-aughts, my best friend and I stumbled across a website of Biblical fanfic. It was basically all hardcore slash, and remains imho the best thing the internet has ever spawned. It led me to saying “hey, I could do that,” as a joke that sort of wasn’t really a joke? And so three people in this world have been subjected to my magnum opus of Jesus/Lazarus fic.
Only three, though. Why not expand?
Luckily I never actually posted it to my fanfic account, and deleted what I thought was all traces of it in a fit of mortification at some point later. Only to find out years down the road that my friend actually printed a copy and has kept it for over ten years for what I can only assume is blackmail purposes.
I did not know that existed. I fully understand why I am not surprised it exists. And I am wholly delighted.
Was it on Fanfiction.net? I remember seeing that there was a Biblical fic category, and being very surprised by what I found there.
I remember they had that category on fanfiction.net, but I’m pretty sure this was it’s own site. I remember lots of Papyrus font. I’ve tried to track it down a few times over the years without success.
That section was FASCINATING.
Lol, I contributed there in high school. I wrote a couple fics as project assignments in my Lutheran’s school religious class.
One was a mostly straightforward story of Jesus healing a teenage servant girl’s acne on his way to resurrect the dead girl; the other was more rebellious (I told a more sympathetic side of the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who were struck dead by Peter for lying about how much they were donating to the church. I made Peter into a power-hungry tyrant and and made Sapphira into a dominating badass. That one didn’t get as good of a grade).
There is biblical fanfic?? Thank you for making my life worthwhile.
So what IS that goddamned secret chord, anyway? A flat minor diminished fifth major seventh… WHAT?
David himself obviously has’nt found it yet in these paintings
Baffling, really
Based on the above pictorial evidence I’m pretty sure that it involved the G string.
*drops mic, flings self into orchestra pit*
Obligatory Hamilton reference on a Mallory post.
Alexander, when you said “our leaders should govern as long as they are able, and when they die we will elect new leaders”, this is basically the situation you were setting up. A civil war every thirty years between the sexy harpist and the children of the previous ruler.
In the meantime, there would be a lot of “UNNNNF”, which might be your jam, tbf.
big butch king of Israel is as far as I made it with a straight face
Okay… so this is making me laugh out loud…and Hallelujah is playing on repeat in my head (both the Cohen and Buckley versions at the same time)..and somehow I know that Mallory Ortberg and I are going to be good friends as we burn in hell side by side.
…is David and Jonathan not canon for Christians? Because I used to bring my parents’ Hebrew-English translation of Samuel into my Orthodox day school, and the commentaries seemed to discuss it as, if not 100% confirmed, very very likely, at least on Jonathan’s side.
Not among most Christians. To them, David and Jonathan were only ever good friends.
What’s better than this? Guys being bros!
IT IS FRAUGHT
If you even suggested it in the church I grew up in you’d be lucky if they didn’t run you out on a rail.
I’m a Christian who is aware of this, but it is not taught. I think it would be a little more difficult to discuss the terrible sin of gayness (sarcasm) when everyone’s like, but David? The one who is supposedly “after God’s own heart”? Not that we should all do everything David did (knocking up someone else’s wife and then murdering the husband to cover it up is…not good), but you know, that whole annoying bit about how God loved David anyway and Heaven forbid we assume that God loves gay people! I mean, murderers and thieves and prostitutes and basically terrible human beings, sure, but definitely not anyone who is attracted to someone of the same sex.
I think I got off on a tangent here. I think some Christians know about it, but it’s not part of the canon.
I distinctly remember making (and landing) a David-and-Jonathan-as-lovers joke with the youth minister at the fairly conservative Baptist church I grew up in, so there’s at least some acknowledgement of the possible subtext if nothing else. Beyond that, interpretations will as always vary depending on the liberality of the church/Christian in question.
So David slept with the son, married the daughter and was the king’s “harpist”.
Biblical morality indeed. Yes, let’s have lots more of that.
“Look, David, I can’t help think that you have fundamentally misunderstood the point of ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill.'”
Omg, I legit cracked up.
a) This is a perfect comment
b) You have a perfect username! I adore Howard Bannister.
oh my god, that fifth one. With Saul sprawled out like a jungle cat, gazing at David, who is glancing coyly back beneath his rumpled curls! You could cut that homoerotic tension with a knife and serve it up at the next local gay alliance’s bake sake.
Also, the way his one leg is curled up on the couch, while the other is dangling towards the floor looks painful. Sexy, but painful.
I believe this is the only example of the Yard Sard phenomenon I’ve ever encountered on the internet. 🙂
“Oh Saul, I’m reaching right for your HEART.”
yes….. heart…..
