Closet-Dwellers of the Mind
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Published in: November-December 2004 issue.

 

THE MOST INSIDIOUS FORM of anti-gay representation is not in religious broadcasting—which speaks only to the converted—but in seemingly gay-positive films and videos. It’s not just that Will of Will & Grace is never allowed to have a boyfriend or that “the Fab Five” in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy have no life of their own except as they can serve straight men—all of which has been generally discussed. The danger comes from a strange inversion in recent movies and television shows whereby the only people who have trouble with homosexuality are gay men. Straight people are presented as perfectly relaxed about it; it is the gay men who for unexplained reasons are not able to deal with their sexuality. There is no homophobia except in their own minds.

The worst offender on television seems to me to be the otherwise exemplary Six Feet Under. To be sure, one of the episodes in the first season depicts a young man murdered by homophobic thugs, a murder that impels David to tell his fellow deacons at his up-tight church that he’s gay. But David’s sexual paralysis seems to be his own doing. His brother tries to set him up with a guy and claims to have “gaydar,” a term that offends David. His sister couldn’t be less interested in what he does in bed. His mother, after she’s inadvertently told that her son is gay, tries to get him to talk about it after reading the requisite books for parents. This scene of the understanding parent and the silent, tormented child is one that’s played over and over again. Of course, in real life some parents are more accepting of homosexuality than their children. Andrew Holleran has written about how his mother attempted to broach the subject even as he vehemently rejected any attempts to discuss it. But this is the only case I know of in literature. Still, one would think from the media that all parents are pflag members long before their children come out to them. In the same episode, David’s African-American policeman boyfriend Keith is assigned by his superior to restrain homophobic protestors at the gay man’s funeral. Although black and gay, Keith finds only acceptance on the LA police force, which is not generally regarded as a bastion of tolerance and understanding.

The strangest example of this phenomenon is the film Big Eden, which concerns Henry, a successful New York painter, who rushes back to Big Eden, Montana, when his grandfather has a stroke. After the Widow Thayer fails to interest him in any of the unwed women in the area, she assumes the obvious, and without missing a beat throws a big party for all the gay men she knows—which are quite a few. The town watches with tender solicitude a little circle game that develops. Pike, the Native-American owner of the town’s general store (no economic hardship there), is in love with Henry, and all the guys who hang out at the store do their best to forward the romance. Henry, however, is in love with Dean, his high school best friend, who, although he loves Henry, has no sexual desire for him. He regrets this failing because his children are terribly attached to Henry, who would make an excellent mother to them. Henry’s grandfather would like to see Henry settle down with a partner before he dies, but Henry won’t even tell him that he’s gay, though his aunt assures him that his grandfather already knows and approves.

And it’s not Henry alone who’s hung up on being gay. Pike also is unable to deal with his sexuality despite the fact that everyone—and I mean everyone in this small-town Montana community—would like to see him and Henry get it on. Even when Dean and Henry dance together at the Fourth of July celebrations, no one bats an eye. Big Eden is a gay paradise, but the only people who seem not to notice are the two gay men in its midst. (The two lesbian characters, who are a couple, seem entirely integrated into the community.)

Big Eden makes several references to Henry’s years in therapy, and it’s clear that he’s quite a mess. Hung up on straight men, he can’t even tell his wonderfully understanding grandfather that he’s gay. He has trouble with doors, and his lack of physical co-ordination mirrors his psychic discomfort with the world. Pike is worse. He appears to have had one electroshock treatment too many and spends most of the movie as a virtual zombie, unable to speak or even move.

What can we make of this pattern of laid-back straight people and hung-up gay men? I suppose this plot device serves the fantasies of the intended audiences for these shows—gay viewers and cool straight ones. For gay people, these representations promote the idea that their families and immediate communities are loving and supportive. Sure, there are “homophobes,” wacko frat boys, and stuffed-up elderly men—but as President Bush likes to remind us, there are always a few bad apples and they shouldn’t be mistaken for a systemic problem. Straight people can be reassured that they are really good people, full of tolerance and understanding for their less fortunate gay friends and relatives.

