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myinnermonoblog:

My daughter recently checked out a book from the preschool library called “My Working Mom.” It had a cartoon witch on the cover. “Did you pick this book out all by yourself?” I asked her, trying to be nonchalant. Yes. We read the book, and the witch mother was very busy and sometimes reprimanded her daughter for messing things up near her cauldron. She had to fly away to a lot of meetings, and the witch’s child said something like “It’s hard having a working mom, especially when she enjoys her work.” In the heartwarming conclusion, the witch mother makes it to the child’s school play at the last second, and the witch’s child says she doesn’t like having a working mom but she can’t picture her mom any other way. I didn’t love it. I’m sure the two men who wrote this book had the absolute best intentions, but this leads me to my point. The topic of working moms is a tap-dance recital in a minefield.

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I confess that I absolutely love the movie Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. A lot actually. It isn’t the kind of movie I would generally love (I’m not into video games, not way into Michael Cera, and generally find that hipster mumblechic movies don’t age well. But Scott Pilgrim does it for me in a big way. It’s visually stunning,well edited, and isn’t overwhelmed by the conceit. It is absolutely fantastic, and if you haven’t seen it yet you need to.
One big draw for me is the character of Wallace Wells, played by Kieran Culkin. Wallace is kind of Michael Cera’s sidekick/mentor in his endeavors, and he is also gay. Typically gay characters in movies are scarf sporting cliches that take Katherine Heigel bra shopping and tell Sarah Jessica Parker advice about boys over cosmos. They tend to be capital F fabulous (Think those guys in He’s Just Not That Into You) Or they are just straight characters who get passed of as gay (Andy Samberg in I Love You, Man) Which is fine, there are definitely gay guys out the who love taking their gal pals on shopping sprees and telling them how to win over their hunky boss, and gay (and straight) guys who aren’t gay in any traditional sense except their attraction to men. But most gay guys fall somewhere in between.
Wallace isn’t a stock character. He’s masculine, a little grungy, and definitely likes guys. A lot. He’s a real person, he seems like someone you would actually know and like. And most importantly to me, Wallace and Scott are friends even though Wallace is gay and Scott is straight.Scott isn’t portrayed as particularly open minded or tolerant, they aren’t friends because Scott feels bad for Wallace and discovers that he’s actually a cool guy underneath it all. No, Scott and Wallace are friends like any other bros. You wouldn’t know it from watching re-runs of Will & Grace or the dreadful Sex and the City 2 (I’ll get to that in a bit), but gay guys have straight guy friends. It isn’t awkward and no one is worried that the gay guy will develop feelings for the straight guy, or the stright guy will become gay. They acknowledge each others romantic lives and advise and support. Which is to say (spoiler alert!) gay guys are real honest to Ellen people. This message is lost almost completely in mainstream media, which is really sad. It must stem from the fact that gay people aren’t involved in the entertainment industry don’t want to rock the boat and advance social tolerance and civil rights for gay men and women get wrapped up in being successful at the expense of the popular perception of gay culture.
(I actually get really upset about this, so pardon me if the following paragraph devolves into a bit of a rant.)
We live in a really unique time in terms of the gay rights movement. No doubt major progss has been made, thanks in no small part to the increased presence of gay characters on tv and in film. The social acceptance of gays is definitely present, especially among young people. And true, also, there have been major legislative advances on behalf of gay men and women. But the small but vocal resistance to gay rights left is still very very powerful and influential (mostly religious groups, but not always, and not all religious groups stand against gay rights by any means). If we want to advance gay people to the status of people, I have no doubt that we need to abolish this last group, and the best way to do that would be to show them that gays are actual people, who differ in terms of jurisprudence, religion, morality, family structure, background, and education. And that starts with showing them real gay people. What is so shameful about the way gays a portrayed in the media is the fact that gay men and women do, in fact, possess a ton of power with the industry. And yet, we are producing movies and tv shows that dont further gay rights at all. We play in to the cliches and expectations that homophobic people convey. I am not of the opinion that any presence of gay characters is better than none at all. Take Sex and the City 2 (this is where is gets really ugly for me). Writer/director Michael Patrick King had a relatively large and diverse audience base for the film. The existing audience for the franchise came fromnthe tv show and the success of the first film, and I can’t think of another film in which a gay wedding would be a-unsurprising and b-generally accepted. He could have made a case for gay marriage, and for the argument that gay weddings are essentially the same as straight weddings. Instead, he created an offensive, tacky, hackneyed catastrophe of a wedding. There was nothing recognizable as an actual wedding about the event. It was a stereotype, pure and simple. I’m sure there are gay men who would want the New York Gay Men’s chorus singing selections from Camelot as they walked down the aisle. And I’m sure there are couples who want nothing more than to have swans swimming peacefully under a garish amount of draped tule. I myself don’t know any such couples myself. And it makes me angry that King made Some of his audience think that was typical. (granted nothing about that film, from the $22,000/night hotel suites to the absurd social commentary and stoning to death of misogyny in the town square in Saudi Arabia was typical in the least). But still, the were mothers in Ohio who went to see that movie with their girlfriends and saw their first gay wedding, and it had to be that tweaked out mess. I wish King had made the wedding about how two guys were committing to each other, and starting a life together because they were love. Instead, the wedding was about pandering to gay sterotypes that no longer serve us. There are gay teenagers who have to come out to their parents and try to convince them that they aren’t really different, that their lives will be so similar to their straight siblings and friends as to make any difference in gender roles irrelevant. This would be a whole lot easier for them if their parents had seen a portrayal of a gay person living anything that resembled a normal life, rather than a decadent pansexual fairy (ha) tale.
I don’t know why we are stuck with Kurt from Glee (I thin Chris Colfer does a great job, and the character is very sympathetic, but he is hardly revolutionary. He is a teenage Jack from Will and Grace) .
I guess my point is this: Wallace Wells is a lot closer in temperament and outlook than any of the other characters I listed above. And Scott Pilgrim was written and directed by a straight guy, and based on a book by a straight author. Why on earth would gay persons wait for the passing enlightened heterosexual to create decent portrayals of gay people? We don’t really have time for that.