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wen-kexing-apologist · 7 months

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Bengiyo Queer Cinema Syllabus

For those who are not aware, I have decided to run the gauntlet of @bengiyo’s Queer Cinema Syllabus and have officially started Unit 3: Faith and Religion. The films in Unit 3 are: But I’m a Cheerleader (2000), Prayers for Bobby (2009), Latter Days (2003), Blackbird (2014), The Wise Kids (2011), Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015)

Today I will be writing about

Blackbird (2014) dir. Patrik-Ian Polk

[Run Time: 1:39, Available on: tubi, Google Play, Lang: English]

Content Warning: suicide via razor blade, reaction to family finding the body does occur on screen

Summary: A young singer struggles with his sexuality and the treatment of others while coming of age in a small Southern Baptist community. (from IMDB)

Cast: *Julian J. Walker as Randy Rousseau *Mo’Nique as Claire Rousseau, Randy’s mother *Gary LeRoi Gray as Efrem, Randy’s best friend * Isaiah Washington as Lance Rousseau, Randy’s father * Kevin Allesee as Marshall MacNeil, Randy’s eventual boyfriend

Alright, so I feel inspired to talk less about my own connection to this piece, as I do to talk about how this feels like the first film that truly dips in towards BL territory. Since this syllabus was designed as a warm up to BL, I think it is worth discussing how Blackbird established some of the tropes we have come to know and love-hate in BLs, especially Thai BL.

First off, this film has a lot of singing in it. Now, that said, THIS BOY CAN SING. I do not begrudge shows for including singing, I just don’t think every single actor in GMMTV’s rolodex needs to be handed a guitar and a microphone and told to roam free. And I think it is quite rare that the BLs can actually justify the inclusion of singing, whereas here we are following a choir boy in a Southern Baptist church living in a small town. Singing church songs on your way to school seems like a perfectly reasonable and justified thing to be doing.

This in and of itself would not be enough for me to say this is the first proto-Thai BL style film I’ve seen on this list so far.

But, if you are familiar with Bad Buddy or My School President then I need you to know that Blackbird includes…

GAY ROMEO AND JULIET

Which, since I started at BL and am actually working my way back to it through the syllabus, is probably why I started looking at this piece as the first of the films that gave me an established foundation in the kinds of tropes that existed in (at least) Thai BL. All of which to say, Blackbird is about a boy struggling to accept his sexuality, in highschool, with his two other friends one of whom is comfortably queer, who is crushing on the straight boy who is in an essentially side-couple relationship.

We get a kid who wants to be an actor, we get a student play, we get the main character finding someone else to fall in love with when he realizes that the boy he is crushing on cannot reciprocate, we have singing, we have guitar playing, and we have high school…with uniforms, AND A (dream sequence) GAY BOY CUDDLE PILE.

I swear to God, there is a scene where Marshall and Randy are watching the student film that Marshall created (that started out as one story and ended up being co-opted to instead focus on Randy, rather than the actual story they had been filming [hello Lomfon and Tien in La Pluie]) that plays so similarly to the Ongsa and Soon date in Episode 1 of Absolute Zero (one of two episodes of it I watched before dropping). They are together, on a blanket, at a school function, watching a movie, with their hands slowly creeping forward.

Like, even the films in the coming of age section had some tropes that I recognized from BL, but I don’t recall them standing out as starkly as they do here. If you follow me, then you have been suffering the consequences of my Shadow brain rot, and even in that case (where I can’t yet qualify Shadow as a BL) I was noticing potential points of connection between Blackbird and Shadow around it’s themes. [which are about religion and queerness so like…go figure. Mainly that, when Claire catches Randy making out with Marshall in front of their goddamn house where anyone can see them (another check for the BL tropes), she calls in the pastor.

The pastor who has the following conversation with Randy:

Randy: “You think I’m possessed?” Paster Crandell: “I think there is something lurking in you,”

So let me drop another coin in the shadows as queerness bucket right now.

What is so interesting to me about this film though is that for as much as I see the overlapping tropes between it and BL, complete with the kind of thrown together ending (imo) that I’ve come to find with a number of the BLs I’ve been watching. It doesn’t read like a BL to me.

Like, if I had seen this film before I ever watched BL, I don’t know that I would have thought about it in relation to BL. I don’t know what vibes I get from BL, but Blackbird doesn’t give me those vibes. Maybe just cause it’s not the type I’m used to, but more likely, because of the severity of the consequences for some of these kids, and the cruelty at which they are shamed. Apparently, one of the minor plotlines of Blackbird is that Randy’s sister has been missing for 6 year, and as a result of her disappearance, Randy’s mother, Claire, has gone heavily in to her religion. So where before way back before Randy was born, Claire had dared her partner, Lance to kiss a boy. Now, she blames Randy for the disappearance of his sister. It is in a heated, emotionally intense moment, but for that moment Claire is so convinced that her missing daughter and all the pain and suffering that has happened to their family as a result is punishment for Randy’s sin of being gay. (Let’s not mention suicide is a sin, and Randy’s mother is perfectly happy to float the idea of killing herself at one point).

More likely it is because I think this film is far more focused on follow the journey of Randy’s self-acceptance, and the decisions he makes around honoring his queerness and what that means for his religion, rather than a story about a boy who meets a boy and falls in love.

For/By/About

Gay Trifecta.

