Star-Crossed Love
In the grand romantic tradition of Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria, and Tom and Jerry, Young Mungo is the story of lovers who chance to meet despite coming from two different sides of a cultural divide determined to keep them apart. Mungo is Protestant and James is Catholic and though the story is set in Glasgow and not Belfast, one must remember that the cultural division separating the Pope and everything else in Christianity goes all the way back to King Henry VIII. Their world is that of the Jets and Sharks for real where the only dancing done is on the graves of sworn enemies. Mungo and James live in a world where they should not be connected by that “and” even if they were Mary and James or Mungo and Jane.
Forbidden Love
Actually, when you get down to it, Mungo and James really are more like Tom and Jerry than Romeo and Juliet. Where the cat and mouse disguise their obvious love for one another within the confines of a sado-masochistic game of hard-to-get because of the obvious interspecies obstacle, Mungo and James face the obstacle not of being too different from each other, but of being too much the same. Adding a same-sex relationship into the volatile mix of Catholics versus Protestants and simple gang territoriality is only asking for trouble from all sides, especially when the only way to divert attention is the pretense of oath-sworn blood hatred.
The Social Effects of Toxic Masculinity
Take Mungo and James out of the Glasgow neighborhood in which they live and plop them down into a bohemian neighborhood with a couple of theaters, coffeehouses and starving artists and you have a completely different story even with the Protestant versus Catholic thing still working its lovely Christian magic. But it is not a bohemian culture in which they come of age, it is a hardscrabble working class part of the city where masculinity comes with certain very rigid rules built into the scheme of things. Violating even one of these rules among normal people would probably be enough to get you beaten up regularly, trying to hide your secret homosexuality from a brother who is a ferocious Billy Boy is the ultimate nightmare of dealing with toxic masculinity.
