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Feeling Smug About Reading Equus

A blog post by matt, posted on January 31, 2007 at 10:01 pm

The latest from Google News:

There’s so many things I could say about these headlines (i.e. “Someone sure loves the word stir!” or “Headline writers are retarded!”) but in the end all I really want to point out is this: Daniel Radcliffe’s upcoming play, the one in which he gets all naked, is Equus.

In Grade 12 English, when I had a creepy overweight and bald teacher who wheezed before he laughed, we read Equus. And I actually remember it pretty well. I guess it was because we read it in the midst of reading stuff like Sons and Lovers and Yeats poems. I remember very little about those, but I remember a lot about Equus. Probably because you always remember the one about horse fucking.

Because that is, essentially, what the play is about — a boy who has sex with horses.

Equus and Growing Up

I think that’s what gets me about this whole Radcliffe “controversy.” Those stories above make it seem like Radcliffe has signed up to do porn. Actually, scratch that — they make it seem like Harry Potter has signed up to do porn. Like the play is going to feature the boy wizard strutting around the stage in the buff, showing the audience where else Voldemort scarred him, making lewd gestures at Hermione, stroking Haggard’s beard. But the truth about Equus is that almost all of it takes place in a psychiatrist office, with only scattered flashback scenes taking place at the stable. For the most part, Radcliffe is going to spend his time on stage sitting down and talking about God.

That doesn’t really make for good headlines, however. Sure, you could still have a similar level of alliteration (Harry Potter Discusses Divine in Debut Drama) but it’s missing that whole “This is somehow representative of a breakdown in society’s morals” subtext that everyone, not just the media, seems to be picking up on.

And so I feel smug for reading Equus, because it feels like no one else has. I can tell people who bring up this whole Harry Potter-gets-naked fiasco that, in fact, the play isn’t really erotic at all, unless you’re into horse fucking, and very few people are. I’m almost looking forward to telling them and dashing their hopes. It’s probably the same feeling those douchebags get when they spoil the Potter books pre-release — I can take people’s expectations and drastically alter them.1

Quick Postscript

I recognize a lot of the supposed outrage over this comes from the fact that Radcliffe still is, in a lot of people’s eyes, the same 12-year-old who appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone all those years ago. And, sure, it’s kind of shocking to see the boy wizard looking like, well, this. It looks like he’s in good enough shape that he doesn’t even need magic powers anymore: he could just defeat evil by bodyslamming it. But, still, as weird or slightly unseemly as it might seem to see a child actor grow up and do horse fucking theatrical productions, I still maintain Radcliffe’s clearly made far better career and life decisions than these monstrosities did.


  1. I could spoil Equus too, but yelling “Dysart, the psychiatrist, bonds with the patient’s feeling of godlessness and, in fact, dons a horse muzzle before the lights go down!” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Snape Kills Dumbledore!”
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