Classic Film or Bigoted Garbage?

The young men around me are just coming out or finally learning comfortable terms with their sexuality. So in a way their "burdens" are about "being gay". Which is similar but not as extreme as the characters in this film because they've had a longer life time of grief.

This is Paris? It's just like Texas to me.

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...This IS bigoted garbage, written by someone who turned on his own kind by selling out, telling the straight community exactly what they wanted to see, hear, and thought about gays already!!!!!!!

Any gay who validates this crap should be barred from the community he claims to inhabit!!!!!!!!!

I say this respectfully but that's bullsh*t. If all gay men thought and felt like you the community would be one boring insular place still stuck in the pre-Stonewall way of thinking.

When this movie (and the play) came out there was nothing like it out there. There were no movies that focused solely on gays or presented us as actual complex human beings with loves and lives and issues and friends.

Sure, there's a lot of self loathing and vitriol within the film but that was a direct reflection of how many gays were actually feeling at that time---dealing with the aftermath of decades of repression stomped out by Stonewall and slowly embracing their sexuality as something to be celebrated instead of something to ashamed of.

This movie is an important part of gay history that helped make us much more visible to society as a whole and helped open doors for other gay films.

You don't have to like the movie. You don't have to be a fan of the movie. But you can't deny the impact this movie had, and still has, on the gay community and society as a whole.

Without this movie you wouldn't have Will & Grace or Queer As Folk or any other gay themed television shows or films.

I wish you would elaborate more on why you feel this movie is crap and why any gay man who likes it should be banished from the community.

Just saying....

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"swishy elitist *****" I love it.

I must say, I've greatly enjoyed reading this discussion. This debate has been engaging, insightful, and at times quite humorous.

I'm a heterosexual who hasn't seen the film, so my opinion on it is probably nil, but I gather from the discussion that the story's author gave a self-depreciating view which offered pathos for the gay community. If that's the case, I could see it going either way. On one hand, it's a reflection of the way the author - and many others like him - felt at the time. On the other hand, it could be argued as being self-pitying rather than empowering and playing into the hands of their detractors.

I will say this much though, it likely would have been a tougher sell if it was an empowering story. It may have been telling heterosexuals what they wanted to hear, while still offering pathos, but it may have also helped to raise awareness of the gay community. Of course, one doesn't fight prejudice by playing into it. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was meant to raise awareness of the black man's plight in the south, but it's mostly remembered today for playing into the racism of the time period - the same prejudice it was supposed to be fighting. Something like that is well intentioned, but ultimately counterproductive.

I don't know. I guess it's better than no representation, though it doesn't sound like the kind I'd want if I were in that position.

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I don't expect them to behave happily,darling! I expect them to be EMPOWERED!~!!!!!!

Yes, but the first step to empowerment is loving yourself.

Like AnjuneVero said, this film was released a year after the Stonewall riots and the play itself was written and produced on the stage a year before Stonewall.

I think Emory was the most empowered of all of the characters. He was openly gay and flamboyant and was not ashamed or apolegetic about it. He may not have been the most physically or emotionaly strongest character but he certianly was the most empowered.

Sterotypical characters aside, I believe it was a direct representation of how many gay men felt about being gay at the time. Didn't Crowley base some of the characters on people he knew? The characters were dealing with self-loathing and a lack of a sense of worth that was a direct result of decades, even a lifetime, of oppression.

The characters, and gay men at the time, would need to develop a sense of worth and love of themselves before becoming empowered. In the gay community at large the result of this empowerment was the gay sexual revolution of the '70s.

It was (and still is) a very slow process for gay men to feel as empowered as they do today.

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