Film Deconstruction: Role/Play and Gay Culture in General

I don't often watch "gay movies," nor do I often read "gay media" or listen to "gay music."It's not that I have an aversion to them, they're just not my thing. Nevertheless, my boyfriend and I recently sat down and watched a movie called "Role/Play," a story about a gay rights activist and a recently outed soap opera star meeting and developing a relationship. Again, not my thing, but he wanted to watch it, so I did the good boyfriend thing and watched it with him, despite the fact that I was not the target demographic for such a film.

Not only was this true, but it turns out I'm exactly the kind of person that this movie hates.

Before I continue, let me give you a brief rundown of the content of this movie: Divorced Gay Marriage Activist meets Recently Outed Soap Opera Star at a resort/spa deal, and they both recognize each other from the news coverage of their respective scandals. The first half of the movie then consists of DGMA calling ROSOS a terrible person for living in the closet, while ROSOS says that DGMA is awful for being stereotypically gay and smearing the image of the very thing he's fighting for. The second half of the movie consists of them having sex constantly and falling in love after two days because the back of the DVD box told them to.

Now, I see what the goal of this film was. The idea was to open a dialog between the two fractured, extreme halves of the gay community; The out and proud people fighting for their rights, and the people in the closet just so they can live without fear of rejection and discrimination. The film shows that, while both sides have their issues with the way they do things, they both also have very good reasons for doing what they do, and by showing this, the gay community can be strengthened as a whole.

Now, if this was a good movie, that would have worked very well. But much like the very issues the film is trying to call out, the entire message is very heavy handed and ends up hurting the community's image more than helping it. True, it does do some things right, but it takes more missteps than it should. During one of the very numerous scenes of our two heroes bitching at each other for being different, DGMA asks ROSOS about his gay media collection. When ROSOS replies that he only has a couple movies and no magazines or books, DGMA calls him out as being one of the problems, and generally a terrible person. Earlier in the film, ROSOS posits that DGMA is a "professional gay" and is probably a man-whore who lives in West Hollywood, Land 'O Gays, and he says this in a way that suggests that this makes him a terrible person as well.

I think at some point the movie was gonna get around to showing both of them accepting their different lifestyles, but that got forgotten in favor of some flimsy excuse to make them get mad at each other so they could build up to some kind of climax. But as it stands now, this is a prime example of why I don't often watch "gay movies."

In my experience, gay movies as a genre always fall into at least one of three categories: Artsy and obnoxious, pretentious and obnoxious, and preachy and obnoxious. Role/Play easily falls into "preachy" territory. Most of the dialog is made up of tirades and speeches about how awful some people are and how they need to get over their terribleness for the good of the whole. Aside from the general problems this causes, the fact that it is THIS movie being preachy and obnoxious causes a whole new set of issues; it calls the group of people in the middle of the graph bad people.

Now, as I've said, I'm not the target demographic here. I don't often watch "gay movies," nor do I often read "gay media" or listen to "gay music."It's not that I have an aversion to them, they're just not my thing. But the reason they're not my thing is that they make me feel like I'm being talked down to, and in some cases, chastised for not being "gay enough." I'm very proud to be gay, and I am disgustingly happy with my boyfriend. But I just don't see why that needs to be my core defining trait. I don't need to browse the "gay film" tab on Netflix or listen to Cher or wear tight pants and comment on those FAAAABULOUS SHOES HONEY just because I'm gay. "Homosexuality" is not at the end of a skill tree consisting of "Showtune Mastery," "Sassy Counter," and "Identify Accessory." To me, being gay means I am attracted to men, but it does not mean I need to adapt to the way the gay community is behaving and what media they are enjoying. But according to movies like this, that makes me a bad person, because I'm not doing anything to show my pride. The fact that I won't watch a movie just because it is labeled as "gay" is apparently a bad thing, and that is the main reason behind my distaste for "gay media" as a whole.