Cinema and Sexuality

The Art Mission, the Art House cinema that I go to frequently keeps showing films that deal with sexuality. My sexuality is determined; straight white male. I've never been with a man. I guess that could change? Yet, I'm 36, perhaps it's too late? Anyway I have thought about whether I could be gay and usually reach the conclusion that on the spectrum I tend more to the middle while staying on the heterosexual side. A friend of mine explained sexuality as more of a spectrum than black and white. Anyway they have screened a number of films that deal directly with sexuality. Moonlight, which was released recently, deals with a gay black teenager in Miami. He is teased and bullied by everyone in the movie except a drug dealer who becomes a father figure for the young boy. In The Handmaiden the lead actress and her handmaiden become lesbian lovers. The love scenes seem like softcore porn from the seventies only updated with handhelds. And JT Leroy which is a doc about a fake author who says he's a gay boy, only to be revealed as a girl, and the whole story of his past is revealed as a phony.

In each of the stories sexuality plays a role. Is JT Leroy heterosexual or homosexual? Is he a gay boy or a straight girl? The definitions of gender are played with over and over again. In Moonlight the story seems to be that the gay teenager is still gay even after growing up and becoming just like the father figure drug dealer. It seems to say that you are born the way you are. You can't change you're sexuality. In The Handmaiden it is less about where you are on the sexuality spectrum and more about the plot to deceive the man of his intentions to marry the young heiress and bilk her out of her inheritance. I suppose that points to more of an Asian definition of sexuality which is more fluid then the Western one. In Asia Buddhism is a big religion. And in Buddhism, Buddha can be man or woman. There is no gender bias inherent in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam where God is very much a man.

All the films are great yet none of them were breakout hits and big successes like Milk or Brokeback Mountain which really seemed to signify a change about acceptance of LGBTQ characters in film and in society. Those films seemed to normalize gay characters. It also seems that these films were harbingers of things to come. After those films, LGBTQ people gained the right to serve openly in the military, then the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was legal. Two major victories for LGBTQ people and their allies. I don't know where the gay liberation movement is headed next? Perhaps more acceptance of their lifestyles? It seems that it has come along way in the past decade or so. And film has been instrumental in those political changes.