Milk: Making History
Gus Van Sant’s biopic Milk is a celebratory tale of America's first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk (portrayed by Sean Penn), who was elected as a San Francisco City Supervisor for the Castro District in 1977. The film beautifully weaves in real-life archival footage of the time in a way that makes the film feel like a mix of documentary and biopic. And while it doesn’t stray too far from the biopic format of dramatizing true events, it does remain fairly faithful to its subject matter. Despite its two-hour run-time, Milk manages to keep the attention of the viewers through it, while also telling the history of an extremely fraught time for queer people and a gay who fought tirelessly to advance and protect the right of his community.
impressive that a film that focuses on telling not only
history, but the history of an integral time and figure of the gay rights
movement, manages to be so palatable for all types of audiences. It toes a line
that is often seen in Hollywood when it comes to controversial subjects.
Instead of completely sanitizing the film to appease the savior complexes of
straight audiences (*ahem* I’m looking at you Dallas Buyer Club), it
performs a balancing act. In order to please straight audiences, it maneuvers
around truths to quote-un-quote “Hollywood-ify” certain aspects of Milk’s life.
On the other hand, the story is unarguably gay. In its attempt to not scare
straight folk away, it doesn’t alienate the audience it represents in the
story. Milk is the hero of the story. He’s not portrayed as a poor victim in
need of saving. Instead, he, and all the other queer activists, are shown,
accurately, to have agency, drive, and determination to fight for their rights.
Unlike other Oscar-bait films, this one does have a fairly progressive message,
that isn’t sacrificed to act as a pat on the pat for any well-intentioned
moderate that wants to make play of radicalism. It has something to say, and it
says it in a strategic way that reflects the theatrical nature of politics this
film depicts.
However, I will admit that it's disheartening that we live
in a world where stories depicting the lives of marginalized communities, such
as the LGBTQ+ community, have to be told with any level of sanitization to
present to the majority. For example, Harvey Milk was said to be a liberal with
his sex life, but in the film, he was depicted as serial-monogamous. “The movie
garnered criticism from some quarters for its tepid and inaccurate
representation of 1970s gay sex and Harvey Milk's sex life in particular,”
Julia Ehart writes in Auto/Biography Studies. “The film devotes precious
little screen time to gay sex or gay sex cultures, containing but one explicit
sex scene (between Milk and Scott Smith) and virtually no anonymous, casual sex
scenes of any sort. And while Milk waxes positive about the beauty of having
"many lovers" to Cleve, he is shown coupled sequentially with only
two-Scott and Jack Lira” (163). While I’d argue that this film doesn’t require
explicit sex scenes, they could have easily depicted the more casual,
non-monogamous aspects of Harvey’s sex life, and the sex culture of gay men at
the time, instead of offering up a big Hollywood-esque romance between Harvey
and Scott (James Franco).
I understand politics is a game of moves and counter moves, and that change can’t be done overnight. One half of me understands that in order to get a message out about a critical political, cultural, or social issue we have to appeal to people in a way that will open their minds instead of scaring them away. The other half of me is, simply put, tired. I want to live in a world where queer stories can be told in authentic and brutally honest ways. I don’t want to live in a world where change is an endless cycle of progress and regression – a cycle that is intact, in part, because people are afraid of being judged as too radical in their fight for change. I think we can strive to be more assertive in our strive for progress, but I also understand that we have to maintain a level of caution. Milk is both an example and a result of how our political system forces minorities to toe the line of appeasement and provocation in order to achieve equal rights.
This film demonstrates that progression and degression of
change in yet another way. One of the major topics of this story is the 1978
California Proposition 6, which was a failed ballot measure that sought to ban
members of the queer community from working in public schools. This movie was
released on October 28, 2008, and less than a month later, on November 8, 2008,
Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that sought to ban same-sex
marriage, was passed. Though it was later ruled unconstitutional in 2010 and
officially overturned in 2013, the despair of that decision is a stark contrast
to the joy seen in Milk, after Proposition 6 didn’t pass. B. Ruby Rich,
writer of New Queer Cinema: The Directors Cut, talks about how the
despair of the passing of Proposition 8 impacted her viewing of Milk.“Edited
by history, Milk was no longer the same film that debuted to the gala crowd in
October. It had acquired an additional layer of sadness, a renewed sense of
loss and betrayal, and a fervid new audience. In San Francisco even weekday
shows at 10 A.M. sold out for weeks. In the Castro itself, lines stretched down
the block and around the corner. People went to see it as a ritual of shared
shock and despair” (252). Milk heavily features a theme of hope that was
personified by Harvey Milk, and this opened to audiences at a time when hope
was greatly needed. I’d argue that films like these are always Oscar-bait, but
I would also argue that this film definitely sought out to be a commentary on
the political landscape of the time, specifically (of course) regarding LGBTQ+
rights. This film evokes despair, just as Harvey Milk's real-life death did,
but it also inspires hope the same way Milk did in real life. Though they may
have altered history and changed bits of Milk’s life for the sake of time or
the story they wanted to tell, I think they did a fine job of portraying that
aspect of Milk – which is perhaps the most important part of his legacy.
Works Cited
Milk. Directed by Gus
Vant Sant, Focus Features, 2008.
Rich, B. Ruby. “Got
Milk? Gus Van Sant’s Encounter with History.” New Queer Cinema: The Director’s
Cut, Duke University Press, 2013, pp. 236-260.
Erhart, Julia. “The
Naked Community Organizer: Politics and Reflexivity in Gus Van Sant's Milk.” a/b:
Auto/Biography Studies, Vol. 26, 2011, pp. 156-170.
.jpg)
I hadn't considered that the movie performed a balancing act, but after you explained it that makes sense! The film worked to appease many kinds of audiences, and it obviously worked since the film garnered a lot of praise, both through audience reviews and award nominations.
ReplyDeleteThe push and pull of progress and regression is a disheartening observation, but a true one. Two steps forward, one step back is the name of the game. It just think back to how delightfully queer really old films were before the Hayes Code, and how secretly queer has been until recent times. Forward, backwards. Milk was a timely film, but there still would be pearls clutched even today at the idea of hero-izing a gay man. I noticed how the arguments of Milk's day are still the same arguments happening today: gay rights, gay teachers, psychiatric care for youths, etc. and it's frustrating that we don't seem to have made much progress in the last fifty years after all.
ReplyDeleteHello! I enjoyed reading your blog post and found it very insightful on the aspects that were not mentioned about Milk’s life. I agree the film does not require much sex scenes but to not incorporate his non-monogamous aspect of Milk’s life excludes part of who he was. Overall, I thought the film was well-done, but I also knew nothing about Harvey Milk until after watching the film and doing the readings. While the movie is long, I agree these aspects of Milk’s life could have been easily captivated in the film while not drawing away from the other multiple topics of the film. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteI like how you made sure to note that while this film is pretty long, it isn't boring at any point - I think it speaks to how good the filmmaking is that it can keep an audience's full attention with that long of a runtime. I also find your point about the film performing a balancing act to remain palatable to all audiences to be really fascinating.
ReplyDelete