heterosexual hysteria about a gay love affair
by Douglas Messerli
Martin Guigui, Menahem Golan and Evgeny Afineevsky
(screenplay), Evgeny Afineevsky (director) Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!! / 2009
This comic movie is also what I might describe as a
film of heterosexual gay hysteria, which is hard to imagine even being produced
in the 21st century, when gay marriages along with a general acceptance of gay
behavior were assumed. But somehow some movie directors of the period didn’t
get the message, and Evgeny Afineevsky’s film, starring the generally watchable
but always exaggerated Lainie Kazan playing Shirley Hirsh, whose son Nelson (John
Lloyd Young) has just announced that he is seeing someone is the perfect
example, along with her husband, who together become the full expression of
true queer hysteria.
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Of course, in the heteronormative world of
Shirley and Martin (Saul Rubinek) it has to be a woman, and worried about what
kind of female her son has picked out (she has forgotten to even ask if she is
Jewish), Shirley soon pays a visit to her son’s apartment, finding a man,
Angelo Ferraro (Jai Rodriguez) there instead of a
woman. To protect his lover, Angelo announces that he is Nelson’s decorator,
and when their mutual friend, Sybil Williams (Shelly Burch) arrives to take a
bath in Nelson’s Jacuzzi, Shirley naturally assumes the Playpen model of the
month is Nelson’s new girlfriend.
Her
husband Martin, although amazed, is absolutely delighted, and now has a new
fantasy given the magazine his wife has laid out before him. Queer dysphoria
has seldom been made so obvious. Where does Nelson go from here? Uncle Mosiha (Eddie
Levi Lee) immediately appears and asks it Martin is already going to the
toilet. Shirley claims the magazine as her own, and Moshia suggests that she
take it away if she wants her husband to do some work in the plant. Unhappy
relationships are at the heart of Jewish families.
It’s the usual problem in standard comedic films, money versus love.
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Meanwhile, we discover that Martin’s uncle Max (Carmen Electra) is a
kind of transgender being who is still married to his sister, who he bought, as
he claims, “on wholesale.”
Nelson
attempts to tell his mother telephonically that his real love is Angelo,
without success, given her selfishly driven view of life, her own attempts at
remaining young and her simple refusal to hear her son’s statements, her “supersizing
day cream” being of far more importance. Again and again he attempts to tell
her he’s gay, but each time she interrupts. There is no way of getting beyond
the force of her motherly, fully heterosexually-demanding love. Even she,
however, announces, given her incompetent servants, that she is hysterical. “I
love you, I love you, I love you, bye bye,” says it all.
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We
can’t quite forgive Martin and Shirley their endless social, religious, and
personal dilemmas, even if they gradually work their way out to acceptance.
Nor
can Angelo forgive his own lover’s reservations, and his reluctance to invite
him to the family wedding, where they might announce their relationship. Finally,
Nelson agrees to let his lover come to the family wedding where supposedly his
domineering mother will announce her son’s relationship with his non-existent
girlfriend Sybil. Even Nelson’s attempt to tell his mother that he is bringing
someone “very special” to the wedding is drowned out by her own selfish assumptions.
There appears no way to get beyond her force of powerful discourse. If she
might ever stop talking long enough to hear others, her world would be crushed.
Shirley
is convinced he’s bringing Sybil to the wedding, and argues that if he is
serious about her, they need to be serious about her as well. So what if Moshia
falls in a faint on the floor, and her husband Martin is out of a job. If her
son is happy, they’re happy.
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But
they’re disconcerted when Nelson brings his “decorator,” who has even created
his own rainbow yarmulke. We have entered another world which no one in the
synagogue has quite yet imagined. But Nelson’s sister quickly recognizes her
brother’s relationship, particularly when Angelo grabs Nelsons’s hand as the
married couple slip on their mutual rings. And finally in the
Drunkenness and general family chaos follows as his parents attempt to
assimilate the “problem.” Immediately, they start blaming one another for their
son’s,” predilections” citing their uncles and cousins as example of perhaps
men who didn’t prefer to marry, the usual miscomprehension of parents suddenly
faced with a gay child. My own parents, so I was told by my sister, came back
from my own coming out ceremony wondering whether or not having dropped me as a
child made me gay, or whether or not some ancient car accident when my mother
was pregnant might have caused the “illness.” In other words, it was a disease,
a condition that needs to be explained instead of a natural phenomenon that
might be accepted. My parents were troubled idiots from 1970; but these
individuals from 2009 might have been imagined to have matured into a greater
awareness, but evidently not.
