🚀 go-pugleaf

[First, I would like to apologize for the length of this posting.
I'm generally a member of the one-screen-fits-all camp, and would
hate to think that this article would imply any sort of approval
for the recent trend here in net.motss towards longer articles without
correspondingly greater content.  But I haven't said much lately, anyway.
Count me down for two articles...]

I was about to put my two cents in on this movie, but Vince beat me
to it.  Unfortunately, I have to disagree with just about everything
he said.  I made somewhat similar comments about "Early Frost", but
with my admittedly failing memory, "Welcome Home, Bobby" makes "EF"
look like a masterpiece of the genre.

Basic point: I would have liked to see the movie they wanted to make
before the TV executives got their hands on it.  More than even "EF",
this is a fatally, fatally compromised movie.  It's a rather touchy
topic, of course: a teenager confused about his sexuality gets involved
with a 35-ish man, gets caught, and suffers at the hands of his parents
and schoolmates.  The basic elements of an OK melodrama with a decidedly
"pro-choice orientation" are all there, but what finally ended up between
the commercials is a disaster, thematically and dramatically, told with
all the sensitivity and subtlety of a screenplay written by committee.
You see, to the TV executive crowd, it's too controversial to let a vaguely
pro-gay script appear uneditted: they need some "equal time" for the sleazy,
slimy side of Gay Life.  But, of course, these people lack convictions,
let alone the courage of same, and the result is a fragmented, dissonant
view of the gay experience, rather like looking at a 3-D movie without
the glasses.

As an example, the relationship between the teenager and the older man
developed rather naturally, and one of the main points which managed to
escape through the final script was that this guy couldn't simply be
considered a simple "child molester": that there was a real affection
and even love which developed between them.  Now, this is too darn
revolutionary to let appear on TV without some "equal time": I can just
see the execs talking in the back room, chomping on their cigars, saying,
"No, you need a scene where the kid returns to the guy's apartment, claims
that the guy exploited him as a father figure, only to find a creepily cynical
boy of the same age in the guy's bedroom, telling him what a chump he is..."
Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt there are kids and chicken-hawks like that.
A better script could have done something interesting with such a
confrontation: as it is, this and other scenes come off as a pastiche,
a parade of good-gay/bad-gay sequences without any organic point of view.
This makes for good advertiser relations, but bad drama.

Also, the events just didn't jibe with my sense of reality: like most
TV movies about gay people, you have the feeling that they haven't
caputured What's True about being gay, and what is on the screen rings
false.  Here are a few which bothered me; perhaps this might start a
discussion:
	o Bobby tells his girlfriend and best buddy about his
	  gay experiences with the older guy.  Very very hard
	  to swallow.
	o The math teacher's coming out to Bobby as an expression
	  of support, after he sees the extent of Bobby's ostracism
	  and hazing in school.  Makes a good story, but I am sure that
	  would be the LAST thing any closeted gay teacher who feared for
	  his job would do.
	o This "I am what I am" sentiment was passable in "La Cage aux Folles",
	  but it's really tiresome, especially in the mouth of a 16 year old.
	  If this is some kind of new slogan, I'm resigning from the club.

One last point, it was unsettling to see the actor playing Cleary, Bobby's
straight buddy, simply rehash his role as the bodyguard in the wonderful
film, "My Bodyguard."  It makes me respect his original performance less.
-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
{bbncca,bbnccv,harvard}!spdcc!dyer

In his reply to my posting re "Welcome Home Bobby", Steve Dyer raises a
couple of points with which I must disagree.

First, Steve points to TV having "ruined" the portrayal of Bobby's
relationship with an older man. The man is indeed not presented as a child
molester, and Bobby indeed becomes involved with him of his own free will.
Yet it becomes apparent in the movie that this relationship is not entirely
beneficial to Bobby.

Perhaps I'm just becoming an old fuddy-duddy, but I'm inclined to say I
agree with the position the movie takes. It becomes apparent that Bobby
comes from a troubled family, and has an (apparently) unsympathetic father.
Bobby's lover (unconsciously) trades on that, and becomes in Bobby's mind
the father he never had. The lover acts sometimes like a father, and
sometimes like a lover. This can hardly be good for any adolescent, let
alone one as confused as Bobby. (This has nothing to do with gender: I'd
feel the same way about such a relationship if Bobby had been Bobbi). 

Regarding the closeted gay teacher who comes out to Bobby: I agree that this
is unlikely. (But, then, so's the plot of Hamlet.) Nonetheless, I too was a
closeted gay teacher ten years ago. I had a student who I should have come
out to, but I didn't, for a number of obvious reasons (including the
conservatism of the district in which I taught). Perhaps, no matter how
unlikely the actual event, its depiction might cause some teachers to think
carefully about their professional obligation to their students, and how
that relates to coming out.

Perhaps by the standards of film, "Welcome Home, Bobby" is not great art.
Nonetheless, by the standards of an industry which has presented "My Mother
the Car", "Gilligan's Island", and "Saturday Night Main Event", it's not
half bad.