Mariana Thome | Straight A / 2016

the new pressures of coming out

by Douglas Messerli

 

Todd Lien (screenplay), Mariana Thome (director) Straight A / 2016 [9 minutes]

 

Straight A, like so many films featuring an Asian-American gay individual, concerns all the pressures society and family put upon a young man, in this case Alex Chen (played by screenwriter Todd Lien), who in order to get into a top college is participating in school politics and other organizations as well as managing to keep a straight-A grade level.

      Yet even these achievements are not enough for his demanding father (Nathan Chen) who now wants him to focus more on his college requirements and tests, and to focus less on his senior activities and, in particular, spend far few moments best friend, Kyle Miller (Zach Cramblit).

      The two begin the movie in bed together, a gay couple who have been going together now for 4 years, an occasion which Kyle celebrates with a gift of a ring. But how can Alex accept it, and more particularly, wear it when he has been challenged all his life to carry on the family name with a wife and child as well as finish a challenging education in medicine?

      Understandably, Kyle is angered that Alex has still not brought up the matter with his father and that they can only pretend to be friends when both feel a strong love between them. And after having to jump out of bed and play-act as good friends in the midst of studying when Alex’s father returns home, Kyle walks out, demanding some serious changes in their relationship.

      The Asian pressure on young gay men is well known and has been the subject of many of the films (short and feature) on which I have previously written. But what this film also made somehow clearer to me is just how so many young boys now feel pressured, having sexual affairs beginning in high school, to settle down with their high school lovers without even bothering to consider the issues of college and exploring other possible companions for life.

      It seems more than ironic that after fighting and winning marriage equality, gays, particularly young boys of 16-18 are now being asked to settle down into a monogamous relationship the way young heterosexual boys and girls were being pressured to do in the 1950s-1960s. Feminism liberated a lot of females from having to make such life-time decisions at such an early age. But gay rights now seemingly demand that young boys come out to their families, introduce them to their lovers, and settle down into a life-time relationship some time before the end of the senior high school year.

      Is it any wonder that Alex keeps describing all the pressures on his life, resenting, in particular the demands his father continues to make when he already the near-perfect son, or at least has aspired to be. But Alex’s father, in this case, is no monster.

      By the time Alex has dinner with his father and returns to his room, he notices the ring in its box is missing. He quickly rings up Kyle to see if he has taken it back, but there is no answer. And when he returns to the living room he observes his father speaking to his dead mother at their small home shrine to her, praising him to her, and praying to guidance to help him tell his son that he knows about the relationship. He has taken the ring to show it to the dead mother as evidence one presumes, and now hands it back to his son demonstrating his love and acceptance.

     Finally, the two, father and son, can openly communicate and reiterate their love for one another. But first Alex feels it necessary to clear up his boyfriend situation and runs off to Kyle’s house, openly kissing him in the doorway, proving that he’s finally come out.

       It’s fine as a story; the two boys can now openly share their love. Isn’t that what we elderly gay men wanted? Yet something in the pit of my stomach is churning, and I suggest poor Alex has yet further pressures facing him at age 17 that he shouldn’t have to deal with. Will these boys be going to the same university? Will they be able to sustain their relationship with all the various pressures and distractions of college life?  Mightn’t there be other young men who might have made for better mates or, might Alex or Kyle even end up preferring a single life?

      The happiness I am supposed to feel at the end of this, and so many other short films like it, is increasingly turning into a kind of generational angst. Why this hurry to rush into a relationship that demands a ring and life-time commitment? What happened to “playing the field,” to the process of learning above love, to all the fun that is often involved with open sexuality in youth. Coming out shouldn’t have to mean introducing your family to your future husband.

      I’m afraid the “coming out” film is now beginning to devolve into a wedding shower.

 

Los Angeles, August 3, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).