Attractive Drinking Problem Saul seems to have roughly the same head as Triton-hat Saul which is kind of weird. I do like how in the Triton-hat Saul picture David really looks like he’s about 14 or 15 and going through a growth spurt, all awkward and gangly.
and Fuck Lord Alfred Douglas.
“THAT’S THE KIND OF FACE LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS MAKES” is my new favorite burn.
That guy on the left in the last photo? It looks like his arm is being eaten by a lion (his sleeve). It looks . . . intentional?
Another note about the last painting. I was puzzled by the fact that Saul’s breastplate seems to have nipples and a bellybutton carved into it…
And then I googled and found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_cuirass
The more you know!
On the subject on David and Jonathan, I clicked through to that Wikipedia article, and I have to say, this image has to be the most paranoid “no-homo” drawing I’ve ever seen. Like, it’s not REALLY making out if your lower bodies are as far apart as they can possibly be without you just toppling over?
I think it’s just illustrating the logistical difficulty of grabbing one’s lover’s ass with all that military gear on.
I think we have reached the apex of “no homo” with this picture. Although that would make for an interesting Western Art History post.
I recently saw a play called “Who Would Be King” which told the story of Saul through clown and physical theater and gender-fuckery. Samuel and David were “Sam” and “Dee” badass prophet and warrior, respectively. Saul was a redneck farmer-cum-king just trying his best, and Jonathan was a hot reluctant-soldier-type. As the David character was a woman there was no homoeroticism, which was kind of a bummer, but all in all it was a pretty solid production with a lot of in-audience swordfighting.
Ok, tangent time. When Samuel goes to find the Lord’s Anointed, and he’s surveying Jesse’s sons, he’s all “ah yes, this handsome, virile youth must surely be the Lord’s favorite,” at which point God tells him to stop being so shallow and judging people based on their appearance. Immediately after that, David’s called in from the fields, and the text informs us that David is ruddy and handsome and has beautiful eyes, and then tells us that this, at last, is the future King over All Israel.
Make up your mind, people.
THIS HAS ALWAYS BOTHERED ME. Thank you.
You are presumably familiar enough with the story of Saul and David that I do not need to recount it for you here!
… says Mallory, right before saying a load of stuff I knew absolutely nothing about. I freely admit that England having an established church is weird and has all sorts of issues, but the fact that Christianity is Officially Sanctioned also means people feel able to cheerfully ignore it because it doesn’t need our support, and I have managed to reach the age of 26 without learning loads of stuff that most people apparently know. Whoops.
I was glad I was a regular CofE attender until my late teens, as it’s given me a lot of clues when reading 19th-century literature. Sooooo many similes, and I only have to turn to the notes for some of them.
Love your description of the cheerfully ignoring populace – so true!
As an official heathen, my only motivation to learn anything remotely related to biblical things is possible homoerotic subtext, so I’m very thankful for these informative posts.
#4 and 5 are so intensely gay that I reeled back from the computer screen. Like, it was physically palpable. Is that what the vapors are? Did this post give me the vapors for real?
clearly!
Someone needs to publish some gay erotica on Amazon with #5 as a cover, stat.
(Though I am all Jonathan/David OTP, myself.)
+1 for Futurama reference!
Handmaiden in pic number 4.
She sees it all.
She doesn’t like it.
SHE DOESN’T LIKE IT ONE LITTLE BIT….
“I don’t know why you’re so stressed, Saul…No one in this room is planning on killing and supplanting you. You’re crazy, Saul. You must be just going crazy. Anyhow, here’s ‘Wonderwall.’”
If you are the guy playing wonderwall, you secretly want harm to come to all who hear you. Even if it’s with a harp.
There goes Mallory getting all biblical again. What’s with all the sex, Ortberg? THINK OF THE CHILDREN.
Poor Red Scharlach. First none of the tv stations credit her with being the source of Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch, and then Mallory independently invents Mighty Moments in Slash History. http://redscharlach.tumblr.com/tagged/mighty-mome…
Check out that URL if you want to see more homoerotic classical art, is what I’m saying.
My two favourite background characters in these paintings:
1. The unimpressed old dude with crossed arms in no. 4. That sardonic head-tilt speaks volumes.
2. The confused Dalmatian in the corner of the ‘lol bye’ one.
Goodness, that sounds frustrating for the queen.
I used to be good friends with a David who dated a Jonathan for a year, although he was known as Jonny. Another time he dated another David. He was Orthodox Jewish, incidentally.
All that "no homo" on YHWH's part? Total reverse-psychology, man.