Why Do Gay People Like Bad Movies?

[c7_assassin]

Like all Writers, I yearn for greater sensitivity. Art demands that we appreciate subtlety and cultivate our refined sensibilities so as to recognize distinctions between concepts and feelings and tease out some sort of profound meaning lurking below the surface of everyday life. Without insight, a Writer is merely an opinionated asshole who can spell.

I must confess to one horrible failing in this regard. I do not understand gay movies. I don't mean movies produced by and for the gay community, with gay characters frolicking about in uniquely gay situations. I understand the hell out of what Priscilla Queen of the Desert was trying to say (don't we dress fabulously? also the desert is poopy and all this sand is getting in my hair!). I mean ostensibly straight movies that for some nebulous reason tend to be embraced by gay people.

Here's an example: the first time I really knew that my gay teenaged cousin was, in fact, gay wasn't when he enrolled in fashion school, and it wasn't when he dyed his hair blue at the age of fifteen. It was when he showed me his DVD collection. At first glance, it appeared to be merely nauseating. The Producers. Be Cool. Gattaca. Ugh. Then I noticed a pattern emerging. The Truth About Cats and Dogs? My Super Ex-Girlfriend? Holy shit, my cousin somehow owned every Uma Thurman movie from the last ten years. Both Kill Bills (and also The Interpreter and Erin Brokovich for some reason). Then I knew.

Now, maybe this it would be reading too much into this to assign a gay je-ne-sais-quoi to Uma Thurman just because my flaming cousin likes her. But maybe not. I mean, if we break Uma Thurman down to her components, what do we find? She's exceptionally tall. She exceptionally non-curvy. In fact, she bears little resemblance to any woman I've ever met in real life. Really, she looks like a what a gay man might see as the ultimate woman; strong, flawless, objectively beautiful but subtly horrifying.

I've never understood the gay male idolization of starlets anyway. What specifically are they praising when they say that a woman is 'fabulous' or 'sexy'? What do gay men see in Judy Garland and her pudding-faced daughter? They for sure didn't want to fuck them; so do they want to be them? I know there are differences between cross-dressing, transsexuality and "gay," and I hate ignorant generalizations, so why must life hand me such confusing paradoxes?

Do gay men perhaps like strong female characters because, let's face it, they are the closest they get to a role model in most Hollywood films? Even in a post-Brokeback Mountain Hollywood, gay characters seem to be defined almost entirely by their sexual orientation. If a gay character makes an appearance in a film, count on the fact that their orientation will be commented on, and it makes no difference whether this commentary is supposed to be 'positive' or not. It still makes 'into bum-sex' seem like the defining character trait for all gay people (or, people-who-just-happen-to-be-gay), and that's got to be a little irksome. And this is exactly the sort of pigeonholing Hollywood has bravely been addressing...when it's done to women. Strong female characters don't give a shit how sexist society thinks a woman ought to behave. She's going to go out and sue giant corporations and cut people up with swords and become Pirate King because hear my vagina roar, pig-men! I can see a gay man vicariously appreciating the victory of another sexual underdog in a not-so-dissimilar gender-war (even when it's utter bullshit).

Or maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I was right the first time; perhaps my cousin just loves trite, shitty movies. I mean, it's hard to see My Super Ex-Girlfriend as anything other than an unfathomable well of monstrous dreck. And in fact, its inclusion in my cousin's DVD collection severely undercuts my thesis above; My Super Ex-Girlfriend despises its female lead and seems terrified female empowerment in general; it could have been written and directed by John Wayne Bobbitt's ex-penis. So do gay men instead just love themselves godawful trainwrecks of pop-culture garbage? Unfortunately the appreciation of camp (another supposed province of 'the gays') is also something at which I'm mediocre at best. I can get drunk and laugh at a bad movie with the best of them, but by definition I prefer Good Art to Bad Art. Some people (my cousin among them) seem to positively be in love with campy bullshit. And I really have no idea what makes one film 'campier' than another; I have no idea what would make My Super Ex Girlfriend more delightful for an artistic masochist than, say, Snow Dogs or an episode of Two and a Half Men, and yet somehow I know it must be. But I don't understand it.

Can anyone out there lend a queer eye to this straight guy and help me see what I'm missing here? Why do gay people like the things they like? Are they embracing crap, or are they responding to something I'm not seeing through my perpetual haze of pussy and beer? Am I the asshole for not getting My Super Ex Girlfriend? Is Uma Thurman a tranny? Help me!

 

[Backstep]

Well, I have a feet/tickling fixation. Would I have The Brothers Karamazov or Monkeys Go Home or Burn Notice: Season 1 in my collection if I didn't? Probably not.

Sure they're just brief mainstream scenes, but they become icons, representative of something that I define myself by. I'm not homosexual, so I can't speak for anyone who is, but perhaps they have similar feelings if Uma has become a male/female transitional figure of sorts.

As an aside, I liked Gattaca despite the plotholes.

 

[Snail Shell]

The LGBT community has adopted Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' as its most recent anthem.

Do the math.

SS

 

[Cokecan]

All I have to say is, you like ET.

That pretty much sums it up for me.

 

[alchemy]

You know, I've never encountered that.

I DO, however, wonder why gay people love show tunes. I don't get it. I work with several gay people and they literally will sing and/or hum show tunes all day. Seriously! I mean, I've never seen Wicked, but I sure as hell have heard it a few dozen tmes.

