How do you feel when straight people try to tell a gay story?

[LONDONER]

Bowyn Aerrow, you have elaborated on my message number 17. Without wishing to upset anyone, I would suggest that if you were born in the 80s and later, you shouldn't try to comment on what life was like for gays before then. As Bowyn Aerrow has pointed out, things have changed a lot since then and we live in entirely different times.

In the 70s I was living in Spain still under the rule of Franco when homosexuality was illegal under the law of "Peligrosidad Social", (Social Danger) punishable with prison where the most unspeakable and barbaric crimes were committed againts gays. So unspseakable and so barbaric that I'm not going to elaborate. You can think of almost anything and it was probably committed.

So, before anyone writes about what is depicted as being unreal, think a little and don't write about what you don't know. "Brokeback Mountain" was a very good film that depicted accurately the attitudes of the times.

[KawaiiKitty]

Bowyn Aerrow, you have elaborated on my message number 17. Without wishing to upset anyone, I would suggest that if you were born in the 80s and later, you shouldn't try to comment on what life was like for gays before then. As Bowyn Aerrow has pointed out, things have changed a lot since then and we live in entirely different times.

In the 70s I was living in Spain still under the rule of Franco when homosexuality was illegal under the law of "Peligrosidad Social", (Social Danger) punishable with prison where the most unspeakable and barbaric crimes were committed againts gays. So unspseakable and so barbaric that I'm not going to elaborate. You can think of almost anything and it was probably committed.

So, before anyone writes about what is depicted as being unreal, think a little and don't write about what you don't know. "Brokeback Mountain" was a very good film that depicted accurately the attitudes of the times.

Well I was just using it as an example. It at least doesnt reflect current times. I feel that until we get gay positive movies that reflect the current times/issues/lifestyle of the LGBT community why should we put so much emphasis on the past when there has been nothing but heartache and trouble there? We know where we've come from. Its where we are now and where we are going that is important. Thats what I mean by we should focus on gay positive rather than gay negative media.

We havent made it to that point where we can rest on our laurels and look back at what we went through and where we came from and say. "ahh it feels good to not be in that anymore" Yes things are changing for the better but I dont think we are there yet. With as much institutionalized bigotry(even worse than institutionalized racism used to be) that all gay people have to deal with on a daily basis we are still not "there" yet. To have a straight person trying to tell a gay story and failing just sets us back even further. Like Ang Lee did with this movie. Yes for the time it depicted, it was probably accurate. Im not sure everyone understood that. I dont want society as a whole thinking that two gay guys have to brawl and nearly kill each other before they have sex.

What was the last mainstream gay positive movie you saw in the theatres in the last five years? I mean Brokeback Mountain is the only movie I can recall in recent history that was specifically made for a gay audience. Not even movies like Magic Mike are geared specifically at gay people.(which Im sure that wasnt the intent but some people thought it was since it was full of half naked good looking guys) It was targeted at straight women well for obvious reasons and straight men who wish they were lucky enough to be in the position of the main characters. I dont even think there was a gay character in the whole movie. Yet I have friends telling me I should go watch it and people online telling me about the hot guys and shit.

[KawaiiKitty]

You can't move forward until you have known what has been before you can realise what can be.

The past teaches us the lessons we need to know so we can avoid the same mistakes in the future. We all need to be reminded how tough our forebearers have had things and how valiantly they have fought for our freedom and our rights so we can stand beside them and continue the battles that will truely free every man, woman and child from whatever shackles bind them to inequality and hatred.

oh I totally 100% agree we shouldnt ignore the future but I think most of us how history has unfolded for the LGBT community. To make mainstream movies about that would be beating a dead horse. Like I said anything that is presented to the public especially on a widespread scale should be gay positive to counterbalance the gay negative things that are already present in our society.

[OrphanPip]

Brokeback Mountain isn't entirely a gay story either. Annie Proulx said that the sexuality of the main characters is ambiguous, they could be gay or bisexual or something else, we don't really get any confirmation from it. I think the movie is OK for what it is, which is not a story about being gay but about a particular experience of two sexually repressed individuals.

I can't think of many particularly great representations of gay life by straight writers off the top of my head. Sherwood Anderson's "Hands" I think is one of the most puissant early representations of a kind of homophobic panic (mixed in with a panic about pedophilia). Willa Cather's "Paul's Case" is arguably about a gay boy, though Cather was also probably a lesbian. One reason I think it is so hard to think about good depictions of gay people written by straight people is because so few straight people choose to write about gays in any particular detail, at least until recently. All I could come up with were 2 stories written 100 years ago.

[Counselor]

Why should it matter if the storyteller is straight? Love is not an exclusive concept.
I'm anxious to see a gay version of Taken, though. I think it could be awesome.

