Victor has been so sweet about him- talking about his reliance on the control of his own body- I think Victor hates Dan because he thinks he treats Jason like pretty meat and Victor knows how important Jason's body is to the man. He's bitchy because he's actually worried about his friend. He keeps trying to tell us that Jason's losing it and the reason he's insulting the various housemates more and more is because no one he speaks to seems to hear him.
I agree that Victor cares about Jason, but I think much of their mutual attachment relied on the other shoring up their individual, rather shaky Alpha-masculine egos via the collective conjuring of VicWorld. A sort of folie a deux which, I think, served Victor better than Jayboy - because Victor, while hugely homo-anxious, is more sexually defined than Jason. Thing is, VicWorld was actually quite toxic to Jason: it cut off his social avenues; it reinforced the paranoid uber-male 'subject, not object' identity (which he cannot sustain and, ultimately, doesn't particularly enjoy); it allowed him to distance himself from his own (significant) personal difficulties by Othering them into the 'get-along-gang' and rendering them contemptible. Jason's difficulties with intimacy were thus transformed into everyone else's "fake" over-intimacy; his social boorishness became everyone else's "arse-kissing"; his lack of confidence in his own sexual identity was directed at poor ol' smitten Dan, allowing Jason to present himself as "100% heterosexual".
So VicWorld merely allowed Jason to bulk up his defences against intimacy, social interaction and examination of his own sexuality. And what did he get in return? Security? Perhaps a tenuous sort of security-by-association, while his mates were around. Fun? Didn't look like it.
I don't think Victor's vitriol at Dan stems from worry about Jason at all; I think it stems from a combination of envy (Dan's still in the house, and Jason's actually smiled a couple of times) and projected homo-fear/fascination (Victor's anxious at the merest thought of being a sexual object - which is why he stayed as covered-up as possible - and he projects this anxiety onto Jason, whereas Jason both likes and responds positively to "pretty meat" comments).
Any worries Victor might have about Jason are as misguided as his concerns for Ahmed, and make the leaky assumption that VicWorld is the best possible place for every self-respecting Alpha-Male to live. Dan has a much clearer understanding of how best to shore up Jayboy's self-esteem and encourage growth in intimacy/interaction/examination. It's just a shame that, in the time that's left, he won't get much of a chance to get anywhere near Selfawaria. |
