crossing the divide
by
Douglas Messerli
Over
the past several years I have been on the lookout for films which might reveal
whether or not the process of young gay and lesbian people “coming out” was
truly easier that it had been for my now agèd generation. Obviously, the young
people in films made after 1990, for example, have a large advantage in simply
knowing that there are other LGBTQ people out there, even if they have never
met them. And, in general, cultures have grown more open to gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and—far more slowly—transgender individuals and their expressions of
love.
Yet, over all, it appears that most
contemporary filmmakers perceive the process of a young man of age 16 or 17
coming to terms with a minority sexual bent to be as difficult an undertaking
as it has been decades earlier, and sometimes as in Olivier Lallart’s 2019
French film PD (Fag) or US
director Scott Sullivan’s 2020 short Red, things had grown even more difficult
for young LGBTQ people simply because they were more easily identified by their
peers and open about their sexual differences. Even young people who had not
yet come to terms with their sexuality were more likely to be defined as
“different” by their fellow dominant normative peers. Conversely, if I may have
been perceived as queer while growing up I was never described as a “fag” and
completely cut off from my fellow classmates; my differences may have caused me
to shy away from them since I did not find many of their social activities
compatible with my interests, but I was never completely shunned. And I
enjoyably shared their company when it came to activities such as playing in
the band, singing in the chorus, debating, and performing in dramas.
In my generation, moreover, there was a
kind of shell of innocence that if one did not quite yet identify as being gay,
it freed one from commitment to or relationship with an unwilling or
self-hating closeted individual such as we see in Red and numerous other
post-80s “coming out” films. By the time I actually “came out” in college, long
after others seeking a gay high school sexual partner, I found dozens already
in waiting, so my experience may not be typical. And I also recognize given the
hormonal changes of adolescence, particularly in today’s highly sexualized
environment, it is far more difficult to keep one’s sexual urges on hold.
That does not mean, moreover, that I
didn’t fantasize about others in my formative years; perhaps I was the gay boy
so closeted that others were frustratedly thwarted by my behavior. I can
imagine one such instance. And I know for certain that I was the cause of
frustration to a couple of heterosexual girls, something that isn’t fully
represented in film but might be a fascinating topic of ancillary importance to
LGBTQ filmmakers: “how does the rejection of a gay boy or lesbian truly effect
their straight counterparts who have fallen in love without knowing about their
“other’s” sexual urges.” What does loving a gay man and woman mean for a
heterosexual girl or boy when she or he discovers the truth? Surely hurt and
anger cannot be the only emotional scars. Does such a relationship ever result
in an investigation of a straight person’s own sexuality? It can’t be that only
gay men and women feel the necessity of pondering those issues.
Nonetheless, I have noticed some
evidence that the whole process of “coming out” in queer cinema is becoming in
some instances a non-issue; and perhaps the “B” pattern of “coming out”
films—boy falls in love with boy as they struggle to come to terms with the
fact within themselves and in relationship to their peers and family—will soon
transmogrify into something quite different. Increasingly, for example, I have
noticed a great number of short and even feature films dealing with individuals
who find the process less a personal problem or even a concern with those of
their own generation, than it is a frightening standoff between them and their
parents and older relatives, perhaps another variation of the genre—a
phenomenon I shall soon have to explore since the resultant pain this causes is
still quite significant. And their companions, unlike those of the previous
generations, are far less tolerant about those who determine in connection with
their families to remain in the closet.
At the same time, however, I have also
noticed there have been a number of recent gay short films released in which,
if there are any problems at all, it has less to do with sexual difference than
it has with other desires and impediments unrelated of the LGBTQ identity.
Perhaps the generational problem I note above might almost be seen to also be
an extracurricular concern, despite its significant effect upon the
individual’s sexual transition. But in several of these new films there seems
to be utterly no major impediment regarding sexual identification and desire.