[KawaiiKitty]

Why should it matter if the storyteller is straight? Love is not an exclusive concept.
I'm anxious to see a gay version of Taken, though. I think it could be awesome.

Love isnt an exclusive concept. I totally agree with you on that. How you experience love is a unique experience, or in my mind it should be. There is nothing that can beat experience over some other form of learning.

Let me put it like this. Lets say you needed open heart surgery. Would you rather have the best surgeon in the world with 25+ years of personal experience doing the surgery you need or would you rather have a fresh out of medical school green as the hills doctor who has only read about the surgery you need and has never performed it?(for the sake of argument they have both around the same competency level) I doubt many people would choose the latter and most would choose the former.

Its the same in this situation as well. The experience of being gay is most of the time better captured by someone who has lived and experienced it. One can think of me as maybe snobbish for thinking this way but if someone is going to make something in the media that is about me and the community that Im a part of I want them to at least know what it was like to experience what they are portraying and not just imagining what it would be like or read from a book what the experience is like .

I think another good example of this is the movie Titanic. James Cameron didnt just try to tell the story of how the Titanic sank. He went to the last surviving people who were on the actual ship and let them tell their story. Which is why even today years after its 1997 release when someone says the word Titanic thats the first movie most people think of. He set out to tell the story from the survivor's perspective not just some random movie about how the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. If you go to read the wikipedia about the making of the movie he went to great length to tell this story. Thats the kind of storytelling the gay community needs.

[Drew]

I didn't like Brokeback Mountain because 1) it bored me silly, and 2) it kept feeling like the producers wanted to show America: "hey, gay people can be rough and manely too! Stopping stereotyping them as all fem!" which is kind of an ironic statement in of itself. Suffice to say the movie itself reinforced other stereotypes, as others have highlighted.

But now that I think about it, I'm not big on most gay films/tv produced by actual LGBT people, either. I don't know....they all seem to romanticize different keystone experiences of being gay (the coming out process, learning how to socialize within the community, overcoming internalized homophobia, etc). I always yearn for something that's striking and true in gay story telling that's not currently being told. I'm all for supporting indie LGBT artists yearning to tell their sides of the story.

[Counselor]

Love isnt an exclusive concept. I totally agree with you on that. How you experience love is a unique experience, or in my mind it should be. There is nothing that can beat experience over some other form of learning.

Let me put it like this. Lets say you needed open heart surgery. Would you rather have the best surgeon in the world with 25+ years of personal experience doing the surgery you need or would you rather have a fresh out of medical school green as the hills doctor who has only read about the surgery you need and has never performed it?(for the sake of argument they have both around the same competency level) I doubt many people would choose the latter and most would choose the former.

Its the same in this situation as well. The experience of being gay is most of the time better captured by someone who has lived and experienced it. One can think of me as maybe snobbish for thinking this way but if someone is going to make something in the media that is about me and the community that Im a part of I want them to at least know what it was like to experience what they are portraying and not just imagining what it would be like or read from a book what the experience is like .

I think another good example of this is the movie Titanic. James Cameron didnt just try to tell the story of how the Titanic sank. He went to the last surviving people who were on the actual ship and let them tell their story. Which is why even today years after its 1997 release when someone says the word Titanic thats the first movie most people think of. He set out to tell the story from the survivor's perspective not just some random movie about how the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. If you go to read the wikipedia about the making of the movie he went to great length to tell this story. Thats the kind of storytelling the gay community needs.

You don't "trust" straight people to tell a good love story? Laughable. Change some pronouns in Romeo and Juliet, and you have the most tragic gay love story ever told. I think it's on Netflix or something, even.

I've noticed this intense discrimination lately, even within the LGBT community, the backbiting and snide attitude regarding anyone that "just doesn't understand". Maybe I'm seeing the world through rose-colored lenses, but at the basic level, they are still human, and want someone to tell them they love them. I don't care who tells me they love me, as long as they mean it, and it comes from a sincere part of their heart. The same applies to love stories and songs; there are some songs written by men about girls that I relate to the sentiment, but not the pronouns.

[megumidesu]

i trust people who haven't been into space to be able to write good science fiction stories .
i trust people who haven't time-travelled or who weren't born in a different century to be able to write good historical fiction .
i trust people who have had perfectly happy lives to be able to write good drama ~

it's not impossible to do research and get it right .

[Counselor]

i trust people who haven't been into space to be able to write good science fiction stories .
I trust people who haven't time-travelled or who weren't born in a different century to be able to write good historical fiction .
I trust people who have had perfectly happy lives to be able to write good drama ~

it's not impossible to do research and get it right .

*applause until hands fall off*