(no subject)

[pantryslut]

Nightcharm has a great take on the film Cruising, soon to be released on DVD. (Nightcharm is NSFW.)

"I think what was really bugging the politically correct windbags was not what was fictional but what was accurate about the movie."

Comments

[mckennl.livejournal.com]

Well, I was living and working in NYC at the time and the problem to me was that there weren't any *other* representations of gay people in the media. It's like why I objected to the trans character on L-Word. It's not that there aren't FtMs who do all those things, who have rage and act like assholes and are hot at the same time, it's that Max was THE ONLY TRANS CHARACTER IN THE MASS MEDIA. This was the ONLY movie with gay men in it, period.

I mean now it's easy to watch Basic Instinct and be like, yeah, she's bi, so what. But at the time, if you wanted to see a bisexual female character in a movie, the blonde psycho killer was your only option.

I'm certain that it represented what it was really like for a lot of gay men in NYC. But it just hurt that it was the only mainstream image. The. Only. One. It's hard to imagine a time like that, but 1980 was that time. I don't even think Elton John was out of the closet yet.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

CATHARINE DID IT! hahaha.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I misspelled "Catherine" in all caps. ouch.

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

I think also that this article simply goes to the other side of that swing on the representation issue--that the movie is good simply because it has representations of gay leathersex that aren't available in any other format. I mean, I totally see your point (and it was, intitially, my point too when I was protesting--both during shooting and upon release), but eventually the representation argument seems to suggest that viewers are essentially passive and a bit stupid, and probably neither of us think that.

On the other hand, while I thought Basic Instinct was just a big dull, it was kind of cool to imagine that this movie could make all potential lovers treat me well because, y'now, I might have a big knife under the bed if they didn't act right. ;-)

[mckennl.livejournal.com]

Well, I think the viewers at the time weren't very well-informed about what it meant to be gay and they didn't have very many -- if any -- other resources to help them. So they didn't have to be passive or stupid to get, at the very least, a slanted impression from the film. It's like if there is only ONE MOVIE about lesbians and it's Monster. I loved that movie but I don't know how I would have felt if it was most people's first look at lesbians.