independence resonates powerfully. It’s no wonder that the potential political importance of Outlander to stir resistance to England at the time of the indyref was recognised and feared by David Cameron and government Unionists.
While the display of the male body, as symbolic territory to be conquered, is an available reading of the source novels in Outlander, the same is not true of the Poldark series. The shirtless display of Aidan Turner’s body is more about the success of Colin Firth as Mr D’arcy in Pride and Prejudice and an apparent desire to recreate the popularity of the first adaptation, where Robin Ellis became a national object of desire (without removing his clothes).
But Ross is also shown to be intimately connected with regional landscape, in a way which is also politically resonant in relation to Cornwall’s relationship with Britain. The 2015 Poldark opens with Captain Ross, dressed like Captain Randall, in his redcoat uniform of the British army. He is ostensibly a facilitator in British colonial aggression, having just returned from fighting in the American War of Independence. Yet it is immediately made clear in the first episode that he’s an anti-establishment figure, questioning the cause he must fight for. He fights, not through choice or desire, but to escape the gallows for brawling, free-trading and assaulting a customs officer.
His return to Cornwall, although still in his redcoat uniform (in the adaptation but not in the book), is a homecoming, not an invasion. He quickly divests himself of the uniform, replaced by garments in blues and browns which visually embed the character within the seascape and rural landscape on screen. It is a landscape which he owns, scythes, rides across, and mines beneath.
That Jamie is emphasised as a “Highlander” points to the importance of the regional in this marking of territory. The Highlands are the site through which the most enduring imagery of Scotland has been constructed – the space of “Tartanry,” mountains and mystical wilderness (to be conquered). Like Ross Poldark, Jamie is “landed gentry,” and their bodies do more than “represent” the regional (and national) landscape, because they own it. Jamie, Laird of Lallybroch, embodies the regional landscape, in the colour of his hair, his costuming, his physicality: they are part of each other.
And so Jamie’s “consent” to submission to Randall carries a different kind of weight here. The filming of the most disturbing abuse scenes on the eve of the (failed) referendum on Scotish
Te filming of the most disturbing abuse scenes on the eve of the (failed) Referendum on Scottish independence resonates powerfully.
While the much-hyped naked sea swimming scene may have come about as a D’arcy-esque piece of titillation for the viewers, it too contributes to the connection of the male body to this particular landscape, at one with it, claiming it in a number of ways. This physical connection solidifies Ross’s position as defender of the Cornish from the encroaching law of the state and his fight against plunder of Cornish mineral wealth by outsiders.
Ross Poldark and Jamie Fraser are, then, the literal embodiment of contested Celtic territory. Across their bodies, we can read the playing out of the politics of region and nation in a period of regional and national instability. So: there’s more to the naked male body in these shows than just the desiring female gaze
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