That review isn’t all right

I WAS really disappointed with Scott Johnson's review of lesbian filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko's movie The Kids Are All Right ("Gender stereotypes at the movies"). I thought the movie was great.

I always find it interesting that socialists and other activists who celebrate a "continuum of sexuality" in real life seem to be freaked out about it in popular culture. Scott (and many other bloggers) seem upset that in The Kids Are All Right--which is about a lesbian couple raising two kids, and all of their encounters and then relationship with the male sperm donor who appears after 18 years--one of the lesbian co-parents begins a sexual relationship with the male sperm donor.

Scott claims that this is the typical stereotype of lesbians secretly wanting or needing a man to really be sexually satisfied. This characterization seemed overwhelmingly simplistic, and actually not really reflective of the intent of the director or even the movie itself.

First, it is hard to believe that Cholodenko, who is an out lesbian raising a 4-year-old with her lesbian partner and also directed the outstanding film featuring a lesbian relationship High Art, would be interested in making a movie that just rehashes old stereotypes.

Second, The Kids Are All Right is less a "lesbian" film than it is a film about the dynamics of long-term relationships, the loss of intimacy, the breakdown of communication and the sexual disconnection that is a result. Thus, the breakdown in the relationship between Nic and Jules is not because Jules "needs a man," but because her relationship with Nic is unstable and unsatisfying--the same reason many straight couple engage in extra-marital affairs.

Jules begins an affair with Paul, not because of internalized homophobia, but because of the problems in her own relationship--the fact that her partner takes her for granted, and is self-centered and condescending. Moreover, Jules is drawn to Paul not simply because he's a man, but because he seems to be interested in her and her work.

And if Jules is interested in having sex with Paul because he is a man, why on earth is this so problematic? There are millions of lesbians who have had sex with men and lived to tell, and which never caused the kind of personal crisis or self-hatred that the LGBT-friendly critics of this film seemed to be overly concerned with.

Granted, if Cholodenko's film was about lesbians who really want to be with men instead of women, then maybe all the hue and cry would be warranted, but in fact, that has very little, if anything, to do with this particular movie.

In fact, in the film, it's Paul who is pursuing and completely smitten with Jules--not the other way around. When Paul asks her to be in a long-term relationship, she's not even remotely intrigued and has to remind him, "I'm gay."

Finally, Scott is "disappointed" that this film does not embrace the opportunity to portray a "non-traditional" family. I guess I don't really understand this critique, and it seems to me to fall into the dubious thinking that somehow LGBT people and their partnerships are more intriguing, more interesting, more adventurous and more sexually active than other unions.

This is been a central "queer" critique of the demand of equal marriage for LGBT people--that marriage is "heteronormative" and boring, and that gays will lose their exciting queer edge by engaging in the institution.

The Kids Are All Right is not about the uniqueness of gay families. In fact, it's the polar opposite--that these "non-traditional" families exist in the same pressurized and alienated world that straight families do, and it often has the same results: communication breakdown, displaced anger, sexual boredom and a general sense of going through the motions.

There is no happy ending here, except that Nic and Jules seem committed to trying to work their issues, just like millions of "traditional" families out there.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Chicago