How cishet White men have overtaken queer cinema at the expense of queer and gender non-conforming people of color
Straight, cisgender, White men are hailed as stars within queer cinema. Whether it is Jim Carrey playing gay in “I Love You, Phillip Morris,” or Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger giving a heart-wrenching performance in “Brokeback Mountain,” they are given these roles because they embody the homonormative expectations imposed upon gay men, whereas actual gay actors are turned away due to an industry stigma attached to them, being that they can only play flamboyantly gay roles and lack the creative range to deliver a nuanced, representative performance. The most recent example of cishet (cisgender and heterosexual) White men being glorified for playing gay roles that comes to mind is “Call Me by Your Name”, adapted from the Andre Aciman novel of the same name. Elio — a 17-year-old boy portrayed by Timothee Chalamet — develops a relationship with Oliver — Armie Hammer’s character — over the course of the film, which is all done in secret away from the eyes of Elio’s parents (whom Oliver is interning for) and girlfriend. The entirety of the movie is shot in the glistening, sun-drenched countryside, underlined with a soundtrack of harmonic strings as composed by American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens. While the film perfectly encapsulates the warm serenity of a countryside summer fling, the production of this film promotes escapist images of queerness that endanger queer youth — as well as queer and trans people of color (QTPOC) nationally and internationally — and relies on queer erasure through sexual ambiguity to appeal to mainstream audiences.
The first thing that ought to be problematized about this movie is the nature of Elio and Oliver’s relationship, which is between a 17-year-old boy and a man well in his 20s. While this is no legal issue in Northern Italy (where the film is set), their sexual relations would be categorized as statutory rape in the U.S. Destigmatizing intergenerational relationships — which are typically built on the initial acceptance of perceived differences between age groups — and eradicating ageism is one of the gay community’s greatest successes, but also one of its greatest pitfalls. Romanticizing this relationship has broader implications in the context of America, where taboo intergenerational relationships are extensively fetishized within the gay community. A quick search of “barely legal gay” on popular porn websites spawns thousands of results, which is indicative of the fine line gay men prefer to walk in their intergenerational relationships. And while “barely legal” is still, at the end of the day, legal, most gay dating apps allow younger gay men to falsify their age so that anyone can be considered “legal”. Combining this with the widely advertised image of intergenerational relationships amongst the gay community, young gay men search these same porn sites for “gay daddy porn”, which pulls up nearly 100,000 different videos to choose from on Pornhub. And just like that, gay boys in their early teens are conditioned to desire older men, which is further romanticized and validated by films such as “Call Me by Your Name”.
“Call Me by Your Name” paints a false portrait of budding queer love, which is silently recognized by Elio’s [White, cishet] parents early in the film and his mourning of Oliver’s departure is supported by them by the end of the film. There is a certain level of escapism that comes from this film — allowed by the privileged intersection Elio and Oliver exist at — and effectively detracts from the fatality faced by queer folx within and without of the U.S. once they make themselves known to society. Both characters are cishet-presenting, White men and Elio is Jewish. Ontologically speaking, it is easier for them to exist as gay men, considering the intersection of their identities. While life expectancy for White men in the U.S. is approximately 77 years, the life expectancy of trans womxn is between thirty and thirty-five years, less than half of the former statistic. There are gay pride parades in Tel Aviv annually and LGBT+ rights for Jews in Israel are guaranteed (whereas queer relations are still illegal for Palestinians in parts of the West Bank and Gaza.) While marriage may not have been made legal in Italy and America until very recently, same-sex couples were still allowed to publicly exist in society without fear of capital prosecution. The same cannot be said for Black and Brown queer and trans folx who live in America, and punishment is even harsher in other countries.
Just recently, Brunei implemented Sharia law to justify the passage of legislation that punishes sodomy by stoning to death. This follows in the footsteps of other Muslim countries that have made homosexuality punishable by death, such as Saudi Arabia, and proves that the privilege afforded to Jewish gay men such as Elio is lost on Muslim men in the real world. For instance, Mahershala Ali won big at the Oscars for his turn as Juan in the 2016 Academy Award-winning film, “Moonlight”. Ali portrayed a gay character in the film, and proudly lives his life as a straight, Muslim man. For Ali to take one of his birthrights as a Muslim, a pilgrimage from Mecca to Medina called Hajj, he would have to enter Saudi territory. Anyone who has knowledge of his work as an actor could immediately report him to local authorities, endangering the actor for perverting Islam with his perceived “homosexual propaganda.” Ali exemplifies the risk those who exist at marginalized intersections face in tackling queer narratives and embodies the bravery that is falsely attributed to cishet, White actors, e.g., Chalamet, Hammer, Carrey, Gyllenhaal.
