We must define apology differently. He says he regrets his choice of words. That’s not exactly an apology. “I was wrong and I am sorry” is an apology; “I used words that offended people and wish I hadn’t” is an unpology. He also demands a retraction on GLAAD’s part in the “apology”.
I don’t want to read the unboxed spoilers so I’ll skim over them to…
There is almost no conceivable way that anybody who heard Gene Shalit’s review had had no previous exposure to Brokeback Mountain or the fact that it’s one of the most critically lauded films in years. Even the commercials for it carry glowing critical excerpts. Do you honestly think there is one person out there who can say “You know, I was going to go see that picture about the gay cowboys who have a long term affair and was prepared to have my view of gay relationships challenged, but damn… if Gene Shalit says it’s about a sexual predator then it must be.” After all, Gene Shalit’s coming was foretold in the book of Jeremiah and he was right about 9-11 and his kiss has been scientifically proven to cure cancer, ringworm, intestinal parasites and regrow lost limbs."
IT’S GENE SHALIT, FOR OG’S SAKE! Most people don’t even know he’s still alive.
As so often happens. Studies done in a leading day care center in Winnipeg do indeed show that most people choose to ignore word-of-mouth, award nominations, a media hooplah and dozens of glowing critical reviews in favor of Gene Shalit’s opinion. In twelve states, Gene also picks the Democratic and Republican nominees for president, and he’s worshiped as a god in parts of Mongolia, Finland and New Jersey.
Yes, because the Oscars are based on a majority vote of the House of Representatives. No film that featured controversial reception or sympatheticportrayalsofLGBTrelationships could ever win the statuette in the notoriously homophobic and conservative Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
[cue Gino Conforti as The Barber: I can hear the cuckoo singing in the cuckooberry tree…]
Your a dumbass DtC. The man has a vocabualry. A critic, any film critic, uses word and phrases…different words and phrases…to describe different movies. And because of this he is a gay-bashing hypocrite? Come on…give me a freaking break here.
We should check and see if he used different words describing Denzel Washington in a movie, and Tom Cruise in another movie. He might also be a racist-bashing hypocrite.
Hypocrisy or consistency. If he’s never once been critical of the billion and a half movies he’s reviewed where a guy tried to woo a woman who was attached to somebody else then he’s a hypocrite. Did he call Clint Eastwood a sexual predator in Bridges of Madison County? How about Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate? How about any number of stupid comedies where guys sleep with married women and then have to escape from the jealous husband?
That would still be wrong. The character of Jack is neither sexually aggressive nor predatory. There is no point in the movie where anything between Jack and Ennis is less than mutually consenting and there are aspects of the relationship in which it could be said that Ennis is more dominant.
No, he’s a gay bashing hypocrite because he calls a gay character a “sexual predator” for doing things which are standard in hetero love stories and which never get called predatory.
It’s not about “different words.” disingenuous one. It’s about making a completely different moral judgement on a gay character who does exactly the same things that straight characters do all the time without raising a murmur.
Furthermore, Shalit’s characterization is completely inaccurate. Jack is NOT a sexually aggressive character. That’s just bullshit. Shalit is a fucking liar for saying it.
Could you just imagine GLAAD’s reaction if Shalit had said, ‘Heath Ledger’s incessant mumbling thoughout the film sounded to me like he had a pair of testicles stuffed in his mouth’.
Personally, I’m more interested in how he treats real gay people like his son than how he judges fictional characters. He might be a hypocrite, he might be a moron, he might be a lousy inconsistent reviewer, but none of that makes him a gay basher.
Frankly, if the gay community wants to make an enemy of someone who treats his gay son with respect, who marches with him and promotes gay issues, over one poorly chosen phrase, then they’re not likely to have many friends in the future. GLAAD has praised Shalit for his response, I think that’s a great step.
Consistently using the same adjectives as a writer is stylistic rigidity. That’s why it’s called stylistic rigidity.
I just flashed to this… you’re tacitly suggesting that he’s a hypocrite, and you don’t even know if he is or not?
(And by the way, Miss. Robinson was the predatory one in the Graduate.)
By definition the person who initaties is aggressive rather than receptive. Or if you prefer, active rather than passive. It’s just the vocabulary we use to talk about the whole courting thang.
Likewise, there are hundreds of movies where a man is sexually aggressive/forward/upfront and the woman appreciates his advances and has her own measure of power.
As I said, and would maintain, I can see how it could go either way. I think we’re using a comb that’s got some teeth that’re a bit too fine. It was just some movie review with a throwaway phrase that could be taken too seriously.
Does anybody have a link to a transcript of the movie review, by the way? (Or did I miss it in this thread?) It’d be nice to see the whole thing in context.
If anybody’s interested, this is a short 1997 article Shalit wrote about being the proud father of a gay son. (His pride was for his son, the gay part was incidental, as it should be.)
So you can’t even say that someone chased and caught someone else? Neither party initatied, they were just both really bored and blase and then ended up falling on each other penises by accident?
[QUOTE=FinnAgain] Consistently using the same adjectives as a writer is stylistic rigidity. That’s why it’s called stylistic rigidity.[.quote]
It’s not about semantics it’s about consistent moral chracterizations.
How doi you figure that? My questions were rhetorical, I wasn’t actually seeking information.
I was referring to the fact that Dustin Hoffman busted up a wedding at the end and absconded with the bride. That’s retty aggressive.
