It’s rather depressing when you belong to a minority group whose best mainstream exposure comes through a movie that depicts one of your kind as a serial killer.
I know lesbians are supposed to be the ”new black” these days, according to SL magazine (”send us your favourite lesbian fantasy couple”), but somehow my gut tells me that Monster is going to tell people what they think they already know about lesbians: that women only become lesbians after being raped; that lesbians are ugly so they can’t get a man to love them anyway; that lesbian relationships are unstable; and that lesbians have violent tendencies — in other words, that lesbians are totally screwed up.
Yes, I know it’s a true story and all, and I don’t dispute the right of the movie to exist, my point is just that mainstream movies and TV shows don’t tend to reflect lesbians in their best light.
Under a Tuscan Sky has a straight woman’s lesbian best friend being dumped by her girlfriend just before the birth of said straight woman’s baby (the lesbian friend consequently gets in the way of lead character’s love affair with a gorgeous man).
A step in the right direction, you would think (no violent tendencies, no rape), but again an underlying message that lesbian relationships are unstable (you’re gonna be left alone eventually if you go this route, honey). But at least this character was allowed to be lesbian for the whole movie (if only in a supporting role).
I mean, yes, Kissing Jessica Stein was great in that the lead character is involved in a lesbian relationship. Unfortunately, our heroine takes this route only because she can’t find any decent men and then, after (a remarkably painless) coming out, turns out not to be lesbian after all. Of course, this is exactly what makes the movie mainstream.
In The Hours Meryl Streep plays a nice enough (if screwed-up) lesbian, but we sense her lesbian relationship is only a distant third prize — after her love for a gay man and for her daughter (not necessarily in that order).
Further back in the mainstream mists of time we had Chasing Amy, whose core message was one of bisexuality — Amy says she doesn’t see why she should exclude 50% of the population when seeking a mate. She’s been a lesbian all along but then tries out a man for a change — funny how this seems to work for her.
Bisexuality with straight- winning-out is a bit of a theme with women in general, really. On TV we have squeaky-voice-screwball Caryn on Will & Grace who periodically flirts with women but is married to the elusive Stan. Then there’s Sex and the City, where Samantha jumps into bed with a woman for a couple of episodes. Suffice to say what was depicted was enough to put me off women. Of course, Samantha eventually returns to men with a vengeance.
In South Africa we never got to see the real TV lesbian, Ellen DeGeneres (who is funny, clever and good-looking), play herself in Ellen. The series was cut in the United States just as soon as Ellen the character, along with Ellen the actress, came out of the closet.
The rules seem to be a bit different for gay men, though. Gay men are gay forever. Have you ever seen a movie where a guy tries out being gay just for a while, because he can’t find any decent women?
The whole storyline of Will & Grace turns on the point that Will remains gay in spite of his great friendship with a really good-looking woman. Think of how often Will and John Goodman’s Butch in Normal, Ohio say something along the lines of, ”Yup, still gay” — with reference to, say, whether or not they are turned on by girlie pics.
Okay, I concede there is Detective Bayliss in Homicide, Life on the Street who is meant to be bisexual, but his bi-character was heralded as ground-breaking (and, of course, he was sexually molested by an uncle as a child and is into Zen Buddhism). ”The exception that proves the rule”, and all that.
Isn’t it also funny how it is usually convincing when a straight person plays gay? That is probably because gay people secretly think everyone is gay deep down, while straights are squirming so hard in their seats they can’t tell. But the other way round doesn’t seem to work — especially for the ”reformed” or closet cases.
Watching Anne Heche and an over-the-hill Harrison Ford try to conjure up the sexual chemistry in Six Days, Seven Nights was simply painful (Heche had just left DeGeneres to have some man’s baby at the time I watched it). And remember Richard Chamberlain in TV’s interminable The Thorn Birds? Did anyone ever really take him seriously as straight male romantic lead in that priest’s frock? Puh-leeze.
Where was I going with all this? Oh yes. Screwed-up lesbians in the movies. One obviously can’t expect a flattering leading role for one’s minority group in every second movie. But remember just after the Berlin Wall came down, and the Russians couldn’t be the baddies anymore, so anytime Hollywood needed bad guys, they were white South Africans with bad accents? And whities would say, it’s not fair, we’re not all like that?
It’s a bit like that. Lesbian life is not just Monster or Boys Don’t Cry (okay Brandon/Teena was transgendered, but you know what I mean). It’s not all murder and mayhem.
All I’m asking for is a bit more exposure for the girl-next-door character. Who happens to be lesbian. Just because she is. Who stays that way to the end of the movie. And who is still alive at the end of the movie. Because life imitates art much more than we realise.