Tyson FitzGerald | The Bash / 2013

courage

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tyson FitzGerald (screenwriter and director) The Bash / 2013 [6 minutes]

 

A gay couple Luis (Ka'ramuu Kush) and Chris (Shawn Carter Peterson) exit a movie theater, having just attended a revival showing of Sidney Lumet’s 1978 film The Wiz. The movie was great, “It’s a classic,” responds Luis, but he’s still pissed.

    He’s angry about Chris’ uptight feelings about showing any affection in public. “Would it kill you to hold my hand in a movie theater?” He asks his companion. 

     “I sat right next to you. I’m sure we bumped elbows at some time.”

     Luis is not amused. “Sometimes I don’t think you even give a shit about me.”

     Chris observes that there were people sitting right to next them, and he, of the old school, doesn’t like to be so “obvious.”

     But Luis makes the problem clear: “Obvious? We’re two dudes going to a midnight screening of Diana Ross of The Wiz. I hate to break it to you, but I think the secret’s out.”

     Chris is embarrassed even to have such a discussion in public. Afraid, as Luis puts it, that a homeless person might know that he sucks dick.

      Pulling him into an alley to continue the discussion, Chris only proves his reticence to reveal his sexuality in any public setting. But there’s something deeper about Chris’ embarrassment we realize when Luis argues that it’s been two years and he still hasn’t met Chris’ mother.

       Almost as suddenly, Tyson FitzGerald’s comedy, however, turns into real drama, as a group of three hoods standing at the end of the alley, clap for their performance, ready to do them in for being fags. Before the two can even begin to try to finesse their way out of the situation, punches

are pulled, as our queer friends begin being beaten to a pulse. And soon see even worse about to happen as Derek (Reggie Watkins), the group letter, gets hit, and plans serious revenge as he picks up a heavy piece of lumber.

       FitzGerald quite brilliantly turns everything briefly into slow motion as Chris, seeing that his lover is about to be clubbed and possibly killed in the process, immediately finds out what doctors have long told us about cortisol and adrenaline.*

     In a second, Chris is able to slug off the punk holding him down and rush over to attack Derek, forcing him to drop the club, while Luis pushes away his attacker and grabs a stone hitting Derek in the head and knocking him out. Now, with the plank in his hand he is about to strike his attacker again until Chris calls out to him to stop.

     The two check up on one another, apologize for their stupid argument, and holding on to one another stumble out of the alley and off in the other direction to their car.

    Every year homophobia, expressed in precisely this manner and worse through guns, results in numerous hospitalizations and deaths. In 2021, for example, there were 617 anti-gay male hate crimes, 530 mixed anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, 205 anti-transgender attacks, and 161 anti-lesbian incidents, making LGBTQ bashing one of the worst of the hate crimes in the US.

      Accordingly, it’s hard to not want to applaud went, as in this short film, the queer men successfully fight off their bashers. Yet we know this rarely happens in real life, and when it does, as in the 1998 film by P. J. Castellaneta, Relax…It’s Just Sex—wherein the character named Vincey, also temporarily maddened by a mix of alcohol, adrenalin, and horniness, grabs a knife in the middle of just such attack by gay bangers and demands the white boy he’s captured to pull down his pants so that he can fuck him—it results in almost complete alienation from all of his fellow gay friends.

      In Bash there’s no sense of dread, guilt, or even the need to call the police to report the incident, as Chris and Luis simply walk away, having, as in a Western, left the villains in the dust.

      This film seems to have forgotten it’s more important theme. Why hasn’t Chris been able to express his gay love and why hasn’t he taken Luis home to introduce him to his mom? If they have found their “courage,” they seem to have forgotten the lessons of the brain and heart. Macho is the problem, not the solution, so the Cowardly Lion learns. But in all the horror and fear of the situation, FitzGerald apparently has turned, just like his characters, in a different direction.

 

*Northwestern Medicine tells us: “Fear is experienced in your mind, but it triggers a strong physical reaction in your body. As soon as you recognize fear, your amygdala (small organ in the middle of your brain) goes to work. It alerts your nervous system, which sets your body’s fear response into motion. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released. Your blood pressure and heart rate increase. You start breathing faster. Even your blood flow changes — blood actually flows away from your heart and into your limbs, making it easier for you to start throwing punches, or run for your life. Your body is preparing for fight-or-flight.”

 

Los Angeles, May 23, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024)