That’s just bullshit. Is everyone who initiates a “predator?” Give me a fucking break.
Heh…have you seen the movie? Jack is the “receptive” one, if you get my meaning.
Jack really isn’t very aggressive or forward. He makes tentative, low key overtures which are responded to very favorably by Ennis. If you see the movie, you see that Ennis is really the one with all the power. I don’t see any way that anyone could watch this film and come away thinking that Ennis was victimized by Jack.
Like I said before, I think Shalit’s chracterization is inaccurate to the point where it borders on outright lying.
Basically, yeah. That’s pretty damn accurate. There isn’t any “chasing.” The first sexual encounter is an impulsive, spontaneous drunken act in which Jack is the initiator only in the most cursory way. If Jack’s character was a woman in that scene, it would never cross anyone’s mind to think there was anything remotely “predatory” about it.
Today show link. Critic’s Corner is about halfway down on the right. It’s a video link, but since I’m at work, I’m not able to play it and see if it’s what you’re looking for.
While I have not seen the movie (I intend to), the character Jack does strike me as predatory. He knows his boyfriend is MARRIED WITH CHILDREN and but, as I understand it, actively pursues him to come back to him. Even if Ennis is a closeted gay man and even if both characters are likable and decent people, this is predatory. He is intentionally trying to break up a family that will forever after be known as “the kids whose dad is a fag and left for another fag”. (Today that’s devastating to kids, but in the 1960s and 1970s it was exponentially moreso- can those of you who are my age (39) and older imagine how those kids would have been ridiculed in your high school? But Jack tries for it anyway.
I’m not saying that he’s an evil person, but if Same Time Next Year was about Alan Alda or Ellen Burstyn continually trying to break up the other one’s family it would have been predatory.
When Bird Cage came out and was critically lauded I was pissed. I thought the characters were cartoons and the producers were total pussies for never once showing any real intimacy between the two long term lovers, and anybody who knows anything about drag queens would know that Nathan Lane’s characters would have a spine and balls of steel (think of what he’s been through and still survives to say “I am what I am”). I was accused for my review of it at the time as being, of course, a self-loathing homo. I felt vindicated later when Nathan Lane said exactly the same things in an interview (he wanted the bond twixt him and Williams more evident, the son to accept him more as a co-parent and Albert to be shown to have a more gutsier side, but was rejected on all counts.)
Diogenes, we aren’t arguing over whether Gene Shalit is a good movie reviewer. Can we take it as stipulated that Gene Shalit is a terrible movie reviewer, and that readers can get accurate information about movies from him only as often as a blind pig finds an acorn? This is Gene Shalit, of course his reviews stink.
The issue isn’t whether some character in a movie is or isn’t a “sexual predator”, but whether Gene Shalit “used the occasion [of his review] to promote defamatory anti-gay prejudice to a national audience.”
It’s pretty clear to me that Gene Shalit didn’t promote defamatory anti-gay prejudice with his review.
Sampiro, watch the fucking movie. Your impression of the plot is completely inaccurate. It’s not a movie about Jack trying to bust up a marriage, It’s about two guys (who are BOTH married with children) engaging in a secret 20 year extra-marital relationship. There are a couple of scenes within that 20 years (and one of those scenes is after Ennis is divorced) in which Jack wistfully suggests that it would be nice if they could live together on a ranch. Ennis shoots it down and that’s it. Jack does not press it. He is not the aggressor in the relationship. He does not try to pressure Ennis in any way. His initial “pursuit” after their first encounter on Brokeback is to send Ennis a post card four years later asking if he’d like to get together again. Ennis responds to this post card by writing YOU BET in big letters on the card. After that, there is no aggression or “pursuit” by either party. Their relationship ensues in mutually consenting fashion. If Jack is a “predator” because Ennis is married, then why isn’t Ennis a predator too because Jack is married. For part of the relationship, Jack is the ONLY one who’s married. Is Ennis the predator at that point?
He did preface the “sexual predator” phrase with something along the lines of “it seems to me that he’s a…” or “comes across as a …”, making it clear that it is simply his opinion, not actual fact. And opinions, as you may know, are like assholes. Everyone’s got one, and sometimes they’re full of shit.
He and Williams sure did make up for it by smooching in public a lot, though!
I think the self-hating homo thing comes from the desire in the queer community to be visible in any way at all. *Bird Cage *was at least superficially sympathetic; some seem to think it’s better not to be too critical when what looks like an advance is made. It reminds me of the gag about the guys up for execution, and when asked for final words, one gives a speech about how tyranny like this will not stand and evil will be crushed, and the other one whispers “Don’t make trouble”. Nobody’s life is less endangered because of Bird Cage.
As for topic, I also haven’t seen it, and I probably won’t for a good long while, for personal reasons. But from what I’ve read, Jack is possibly a would-be homewrecker; I don’t think that’s the same thing as sexual predation.
same Time Next Year would actually be a pretty good comparison to Brokeback. It’s essentially the same plot. Two married people meet a couple of times a year in the same place over a period of years. Jack does NOT spend any significant time trying to persuade Ennis to leave his family. You seem to have been completely misled on that account. His suggestions are speculative, hypothetical, wistful and infrequent. He does not ever seriously try to pressure Ennis to get a divorce, and for the last several years of their relationship, Ennis isn’t even married.