The Kids are So-So
On Sunday night, my galpal and I joined a sold-out crowd of moviegoers to see the much-anticipated The Kids Are Alright at the tiny Ptown Theater. The a.c. was a bonus.
The crowd at the early show was mostly Well of Loneliness era women in pairs and posses. Quite frankly, I was looking forward to seeing Annette Benning (love her) and Julianne Moore getting it on. A lot. My biggest worry before the movie was that one of the lesbians goes straight. That should have been the least of my worries.
The film is wonderfully acted and expertly shot but for me that didn’t make up for the story line that seemed more conventional because I was sitting next to the unconventional John Waters. He thought it was a decent sitcom. My other seatmate started fidgeting, then harrumphing and finally yelling on the bike ride home, “For this we waited in line? And for thirty years? I’m a lesbian and I hated that movie.” A woman on the street stopped her and said she hated it too and sent her:http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/
the-kids-arent-alright/
Since I have friends who are filmmakers, writers and directors, and know what they have to go through to get anything made and distributed, I am not an immediate critic of the movie I’ve just seen. I appreciate that it even exists for a few hours and then I get critical.
So I’m glad that Lisa Cholodenko got her film made. But the film got made because it did not rock anyone’s world or challenge any racial or gender stereotypes. The only good sex with skin was straight. Long-term same-sex coupling and parenting was shown to be just like as same-old-sex coupling and parenting. The lesbians were of course virtually sexless. Mothering is smothering. Even absent fathers do it better. Despite a CA-CODA-speak script, everyone was on an AlAnon slip. Women, even lesbians, fall for guys just because. Because they watch gay male porn? Try The L-Word. The portrayal of people of color was annoying. The kids would really be alright if they went to a COLAGE meeting, Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere.
If TKAA pissed you off, I recommend Angelina Jolie in Salt. Pretend she’s a lesbian.
July 27, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
kate. good points all. as usual. i’ve got a piece about it running on the huffington post this morning. see what you think.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-garry-/the-kids-are-all-right-no_b_659444.html
love to the galpal. xo
July 28, 2010 @ 12:26 am
Think of it as an “inception” of sorts – someone planted the idea in her brain that only hot straight sex sells and there was no music to wake her up from her dream of riches. Would it have been well acted and well shot if it was a hot lesbian scene ? I remind us of Susan and Catherine in the “Hunger”. Would it have been made…. ? Who cares?
July 28, 2010 @ 5:31 am
Thanks, Kate. I am so with you.
My kids have a donor who they can meet when they are 18 if they choose. So I went to the film aware that I just might be super sensitive to the content. But hey, we (LGBTQ families) have never really been portrayed in a Hollywood film so I was really wanting to love it. And of course, there was that added benefit of having Annette Benning and Julianne Moore – both total hotties – on the screen for two hours. So I went with a positive attitude.
Then Powie! I was able to get past a lot of the inaccuracies, but just couldn’t stomach the fact that not only did the film focus on the straight sex as to hot sex and that one of the moms had to have a het fling with the donor, but to top it all off, the more femmie of the women is the one to have a hot sexual relationship with the donor. Come on. At the very least it would have been a bit more interesting if Annette Benning was the one who was attracted to the guy.
But worst of all for me, was that the Jualianne Moore character didn’t seem to think more than 15 seconds about the impact of her action on her kids, who were just discovering a connection with their biological parent. This is deep and real for kids, and very vulnerable. For me, this was the very most troubling part of the film – sending the message that we do not care about our kids in quite the same way as straight folks.
Some parts of the film were good. I think the parents’ ambivalence about their kids’ connecting with the donor was right on and real. I thought that the portrayal of the helicopter parents not ready to let go was absolutely hysterical (possibly because it hit close to home?). And I really like that the couple makes up in the end.
My kids are 9 and 12. My 12-year-old son has been relatively uninterested in his donor up until now. We bring him up once in awhile to try to see if he is interested or curious, and up until now, he didn’t bite. Then the other day he said to me “wouldn’t it be weird if I have passed my donor on the street and just didn’t know it.” This issue is uniquely personal and fascinating and poignent. The film doesn’t do it justice.
