I agree that, to make the invisible, visible, one needs to draw from any type of representation possible, since this will slowly normalize it and make it easier for future representations to appear on screen. It is with this is mind (that any type of representation is somehow positive, since it means that ‘at least’ there is a representation on screen), that I am torn between accepting the 2007 Canadian film ‘Breakfast with Scot’ as a positive representation (in that it is made with the idea of normalize homosexual relationships on film) and that, as a film, it is awfully flawed.

I guess the problem lies exactly there when it comes to film analysing. How, can I as a viewer, praise a film that talks about a gay couple coming to terms with raising a camp kid (an original idea, full of potentialities for the gay community), when the final product, the film itself is, ultimately, bad?

If I put on my ‘Queer Theory-analytical hat’, I should praise the coming out of the closet storyline of one of the adults, Eric McNally, the idea of accepting oneself as a gay man, the idea that being homosexual does not mean being camp, but at the same time it does not mean having to live by heteronormative rules of social behaviour… With this same hat, I can try and understand and analyse why both protagonists (the aforementioned Eric and Sam) cannot seem capable of calling each other boyfriend,or partner to either themselves or anyone else (even though they live under the same roof, in the same bed, and are commited to each other); and why there is so little human contact between them two (though they appear in bed, fully clothed, once, they do not kiss each other, quickly, till the end of the film), more to do, I’m guessing, as a way of keeping the audience at bay (yes, these two men are gay and in love, but we don’t need to see that. Them telling us in enough) than anything else.

But herein lies the issue and it is that, if I take this hat off, and put my ‘Screenwriting hat’ on (and my MA in Television and Cinema screenwriting allows me to do this, just as much my PhD studies are allowing me to use the other one), there are so many problems with this film that, personally, any positive representational values or ideas I have mentioned above become inconsequential. Awful characther development, horrendously thin story archs, stereotypical situations, badly resolved third act and mediocre dialogues makes me not be able to praise any good qualities this film might have in terms of representational values (and there are some).

What surprises me the most is that, if you go back to the Internet Movie DataBase website (www.imdb.com), there are some very interesting messages in this movie’s board about what it is to be gay, the nature vs nurture debate, etc, which means that ‘Breakfast With Scot’ is positive in that it makes for some interesting ideas to be discussed by its audience. I guess that, in time, when I have read some more and I can contextualise and analyse better, I should go back to re-watch this film, and see if my initial reaction (which to be fair, is one of discontent and slightly appalled towards this film) still stands, or I can objectively view and dissect Laurie Lynd’s film.

]]> http://thedaytheearthstoodgay.com/?feed=rss2&p=17 0 http://thedaytheearthstoodgay.com/?p=15 http://thedaytheearthstoodgay.com/?p=15#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:30:25 +0000 Adrian http://thedaytheearthstoodgay.com/?p=15 In trying to establish the type of film that will constitute the base of my PhD, I encountered some problems. Since I am going to be studying ‘gay cinema’ of sorts, I faced questionings from my friends and relatives wondering what exactly can be defined as gay cinema, if Spain has an specific gay genre, where are the limits, etc.

I have always tried to explain that I will not be studying gay cinema as a whole, but the evolution of the gay character in Spanish cinema, and as such, I didn’t see the need to define what gay cinema is understood as, where are its limits, or what are its markers. Reading through Alberto Mira’s ‘Miradas Insumisas’, though, I found some answers (to the questions I hadn’t asked myself, but which people where keen to know), and in page 25 he esplains that  though ‘gay cinema’ (a term that really needs to be put inside inverted comas) is difficult to pin down, general understanding of the term has normally been referred to one of three different possible definitions.

1.- gay cinema as that one which is based on the representation of homosexuality.

2.- gay cinema as that one which is made by gay/lesbian directors or screenwriters, but that does not mean that gay characters have to appear in them.

3.- gay cinema as that one which, even when it doesn’t have any homosexual groundings, the ‘gay community’ have come to appropriate it as being gay.

Personally, I was always interested in the first definition, and this is what I will be looking at (primarily) when writing my thesis, but I find quite interesting the other two possibilities. While many homosexual directors will include gay characters in their films or television series (and therefore, these films would fall in both definitions of ‘gay cinema’) there are known gay directors or writers who have not done (yet) movies with a queer text in it, but can still be seen as ‘gay films’ according to the second definition.

So while Almodovar is clearly a gay director (second definition) who has gay characters in some of his films – ‘Broken Embraces’, ‘Bad Education’, ‘Labyrinth of Passion’ – (first definition, and therefore some of the films that I will undoubtedly discuss in further blog posts and my thesis), we have others like, Joel Schumacher, who we know are gay in real life, whose filmography doesn’t particularly follow definition one, but can still be seen as ‘gay cinema’ according to definition two. And although there is nothing particulaly queer about ‘Tigerland’ or ‘Bad Company’, we cannot deny that ‘Batman & Robin’ or ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ have a clear gay/queer/camp atribute to them.

