Anyway, couple of things. It strikes me that there's been a few Chinese films or films made by Chinese film makers on gay and lesbian themes. Just saw "Saving Face" by Alice Wu, set in the Chinese enclave of Flushing, Queens. No major character dies; instead, reconciliation and acceptance. But perhaps the setting and the tensions are too "Chinese" for a general audience.
The other: is it really worthwhile to dig so deep into a film? Most of us don't revisit a film. In the cinema, we see it, and we emerge out into the world again. If it affects us, it's at the level of our sensibility and our emotions. At the basic level, wouldn't the question be whether we come away from it with sympathy or antagonism to the protagonists? If so, then at a pragmatic level, shouldn't this film be judged as to whether it creates sympathy and empathy for gay relationships, or the other way around?
I've always felt the genius of Hollywood as American propaganda machine -- it's not just that, but it seems to me it often functions as such -- is that it tweaks the emotion and sensibility such that, bottom line, one walks away seduced, no matter that at another level, one questions the actions, logic, whatever, on screen.
This isn't the great art film, the kind that has one walking out in a daze, hugely dis-balanced, pushed to reconsider basic orientations, beliefs, values. It's a rare film that does that.
kj khoo
On 2/3/06, Christian Gregory <cgregory at triad.rr.com> wrote:
> > In the film, Jack lives in Texas, and Ennis lives in Wyoming, so Jack
> > presumably gets killed in Texas in the 1980s (since the film begins in
> > 1964 and the affair spans two decades -- which we know because Ennis's
> > daughters are already grown up, and one of them is ready to get married
> > at the end of the film).
>
> So, it's unrealistic to imagine a gay man being killed by gay-bashing in
> Texas in the early 1980's?
>
> > do queers have a 67% chance of dying by gay-bashing and a 33% chance of
> > dying of AIDS in the real world, as the gay-themed Oscar contenders
> > represent? If that were true, being queer would be practically a death
> > sentence.
>
> So your critique of the Oscars is that it doesn't represent the actual
> statistical distributions of gay people by means of death? How would the
> world be a better place if they did? Would the films be better? Politics
> transformed? Seriously.
>
> And if it's not the true distribution that the Oscars should approximate,
> what distribution would make you happy?--Let's see 0.5% by the flu, 12% in
> car accidents, 2.1% of injuries sustained at the gym, 50% of injuries
> sustained fighting Hollywood oppression, etc. I mean, is that the kind of
> thing you're interested in?