New homosexual-themed film. I’m sure it will be touted as relevant and illuminating the complexities of life as a modern, urban young adult. But the irony is that, for an artsy film, it totally undermines the arguments that homosexuality can’t be a moral choice since they’re “born that way”. In fact, it looks to be a fine description of the traditional Catholic view of homosexuality–the mechanism of how it works, that is, not the morality. http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/theartofbeingstraight/
Smart, handsome, twenty-three-year-old Jon (Jesse Rosen) has just moved to Los Angeles from New York, ostensibly “taking a break” from his longtime girlfriend. He moves in with college bro Andy (Jared Grey), whose pals incessantly do that kind of “That is so gay” banter that’s essentially harmless — unless you’re the only gay guy in the room. Jon is hardly comfortable discussing his shifting Kinsien scale placement with them, and his new job as bottom-rung gofer at a major ad agency is fraught with sexual tension as a studly boss (Johnny Ray Rodriguez) barrages him with thinly veiled come-ons. Infamous among his buddies as a womanizer, Jon is more surprised than anyone when he ultimately falls for his boss’ seductive charms, which sends him spiraling into a world of sexual confusion. Meanwhile, he becomes re-acquainted with Madeleine (Rachel Castillo), a friend from college, who has recently chosen to become a lesbian. She falls for the affections of a man….until his wandering eye and casual maltreatment cause her to remember why she gave up men in the first place. Ultimately, each of the friends discovers that acceptance in modern American society is not as difficult as they thought, that social mores no longer dictate who we are and that each decision you make has a direct affect on your identity.
The argument (actually, the indisputable fact) is that it’s not a choice, not that it’s necessarily genetic.
This movie sounds like a story about a guy discovering and coming to grips with his sexuality, not actually changing it.
Even if the movie was (or is) about a fully straight person transforming into a homosexual, that wouldn’t undermine anything, it would just be an incorrect representation of reality.
Uh, this is a pretty common occurrence. Most of us grow up under the pressure to deny our homosexuality. It’s a major event in any gay person’s life when they first admit to themselves that they’re gay. This moment happens at different times for different people, and the sequence of events described in the film is acted out pretty frequently in real life. Probably a third of the gay men I know underwent a similar voyage of self discovery. I have a young friend right now, 21, who’s always told himself he was straight, but “experimented” while “drunk” a couple months ago, and is undergoing a very similar paradigm shift. Currently he’s decided he’s probably bi. Check back in a couple months though.
I grew up in small towns and later a small city in a very conservative Religious Right dominated state, and there are millions like me who grew up gay in flyover states that had maybe a gay bar or two but no visible gay community, so denial to one’s self and one’s peers and most especially one’s family seemed almost a natural part of being gay. I realize it’s provincial to think so, but it was a strange realization to me that gays who grow up in big cities in blue states have such similar issues. It just always seemed that if you were from San Francisco or L.A. or NYC- places where the election results at least are more liberal and the WASP mafia doesn’t have such a strangle hold on politics and where there’s not just a gay community but several gay communities (e.g. instead of a “come one come all” bar where half the crowd is straight there are bars specifically for butch lesbians, lipstick lesbians, biker gays, daddies, bears, twinks, gay sports bars, etc., or a Gay Men’s Chorus and very active P-FLAG chapters and high school gay-straight alliances, etc.) that coming out would be a lot easier. Apparently it’s really not, I suppose since “telling Mom and Dad” is one of the hardest things to do regardless of whether they’re Boston brahmins or trailer park media reps (“sounded just like a freight train- broke all my Elvis and Jesus collector plates”). Hell, even Cher- who couldn’t be more of a gay icon if she’d starred in a remake of Mommy Dearest, flipped out when she learned her daughter was gay. In a way it’s disappointing and in a way it’s somehow reassuring.
Interesting how the male and female perspectives are so different in that synopsis. The man realises he is gay when he is attracted to a man, the female decides to be gay because she is repelled by men.
Only for some. I think for the vast majority it’s because they’re attracted to women. I was reading an interview with Billie Jean King recently in which she discussed her very long coming-out process (before being publicly outed by a palimony suit that destroyed her career for many years, bankrupted her, forced her out of the closet to her parents, and basically ruined her life in all conceivable ways [but she’s much better now]).
She grew up in a conservative religious family and it never occurred to her she was gay; she knew something was wrong, that she loved her husband but he just didn’t “do it” for her. (She aborted their child even because she didn’t think the marriage would last, a confidential matter that became very public in the early 1970s when a journalist reported it.) Per King, she was almost 30 before she realized she wasn’t repelled by men but rather was attracted to women.
Not going to offer an opinion of a film I haven’t seen- but to opine on the synopsis, I’m got nothing but rolleyes for:
Yeah, 'cause if every man you date has a wandering eye and casually mistreats you, it isn’t a matter of your chronically poor dating choices- no of course not, it is because men cheat and mistreat their partners. That’s just what men are- all of them.
Now that you’re dating women, you’re in the clear. Sure, you have habitually chosen partners who treat you badly but since women never treat their partners badly your history of poor choices will never come into play. Women are only ever supportive and considerate and always a portrait of peaceful contentment.
Nevermind the fact that this character became a lesbian not because she is attracted to women but because she’s been unsuccessful dating men. Whatever lesbian brought this woman onto the team should not get a toaster. No toaster under these circumstances- doesn’t count.
I’ve grown tired of the idea that Loving Commitment in a relationship grows exponentially as the percentage of women in the partnership increases, decreases as the percentage of men in the partnership increases.
Meant to add: you’d think that if anything would repel Billie Jean King against a particular gender it would be the absolute nightmare she lived in the early 80s- the humiliation of being a joke for every comic at the same time that she was broke and deeply in debt, and of course this wasn’t quite the way she’d expected to tell her parents (not that she’d ever expected to- this was a long long time before kd lang and Ellen and Rosie). Instead she’s now openly gay and in a long term relationship with another tennis pro, so it wasn’t just a repulsion thing.
Similar story with Fannie Flagg: it wasn’t that she was repelled by men so much as she was never attracted to them, but was grown before she realized “Hmmm… I think I’d rather like to cuddle with a naked woman”. She’d had an openly-closeted* gay aunt (the butch almost to the point of transgendered inspiration for Idgie in Fried Green Tomatoes) but as you can tell from just looking at her, she may be a tomboy in some ways but she’s also a girly girl so it never really occurred to her she was like her aunt. She’s just attracted to women (specifically to soap star Susan Flannery with whom she had a Grover Cleveland [i.e. two long-term relationships with her separated by a long term relationship with another person in between] and Rita Mae Browne [the in-between, who outed her in a memoir]).
*Openly-closeted: someone like Jodie Foster or Anderson Cooper who neither openly discusses nor attempts to deny their sexual orientation, thus being a bit a Schrodingerpussy, simultaneously out and closeted.