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Are the Kids All Right?

Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right (2010)

The kids may be fine, but their lesbian parents are definitely not. Much to my surprise, I recently discovered that the director and co-writer of the famed lesbian comedy-drama, The Kids Are All Right, is herself a lesbian. Having discovered this I find myself with an even bigger headache. “Why such a headache?” you may ask....”finally some lesbian representation in mainstream cinema!” you may exclaim. Wrong. Unfortunately and contrary to what the movie may have promoted, this film is not about lesbian marriage, parenthood, and life. It is really about the couple’s sperm donor, Mark Ruffalo, and their kids’s quest to find him (don’t you know kids need a father figure!) and the subsequent shit storm that commences once he enters the family’s life.

All too often, “deviant” sexualities, such as lesbianism, become universalized and normalized with the inclusion of representation in mainstream media. The Kids Are All Right is a prime example. The inclusion of depicting a lesbian couple as the film’s protagonists comes at the price of the erasure of the true difference and fluidity of identity- not only within the queer community, but within the lesbian community. Lesbian couple, Jules and Nic, are the quintessential and stereotypical traditional butch-femme lesbian coupling. Jules fills the role of the feminine stay at home wife and mom, while Nic is the masculinized workaholic and alcoholic. Aside from this depiction of heteronormative lesbian identity and gender roles is a complete void of sexual attraction and intimacy between the couple. In fact, the only explicit depiction of sex in the film is between Jules and the sperm donor. This is overwhelmingly problematic. The contrasting images of a frigid non-sexual relationship between Jules and Nic and then the hot and heavy insatiable sex between Jules and the sperm donor supports the idea that lesbians can’t sexually sustain themselves within their own relationships and subsequently confers the power and dominance of the penis and hetero sexual coupling.

#queer #queerfilm #lesbian #lesbianproblems #lgbt #lgbtq #film #cinema #the kids aren't alright #the kids are all right

that-awkward-lesbian-moment

THAT AWKWARD LESBIAN MOMENT

when you watch “The Kids Are All Right” with your girlfriend and your mom (who doesn’t know you’re gay)… (submitted by Anon)

gilliaan-blog

Jules: …marriage is hard… Just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing. It’s a fucking marathon, okay? So, sometimes, you know, you’re together for so long, that you just… You stop seeing the other person. You just see weird projections of your own junk. Instead of talking to each other, you go off the rails and act grubby and make stupid choices… You know if I read more Russian novels, then…

cchristina-hendricks

You couldn’t have picked a more painful way to hurt me.

badwolfkaily

Julianne Moore + Lady Loving

The Hours (2002) The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009) Chloe (2009) The Kids Are All Right (2010) Map to the Stars (2014) Freeheld (2015)

everlarksberry

I love this scene

babejusee

The Kids are All Right (2010)

femmefaetale-blog

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as Nic and Jules in The Kids Are All Right (2010)

I love you chicken.

I love you too, pony.

tomhiddles

“I love lesbians!”

shatteringthesilverscreen-blog

well aren’t you cute

tomhiddles

I wish you were gay.

projectqueer

Thirty-five years of an AIDS epidemic, and there's no cure? That is inexcusable, Larry Kramer tells the National Institutes of Health.

As reported in Poz, a statistical model has predicted that over the coming years, if present trends continue, by 2035 there will be 1.39 million cases of AIDS in America alone, and some 435,000 deaths, costing the health care system some $256 billion.

CLICK ON THE HEADER LINK TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE.

shatteringthesilverscreen-blog

Follow up on my post on How to Survive a Plague.

#queer #gaycinema #queercinema #larry kramer #ActUp

projectqueer

A new magazine project challenges reductive images.

In America, there is no shortage of tropes used to describe black gay and bisexual men: Fierce, finger-snapping queens. The brother on the DL. Choir director. Homo thug. The public consumes these stereotypes as if they are definitive representations of the lives of black queer men, but they are not. And the striking work of three black creatives — the talented founders of The Tenth — is shifting the narrative.

Khary Septh, Kyle Banks, and André Verdun Jones are at work on the third volume of The Tenth, which is a hybrid, high-quality biannual print publication that smudges the boundaries between high and low art, culture and subcultures. Beyond the founders’ worldviews as Brooklyn-based black gay men, the trio’s sensibilities for the arts and combined experiences in various fields are what distinguish The Tenth from similar media. In the past, Jones produced TV commercials and documentaries; Septh is a creative director in the fashion industry; Banks is a professionally trained singer-actor with experience in music and acting management.

“We’re art directors who’ve worked in fashion and music and film. We’re just doing what we know how to do best, in the interest of our people,” Jones says. “We’ve made enough perfect images of white girls selling high-fashion clothes and bags for the global corporate fashion machine. We’d like to perfect our own image.”

The founders are inspiring the public to reconsider common conceptions of black sexuality. Even more, the volumes are exceptionally queer — pushing boundaries and questioning what the public considers normal. And while the founders are not afraid to combat anti-black racism, they also deal with the complications of intra-racial violence.

“But there’s something else driving the process — this need to understand our sameness as black gay men, across geographic boundaries, across class boundaries, across generations,” Septh acknowledges.

Whether explored in deftly curated photographic essays, in-depth interviews, or prose reminiscent of the black-people-loving words penned by Harlem Renaissance writers, the diverse worlds of black gay and bisexual men are centered. The Tenth, which takes its name from a W.E.B. DuBois essay titled “The Talented Tenth,” contains counternarratives on black gay and bisexual men’s lives, but it is most valuable because it provides space for black men to tell the stories of their lives, on their own terms, using language and visuals they create.

“It’s about ownership and entitlement and asserting that we too have as much right to this collective American memory, and can just as arbitrarily recolor it as anyone else can,” Septh says.

The Tenth is an attempt to rewrite and make right the public’s relationship to black gay and bisexual men, and our relationships to one another. The latter is the greater win.

It’s not sex...it’s LOVE

Paris, Je T’aime (2006)/Various Directors/France

Overall this film is an exquisite piece or art and can be considered queer in composition since it does not adhere to traditional styles of cinema. Rather than one continuous narrative, Paris, Je T’aime is composed of 18 different short films (all by different notable directors). Gus Van Sant’s segment, Le Marais, captures the innocence, tenderness, and beauty of love at first sight in a queer context. The 6 minute short film goes far beyond what US cinema has attempted to in terms of depicting queer love. US queer cinema is predominately centered on queer sexuality and we are bombarded with tales of mind fucking sex. Le Marais depicts the rawness of queer romance that not only leaves audiences with a hard on, but once again infatuated with the pubescent notion of soul mates. How ironic...a queer narrative, that traditionally is considered deviant/sinful, has the ability to connect audiences to the pureness of the heart. Love is the master and we are its slave.