Kaze to Ki no Uta and Death and Venice
This time I am again going to be discussing the influence of a western film on Kaze to Ki no Uta, specifically Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice (1971), based on Thomas Mann's 1912 novella of the same name. (There will be spoilers for the plot). The story centers on a middle-aged man named Gustav von Aschenbach, who is either an author or a composer depending on the adaptation. He is respectable and completely lacking in vices, almost to the point of asceticism. He travels to Venice on vacation, where he sees a very handsome young Polish aristocrat named Tadzio, and soon becomes infatuated with the boy. He starts following him all over Venice and has a makeup job to look like a younger man in the hopes of being more appealing to him, despite looking down on a man who had a similar makeup job earlier in the story. He stays in Venice to follow Tadzio even though a cholera epidemic breaks out, and eventually he catches the disease and dies.
In the film adaptation, Tadzio was played by the late Swedish actor Björn Andrésen. After the film was released, Andrésen became a worldwide sensation due to his strikingly good looks, and was dubbed "the most beautiful boy in the world." He was especially popular in Japan, which he toured in 1971 to promote the film; the crowds that received him were compared to those accompanying the landing of the Beatles in the United States. Takemiya's depiction of Gilbert was strongly influenced in its aesthetics by Andrésen's appearance, as the comparison above clearly illustrates. Comparing him to his spiritual predecessor, Étoile Raël of Sunroom Nite (which was published before Death in Venice came out) shows how many of Gilbert's characteristic features such as his head of golden curls were inspired by Andrésen.
But it may be that more than just Tadzio's appearance went into Gilbert. The title of the film, at the simplest level, refers to the fact that Aschenbach dies of cholera in Venice, but his true death comes when he abandons himself to his passion for Tadzio and loses sight of all his previous ideals and scruples. (One wonders to what extent this reflects Mann's struggle with his own repressed homosexuality). Likewise, Gilbert is perceived as a corrupter of public morals at Lacombrade, who constantly tempts other students to sin and spiritual death. In some cases, Gilbert's seductive qualities even cause the actual deaths of some students, such as Ernest Briller, and possibly Elliot, Neslie, and Fabian also. Or so we are led to believe at least, by the teachers and the students body and even Gilbert himself.
But is that really so? Tadzio is obviously not at all at fault for what happened to Aschenbach, and the same may well be true of Gilbert. It is the upperclassmen's choice whether to sleep with Gilbert or not; they could very easily have refused him if they wanted. The other students mock Gilbert and put all the blame on him because it is easier to bully a single physically weak student than to call out the upperclassmen for their behavior, but that does not mean that we should side with them. The case of Ernest is also ambiguous. Gilbert says that he intentionally seduced Ernest, yes—but he says the same thing about Serge, and we know that that is not true. In fact, Gilbert's reaction to the mention of Ernest, and his strange behavior around the swamp at night, suggest that he was just as troubled by whatever happened between the two as Ernest was, which contradicts the picture of the evil seducer that all the other characters give us.
It is also interesting to compare the struggles faced by Gilbert to those faced by Andrésen. The publicity created by his starring role and the sexualization that he experienced at the hands of so many people were extremely difficult for Andrésen to endure. At various points he sank into depression and alcoholism, and though he would act in a few subsequent films, he tried his best to remain out of the public eye from then on. In the end, even though his beauty was what made him so famous, it turned out to be a curse rather than a blessing. Gilbert of course has the same problem. His beauty means that he is constantly sexualized and often sexually abused by older men, most notably his own uncle. Even when he and Serge run away to Paris, he cannot escape people who see him as an object and want to use him for their own purposes. I doubt that Takemiya knew many details of Andrésen's personal life, but she was intelligent enough to understand that such otherworldly beauty comes at a high cost, so it is no surprise that Gilbert's story shares some similarities to his real-life inspiration.