Not that, according to the second definition of ‘gay cinema’ we would need these clear gay markings to appear in his filmography to be considered ‘gay cinema’, since the whole idea is that, even without those films, Joel Schumacher could still be considered to be making ‘gay cinema’ just because of his sexual orientation. On a side note, one needs to asses if to be able to read a film one needs all this ‘exterior’ information (what is not seen on screen) to be able to define it and categorise it. Personally, what directors do or like to do or would like to do in the privacy of their bedroom, or whom they love is non-consequential to the production, viewing and enjoyment of a film, and therefore it is a marker that I do not think I will be exploring within my own research (though I do find it a fascinating point that we could discuss in future posts).

Finally, the third definition I find absolutely fascinating since I am torn between agreeing to it, and trying to deny it. Mira discusses films like ‘Splendor in the Grass’, a film that has no intrinsically gay qualities, but that the gay community (or at least, part of it) has read it as gay, and has ‘taken it’ as ‘one of their films’. Though I don’t think there is a type of films that homosexual beings will be more attracted to, there is no denying that there are certain films that gay viewers are more likely to enjoy or feel drawn to (and I do see the oxymoron in this sentence!). It’s a very fine line.

If you agree that there are certain films which a homosexual gaze is going to appropriate as ‘theirs’, then you can agree that there is a ‘gay canon’ through which we (gays/lesbians) see films, and which we base when deciding if we like a film or not. In very simplistic terms, the musical genre, for example, is one that appeals to the gay community, and though such statement can be far too broad (stereotypical even), there is no denying that, a big number of the international gay community is drawn to this type of films, more so than heterosexual men and (even) women.

Though I do not adhiere 100% to this third definition (I think it opens the door to multiple discussions about the gay gaze, this idea of gay canon to liking films… discussions which I hope we’ll have time to discuss in future blogs, since it is interesting), I do believe that there is some truth in it. And even if I try to tell myself that it isn’t true, that there are no rules to which I go to when I decide what films I like (and therefore there can be no common gay-denominator in film-liking), I can’t help but see that, for example, I do like musicals. And although, again, musicals are just an example, if a group of 50 homosexual men and 50 heterosexual men (ditto for women) were to write down their top 5-10 films of all time, we would see some clear repetitions in the two distinct groups, and therefore, maybe (just maybe), we can agree that there is a patternof sorts. A gay-pattern, and a heterosexual-pattern.

I leave you with a quote from Alberto Mira himself, which defines this third notion of ‘gay cinema’: They are not [···] gay films, but movies which by incidental and sometimes very difficult to define motives are liked by gays.

]]> http://thedaytheearthstoodgay.com/?feed=rss2&p=15 5 http://thedaytheearthstoodgay.com/?p=13 http://thedaytheearthstoodgay.com/?p=13#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:44:47 +0000 Adrian http://thedaytheearthstoodgay.com/?p=13 Amongst other (very interesting) things Annamarie Jagose discusses in ‘Queer Theory. An Introduction’,  she talks about a number of  (homo)sexual movements, their pros and cons, and a brief history about them. I was just reading about the Homophile movement and Gay Liberation as predecessors to Queer Theory as a theory per se, and it made me think about how many gay movies have at their basis one of the main notions that Gay Liberation as a movement defended.

While the Homophile movement saw homosexuality as ‘being just like heterosexuals except in their sexual object choice’ (page 31), the Gay Liberation movement talks about homosexuality as being something radically different, and something to be proud of. Gay Liberation exaltates the idea of ‘difference’, and how this needs to be acknowledged, discussed and accepted as a way of being, and not something to be hidden, or prohibited.

As Jagose points out, for gay liberationalists, a gay identity is a revolutionary identity, and therefore one has to publicly declare one’s own homosexuality (as the beginning of a sexual, personal and social revolution), to be able to socially transform to what you truly are. In other words, one has to come-out, since ‘the logics of comming out assume that homosexuality is not simply a private aspect of the individual’ (page 38) but an aspect of one’s personality that needs to be known by everyone. If this aspect should or not be your main trait in life (ie, if you should define your life as a homosexual one, instead of defining who you are by other traits you have like being white, middle class, nationality or even favourite colour, for example) is something to be discussed in future.

But thinking of this ‘coming out experience’ which, to be fair, all gays have to go through in some way or another, I realised how many of the gay movies out there have this at the basis of their narrative. From the top of my head, ‘Shelter’ (fantastic film) or ‘The Art of Being Straight’ (pretty poorly written screenplay), deal with this idea of accepting who you are and expressing this real you to others, but there are many films out there with this notion as their narrative trigger.

All examples I can think of, though, are non-Spanish films, which makes me wonder if there is any movies in Spain which deal with this subject matter as their main plot. I know that ‘Segunda Piel’  (’Second Skin’) deals with the idea of a man not coming out (and in fact being very much in the closet), a similar storyline to one of the subplots in ‘Más Que Amor, Frenesí’ (Not Love, Just Frenzy), while ‘Sobreviviré’ (I Will Survive), a beautiful movie which I truly recommend to everyone, actually deals with a different way of coming out, when a gay man falls in love with a woman, and has to come out as non-gay (at least for the period of time that he is with her). But I can’t find a movie solely based around the gay liberationalists’ idea of the necessity to come out publicly as a means to assert yourself.

