‘looking: the movie’ is politically important for so many reasons.
most obviously, it actively tries to engage in important political conversations (a little too hard, perhaps; the writers andrew haigh and michael lannan are best when they are meandering apolitically and aimlessly through the little details of relationships): patty talks at some length about the personal stakes in the post-Windsor/DOMA moment, while brady (richie’s self-consciously radical queer boyfriend for most of the film) and patty engage in a heated dispute over what it means to be ‘gay’ and whether one is politically obligated to be queer (i.e. actively engaged in dismantling the hegemonic system) and whether it is politically permissible to be an assimilationist (i.e. being a good, non-threatening presence within the dominant system).
but more importantly, the film says really radical and truthful things about gay male desire in america. consider how patty has sex with a random 22 year old kid as a prerequisite to the film’s real conversation about whether patty’s brief escape to denver has really changed anything. consider how it is revealed that dom and patty’s relationship, perhaps the most stable relationship on the show, was founded on a mutual jerkoff. for gay men in america, sex is a necessary prerequisite for any semblance of social and emotional intimacy. and this assertion is perhaps problematized through a closer reading of dom and patty’s first encounter. it is of utmost importance that it was a foiled, and necessarily awkward sexual encounter, which then opened up new possibilities of social intimacy (they become best friends, despite an age gap) and emotional intimacy (they kiss at length, brush their teeth together and even spoon each other to sleep, in one sustained scene). where the initial sexual encounter goes smoothly (instantiated through the case of the random 22 year old), the result is a rather flat emotional connection, where everything is just 'nice’ afterwards.
on that note, it is also interesting to note how patty describes the sexual encounter with the 22 year old--that it was “democratic”--22yo rimmed patty, then patty rimmed him back; 22 yo fucked him, then patty fucked him back. this is the first pronounced link that ‘looking’ has made between the supposedly ‘private’ domain of the sexual and the public domain of the political. importantly, these conversations have been going on for some time within the ‘looking’ universe; when patty is disease-phobic and anti-bottoming in the first season, it’s about femmephobia, internalized homophobia, and about anti-poz culture. but here, the link is more aggressively asserted, and it emphasizes the importance of a rigorous and robust political culture for a robust sexual life.
the film is filled with little gems: there’s a particularly mic-drop-inducing use of repetition where kevin berates patrick for not giving their relationship a try at the beginning of the film, which is later contrasted with patrick berating richie for not giving their relationship a try. the difference here is quite clear: patty loves richie so much more deeply than he does kevin, and that love manifests here as a radical courage and a radical abandon. this is where being realistic suddenly becomes the most radical political statement possible. that is, the movements it makes are thoroughly deleuzian; they are static, seemingly reaffirming the dominant pro-assimilationist hegemony, but at the same time transforming it from the inside out. the radical point here is to allow a thoroughly politicized subject to become thoroughly apolitical; in so doing, ‘looking’ reaffirms the hegemony while loosening its grips on the subjects within it. here, profound philosophical work is being done in ways as subtle as the film’s execution.
and this is best illustrated in the moving final scene. when richie and patty finally decide to get together at the very end, the film seemingly restores and reaffirms the possibilities of boring, cliché relationships, and of the american dream in the romantic domain (people can love each other regardless of class, race etc.). but by being ‘realistic,’ the film insists upon the possibility of a break-up, of a dark underside to a utopian american vision. by inserting several unresolved, undecided options of what ‘giving it a try’ might mean, the film resists any utopian narrative of heterosexual romance; anything could still happen. and yet, despite the dark undersides, there is still hope, possibility, love, friendship, connectedness, happiness. this is the philosophical message of ‘looking’--that there are queer possibilities in assimilationism.
