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I know you all love the scene with Hamilton and the camera but honestly that he will take pictures of a guy and his motorcycle when he is supposed to be taking pics of the girls does have me wonder if Hamilton isn't really truly gay. He is ok with Jake-the-guy and a bit put-off at learning that Jake is a girl.
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The character of Hamilton Fleming is sexually ambiguous. He'll kiss a guy to save him emotionally. That's the point: it's the right thing to do, even from the perspective of a highly traditional sexual morality it's the lesser of two evils.
And yes, that ambiguity is present in the very first scene with Fleming. What he sees in Pratt, in that scene, is "a raven at my window with a broken wing," as the last line of Dylan's "Love Minus Zero" puts it. That's why the first line of that song is scrawled on Finn's blackboard in "The Beginning" (but not in the UP). Fleming already senses that Pratt is emotionally wounded and in desperate need of saving when he first sees her. That's why he's drawn to her. Even though he assumes she's a guy.
Pratt's bike (subject of his "Nice Bike" comment) is a symbol of her personality; dark, raven-like, forbidden. In the final episode it's completely taken apart and rebuilt, In other words, he saves her.
And then there's the fact that Hamilton is perched atop the door. He's a door-spirit, a Janus, a god of beginnings and endings, of comings and goings. He's there when Krudski first enters the school. Symbolically, that's endlessly rich.
But the best part of the Hamilton-at-the-window scene is that when we first see Hamilton in that scene, HIS CAMERA IS POINTED AT US, at the film camera. WE ARE PRATT. WE ARE THE ONE IN NEED OF SAVING. Ultimately, it's all about Fleming and us, because Pratt is Everyman, Pratt is us. We're in need of saving -- from "realism" and from wrong-headed ideas of what love is. If you don't feel kissed by Fleming in YA, you don't get it. And yeh, it doesn't matter whether you're a guy or a girl, straight or gay. It's about something deeper than sex -- it's above love. That's the point.
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Finnegan, for being a joke i still find it odd that people can get themselves so excited at the thought of tipping a cow that they are so convincing they succeed in the joke. New shoes, a new car, a christmas bonus that is twice your annual salary, a new baby, a wedding, all are things to get excited about. But to want to go into a field and tip over a cow. I'm busy shaving my legs that night.
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Yeh, it's sort of crude and wacky. It doesn't work well, And it certainly isn't beautiful or profound, the way the ending of "The Beginning" is. I'm very glad the cow-tipping didn't make it into the series as aired. However, its presence in the UP tells us that the dream aspect of YA was there from the start.