In the
midst of proving his virility, Martin finally fucks his wife after many a long
year. But what that says about the subject at hand, their gay son, I have no
idea. It’s still another example of heterosexual hysteria. Okay, he can, if
only he would, still shtup his wife. Glad to know it. But the film has gone far off track, or
perhaps is simply expressing its terror of gay relationships.
And now
Martin is even terrified to be in an elevator with a gay man. I guess we’re
supposed to sympathize with his situation, but at this point Afineevsky’s film
has grown into such a homophobic disaster than I can’t quite deal with it. Does
his character feel that he’s being attacked by a gay man for even sharing a
small, overloaded elevator stuffed with mean executives, given that a paisley
frocked gay boy exists within? Perhaps gayness is a significant force to with
which straights have to adapt or, at least, accept as being among them. Even
his dominant wife realizes that her husband has truly become homophobic, and
demands he enter a gay bar to “face his fears.”
Inevitably, several young and older men are perfectly happy to flirt
with our recalcitrant anti-hero, who covers his tracks by suggesting he’s
simply there for research. But Skip, another elderly patron, would like being
Martin’s “bicycle seat,” at which point Martin attempts to escape the bar only
to discover his brother-in-law Max amongst the crowd. And in the bathroom it
cuts even closer to the heart when a drag queen, a fellow-office worker
Noodleman, recognizes him. Martin has floated down into a rabbit hole from
which there is no escape, people from his own long normative-life popping up to
remind him that his world is not the only vision possible.
In a fit
of his own hysteria, Martin admits that his son is not like any other others.
Perhaps he simply doesn’t understand women, since for most men they make so
sense whatever. Which, of course makes no sense at all to Shirley. We have now
entered another planet, wherein even heterosexual couples cannot explain their
relationships, as Martin attempts to recall his gay encounters, it was “kind of
exciting,” forbidden and enticing, the world all gays know it to be. For the
first time in his life Martin has awakened into another world which he cannot simply
comprehend. “It was uncomfortable and weird, but it was also erotic.” Yes. Yes.
That is the gay world indeed which Martin has suddenly discovered, suddenly
singing out “I’m a gay man.”
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Shirley’s response, “This is all happening to somebody else,” a true
sign of total unease and displacement.
But oddly enough, Shirley is determined to go into her son’s life and
learn to live with it, not the lesson you receive from so many other films. She
might be a control freak, but she is also loving and caring and desirous of
understanding something outside of her narrow purviews. So, in a sense we
forgive the overbearing woman she is, as she and her husband both struggle to
comprehend who their son might be in a world they never imagined.
But the
gay jokes still continue as Noodleman meets ups with Martin again in the office
elevator, whispering, “I didn’t know, you sneaky little devil you.” Like a
Dantean world Martin is meant to suffer all his fears and doubts. This is after
all, despite its generally caring message, still a work of gay hysteria.
Shirley, in all of her endlessly good
intentions, introduces her husband to the head of The National Society for Gay
People. Despite their good intentions, he admits he feels “shocked,”
“disappointed,” “horrified,” summarizing it as “a nightmare for our family.” Clearly,
even the erotic experiences at the gay bar have done nothing to relieve his
homophobic horror. And by this point in the movie, I have to admit, this
terrified couple is frankly getting on our nerves. My parents behaved
similarly, and frankly never fully accepted the reality of my life, but fortunately
I didn’t have to live with their own tortures to which this film keeps
demanding we attend. Such close-minded people should be left in peace for their
own ridiculous inabilities to accept another human being for his own existence,
but this film can’t let up—at least not yet. Making everything worse, Uncle Moshia
appears at that very moment, Martin, in total despair, inviting him into their
impossible conversation.
When
they ask him about sex, Moshia immediately suggests the boys should go to a
whorehouse to fulfill their sexual needs. “There is nothing healthier than a
healthy hooker for a healthy sex life style.” The comedic situation becomes
even more misogynistic when he suggests that “girls should be encouraged to stay
virgins until they are married,” a proposition to which the gay boys easily
agree. Even Martin has to admit he’s pretending to be on another planet at this
moment.