 

[Bugman]

I've had my share of gay friends over the years, and just like the hetrosexual population they did not all share the same tastes in music, art, movies or much of anything else. If I missed the point of your post, my apologies.

 

[Barney Stubble]

The only trend I've noticed is a fascination for Judy Garland.

 

[TropicThunder]

I always thought the Judy Garland thing was just a stereotype.

 

[totoforhire]

I'm gay and I enjoy all sorts of movies.

 

[Knox The Hatter]

Thirty years ago, I had a gay friend tell me that all gay males (not true, of course) have an obsessive fixation on some tragic female heroine who fought Conventionality to be understood, a female who suffered for her soup, as it were, and wound up dying young. Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Maria Kallas. When I asked why, I never got a...erm....I was gonna say straight answer, but, let's just say his reasoning was opaque. When you think about it, it does make sense, though. Gay males who have a very strong feminine side would identify with tragic female heroines who had a hard time being understood.

The 'camp' thing, though...the attitude seems to be, the more trashy and tawdry it is, the better. Lesbian culture (which I feel slightly qualified to talk about; my sister and my best friend are members of the Sorority of Sappho) is as different as could possibly be. You don't see any memorial obsessions with Montgomery Clift, that's for sure. And, nothing's campy about Melissa Etheridge. The closest thing to campy on that end would be Ellen DeGeneres, and she's really zany, that's all.

Plenty of gay people in my life, no doubt about it. My friends, my family, they're all great. I don't feel it necessary anymore to question them about 'camp', or tragic heroines, or dressing up in flamboyant, funny outfits on Pride Weekend, or the asthetics of sage accents. It just is. I find it more incomprehensible that anyone with an IQ above that of a hamster would buy into twisted, theological mythology, or supply-side economics.

 

[Cosmo_ac]

As far as "my SuperGirlfriend" goes, i'm reminded of a college project. For that project, I went to a local comic book store and asked a myriad of questons. One of those was about comic book buyers and such. I was told that when it came to X-men comics, the biggest buyers where gay people. I suppose this really shouldn't have surprised me. If you think about it, it makes sense. The x-man comics were essentially about descrimination. You had people (mutants) who were born a certain way, and because of who they were, they were descriminated against. At the time, it was likely aimed more at black people then gay people, but in the year 2000+ descrimination is more common against gay people then black people.

That being said, I remember renting a movie called "Another gay movie". I'm not 100% sure why i rented the movie, though I think it had a pretty good cast with some of the "kids in the Hall" as cast members. At any rate, The movie was super gay. Like, super, duper, uber, gay. The concept itself wasn't too bad. American Pie meets gay. I thought it would be funny. To it's credit, it had some funny moment. Instead of "The Stiffler" they had a butch lesbian called "The Muffler". I admit, I shit a brick I was laughing so hard at that one. However, I found the movie itself simply...too gay. It was like a gay man's wet dream. Sure, it had some funny moments, but it was just too gay to be enjoyed. Too much male nudity, too much butt sex jokes, too much gay.

Ultimately I think that, like any particuler genre of movies, Gay people have their own. However, sometimes those genres aren't listed.

 

[venray]

Dont dis the Uma or any of Quentin's films.....as for your question....it really makes no sense as all people are different and their tastes in film vary accordingly....

 

[Xodlirv]

I feel obliged to point out two things wrong with this post from the get-go.

1. The term "bad movies" is an opinion and nothing else. One person's Citizen Kane is another's Plan 9 From Outer Space. And the weight of a shared opinion does not make it any less of an opinion.

2. To state that all gay people like anything is a broad stereotype and therefore fallacious. As a heterosexual American male who has never watched a football game, I'm somewhat sensitive to such things.

 

[Xodlirv]

Dont dis the Uma or any of Quentin's films.....as for your question....it really makes no sense as all people are different and their tastes in film vary accordingly....

Yep, that's pretty much what I said. Much more concisely spoken, sir. Bravo.

(But why you hatin' on the Shemp?)

 

[Cosmo_ac]

The term "bad movies" is an opinion and nothing else. One person's Citizen Kane is another's Plan 9 From Outer Space. And the weight of a shared opinion does not make it any less of an opinion.

Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Serious nerd points for the "Plan 9 From Outer Space" reference!

 

[MrMacphisto]

Hey, Gattaca was good.

...just sayin'...

 

[c7_assassin]

I've had my share of gay friends over the years, and just like the hetrosexual population they did not all share the same tastes in music, art, movies or much of anything else. If I missed the point of your post, my apologies.

Dont dis the Uma or any of Quentin's films.....as for your question....it really makes no sense as all people are different and their tastes in film vary accordingly....

To state that all gay people like anything is a broad stereotype and therefore fallacious. As a heterosexual American male who has never watched a football game, I'm somewhat sensitive to such things.

I'm gay and I enjoy all sorts of movies.

In retrospect, this is pretty obvious. When I'm tired I sometimes think crazy thoughts. Ah well, my quest for knowledge continues...

 

[sasaxrah]

I think some gay guys identify with a strong famous female legitimately. Others pick up on the fact that liking these women is part of the culture, and to fit in with that culture, they adopt certain elements. When you're coming out, you want to be accepted by a community. It's like moving to New York and starting to root for the Yankees at bars.

But most gay guys I know that are not 50+ years old aren't interested in Judy Garland and the like. But I'll never understand why so many of my gay friends loved Moulin Rouge. Vomit.