Thursday, August 30, 2018

With "05:59 Paris Théo & Hugo (dans le même Bateau)," Netflix--unless it's Hulu--has delivered:

To quote Armond White, film critic for Out, "The sex club orgy that starts the film should be a landmark in movie history.  It's not new for [male!] gay culture which has depended on pornography for verification of its desires...[Directing team] Ducastel-Martineau transcend pornography through their unabashed acceptance of gay male sexual activity...But it's the circumstances of public sex--communal sex, shown without disapproval or inhibition, that gives honesty and amazement [?!] to the film's understanding of gay male behavior. The libidinal aggression that defines male instinct and is an undeniable part of [male!] gay socializing on the streets, in bars, discos and even sex clubs get[s] acknowledged in Hugo and Théo's meat-cute" [?]. Indeed it does, though I'm not sure what is meant by 'meat-cute.'  Nor am I altogether sure that I get in what sense 'amazement' contributes to the film's understanding of gay male behavior--though I very distinctly recall, as a militant Gay Male Liberationist back in the early 70's, the utter
consternation of an embassy of Lesbians (I think from the Daughters of Bilitis) to one of the first [male, of course] Gay Liberation meetings in Seattle, to whom I  and my Gay [male, of course] colleagues attempted to propound (and, perhaps, to understand ourselves) the moral, ethical and philosophical value that gay men place on communal, public and promiscuous sex. Cutting edge stuff in 1970, and then, and still, fundamentally and ideologically divisive of Lesbians from gay men. And there we would still be--isolate from one another--had not our Sapphic Sisters come up with the absurd (but important to them), genially inclusive issue of "gay marriage," which, by overwhelmingly persuading straight women, won the acceptance of society generally for "gay rights," id est, the basic right of homosexuals, particularly and generally, to exist, and not to be persecuted. Silly. Preposterous. But that's how it happened.

Now the meaning of "meet-cute." Nota bene that this is, basically, a nauseating heterosexism, referring to the peculiarly revolting genre of chick-flicks known as romantic comedies; specifically to the scenario of these in which two individuals (male and female--unless it's two males who meet in an orgy; in which case, it's called a meat-cute) are brought together in some unlikely, zany way. The way the characters meet in Serendipity or When Harry Met Sally. I, of course, have never seen either of these movies, although I have seen scenes from the latter, which I found, in very deed, excruciatingly cute.  Women, apparently, have really bad taste and are captivated by negligible trifles.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home