Will keep investigating, though maybe, what we should look into is not so much as why Spanish cinema doesn’t have this as a narrative imperative in gay movies, but why it doesn’t feel the need to have it, and therefore maybe being more open about how they represent homosexual sexuality, where the need to establish that one is gay/lesbian is not needed or interesting, but rather what they do once that has already been established.

In the Introduction, his personal statement on why Alberto Mira himself does what he does for a living, etc, he comments a couple of things that I feel are quite interesting. He says that the gay adolescent doesn’t define himself only in terms of his homoerotic desire, but also in his fascination for certain type of woman (page 14). Mira explains that when young, he felt an interest in Natalie Wood, particularly in ‘Splendor in the Grass’ (1961). He also names Julie Andrews, Elizabeth Taylor or Shirley MacLaine. It is an interesting thought that, young gays, could not only define themselves by the fact that they are attracted to people from their same sex (and not only that they can see the aesthetic values of men, something which heterosexual men can do too, but also feel sexually attracted to them), but by the fact that they have a non-sexual fascination for strong women. Looking at different internet profiles, or talking to some of my gay friends, I can see a pattern of the kind of women we are talking about, since they quote Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, Grace Kelly, Angelina Jolie or Emma Thompson (this one my personal one) as the women they admire. They are all strong figures who, outside of a film, you have a sense could defend themselves easily, women who do what they want, when they want it, and are not scared of speaking their mind. Is this fascination for strong female characters an intrinsic ‘happening’ (in search of a better word) in all gay men?

He mentions (page 18) and I quote (and translate myself) ‘I am not the only gay that sees heterosexuality like a convention we need to escape from with our imagination’. Much has been discussed (and will be discussed here, in the future) about the need for the majority of gays to escape heterosexual do-ings, ie, monogamy, mariage, ’settled life’, kids, etc. Without going into this aspect of the quote, I am interested in the idea that we use our imagination as a way of escapism, therefore being more ‘creative’ with our lifestyle and our life choices. We use our imagination as part of our jobs, and there is a bigger number (though I haven’t done a census, so I’m not sure how accurate this is) of gay men who end up working in the art industry, than those that end up in the sciences world. Not saying it doesn’t happen, and I know a couple, but I have more friends working in media, marketing, films, or even social services, than those that work in banking or science research. And those who don’t work in the arts and social services, tend to, in their spare time, have some kind of creative hobbies, be it photography, writing… Therefore, even if their chosen career isn’t as ‘creative’ or ‘imagination-using friendly’ as they would like to, they still have their ways of escaping, and hiding behind a camera lense, or a computer keyboard.

Finally, and this isn’t very queer related, but I like it to be something to bear in mind whenever we talk about films here, I quote (page 23) and translate: ‘I will look at the text as a place where a series of potentialities that acquire a meaning with each reading, and not like a chain of fixed meanings, immutables and all-truth englobing. It’s not that Splendor in the Grass is a ‘gay movie’, but that to certain viewers it can be‘.

It is not that, from now on, any movie here discussed is a gay film, were the only valid reading is that one we find or analyse, but that some movies to some of us can be read as being gay, while other’s won’t see that reading. Also, meanings are not impossed by the movie itself (althogh I do believe that some meanings are intented by the filmmaker and therefore those might be more intune with what we should be reading out of it), and meanings can be, and should be created, by the reader him/herself, who uses any theoretical background he/she knows. As such, what we discuss here is our own interpretation of things. But, then again, isn’t that theory in general? One’s own interpretation of the world?

As part of my research, and also as a personal challenge to myself, I have decided to start this new project you have stumbled upon, this blog, as a means to express thoughts, ideas, suggestions that verse not only about Spanish Cinema, or Spanish Gay Cinema, for that matter, but anything that relates (even if in the slightest of manners) to my own thesis. I want this blog to be a place where it is not only I who digresses about my readings and academic writings but where you, the reader, participate in giving your own thoughts to the subject matters we will be discussing. You do not need to be in the academic world to participate, and I will appreciate any comment you want to share with us. Don’t ever be shy to express what you think of it all, nor to correct me if you think my views, my analysis, or my thoughts are wrong. Life is all about learning, and we can all help each other out.

It is, I must admit, a bit on the early stages, so I am not completely sure how this will work out, or if it will. I am hoping that ‘The Day The Earth Stood Gay’ will help me during my three year research, and though I will try to keep it as ‘academic’ as possible (in its writings and ideas), there is also space for the subjective opinion, or the fun observation.

As I mentioned before, though my research is in Spanish Gay Cinema, I do not want this website to be just about that. Talking about non queer theories is allowed, same with movies that are not from Spain. The Day The Earth Stood Gay is, if one ought to define it, a blog about cinema and homosexuality, in whatever way or form we want to explore it.

But enough of introductions, let us begin and see where this new project takes us. So buckle up, we are ready to go.