But the insidious part of this representation is the implication that homophobia really exists only in the heads of gay people. Now our maladjustment isn’t one of sexual object choice; it’s a form of paranoia. We alone feel that there’s something wrong with being gay. Homophobia is in our deep fantasy, and it is the loving, tolerant, long-suffering straight environment that will help us come to terms with this derangement. How comforting this must be to the straight audience; how it lets them off the hook! It’s the same argument that’s used to convince black people that the only racists are the ones in their imagination. Or it is used with women, who are told that sexism is all in their minds. Your oppression is an illusion that you must overcome. It’s a subtle form of blaming the victim, because it’s the victim who is his or her own oppressor. In the end, a feel-good movie like Big Eden will make you feel bad. You’ll ask yourself, How was I such a jerk to think there were people who didn’t accept me? But, of course, you weren’t such a jerk at all. Once again, it is we who are sick, this time not because we’re gay but because we have this delusion that others are against us.

This fantasy of a world of acceptance, where homophobia is a thing of the past, finds its way into the treacly adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel A Home at the End of the World, whose screenplay Cunningham wrote as well. The story concerns Bobby, a boy stalked by the grim reaper. First he contributes to his brother’s accidental death, and then, before he’s out of high school, both of his parents die. He’s adopted by the parents of his best friend Jonathan, with whom he performs mutual masturbation. (Bobby has a surprisingly low libido—or perhaps not surprising given the level of morbidity around him—but an insatiable need for affection.) Later, he joins Jonathan in a communal home that includes Claire (who loves Jonathan but finds a stud in Bobby), Rebecca (her child by Bobby), and—in the novel but not the film—Erich (Jonathan’s ex-boyfriend who is dying of AIDS).

The film is aglow with acceptance and affection. Jonathan’s parents embrace Bobby into their family when Bobby is orphaned. Jonathan’s mother (luminously played in the film by Sissy Spacek) is a model of acceptance, first when she catches the boys getting stoned and later when she finds Bobby and Jonathan jerking each other off in the car. Jonathan is not so cool about the latter event. Claire is disappointed that Jonathan, the love of her life, is gay and thus not really father material. But she seems perfectly happy to take Bobby as sloppy seconds—and who wouldn’t be, with Colin Farrell in the role? At their dream house in upstate New York, she watches Jonathan and Bobby dancing together and decides to pack her bags and leave them both forever, taking Rebecca with her.

One of the chief weaknesses of the film and the novel is making sense of Claire’s decision to leave this “home at the end of the world.” In the novel, her motivation, while far from convincing, is somewhat comprehensible. Listening to her daughter babbling on, Claire wonders, What if she came into her full consciousness just as Erich died and Jonathan started to get sick? What would it do to the child if her earliest memories revolved around the decline and eventual disappearance of the people she most adored? In the novel, Claire is acting on what she regards, at least in her own mind, as the child’s best interests, although clearly she’s suffering from some form of delayed AIDS panic. The novel A Home at the End of the World, which was published in 1990 and so reflects the full horrors of the pandemic, is concerned not only with AIDS panic but with homophobia as well. Erich comes to live with Bobby, Jonathan, and Claire because, as he puts it, “My family’s written me off.” His sister calls but won’t come up to his apartment because she fears her kids could catch the disease.

All of this is missing from the film. Erich is dropped from the story. Jonathan tells Bobby he fears he has AIDS and Bobby, after trying to deny that anything is wrong, accepts it with the same composure that he’s shown after all the deaths that have dogged his young life. In the movie, Claire doesn’t know that Jonathan is sick—she merely leaves when she realizes that Bobby is as attached to Jonathan as he is to her. There’s no homophobia, no AIDS panic, no maternal concerns for Rebecca’s well-being. A Home at the End of the World is a work pathologically attached to niceness. No one is allowed to show the slightest streak of meanness. The characters’ one weakness is to leave when they feel unwanted.

The book and movie luxuriates in AIDS revisionism. If you watched only this film, you’d think there had never been any rejection of people with AIDS. The world is merely one big hug in which sometimes people just have to go off by themselves for a while. A Home at the End of the World promotes a “Teletubbies” dreamland in which the sun sets in Technicolor on a landscape where all disharmony is entirely erased. It’s the type of fantasy that might lead the unsuspecting to believe that Dick Cheney really believes in equality.

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