Question: Does the world need another movie about homophobia? Answer: No. One was enough.
We need to know that it exists; we don't need to be obsessed with it. We don't need to experience over and over - vicariously, through characters in a movie instead of our own bodies - the pain of being hated because we're different. We need to stop wallowing in rejection. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as victims and celebrating our victimhood.
Many gay men disagree with me. Many gay men think Brokeback Mountain is the greatest gay movie ever made. If you're one of them, if your favorite gay movies are ones where the gay character(s) get rejected, humiliated, beaten up or killed (often by the straight men they love) then you will probably like this movie. I'm not saying any of that happens in this movie, so this is not a spoiler; I'm just saying if you like movies in which gay men suffer because they're gay, you'll probably like this one.
Personally, I'm tired of that suffer-for-being-gay crap. But I'm equally tired of gay movies at the other end of the spectrum, in which toned, tanned, hairless gym bunnies with huge - muscles - celebrate their own fabulousness while inferior (ie, normal) gay men worship them and brain-dead queens twitter comically in the background.
AND I'm tired of movies that try to have it both ways, with an hour of pain and rejection followed by a miraculous happy ending, in which the hunky, white-toothed prince carries his frog bride off into the West Hollywood sunset.
What I want, and what I believe most gay men need, is movies about ordinary gay men, whose lives are fun but not fabulous, who have friends - gay AND straight - who love and support them, not because they're rejects who need that support but because they're interesting men who are fun to be around.
I want movies in which gay men live full, rich, happy, challenging lives with AND WITHOUT partners, in which a gay man isn't defined or validated or made whole by the man who loves him any more than a woman is and - even more important - would laugh at such a stupid idea. We need liberated gay men in movies just as we needed liberated women in movies 50 years ago.
I want movies in which no one is humiliated or beaten. I want movies in which no one vomits. I want movies in which the stupid phrase "unconditional love" is never heard.
NOBODY loves unconditionally. It's not possible for human beings to love unconditionally. That's as big a lie as Prince Charming. We love what makes us happy, what makes us feel useful and wanted and valuable. That's good, not bad. Unconditional love doesn't exist, so we need to stop insisting on finding it.
All I'm saying is that we gay men need to accept the fact that we are human beings, and we need movies that show us acting like human beings instead of like caricatures.
