26 May 2009
Token Hollywood Gays
I was on a plane last week and one of the movie choices was 'Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist', a recent movie that went by totally unnoticed at the Irish box-office. It stars boy-of-the-moment Michael Cera (from Juno, Arrested Development & upcoming Year One) and a cast of mostly unknowns.
I expected a typical teenage rom-com, and that's exactly what I got.
Below is a breakdown of the plot - warning this may spoil the movie!
* Boy fancies girl,
* Boy mopes over girl for 45 minutes
* Boy gets girl
* Montage of love scenes, accompanied by tune from twee indie band of the moment
* Boy does something to jeopardise relationship with girl
* Girl breaks boys heart
* Boy gets girl again
* End credits with music provided by twee indie band of the moment
Anyways, what made this teenage flick different to the rest is the supporting characters.
Young Michael Cera is too much of a loser to have straight friends, instead the producers have him hang out with a bunch of gay guys.
Hot gay guys at that! These guys aren't the type of losers you'd expect Michael Cera to hang out with, no, they have their own rock band (called The Jerk Offs), they have groups of boys fight over them when they play concerts, they have their own mini-van. These are the kind of gays that you wish existed in real life, cute, talented, witty, did I say cute?
So in typical teenage rom-com style, we get plenty of snogging and plenty of sex scenes. There is quite a lot of guy on girl action squeezed into the 90 minutes run time. But where is the guy on guy action? We have three very cute homosexuals, they give each other plenty of glances and raised eyebrows but no kissing. There are times the obvious lovers pop into their van, but for what? We can only assume they are brushing their hair in there.
Yes, it's very brave of a Hollywood production to give us a supporting cast of young gay men. It's also admirable that these are desirable, cute characters and not the stereotypical after-thought ususally associated with gay character on screen. So would mainstream audiences have been deeply upset by a kiss? After-all the straight characters are ripping their clothes off at every given opportunity.
No more token background gays Hollywood, ya hear?