Why I Walked Out on Spiderman

I finished my Ph.D. in 2001, and, unable to find an academic job in a university near a gay neighborhood, ended up moving to Wilton Manors, Florida, to share a house with my friend Yuri.  I lived on writing and two part-time jojbs, fitness trainer and English/composition instructor at the police academy.  

Wilton Manors was like West Hollywood: as you traveled from the gym to the restaurant to the bookstore to the gay clubs, you rarely if ever saw a straight person.  As in West Hollywood, you had to choose your movies and tv programs carefully.  Homophobic slurs weren't as common as in the 1980s, but offensive stereotypes were still common, and the heterosexism was rampant.  Movie and movie proclaimed, loudly, that heterosexual desire and practice was universal, that LGBT people absolutely did not exist.

Here are the movies that I saw in 2002:

1. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Sam and Frodo subtext.

2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry and Ron subtext.

3. Chicago. Strong lesbian subtext.

4. Sweet Home Alabama. Gay character.

5. Spy Kids 2.  Children's movie starring Daryl Sabara (left, later photo), who doesn't express any hetero-horniness.

6. Big Fat Liar. Children's movie starring Frankie Muniz of Malcolm in the Middle, who befriends a girl but doesn't fall in love with her.

7. Orange County. Gay characters.

8. Clockstoppers.  A boy (Jesse Bradford) and a girl stop time, but don't fall in love.

9. The Mothman Prophecies.  Richard Gere investigates the West Virginia monster, and tries to reunite with his dead wife.  Ok, he is obsessed with the wife, but I'm nto the paranormal.

Even though I was very careful, three intensely heteronormative movies still made it through my defenses:

28 Days Later.  Cilian Murphy wakes up in the zombie apocalypse, and hooks up with two survivors, a man and a woman. I'm all set for a nice triangulation, when all of a sudden the man dies.

Of course the man had to die.  We had to have a man and a woman left to prove that only heterosexual desire exists, that only heterosexuals exist, to erase gay people from the universe.  I popped the DVD out of the player and threw it in the trash.

Igby Goes Down.  The title made it seem obviously gay-themed, and I heard the star, Kieran Culkin (left), was gay.

It wasn't gay-themed.  There were no gay characters.  Instead, there was an amazingly homophobic portrayal of a bi drug dealer.  

More after the break

And one I started watching in the theater, but walked out after the first line: Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man.

I knew Tobey Maguire from Great Scott (1992), a Fox sitcom about a teenager with an active imagination and a gay-subtext best buddy.

The Ice Storm (1997), which I didn't actually go to see because it sounded depressing, but I heard that his character was gay. 

And Pleasantville (1998), a send-up of the heterosexual nuclear family mythos. 

Surely such a gay-friendly guy would not star in a homophobic movie.

I admit that I wasn't very familiar with the Spider-Man mythos, and didn't know that Spidey gets a girlfriend, Gwen.  But that was to be expected: 100% of American movies feature a boy-girl romance. Heteronormativity comes when the characters assert that male viewers are without exception wild about girls.  That I am wild about girls.  That I have never experienced a moment of same-sex desire.

Scene 1: After the lengthy opening credits, with the cast names, Spidey's muscular arm, and the Green Gblin's head piercing through spiderwebs, Peter asks us:

"WHo am I?  Are you sure you want to know?  The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody said this was a happy little tale...if somebody told you I was just a regular guy, not a care in the world..."

We fade into a street view of bucolic small-town Queens, with an American flag and street traffic.  "...somebody lied.  But let me assure you.  This, like any story worth telling, is all about (a boy and) a girl.  That girl."  

He blathers on about how she is the Girl of His Dreams, his reason for living, the love of his life since he was a zygote, while I sat there, stunned.

First Tobey erases all action adventure, comedy, science fiction, and horror stories.  The only story worth telling is about boy sand girls gazing into each other's eyes forever.  Nothing matters in life but that fade-out boy-girl kiss.

Next he erases gay men, and for that matter all same-sex friendships.  No same-sex bonds of any sort exist.  I do not exist.  

Who on Earth thought that this incredibly offensive statement was a good way to begin a movie?

I stomped out of that theater pronto, and I've never seen any of uber-jerk Tobey Maguire's other heterosexist dreck

See also: The most homophobic movie ever made

Edward Padilla: "Suburgatory" short guy hangs out with Brad Pitt and Mel Gibson, plays priests and Chicano Divas, has a husband and a d*ck