Connor Williams | Affection / 2020

sharing the love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Connor Williams (screenwriter and director) Affection / 2020 [6 minutes]

 

The cute gay couple at the center film are very much in love, attempting to decide how their relationship will progress. Luke (Spencer Claus) is obviously more comfortable with his sexuality, than Shawn (Justin Kang) who still has difficulty expressing public affection, having grown up in a more conservative Asian family.

     A small incident in which, as the two walk along the street, a man passes them muttering homophobic language in reaction to their holding hands, primarily defines the movie. Luke turns back to shout at the man, himself apparently using obscene and abusive language to tell the man off for his homophobia. Oddly enough his own words are muted, so the viewer can only imagine what he is saying. In Shawn’s mind, the whole street suddenly has their eyes peeled to the couple, as he attempts to calm down Luke.

      US director Connor William’s film argues through Luke’s defense of his actions that the stranger was making the scene, not Luke, and that he has every reason to defend himself. It is Shawn who is unable to accept public expression of who he is sexually. The fact that Shawn just wanted Luke to stop in his public outcry becomes an act of cowardice, an expression of closeted behavior in this short film.

       Luke accuses Shawn as being embarrassed, and from there on this short film puts all the weight on some rather inexplicable guilt that the young Asian man should feel for his desire for a more temperate expression of anger.

       Although I have certainly been a highly outspoken person all of my life, causing me to many a time be shouted down and censored, I fear that in this case I might agree with Shawn. Forgetting

the danger one puts oneself in calling out every homophobic offense made against gay men, there is simply the matter of the survival involved. Homophobes are certainly not very logical individuals and such a situation might easily turn violent. Shawn’s argument, that he is not denying Luke’s words or his feelings but simply reacting to his own violent expression of them, seems to me to be quite sane.

       Yet Williams’ work puts all the onus on Shawn, forcing him by film’s end to grant that Luke was right, to admit that he’s just not comfortable with pubic displays of love.

       Perhaps it is representative of the times in which I came of age. Although we were certainly open about our gay relationship, Howard and I, my husband in particular, felt uneasy about challenging so much of the general society which in the 1970s and 1980s were not all open-minded as polls suggest they are today. I wanted to make public challenges, but in the long-run I also realized that might have been pointless. Our love and its expression spoke for itself, kisses and hand-holding on the street not necessary to express our feelings. People could read it in our eyes, a hand laid across a shoulder. I’m pleased to see a resistance to that attitude in the figures making films today. Why should gay men and lesbians feel limited in where they chose to express themselves, particularly in a world where heterosexuals feel no such hesitations?

      Context, however, seems thrown to the winds in this work. Does one pick an argument with everyone who dismisses LGBTQ+ behavior? Does one endanger one’s life just to express one’s rights? Certainly, we need to speak out when necessary, but as Shawn hints he surely has more important things to do with his life that shout down every public idiot.

 

Los Angeles, December 17, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).