In 2017, The Human Rights Campaign documented 29 deaths of transgender people in the U.S. as a result of fatal violence. The majority of these people were womxn of color, and few of them made it past their early thirties, fitting the aforementioned statistic of life expectancy. This is the harsh reality of queer visibility within the U.S., which is immediately glossed over when films such as “Call Me by Your Name” are pushed to the forefront of American queer cinema. Considering the historical exclusion of trans people in nearly all conversation surrounding queer visibility — specifically with the Gay Rights Movement and initially pushing ENDA (the Employee Non-Discrimination Act) to exclusively ensure gay rights — it is not shocking that the plight of queer and trans folx of color is being silenced by public reception to this film. They adhere to the same homonormative standards that framed the Gay Rights Movement, in which [White] gay men fought against discrimination by adopting a hypermasculine image and conforming where the founding [trans] mothers — such as Marsha P. Johnson — did not. Not only are Oliver and Elio both physically fit, which is associated with masculinity in mainstream culture, but they maintain cishet relationships throughout the film, which only reinforces their masculine image and makes them seem “less gay”.
The sexual ambiguity embodied by both Chalamet and Hammer’s characters is a huge factor in the commercial success of this film. Were the story any more raw, mainstream audiences might not have latched onto it with such zeal. The fact of the matter is, the closest the audience gets to seeing gay sex is when Elio metaphorically fucks a peach, which is literally manifested when Oliver penetrates him towards the climax. During the one gay sex scene of the movie, the camera pans to the window as the protagonists slip off their pants, leaving the audience with nothing but muted moans and their naughty imagination. Thus, the film creates a paradox in which it is “just another love story,” yet stands tall as one of the most well-constructed examples of queer cinema in recent memory.
What the audience fails to consider is just how fleeting this relationship is. While Elio falls deeply in love with Oliver, going as far as leaving his girlfriend by the end of the film, Oliver is preparing to wed his [female] fiancée across the pond. Considering the short timeframe between having sex with Elio and engaging his future wife, it can be assumed that Oliver was getting out every last drop of sexual deviance before tying himself up in heterosexual perpetuity. At the end of the day, none of his homosexual relations matter because he presents to the rest of the world as straight.
This is not a film of sexual ambiguity. Sure, it points to the sexual fluidity that underlines all human interactions apart from normalized perceptions of sexuality, but ultimately, “Call Me by Your Name” belittles queerness to nothing more than occasional flings with the same sex. This is reminiscent of modern-day fraternal bonds, in which frat brothers sodomize one another in the comfort of their houses then indulge in sorority sisters and project a hypermasculine image to wash themselves clean of these drunken, gay nights. It’s like the ultimate “no homo.”
In a global context, queerness is not the warm Italian façade fabricated by “Call Me by Your Name”, which romanticizes aspects of queerness that endanger queer, American youth on a daily basis. This is a coming-of-age-tale that spits on the struggle endured by QTPOC around the world and shrouds queerness in those same [White] homonormative standards that exclude Black, Brown, trans and non-binary bodies from the conversation in an attempt to reach mainstream audiences. It is impossible to deny the link between homonormativity and heteronormativity in this context, as this film is driven by two straight actors who are taken more seriously because of their sexual orientation. Such a casting choice tells gay actors they must aspire to an image of straightness if they ever want to tell their story, which is determined by adherence to traditional gender roles. And so it goes: a heteronormative, White supremacist society paints masculine-presenting, White, cishet men as the face of the gay community, retaining deeply racist, transphobic and homophobic attitudes. Representation perpetuates violent misrepresentation and is limited to the narratives that are most palatable for commercial audiences, allowing them to feign progressive inclusion. What a groundbreaking piece of queer cinema!