July 28, 2010 @ 11:16 am
I respectfully feel differently (than most, but that’s usual) I say skillful storytelling requires the complexities of affairs that ARE part of life-this is where it’s a universal story & why sugarcoat like every other too simplistic Hollywood film.
There is room for more than one lesbian story I’d hope.
I LIKED the script. Another brilliant script from “High Art” creator. Real people. real situs, captures well the complexity of LTRs and humans. She totally gets MY lbean sxuality, tho the man is a bit one-dimensional and a foil.
L Word is just daytime soaps schlock for me-I can’t even watch it, never appealed. And yes, many do find what is outside their reference field to be most erotic, an old tale, long known.Actually Julianne’s justification for it was right out of my own mouth, regardless of the fact that only women go there.
Asking this film to be an end all is like asking any other movie to be the definitive word or criticizing my 50’s pulps for their PI elements instead of understanding within their own context.
July 28, 2010 @ 9:05 pm
Wanted to love it. Didn’t. I think John Waters was being kind. At least sitcoms are usually funny. This was clunky and kind of heavy and weird.
Annette Bening, to her credit, got the character of the 1950s, overbearing, “Because I make the money around here, that’s why!” alcoholic dad down. Never saw that one coming.
False advertising on the movie tagline. “Nic and Jules had the perfect family, until they met the man who made it all possible.” No they didn’t. Their relationship was a humorless, passionless, chore. Their parenting was overbearing and burdensome.
In the end what left me unsatisfied as a movie-goer is that they didn’t work through anything. So Jules, has a passionate affair with Paul (The likelihood/rightness/wrongness of that plot point has been covered by a lot of people. So I’ll just take that one at face value.)
Then, when he falls in love with her and tries to talk to her about a future, she says, “I’m gay” and hangs up on him?!? Gay or straight or bi or whatever, that just seemed weird and shallow. Not, “Hey, I made a mistake. I love my wife. I don’t want to hurt my family, etc.” But rather, “So sorry sir, we’ve had some fun, but I have a gay job to do here.” I did not believe that response from an uber-processor like Jules.
Should have either made some breakthrough (not just some painfully overwritten speech about “Turn off the tv kids. I want to talk to you about marriage being hard”) or split up. Instead, it is just, Nose to the relationship grindstone, let’s finish this thing.” Which is kind of how I felt 3/4 of the way through the movie.
I did learn three important things from watching the TKAA:
If you are a teenage boy struggling with your sexuality, apparently you are mean to animals.
Lesbians are required BY LAW to wear all kinds of bracelets, strings, and beads on their wrists.
If you are starting a landscape business, you need a truck that resembles a wrecker and takes up the entire driveway.
July 29, 2010 @ 12:46 am
The most important part of the movie is, perhaps, all the things you hate- especially that the couple was married and it was NOT pointed to as different- same boring het stuff. It was very normalized. The more that is shown to the masses, the more it will become so
July 29, 2010 @ 1:08 am
True, thought it lame that the good sex was straight sex. Thought of you and wcas groaning for my girlfriends at the lack of hot girl on girl action. I wanted and expected to see AB + JM having an intimate blast at SOME point- a crucial scene was omitted (bet they shot a few…)
Was glad to see depiction of couple likely to survive, maybe even thrive again after, some infidelity- almost the most radical part of the movie.
Loved “Laurel Canyon” and “High Art’ was great (Patricia Clarkson-!) but TKAAR wasn’t nearly as fun or sexy.
In spite of disappointment about what it wasn’t, it was one of the better mainstream movies I’ve seen this year.
