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Nov 15, 2020

Eleven Minutes to Homophobia in "Adventures in Public School"


Amazon Prime added a movie, Adventures in Public School, to the "We think you'll like it" list.  I'll give you 100 to 1 odds that the adventure is about Winning the Girl, so I'll hate it. 

Just for a lark, let's plug it in to see how long it takes for the heterosexism to begin.

One minute: Teenage Liam (Daniel Doheny) is being home-schooled by his mother, because he is too smart, sophisticated, and sensitive to be bruised by the bullies and misunderstood by the morons in public school.  

Sensitive?  Code for "gay." Maybe this movie won't be so heterosexist after all.

Five minutes. Mom is giving Liam the whole school experience, including sports and a prom, where of course she is his date.  

Geez, just have sex with him already.

This is disgusting, but it's "Mom wants to have sex with her son" offensiveness, not heterosexist "The Girl of His Dreams" offensiveness, so it doesn't count. .  

Six minutes: Lame...um, sorry, Liam... wants to be a "real boy" -- and get away from his Smother for a few hours, so he insists on going to public school.  Mom escorts him, giving him fretting helicopter-mom advice about how to survive.  "They will misunderstand you.  They will call you names.  They will accuse you of cheating.  But just remember, you are superior to them.  You are perfect in every way."

So that's why you're not screwing him.  It would be inappropriate to have sex with God.

Will this be a movie about how clinging mothers and absent fathers turn boys gay?


Eight minutes:
No.  Suddenly Lame sees Her across the crowded hallway.  He is frozen in place.  His jaw drops. It is the Damascus Road experience.  He has seen God and lived.

Have you ever in your life responded that way to the sight of an attractive person?  But I guess She is not a person, she's so wonderful that she will be the God of a god.

Suddenly Lame understands the meaning of life, the reason he was put on this earth.  He knows that he will spend his life joyfully, eagerly doing the only thing worth doing, the only thing that matters: basking in the glory of The Girl. 

There it is!  The heterosexist erasure of same-sex desire.  

But I don't get to the "Turn this nonsense off" button soon enough. 

Ten minutes: Lame is a taking a test. There happens to be a homophobic slur etched into his desk.

Eleven minutes: The proctor accuses him of "spreading vicious rumors" about him and the gym teacher, Toby.  "Yes, I have been with a man, and yes, it was Toby, but I'm not a dirty cocksucker."

So just anal, huh?

Eleven minutes to the homophobia.

2 comments:

  1. The boy looks cute but the plot sounds the childhood of Norman Bates

    ReplyDelete
  2. To be fair, "mother wants to sleep with son" is so offensive, it's our default insult. Though hooking up with the gym teacher is also a serious accusation. (Though to be fair, with so many showers, it won't be dirty.)

    ReplyDelete

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