Why Do Gay Movies Make Me Feel So Sad?
Perhaps they reflect reality a little too well.
The scene is my family living room in 2016. I am catching up on Game of Thrones Season 2 (when it was still a good show) with my mom and sister, and it gets to the scene between Loras Tyrell and Renly Baratheon in bed discussing the latter’s need to find an heir. Their playful banter includes light kissing, touching, and the occasional glimpse of nudity, all done in the secrecy of Renly’s tent. My mom blurts out “Ew,” and makes us fast forward past the scene. I say nothing and comply.
I imagine that my experience growing up as a gay man resonates with many other members of the queer community. From the jump, life was an uphill battle to self-acceptance and more importantly self-expression given the lack of representation in the media. There exists quite a library of queer film, but few works have truly made their way into a fabric of the mainstream, and even fewer with significant acceptance. We had Midnight Cowboy (1969) in the ’60s, which peeked into the darker side of pre-aids crisis nightlife, then later on Brokeback Mountain (2005) hit theaters, giving us actual cowboys. Two themes in both films stuck out to me, themes that have also been very present in my own life: secrecy and pain. Another type of queer film that has appeared in Hollywood is the social or historical…