(And I thought the actress “of color” played the most alive, thoughtful, sexy, sympathetic and likable character)
Wasn’t as funny- or riveting- as Joan Rivers documentary (still crack up whenever I think of her telling why she likes anal sex) and “I am love” with Tilda Swinton still my fave of the year (and has hot lezkiss FYI)
August 1, 2010 @ 3:31 am
I think I’ve finally boiled it all down as to why this movie bothered me so much. Cholodenko, of course, had every right to tell the story she wanted. Her business. But now all the Moral Majority/Family Values/DOMA people do not even have to STRETCH to say, “See, we TOLD you. This movie was made by a lesbian, so now we have it on good authority that:”
1) Lesbians lead tragic, humorless, angry lives, but the answer to that is a man, because only a man can really satisfy a woman
2) Gay parents mostly talk to their kids about porn and whether or not the kids are gay (because they are recruiting, you know)
3) Straight dad’s talk to them about important things like motorcycles and how to have enough self-respect to not hang out with people who pee on dog’s heads.
Thanks a lot, Cholodenko.
August 6, 2010 @ 6:37 am
Kate, this piece was as always awesome and to the point. Absolutely agreed on many counts. Nic and Jules were so very racist and their lifestyle was so very opulent – it seemed like there was some assumed wealthy white suburban audience who were supposed to relate to Nic and Jules because of a shared class experience/obliviousness to interlocking systems of oppression, and this was deeply troubling. The strategy of winning acceptance for rich white gays (and rich white gays only) by proving their normalcy goes against everything the movement should be for. The portrayal of the donor dad as an interloper was also quite troubling – there are so many types of families and privileging a nuclear family with two parents is so harmful to so many. In the queer community, it also seems sort of weird and out of touch with reality.
On the flip side, however, I didn’t consider the fact that the kids turned to the donor as an alternate parent figure to be a perpetuation of the ideology of lesbian-parenting-as-inadequate. A lot of teenagers turn away from their parent(s) and towards other adults (especially adults who seem cooler, and who let them engage in contraband activities), and it’s not because their parent(s) are fundamentally inadequate, it’s because teenagers and parents often have pretty epic power struggles as everyone tries to navigate the shifting parent-child relationship. Along these lines, I think Nic and Jules largely escaped being a stand-in for “all lesbians” because they were the only gay people in the film/their circle of friends – this seemed unrealistic (are there actually out gay people who don’t hang out with any other gay people?), but at the same time, their behavior seemed much more emblematic of their class position than their sexuality. I also thought the movie (sort of) quashed the “lesbians REALLY want men” stereotype by having Jules ultimately dismiss Paul, hanging up on him and saying “I’m gay!” It seemed that for her the affair was much more about desire for attention than desire for a man … [And you could also argue that even if Jules were into men, if it was handled well, it wouldn’t be the end of the world – bisexual people face prejudice in both gay and straight circles, which is everyone’s loss.]
As the gay young adult kid of straight parents (who, by the way, are huge fans of yours, Kate), one of the things I loved about this movie was the way it sends a message that a family (any family) can be imperfect but still really love each other and ultimately support each other. Parents can have a tough time in their relationship with each other, it can be a “marathon” as Jules says at one point, but it doesn’t mean they don’t care a ton about each other and about their kids. Even when their marital drama causes their kids a lot of pain – the kids’ discovery of Jules’ affair is of course an incredibly extreme example of this – the kids can still, ultimately, be okay, better than okay.
A lot of my friends really appreciated this movie, as did I. We definitely noticed the only-straight-sex-is-sexy thing, but then, maybe it was easier for us to write off because none of us really want to picture our parents having sex, anyway. (When you’re in college watching a movie about parents’ relationships with their teenage children, you definitely identify with the children.)
Also … you know … we’re younger. We haven’t waited thirty years for anything. We’ve maybe been out for like ten years, tops (yes, some of us came out in middle school – it’s weird). Maybe if we had dealt with stupid stereotypes for several decades, only to see a movie which retained many of them, we’d be less excited about said movie. Which is all to say, no disrespect/insensitivity meant – we respect and admire all of you who came before us SO much … and if this reading of the movie seems naive or even out-and-out stupid, that is totally legit.