In the
next scene we see the now quite recalcitrant parents ringing the doorbell of
their son’s apartment, having brought orchids to Angelo. The parents don’t at
all like Angelo’s wonderful canapes nor Angelo’s brilliant main dishes. They
drink plenty of wine, thanking him for his terrific meal, but finally and
painfully their son Nelson attempts to explain who he might be to his parents:
‘How can I explain to you what I am what I am any
better than I can explain what you are?” That is perhaps the most profound
statement one might make to one’s parents. “You have to understand, this has
nothing to do with you. I am who I am, probably since I was born….I don’t feel
I have to be dishonest with myself just so you two can feel comfortable.”
When his
mother challenges him about how does he know, Nelson explains that his
relationship with Angelo is not his first one, and he simply knows now who he
is. Now his father is perhaps even more disturbed and wants to have a few
private moments with his son. He takes him to a local sports bar where he
thought they were always “on the same page,” but Nelson makes it clear that
they were in different books, his father enjoying the sports game, while he
always like the “players.” His father, probably similar to my own father if he
could have expressed his feelings, suggests that if he might have opened up to
him earlier, they might “have fixed this.” But Nelson makes it clear, that was
precisely why he didn’t come to him earlier, “I’m not broken.” He points to the
soccer players, saying you know some of those guys are gay, the only thing
that’s broken is that they can’t come out.
Yet the
parents in this film are still unable to come to terms with their son’s
sexuality. They seek out a doctor Herman, whose wisdom consists of normative blanket
of comfort, blaming yet again the mother for her lack of attentiveness, and the
child replacing his mother with his father. Bad Freudian psychotherapy that is,
in fact, totally nonsense. Even Shirley suggests “if you ever go back to med
school, I’ll pay for it.”
Still
not accommodated to the sexuality of his son, Martin calls up Sybil, you
remember her, the Playpen model, to encourage her to have sex with his son. She
argues that it’s truly impossible since he’s gay, but Martin still can’t quite
assimilate the situation, and the encounter turns into his own sexual
compulsion as he attempts to have sex with her, which again reveals his own frustrations,
related, of course, to his inability to accept his own son’s sexual
orientation.
As she
leaves Martin’s office, she runs into Uncle Moshia who recognizes her as the
gift of God’s beauty. She quickly kisses him and escapes, describing him as “a
real man,” whatever that might mean in this endless confusion and
misunderstanding of sexuality.
After
all we’ve been through, Shirley wants to meet with Angelo’s parents, another
entire dimension that I’m not sure this already hysterical film needed to prove
its point. But here we are with Angelo’s father suggesting he has no desire to
meet “the other parents,” and his wife arguing that it is nice gesture. We
already know we are entering a territory in which there is no turning back.
But
where can they meet? The Ferraros are terrified of any Italian restaurant where
they might be seen by friends, the Hirschs afraid of any Chinese restaurant
where they would be recognized. Shirley doesn’t like raw food, so a sushi place
is out of the question. Besides the Vietnamese, the Korean, and the Thais are
excluded because they all buy from the Hirsch’s. They finally settle on a
Russian restaurant, which serves only vodka.
The two
women, mothers of Angelo and Nelson, share photographs, while the reluctant
fathers wait for their drinks, not at all seemingly interested on the youth of
their own now lost sons. But the men, almost in competition, bring out their
own pictures of their sons engaging in sports. Their patriarchal interests
become immediately apparent until it breaks down into Nelson as a cheerleader,
Angelo playing a character in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of
Julius Ceasar in what Martin describes as a skirt. Their macho world is gradually
falling apart before their very eyes as they realize their “boys” where already
moving into a world which they themselves could not easily embrace.
Their
meet-up does not end amicably. Little in this hysterical film ends up with a
reasonable possibility. Shirley returns home ready to put her face into a gas
oven, although they have only an electric stove. Angelo and Nelson seek an
island where they will be free, although Angelo reminds him that there are no
islands like that.
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But in the last segments the two men are on
TV as one of the first same-sex couples demanding rights to adopt a child. When
they meet with local objections, both families leap into the fray to help their
sons, and together, the Hirschs and the Ferraros finally are joined in a battle
that is far more important than their regrets and problematics. Finally, they
become proud grandparents of a new generation, the men smoking cigars in reward
of the successful adoption of the child by Nelson and Angelo as if they had
just concluded a mafia deal. That is, in fact, the height of the hysteria that
this film felt was needed to take its audience into the embracement of a simple
relationship between two men. Forget it, Mr. Afineevsky, I might argue. We have
all mostly been there long before you imagined it.
Los Angeles, March 16, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (March 2025).
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