Douglas Messerli | Two Films of Gay Hysteria / 2025

two films of gay hysteria

by Douglas Messerli

 

Before I even begin this essay, I want to make clear that in using the word “hysteria” I am not at all referring to what dictionaries now refer to as “the old fashioned term for a disorder characterized by neurological symptoms often accompanied by exaggeratedly or inappropriately emotional behavior, originally attributed to disease of injury of the nervous system and later though to be functional or psychological in origin,” and usually applied to women and gay men. My use of the word is the general contemporary and modern use of the word to suggest an “exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement.”

     In this case, I am speaking about two movies—long after the mythical gay enlightenment of Stonewall, in both cases using as their excuse a period before that event—whose characters behave in a manner that seems so alien to the conditions of 2009, when both of these films appeared, that it creates a kind of conundrum for someone like me, well versed in gay cinema, why they were even made.

    In both films there is an exaggerated sense of behavior in a time in which Howard and I had easily come out as a couple and that films were being made that showed an entirely different view of the gay world than in 2009 I can’t quite even recognize the issues they attempt to bring up. Granted, Howard and I lived in a privileged world of university life, surrounded by liberal friends. In fact, our entire lives, even later in the museum world and for me in the university, protected us from having to face the general prejudices of US society, despite my own parents’ inability to quickly adjust. But if these films are to be believed, and I suspect they are outrageous exaggerations, in which the only worlds that Stonewall effected were small communities in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other urban areas. The rest of the world remained terrified by the realities of gay life. Perhaps I simply missed out knowing that reality. But why suddenly in 2009 did Evgeny Afineevsky in Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay! and female director Gwen Wynne in her film Wild About Harry feel compelled to remind us of this fact? Wynne, in particular has been an outspoken champion of “unspoken” stories and an important supporter of gay causes. And Israeli director Afineevsky has made several important documentaries on how divorce effects children, and other perfectly reasonable films. One has to wonder what was in the air in 2009 to make both directors dabble in a kind of hysteria that roars through these films. Barack Obama had just been inaugurated as President. History had been made as the first black man became our nation’s leader.

     Did these intelligent forces suddenly feel, accordingly, the need to go back in time and reveal what it was like before such a new force? Having no way to properly explain it, I have just noted it, almost as an aside. Neither film is brilliant, and neither of these films offers anything really new in its perspectives. But they both, quite similarly, bring up familiar reactions far out of whack with what seems to have been the truth of the times, and was certainly not at all of great interest to 2009 audiences.

 

Los Angeles, March 19, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).