I have already written about a few of
these films, some examples being US director Brian Tognatti’s Just Ask Him
(2020); Icelandic director Runar Þór Sigurbjörnsson’s Hann (Him)
(2018); Dutch director Jiels Bourgonje’s Turn It Around (2017); US
director Ly Tran’s Rose Canyon (2017); and earlier, the comic “coming
out” farce by French filmmaker Françoise Decaux-Thomelet, Enceinte ou
lesbienne? (Pregnant or Lesbian?) (1996). One might describe these
films as simply a matter of coming to recognize the new openness, sometimes
resolved with a simple change of a pronoun in describing one’s desires.
Arguably, there is even a sub-genre
already developing around these films that proposes that “coming out” is
nothing of great significance with a little help of the older generation. In at
least five works I’ve observed young men of ages from 14 to17 who have been
perfectly ready and willing to jump into the sack with someone of the same sex,
but can evidently find only mature men who are ready to kiss and make proper
love to them as opposed to simply shyly exploring their bodily territories;
these youngsters are clearly beyond the touching-feeling-masturbatory exercises
played out in school toilets, bedroom sleepovers with friends, or gropes in
their classmates’ autos. US director Lawrence Ferber’s Birthday Time
(2000), Norwegian directors Jan Dalchow and Lars Daniel Krutzkoff Jacobsen’s Fremragende
Timer (Precious Moments) (2003), Australian director Jonathan Wald’s
What Grown-Ups Know (2004), Danish director Christian Tafdrup’s En
forelskelse (Awakening) (2008), Danish director Lasse Nielsen’s Happy
Birthday (2013) and Dutch director Vincent Fitz-Jim’s TommyTeen18
(2017), all concern young boys absolutely ready to make the leap into total gay
sexual pleasure the moment they turn of legal age or are accepted by older men
as lovers.
If these films present new difficulties
and barriers to be dealt with, at least they have little to do with the
confusion of sexual identity and the individual’s inability to accept his
burgeoning desires. If in our time of cultural hysteria concerning all things
to do with pedophilia clinical psychologists have been chary of and even
punished for exploring the idea that on many occasions it is the younger
underage individual who encourages the elder to enter into sex. Yet LGBTQ
filmmakers have repeatedly suggested that this was precisely what happens,
their characters having few second thoughts about engaging in sex with older
men.**
Sometimes far more difficult for a young
person suddenly discovering that he or she is sexually and emotionally drawn to
members of the same gender, particularly in small towns but even sometimes in
larger schools, is that there is no one immediately to turn to for either
support or, even more importantly, for sexual exploration. Some cannot even
find another gay person of their same age. In a class of about 140 students, I
was long convinced that there was not another gay person among my peers.* Is it
any wonder then that often individuals look to older people who they might
identify as possibly being homosexual to help them not only to comprehend what
their feelings mean or if they might arouse such feelings in others, but to
understand how to fully engage in same-sex situations. It may seem a strange
question, but it’s an inevitable one when there are no models: what do you do
in to show your love in gay sex? As a commentator in Nic Sheehan’s 1985
documentary No Sad Songs noted, as a gay man you come to learn what many
straight men never do, that you have an anus. Exploring gay sex with an older
boy, the young hero of David Moreton’s Edge of Seventeen (1998) is
pleasantly shocked to find himself being “rimmed” during one of his first gay
sex encounters. Young boys often need help in coming out even if they have
learned to accept their sexuality. The joys and pleasures of homosexuality has
not yet made it into many classrooms.
*I have
since discovered that at least one of my female classmates has long been in a
lesbian relationship and one of my male friends in my class at least
experimented with a gay relationship.
**I should mention that I discuss a very similar subject in my essay and gathering of films in 2008 titled “The Gap between Desire and Apprehension: The Problem of Man and Boy Love.” However, this earlier essay focuses on the age gap of just a year or two from when sexual activities will be legal, whereas that later essay concerns the much large issue of legal and illegal man/boy love.
Los
Angeles, May 30, 2022
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (May 2022).
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