Buddy Cops

In Homicide, a buddy cop film, Bob Gold and Tim Sullivan recapitulate one of the oldest motifs in Western literature: the love between comrades-in-arms. Our first great literary masterpiece, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is a male love poem. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, David and Jonathan, Achilles and Patroclus, Roland and Olivier—the epics of heroic friendship involve two men, fiercely loyal, who embark on a dangerous mission. Willing to die to defend each other, the two warriors prize their friendship above all other relationships, and anthropologists Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow see parallels between these bonds and romantic love. In comparison with the comrade, women, if mentioned, dwindle into insignificance. “Roland does not think about Alde on the battle-field,” writes C. S. Lewis. “The figure of the betrothed is shadowy compared with that of the friend, Oliver. The deepest of worldly emotions in this period is the love of man for man, the mutual love of warriors who die together.” The center of the hero’s life is the comrade and war, not hearth and home.1