Douglas Messerli | Standing Up / Speaking Out [Introduction]

standing up / speaking out

by Douglas Messerli

 

In numerous gay films, particularly since Stonewall, we can observe individuals being brutalized by homophobic and just plain fearful heterosexuals or other closeted homosexuals attacking others out of their own self-hatred. All of these result in painful experiences for the usually young homosexuals trying to come to terms with their own sexuality, and often these attacks end in serious injury and sometimes even death.

     Yet, queerly, in very few of these films do the others around the bully do anything major to prevent his acts. Young girls sometimes attempt to quiet down their name-calling boyfriends, to qualm their testosterone-led attacks; but just as often they also participate. And other males—often

part of what might be described a gang-members with the bully representing their leader—generally join in for a psycho-sexual gangbang, or stand back quietly in the corners. Even the so-called nice boys and girls scurry away from such schoolhouse and schoolyard attacks, refusing to even slightly stand up to the bully or group of attackers. And over the years of observing these films I have increasingly come to wonder why these “other” folk, often making up the majority of the schoolyard crowds do not stand up and speak out for the gay student being abused, particularly given that we supposedly now live in a world where the newest Gallup poll (June 2022) indicates that 71% of the US population support gay marriage. Are high school students still so primarily sexually bigoted that they cannot bring themselves to call out open homophobia?

      Or, perhaps young and older gay filmmakers are exaggerating the situation just to make the point that gay bashing still exists. It’s far more dramatic, of course, to show a one-sided confrontation, and to present a world where the bully still rules than to explore the nuances of teen behavior or even the full range of adult homophobia which we all know prevails despite any of the positive statistics.

      A very few films, however, explore the contra-intuitive narrative in which friends, gay or heterosexual, or even strangers stand up to the bullies and speak their minds even while themselves fearing violence and/or social retribution. As early as 1980 even a straight bullied boy such as the fictional Clifford Peache determined since no one would readily come to his defense that he needed to hire a bodyguard, as director Tony Bill demonstrated in his My Bodyguard.

      Coincidence being so much a part of my experience, I encountered it yet again regarding this issue during a period of 2 days, happening upon four movies produced in 2012 and 2013. And, accordingly, I felt is useful to group these four short films, even though I am certain I have already written about others and will surely encounter further examples.

     The four films I discuss are the German-made works Jain, directed Marco Zanoni, and Christan Freitag’s Beat Beat Beat, British filmmaker Liang Hu’s film about Communist China’s phone monitoring, Listen, and Dutch directors Dylan and Lazlo Tonk Uitgesproken (Caged)

 

Los Angeles, December 14, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).