Before there was 'Top Gun'...

[lederhosen]

If you grew up in a certain setting, you probably read the Biggles books as a kid. As with just about any story where you have a close-knit team of male characters and vanishingly few female ones, there's temptation to read in a homoerotic subtext. Good for some cheap laughs, but you know it's not what the author intended.

That said, I don't think this passage really helps matters:

The thought of Algy a prisoner in enemy hands affected [Biggles] far more than he was prepared to reveal to the others. Probably they felt the same. While he did not allow himself to dwell upon the possibility of Algy or Ginger becoming a casualty there was always a fear of it lurking in the background of his mind. If one of them went it would make a difference. The others would go on and the war would go on but things would not be the same. In war, duty, as defined by the High Command, made no allowance for personal feelings; they were supposed not to exist; and the British fighting forces in their many wars had established a sort of tradition in this respect. However a man might feel it was considered weak to let others see any sort of emotion. The whole thing was of course a pose... If men were going to break down every time a comrade failed to return the will to win would soon break down. After it was all over - well, a man might let himself go. Alexander the Great had shut himself up in his tent for three days. Julius Caesar... Mark Antony... they had broken down and wept, and they were soldiers. ... Thus pondered Biggles, with gnawing anxiety in his heart, but with hardly a word of reference to Algy on his lips. His job was to get rubber, not indulge in private enterprises to satisfy personal feelings. - Captain W.E. Johns, "Biggles Delivers the Goods".

Comments

[notasquirrel.livejournal.com]

thetz wuz a gud wun, mistur artblak! i laffd ann laffd!


"But I thought you said it you didn't get it, Mister Buzzy."
"What? No I didn't."
"Yes you did Sir, you said-"
"No, I totally didn't! I mean, it's a *tent* joke, right? It's about,you know...tents..."

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

For me, it's not until it's his job is to get rubber that I lose it.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I considered providing context for that (he's trying to help the war effort by smuggling a secret cache of rubber out of occupied Malaya) but that would have spoiled the fun. A few pages later, he vows that if he makes it out of this mess he'll never use an india-rubber again.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I figured that it had to be rubber as a war materiel. It's just, you know, even putting the context in doesn't spoil the juvenile snickering.

[notasquirrel.livejournal.com]

For me, it's not until it's his job is to get rubber that I lose it.

i thinke thee rubbur iz soe thee tint dusnte leeke. *facewash* problee.