Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre > Big Brother: Revenge of the Sixth.

This inability to communicate and the tendency to manipulate relationships and really screw them up doesn't strike me as that weird from someone who's 20, people tend to lose it at that age anyway

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That he doesn't handle himself at all competently isn't a surprise if he's having so much trouble with the idea that he's gay. His narcissism seems to stem from the fact that he's desperately trying to reject it... why is he trying to?

Difficult to say. When he originally did that whole 'under the covers' thing with Saskia and Maxwell, he rationalised the convoluted 'secrecy' by saying his parents didn't know he was gay. However, this sits oddly with Craig's own previous statement that his parents keep asking him if he's gay, despite any number of exasperated denials. Craig's discomfort with homosexuality is, I suspect, his own problem rather than his parents. I wonder whether this is simply down to local stigma of gayery (where'd Craig grow up, again?), perhaps with the result that he's equated open homosexuality with being weak? Craig does seem concerned with being powerful/on the 'top team', and perhaps he sees being gay as incompatible with this?

I don't think his narcissistic selfishness stems entirely from his conflicted sexuality, although obviously there's a big overlap. Craig seems to relate to people only inasmuch as he's attracted to them or he sees them as 'winners'; he has relatively little interest otherwise, and dropped Vanessa like a fresh turd when Team Saskia beckoned. It's all quite His Majesty The Baby type behaviour, making it all the more ludicrous when Craig claims he always gets what he wants, is adept at controlling/manipulating/destroying people, and is capable of "protecting" his friends. It also makes his angry "I do so much for everybody and this is how I'm treated" tears look petulantly non-Selfawarian.

If he had any communication skills at all he'd be trying to talk to Derek about it but I presume he's scared because Derek's so very cheerful about the whole thing.

I don't think Derek was being flippantly cheerful or dismissive, though, when he comforted him in the bedroom; he was kind and solicitous, but I agree Craig was unable to appreciate or make use of Derek there. I've a feeling it won't be long before he's bad-mouthing Derek again, the whole episode apparently forgotten.

This really does seem to be a deficiency in Craig, even taking the 20-year-old emotional crapness into account; he seems almost puzzled when heterosexual boys behave heterosexually. It brings me back to my original theory that he'd thrown himself into furthering his hairdressing career at the expense of any sort of exploration/experimentation of his sexual identity or, indeed, his identity in general. I'm willing to bet he's happiest in - or at least familiar with - the role of camply ambiguous celibate with possessive "secret crushes" he almost never properly communicates or acts upon, but feels terribly slighted by when the love-that-never-was inevitably meanders elsewhere. Like I say, there's something quaint, even throwback about this sort of gay male behaviour. It'd fit quite well into one of Morrissey's beloved 1960s kitchen sink dramas - and it'd probably end with the queer-bashed protagonist contemplating suicide in a depressing Sarf Lahndahn bedsit.

Has all this been played out before? I bet it has, and I bet it ended badly. Perhaps he's tried to embrace his (as he sees it) unluckiness in love, and forge it into a powerful Destroyer identity?