Blackbird is based off a book of the same name written by author Larry Duplechan, who is a gay man. The director of this film Patrik Ian-Polk is a gay man, and though he had a delay in making this film that required a recast of the main character, Randy, Patrik was able to find Julian J. Walker who is also an out gay man. Fun fact about Patrik, he was the creator of Noah’s Ark which is a show I have yet to see, but Ben has put on a number of lists. So I understand why this film may have ended up on the syllabus. I feel like this film is for gays in that I think if I Knew I was queer in in 2014 and saw this movie, I would probably need to hear the “God is love” style acceptance stuff. I think it is a testament to where we are now in terms of queer content that I can debate with myself about whether or not the level of cheese that comes from the Dad being cool with his son being gay being commentary to the straight audience about how queerness should be treated. But, I don’t think that is the case here, I think this is by and large a film for Black queer kids who are balancing on the edge of self-acceptance and their relationship to religion.

Favorite Moment

I am gonna cheat and say that I have two, but they’re technically connected so it’s fine.

The first is a funny moment, which is when Randy, Efrem, and Randy’s dad are sitting in the waiting room of a clinic so Efrem can get STI tests done. I loved the way that Lance tried to broach the question about whether Efrem and Randy were a couple, and I loved the random confession from his dad that he’s kissed a dude before…with tongue. Like, it feels like such a real and funny moment to me, the random “I dabbled” confessions.

The second, and the one that is actually my favorite moment, is when Randy asks Efrem if he is okay, for probably the thor time since he has seen him being thrown around at The Hill (where the gay boys in this small town in Mississippi go to fuck). And Efrem just can’t pretend anymore, and he breaks down for a quiet moment in Lance’s truck while Randy just holds him. I love that Lance gives them time, seeing what is happening, so that the boys can have a moment to just give and receive comfort, and that (and I think in part due to how chill Lance was about queerness) Randy and Efrem can just hold hands in the truck. I love love love love when boys get to be physically affectionate without it being perceived as romantic or gay. Which I know probably sounds counterintuitive because both boys are gay (but not dating), but it’s just like, a level of comfort that I feel like Randy would normally shy away from because he has been so desperate to appear straight.

Favorite Quote

“Are you okay?” || “I wish you would stop fucking asking me that man, I’m running out of punchlines,”

I said this when I was watching If It’s With You but I am such a fucking sucker for any character that masks their own pain, problems, or sadness behind a bright and happy mask. I loved Amane in IIWY, I loved Koichi in Eternal Yesterday, and I loved Efrem in this. I love that he holds himself comfortably, I love that he doesn’t make a big deal at all about the everyday traumas that his friends are subject to. Which is not to say he doesn’t care, and is to say that I feel like he is able to help make The Big Things feel manageable. Randy is struggling throughout most of the movie with the fact that he keeps having Gay Wet Dreams, he’s struggling with his own sexuality, and tossing his bed shets in the washing machine always feels (to me) like he is ashamed. Randy’s mother is in a deep bout of depression because her daughter has been missing for years and Randy often has to take care of her as a result.

These are, in my mind, Big Things, and I appreciate that Efrem can just come strolling on in to the house, laugh away the soiled sheets, come chatting happily with Claire even when she’s not responsive, and ask to finish off the cereal that’s in her bowl but that he knows she isn’t going to eat. I loved that he could give Randy a private moment to hang up more photos of his missing sister, but then turn around and start wrasslin’ on their walk to school.

But I love even more that we see these moments where things don’t go so well for him, and how it chips away

Score

7/10

I would have probably given this an 8 because some of the acting was not great, I didn’t like the rape fake out that they did, etc. But I feel like it’s quality tanked a bit at the end when Randy’s sister is found and when we get the Life Update from Dream!Marshall at the end. I feel like it served to undermine the severity of the situations at hand. That Marshall had killed himself after Leslie had killed herself, and he was given a two minute update about what the rest of his life was going to look like. Also, I am a Southerner and there was some accent work in there that felt too fake.

#queer cinema syllabus #bengiyo's queer cinema syllabus #blackbird #blackbird the movie #blackbird (2014)

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pynkhues · 1 year

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Havey you seen glass onion knives out yet? Thoughts on the series?

Hahaha, yeah, I actually ended up watching it on Christmas Day with my family after my nephews had gone to sleep. We couldn't agree on what to check out, and Glass Onion just ended up being the easiest option.

I said in my one-line Letterboxd review that Rian Johnson is an enemy of narrative tension, which I stand by. I just - - ugh. The Knives Out movies frustrate me on so many levels, because at the end of the day, I like plot-driven murder mysteries, I do, but the thing with the Knives Out movies is that they feel like they're written by an AI that's been fed Agatha Christie novels, Sleuth, and a bunch of current trending Twitter headlines.

The result to me is just empty filmmaking. There's no characterisation outside of caricature, no shortage of themes but absolutely no depth or interrogation to any of them, absolutely terrible pacing, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes a mystery story compelling (which - and I mean this genuinely - is the mystery. The first one had the red herring and POV character as one and the same, which ??? and the sequel had the mystery solved more or less by the end of the first act and then proceeded to re-tell it two more times in case we missed it). They don't have anything to say, there's nothing to analyse or engage with, the characters are one-note, and every scene is about five minutes longer than it needs to be.

The nicest thing I can say about them is the cinematography is decent, but beyond that - - yeah. The hype baffles me, and I think Rian Johnson is a hack.

#also as a beatles fan the whole glass onion thing annoyed me #i'm sure it was a nod to the fact that steve jobs was such a huge beatles fan and riffing off that #and the character trying to possess genius instead of being a genius #but even the gag about him playing blackbird on the guitar paul wrote it on landed with a thud #because it was a right handed guitar #and paul's left handed and plays a left handed guitar #which i feel like anyone who knows anything about the beatles knows that #(literally every book and documentary talks about the impact of paul being able to play parallel to john and george as a left hander #had on fandom and beatlemania and the perception of intimacy #which is just something i find really interesting generally)#but my point is that it just demonstrates to me again how superficially the movie engages with its own concepts #and how lazy it is #glass onion #knives out #film asks #welcome to my ama

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