‘Daring you to desire them’: Digital Classicism, Star Bodies and Call Me by Your Name

Abstract

This chapter explores how Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017) places the characters of Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) within a long history of Queer classical reception, and in particular the way the film, and its active fanbase, brings ancient sculptural imagery and classical myth into dialogue with the digital present. I examine the way the 1980s-set film frames its love story with archaeological discoveries that are juxtaposed with, and then embodied within, the bodily posture of Elio.

I begin by highlighting the way the film’s opening titles work to frame the film within a queer history of classical receptions and, through the imagery presented, act as a guide to viewing the film that follows. I will discuss sculptural references, implicit and explicit, that shape the bodies of Elio and Oliver on screen and place them within the film’s languid topography of bathing pools, ancient ruins and artefacts, and intertextual cinematic heritage. However, I argue that one reason for the astonishing international success of the film lay not only in its use of the past but in how the film resonated with an audience securely located in the digital present. Here I turn to the fascinating ways in which the romance of Elio and Oliver has been reworked by fans online, who have often brought ancient and modern juxtapositions to the fore with great imagination and insight.

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ORCID for Michael Williams: orcid.org/0000-0001-5386-5567

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