Film Review--Victim (1961)

Our next film in Basil Dearden’s London Underground is Victim, starring the great Dirk Bogarde, one of my favorite character actors. Dearden returns here to what succeeded with Sapphire: a screed against a strongly felt social problem. This time, he tackles bigotry against the gay community, specifically the laws on the books that made homosexuality illegal. Like Sapphire, Victim handles the issue by wrapping it in a mystery, but much more loosely here in favor of a more direct approach.

Bogarde plays Melville Farr, a London barrister with a loving family and a successful practice. He’s also in the closet, forced to deny his true self for fear of arrest and losing everything he holds dear. That changes, though, when members of the gay community from across the city begin receiving blackmail letters along with evidence of their “crimes.” When it hits close to home, Farr realizes that he must risk everything by using his clout to discover who’s responsible. The trouble is that most of the victims would rather pay the money than have their secret revealed, so it becomes his sole responsibility to make the sacrifice.

The impact of Victim comes less from the plot than from the overall attitude of the film. This is 1961; openly gay characters were virtually unheard of in film and, the rare time they do appear, they are sniveling, perverted villains. Dearden, who had denounced the laws publicly, not only recognizes homosexuality as an existing, viable way to be, he completely condones it. We so rarely see this attitude in film even today, let alone fifty years ago, that it is much more than refreshing to see Dearden take such a position, it’s downright shocking.

Though it takes a bolder stance than Sapphire, Victim is much less preachy, simply because the story is more artfully told. It doesn’t look as pretty as the earlier films and has a much stagier feel, but between a stronger script and Bogarde’s incredible lead performance, Victim is a great piece of work. Bogarde squeezes every ounce of emotion and conflict out of his character. As a barrister, he needs to stay on the right side of the law and, as a husband, he wants to satisfy his wife’s needs, but at a certain point he can no longer deny who he really is. This sentiment is repeated over and over, hammering home the normalcy of homosexuality. Over the course of the film, Farr’s coming to terms with himself runs in concert with his pursuit of the blackmailers; he summons the same courage to deal with both. When we finally discover the culprits, it suggests that the mainstream public is as much at fault for the practical enforcement of the laws as the bureaucracy that wrote them. Dearden rarely shows subtlety, but it is an intelligent and emotional film with its heart firmly in the right place.

While Victim was successful in England, its content could not escape an X rating. That was far less detrimental to a film’s audience as it is now, but still damaging. Over here, though, the film board would not allow it until all use of the word “homosexual” and all its variants had been stricken from the film. Really, that’s a lot to cut, and I can’t imagine how it was replaced to make sense. In their effort to pull the teeth out of the film, the effectively banned it and it became a forgotten relic in this country. The only mention I’ve ever previously seen for it is in The Celluloid Closet, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s documentary on the history of gay filmmaking. It’s a sad fate for such a great film, one from which we could still stand take lessons. Rarely will you see such an open attitude in film outside of LGBT cinema; the mainstream still has a long way to go.

Next, our final film in the collection, a jazzy little diversion called All Night Long.

"Internet Left Fringe," eh?

I don't know if this is true, or if this is Harwood's own phrasing on something that a "White House source" said, but I'm going to take a few seconds to play with it in any case.

First off, the corporate media has far more reason to dismiss bloggers as the "Internet left fringe" than staffers of a president who was put in office on the backs of millions of "Internet left fringe" donors and volunteers. Yet it seems that Obama's staff, headed of course by one Rahm Emanuel, he of the "fuck the 50-state strategy, take the corporate money" thought process, has bought into the "Church of the Savvy" position that bloggers are a sad, silly minority of people online who will never be satisfied with anything.

Sure, I've seen people on the Internet whining that Obama is no different than Bush. It shouldn't have taken a Nobel Peace Prize for us to know that that line is objectively false. That doesn't mean that we don't get to be pissed when Obama's not living up to his promises. And as Jane Hamsher and the others who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for candidates to support a public option could tell you, the "internet left fringe" can move dollars and poll numbers and support.

As for the National Equality March, like other protests for social justice, it gets written off as "fringe" by the same mainstream media that fetishized the tea parties. It seems they don't have enough corporate sponsorship to be taken seriously. As usual, real grassroots is threatening to those in power, whether their power is corporate media or political insiderdom.

It's too bad, though, for Rahm and his cohorts and for Harwood and the rest of the media. The netroots got a taste of its own power (ironically, starting with its ability to put Obama in the White House) and it's not going away, it's growing. And more and more of us are leaving the basement, taking off the pajamas, and going to an office for a media job--to which we bring the same political ideas, the same social justice values, and the same drive to get the job done that we did when blogging was something we squeezed in in our spare time because we just cared so damn much.

(In other news, today's my first official day at the new job. Wish me luck!)

The N-word

Ok, this might be a difficult post, and I apologize in advance if I offend anyone, but I would rather talk about it than not talk about it because I think it is important.  

Recently two of my good friends (both people of color) were arguing about the n-word and whether or not it can be used in certain situations or never.  One was arguing that in some situations, the meaning of the word has changed and that it can be used in a positive way to refer to a friend or whatever.  The other was saying that the history of the word can never be separated from the word, and therefore it should never be used.

About the first argument:  

First, I hate censorship.  Not only because I like cussing (which I do), but also because I think it is dangerous to limit freedom of expression.  Huckleberry Finn was one of the most commonly banned books during the 20th century because of the number of times that the n-word appears.  People that argued for the book to be banned would often use the fact that the n-word appears however-many hundred times.  However, if you actually read the book for it's content instead of counting "n*****," you know that the book was actually ahead of its time in terms of race relations (especially in the South) and carries a very strong anti-racist message.  Just because Mark Twain actually used the language of the people doesn't change that.  This book was really commonly banned from being taught in schools, but I would rather my children read books like this that show a more accurate history than one that has been censored and polished.

Second, I love word reclamations.  I love that languages are always changing.  The word "queer" was originally a derogatory term given to homosexuals and people perceived to be homosexual, but the LGBT community has reclaimed the word, which I think is absolutely beautiful.  The word can no longer be used against them because they own it.  This is what my first friend was arguing had already happened with the n-word.  He says that his family and friends use it all the time and it never has a negative connotation.  I think that's great - who am I to tell them what to call each other?

And about the second argument:

The n-word is VERY offensive.  And people have a right to be offended by it, especially people that identify with the people that the word was used for.  And as much as the word as been popularized and as much as it shows up in music and in movies, the word is still often used in a very hateful way toward Blacks.  My second friend told me that once at a party, her friend asked some people to stop singing the n-word in Kanye West's song "Golddigger" because it was really offensive to him.  They laughed and kept singing all the words.  This is unacceptable.  Whenever someone politely asks you to stop saying one racially-charged and very offensive word, why the hell wouldn't you stop?  There is no situation in which you NEED to say it, and it's pretty easy to just not say it, so when someone asks, just don't.

So I don't know who's right.  I still think it is dangerous to say we absolutely cannot say the n-word in any situation.  This would only make the terrible history associated with the word invisible.  And who am I to tell Kanye that he can't use the word as he wishes?  But as a white person with no personal connection with the word, who am I to tell someone that they shouldn't be offended by it?  Comments welcome of course.