“Maybe I should thank someone else. Someone who's really been there, someone who taught me alot, about poetry and Shakespeare, and just, y'know, stayin' awake, man. Someone who's just an overall great guy, a great teacher... to Howard Brackett from Greenleaf, Indiana! And he's gay. Y'know, I've been thinking alot about this night, and I've decided to dedicate this whole night to a great, gay teacher. Mr. Brackett, WE WON!”

~Cameron Drake, In & Out

These words started and ended what could possibly be a good enough summary of what homosexuals go through, in a plot-constraint movie at least. With a dose of just about the right amount of humor, In and Out was successful enough, if not intended for hardcore satire, in showcasing the real scent of society and every homosexual’s banter against each other. Set in a small town in Indiana which could possibly be a good representation of what society is and how society, in general, and in truth, conservatively reacts when issues concerning homosexuality are presented. Howard Brackett, portrayed by Kevin Kline, made possible for the audience to grasp if not half, even a tinge, of what the real deal is when it comes to homosexuality. That everyday we strive to be someone we want to be and that everyday we are given the possibility to actually be that someone that we want to be and the everyday there is a vast possibility that there’d be born, a gay baby.

The movie showcased a man who lived his life for the longest time in the direst appropriate and civil way that he possibly could, stirred by society’s standard of what a real successful man should be; married, with a decent if not beautiful, healthy, ready for child-bearing wife, stable career, barbecues on Sundays, baseball matches on TV, etcetera, etcetera. A man who struggled in his utmost to fill the role that society dictated in the end felt prey to a storm that’s long been there, he just didn’t quite notice. He didn’t quite notice for he was far busy watering the plants, when in the end, all the toiling and exhausting energy wasted on the plants, would be in vain for there’d be a storm, add the sweet-bitter fact that he planted the wrong set of plants anyway.

Gay-humor wise, I must say that it’s rather subtle, or it’s just that perhaps, during that time, gays weren’t really “GAYS” (out, real-open, cross dressers or not) for that was filmed 1997 and I really have no idea at how people treated gays generally during that time. For if you’re going to compare it to the Will & Grace generation that I woke up to, it’s rather subtle and exaggerated in a way that, it was just way too stereotypical and too smack-right-at-the-middle-bull’s-eye to the point. The set-up was there and really, if you’re going to think of it, it really served as a good, again if not hardcore satire, representation at how conservative our society still is. Maybe I’m wrong if I’m going to say that it was exaggerated for maybe, just maybe, in truth, there’s still vast discrimination present all-over society just that the culture that reigns in me, doesn’t have quite that snare. Maybe, it’s still an understatement, maybe it’s a hard-crisp honest cracker that I’m just not willing to bite, but, at this generation, it’s still quite hard to believe that, indeed, society still has an immense silent power of making people choose stuffs that they need to have over the stuffs that they want to have, that they’d be happy to have, that they’d be sincerely happy and sincerely fulfilled to have, deep in their heart of hearts.

“The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.”

~Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886

Time and time again issues concerning homosexuality have been raised. And this movie is but one of the many medium that forever and forever have strived in making society realize the need for proper reiteration for better comprehension of the vast dimension of homosexuality. It was both funny and real. It served well as a good briefer for the discussion of Stereotypes on society. To end my reaction, since I’m gay-loving and all, let me end my reaction paper using Martina Navratilova, a bisexual demi-god, champion, tennis player’s word saying that, indeed, labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. And, true to the core, labels are not for people.



mgla
2004 – 39XXX
soc 130