CarnalNation

And the hunky little naked golden dude with the oh-so-phallic sword goes to….

First Tom Hanks, then Heath Ledger's nomination, Sean Penn's win, and now Colin Firth is nominated for A Single Man. Apparently the Oscar folks simply love straight guys playing homos… just as long as said sodomites suffer a lot, maybe even die a grisly death.

Back in the bad old days, any queer film character faced at least disgrace, and probably death, by the final reel. Hollywood's Hays Code for decades forbade even a whiff of "sexual perversion" to go unpunished, Supposed sin led to suffering. The End.

Things did eventually loosen up a bit, but homos never ended up happy when the final credits rolled. Even in "tolerant" movies, gays were pretty well doomed. Otto Preminger's 1962 film Advise and Consent, for instance, was groundbreaking in its day for its portrayal of gay life and its sympathy for a closeted Senator…who nevertheless ended up shooting himself.

These are different times of course. Gay men who are the central characters in prestigious, Oscar-nominated films do not end up dead or dreadfully alone.

Except in the case of Philadelphia, but that was about AIDS.

Oh, and Brokeback Mountain, but that was a beautifully wrought tragedy.

Yeah, well, Sean Penn's Harvey Milk got snuffed…but that was a historical fact.

And now there's the latest gay prestige film, A Single Man, in which—surprise!—one homo dies, leaving his ex dreadfully alone.

No, I'm absolutely not arguing that these movies shouldn't have been made, or that someone should have tacked on sunshine-and-bluebirds happy endings. Not a bit.

I'm just saying. What—if anything—should we glean from the fact that Brokeback, the last Big Gay Fictional Film, has been followed by another story of another man who likewise suffers terribly because of the violent death of his lover?

Sure, there are many significant differences between the two films—not least of which is their provenance. Brokeback was based on a New Yorker story by a straight woman, directed by a straight man from a screenplay written by hets. A Single Man was based on a novel written by noted queer scribe Christopher Isherwood, and scripted and directed by a gay fashion designer.

But then there are those pesky similarities. Both films are situated in a homophobic milieu, whether pre-Stonewall Los Angeles or pre-and-post-Stonewall cowboy country. The only notable female characters in both Brokeback and Single are straight women made miserable by their partners' same-sex attractions. And though the queer characters in both suffer from the constraints of the closet, none of them does anything about it, except…suffer. Now, I'm not suggesting that Colin Firth's professor should have marched around with a Mattachine Society picket sign, or that Ennis should have joined Queer Nation. But—even putting aside Milk for the moment—Tony Kushner's terrific play Angels in America showed how the closet isn't just a personal drama but a political locus.

It's an irresolvable debate: Does art have a social responsibility? Well, I'd argue mostly not, but that doesn't mean it's somehow detached from what's going on in the larger culture. I read Isherwood's pioneering novel four-plus decades ago, way back when I was in the closet, too, and found it a refreshingly frank, if emotionally bleak, look at being gay. And while Tom Ford came up with a visually ravishing film, I had to wonder, Why, after all these years, film this particular story, now? Was it to be taken as a cautionary tale reminding us never to go back to pre-Stonewall oppression? Or was it a soap opera acceptable to kinda-sorta liberal straights, secretly reassured because the gay guys were, as per the title of a 1962 film about the closet starring a closeted Dirk Bogarde (and featuring yet another gay suicide), ultimately Victims? No, not threats to the American way, not horny guys who enjoyed forbidden sex, just retro echoes of Harold in The Boys in the Band saying, "Show me a happy homosexual and I'll show you a gay corpse."

Midway through writing this, I decided to take in the new indie film Watercolors, a surprisingly well-acted movie about gay teens and getting bashed. Yes, it was yet another coming-out film, but it was rather sweet and real and the bashing horrifyingly plausible. (Coincidentally, it, like A Single Man, even featured underwater shots of a hunky naked guy swimming around.) But then—major plot spoiler ahead—the film took a major swerve toward Brokeback Mountain and we ended up with yet another dead gay guy and a survivor left to suffer, and if the film ended on a hopeful note, I still had to wonder whether the Dead-Homo Thing is simply a reliable tragic theme, or some vestigial holdover of internalized homophobia.

Or maybe not so internalized. As we all know, the LGBT movement gained a foothold in mainstream America during the height of the AIDS crisis, when the stereotype of the homosexual man went from "predatory, mincing child molester in leather chaps" to "pathetic shell of a man covered in lesions." Yes, we were officially Ennobled By Suffering. And while it's better to be seen as a martyr than a monster, I can't help but wonder whether some of our borderline friends are now a little miffed because some of us not only had the temerity to survive, but now refuse to shut up. 

Many years back, my sweetie wrote a pissed-off note to the film critic of The Nation, who responded, "It's apparently impossible to please a self-appointed true radical." Well, I'm not one of those—at least I hope not—and neither is he.

It's just that if I were Harvey Milk's iconic queer kid in Altoona, only with a Netflix account, I'd be wondering just what the hell I was getting myself into.

 And I wonder why so many good films (still) feature so many dead gay men.