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ingravinoveritas · 10 months

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How do you feel about the fact that angels and demons are non-sexual beings in Good omens?

Anon #1: Well, this is a great question and I appreciate you sending it in for me to answer. Including the other Anons here since they are relevant.

I actually have a lot of feelings about angels and demons being non-sexual beings in Good Omens, which I will do my best to explain. I think the first thing I have to do is make sure I understand what you mean by non-sexual. I know Neil has said that angels and demons do not have genitalia "unless they make an effort," so by that measure, we can say angels and demons are genderless beings (agender or genderqueer perhaps as well, depending on the angel or demon). That, to me, is distinctive and not the same thing as non-sexual, which I consider to be beings who--by design or choice--do not engage in sexual intercourse.

The other thing we have to consider is the distinction between book!Good Omens and TV show!Good Omens. I have not finished reading the book, but it is my understanding that Neil (and Terry, of course) established the angels and demons as genderless in the original text. When the show was adapted for television, 30 years had passed since the novel was published, and so much had changed in that time, so a lot of things were updated to have Good Omens more align with the sensibilities of the modern era (one example is Neil talking about Crowley's aesthetic as an early '90s "Wall Street" type and how they had to figure out what the equivalent of that would be in the present day).

One thing that hasn't changed very much, however, is the portrayal of gay/queer people in the media. For much of those intervening 30 years, gay and queer people were shown as stereotypes--flamboyant, one-dimensional caricatures who existed as "sidekicks" (the "gay BFF") or object lessons for the straight characters (I would say this was especially the case in the late '80s and '90s with the AIDS crisis).

By this time, gay and queer people could exist on TV, but only if they were non-sexual/sexless. One example of this is Blanche's brother Clayton on The Golden Girls. After he comes out to Blanche, he brings home his fiance Doug in a subsequent episode, which has Blanche indignant. "I don't really mind Clayton being homosexual, I just don't like him dating men." Another example is Will & Grace, which aired in the late '90s. Will was a gay man who was one of the main characters, but while we constantly saw Grace falling into bed with random men and all sorts of escapades related to her sex life, we were never shown Will in any sort of similar situation. He could be gay, and he could be Grace's BFF, but he couldn't have a sex life of his own. It was this idea that gay people could exist in abstract terms, but not in the concrete reality of what it meant to be gay. Homophobia disguised as "acceptance."

So when I see/hear the word "non-sexual" in relation to gay and queer people, this is what comes to mind. What I also think of is that the absence of gay male sexuality (as for the majority of the show, Aziraphale and Crowley are male-presenting) is not the same thing as the presence of asexuality. I think it's been remarkably easy for Neil to take credit for that when it doesn't seem to have been his actual intention, and it also removes from him the responsibility of portraying that specific aspect of a non-heterosexual love story.

One thing I want to be very clear on is that I am in no way trying to put down anyone's head canon or what any reader or viewer may see in these characters, and I will never say that anyone's head canons are not valid. But when we are talking about the canon--in other words, what is actually on the screen--I feel like there is a tendency to overlook what Michael and David are actually doing with these characters.

In addition to what I mentioned above about gay characters on TV in the '80s and '90s, the other thing you absolutely could not do as a gay or queer person was fall in love. This is alluded to more in the example above from The Golden Girls, where Blanche is horrified that her brother wants to marry a man, until Sophia finally helps her understand:

Blanche: "Oh, look, I can accept the fact that he's gay, but why does he have to slip a ring on this guy's finger so the whole world will know?" Sophia: "Why did you marry George?" Blanche: "We loved each other. We wanted to make a lifetime commitment. Wanted everybody to know." Sophia: "That's what Doug and Clayton want, too. Everyone wants someone to grow old with. And shouldn't everyone have that chance?"

Here we are now, over 30 years later, and some people still don't want everyone to have that chance. Some people think two people of the same sex can't love each other the way a man and a woman do. Because queer love--and especially love between two men--is still looked at as "less than" and inferior to straight love.

This is the world Michael and David grew up in. This is the social and cultural climate they saw and navigated their own sexuality and identity in--'80s Britain, Margaret Thatcher, Section 28. Where being gay or queer wasn't just immoral, it was illegal. Your very existence alone was stigmatized, pathologized, and criminalized. And they are bringing that lived experience into the roles of Aziraphale and Crowley, albeit in different ways.

To me, Michael is playing Aziraphale as a repressed gay man. A man who--much like David--grew up in the faith and was made to believe that his natural feelings, attractions, and desires were wrong, shameful, and disgusting. We see this with Gabriel deriding Aziraphale for eating sushi and enjoying other Earthly pleasures, and it would be logical to think that it's taken a long time for Aziraphale to feel comfortable with the foods/drink/books he likes and the pleasure they bring him. Similarly, it's taken Aziraphale a millennia to find the one being who makes him feel comfortable with the desires he has. The being who is the exception to every rule Heaven ever laid out, who encourages Aziraphale to be himself in every respect. And that's Crowley.

