OK...but I don't think those details really have much effect on the overall schema I'm suggesting. They are the kind that get easily forgotten over time; but I did come up with this hypothesis immediately after watching the darn thing back in the '70s.
And, given the other things Spinrad wrote in the mid-to-late '60s (The Iron Dream, The Men in the Jungle, Bug Jack Barron....), I have real trouble believing he's being completely, um, forthcoming about this one.
I am most definitely not a Freudian*, but it doesn't take too much of a whop upside the head for me to see when someone else is utilizing blatant sexual symbolism.
----- * At least, not what Freud or his faithful followers would think of as a Freudian. I think he had a good idea about people being driven by suppressed/repressed desires and urges ... but I also think he was a dirty old man, and that not all suppressed/repressed desires and urges, by a long shot, are sexual.
no subject
And, given the other things Spinrad wrote in the mid-to-late '60s (The Iron Dream, The Men in the Jungle, Bug Jack Barron....), I have real trouble believing he's being completely, um, forthcoming about this one.
I am most definitely not a Freudian*, but it doesn't take too much of a whop upside the head for me to see when someone else is utilizing blatant sexual symbolism.
-----
* At least, not what Freud or his faithful followers would think of as a Freudian. I think he had a good idea about people being driven by suppressed/repressed desires and urges ... but I also think he was a dirty old man, and that not all suppressed/repressed desires and urges, by a long shot, are sexual.