In this scene in the Bastille (which I know has been analyzed a thousand times and a thousand ways), when Aziraphale looks at Crowley like this, the desire rising up in him is more than obvious. The wide eyes, the heaving bosom, and of course the smoldering up-and-down glance all speak to this--he is, quite literally, checking Crowley out, without shame, possibly for the first time ever. Even though that desire is not outwardly expressed in GO season 1, it does not mean it doesn't exist--only that Aziraphale letting himself feel this (and Crowley being the one entity who allows him to feel this) is the first step in a very long journey away from that lifetime of repression.

In terms of Crowley, I feel that David is playing Crowley as a gay man who is afraid of commitment because he has been hurt in the past. There is a feeling of impermanence to Crowley--that, despite being a celestial, immortal entity, he doesn't like to hold onto things because deep down, he believes they will eventually be taken away. He knows who he is, but is all too aware of the consequences that come with it. So he does not get attached, because to him, attachment equals pain, and he believes nothing is worth that risk.

In the church scene in 1941 (which, again, so much has already been said), Crowley saves Aziraphale's books from the wreckage. It's been said by many that Crowley fell in love long before this (which I do think is true), but for me, I feel like this was where we saw that Crowley was truly "attached" to Aziraphale. He rescued Aziraphale from the Bastille, and he saved Aziraphale from the bombs of the Blitz, but in grabbing the books, Crowley isn't just saving Aziraphale's body--he's holding onto a piece of his soul. For the first time ever, Crowley has found something that isn't temporary, and after a millennia of cynicism, Aziraphale is the one entity who makes him feel fully and wholeheartedly ready to commit to something.

This is what I have seen and perceived in the portrayals of Aziraphale and Crowley that Michael and David have given us. I absolutely do 100% believe that asexual folks deserve representation--representation that is clear and specific, not just a side effect of Neil not wanting to show these characters expressing outward sexual desires--but I do not believe that is how Michael and David are playing the characters. It's not enough--or at least it shouldn't be--to have characters of marginalized backgrounds just standing in the room, or to say, "This one's gay," "This one's nonbinary," "This one's asexual." Including these identities in the fabric of the story means doing what Michael and David have done, which is showing these people or beings as three-dimensional, as fully realized characters who happen to have that identity, rather than as ticked boxes representing a certain identity on a checklist.

And to the Anons mentioning the Radio Times article (which seems like it came out a hundred years ago now)--Anon #4 particularly--I appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me, but I could not disagree with you more.

First of all, I have no idea where in the world you got that Aziraphale and Crowley's romance was explicit in season 1, because it was absolutely anything but. Three days after they posted that, RT posted another article seemingly backtracking on everything they'd previously said (as if we'd all somehow pulled a Gabriel Jim and forgotten everything about the first article). The phrase "Could romance be on the cards after all?" is in the bloody headline of article #2, which to me says that RT is going to go in whichever direction the wind blows--to create engagement and generate clicks--but also that it is very clear what they meant by "conventional" in the first article. I do not get the feeling that Radio Times--a mainstream publication that seemingly publishes any story they can farm from social media--was thinking of ace or aro identities or relationships when writing that. Even a tiny little bit.

Even a queer-centric media outlet like Pride today published an article saying the first season of GO lacked LGBTQ+ representation. Obviously, I do not at all agree with this or with several other things mentioned in the article. But what I am challenging folks to do is think about what this is really saying. By the end of GO 1 season, everyone accepts and assumes that Madame Tracy and Shadwell are a couple. She makes eyes at him, they have dinner together, and no one questions them being a couple, even though they are not shown being physically affectionate. Aziraphale and Crowley do exactly the same things, but no one (speaking of the larger public, outside the hardcore fan base) assumes they are a couple.

Maybe what that means, then, is that "representation" that requires you to squint and turn your head in order to see it--like Aziraphale and Crowley holding hands on the bus--isn't really representation at all. And by Neil "not wanting to label" something, it seems to suggest that committing to a label or embracing that gayness is something he is not comfortable with--for any number of reasons--and is why we could have a meaningless love scene with a straight couple that does not have a real connection (Newt and Anathema), but couldn't have a meaningful love scene with a gay couple that does have a devastatingly profound and powerful connection.

So yes, those are my thoughts on the angels and demons in Good Omens being non-sexual, and what that means in a larger cultural/societal sense. I know that when GO season 2 comes out in a week, I could be proven completely wrong about everything I've just said, and I will have no problem with that at all. I fully trust what Michael and David will bring to the roles of Aziraphale and Crowley, but my hesitation stems from the limitations they will potentially be up against, in terms of the script/storyline (and is something I have felt from the interviews we've seen with them this past week).

I'm hopeful for the best, though (as always), so we'll just have to see what happens...

#anonymous #reply post #good omens 2 #good omens #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #david tennant #soft scottish hipster gigolo #creators are not perfect #I think Neil may have some internalized homophobia he is still dealing with tbh #but people are afraid to call him out in any way #and this was me trying to keep my response short #probably going to have to turn off anons for a bit while i answer the rest #dealing with RL stuff at the moment so a bit backed up #discourse

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