Wouldn’t you be? I’m an old gay writer. Nobody cares much about me anymore. But just as my ‘decline’ began, a young whippersnapper appeared. He quickly became the new god of the gay art scene. And he’s cute as a button to boot.
In case you’re wondering; yes I have seen some of Xavier’s flicks — and, I kinda like them.
Which is another problem. This made me really jealous; the guy is not only cute, and a great actor, but he can direct!
Well now I can relax because there’s nothing to be jealous of.
Xavier Dolan has been knocked off his pedestal — a victim of political correctness, intersectionality, and the ’woke folk.’
What I interpreted all these years as a rejection of my writing had nothing to do with me. It’s just that what used to be the called ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ — and became (briefly, in my heyday) ‘the love that won’t shut up’ — is now, well, pretty much over.
I haven’t seen Dolan’s new film The Death and Life of John Donovan. But my critique of the reviews of this film has nothing to do with whether the critics are right or wrong, and everything to do with the cultural prejudices that dominate their writing. Angelo Murreda in The National Post refers to the film as “a comparably minor story…about a relationship between a gay actor unable to live frankly in public and an awkward pre-teen in search of a friend.” The Globe and Mail’s Kate Taylor is even more explicit in her dismissal of the film’s subject matter: “I am prepared to believe that a rising actor in the early 2000s in New York would be as firmly closeted as Rock Hudson in the 1950s, but I’m not prepared to believe it’s still society’s fault.” Wow.
When Kate Taylor was a theatre critic she never seemed very fond of my work. But I never dared imagine she was homophobic. It’s now clear to me that she always thought gay men were repulsive, annoying whiners. It’s just that now she can be completely comfortable about expressing her homophobic views in a culture climate that believes homophobia is over, that feminine boys are probably asexual and trans anyway — and that all us privileged fags should just shut up.
This cultural shift will not pan out well for anybody, gay or straight. There are (have you noticed?) lots of tortured young men out there, many conflicted about their sexuality and its relationship to masculinity, some of them with guns — some of them who are ‘incels’ — and some who are shooting up gay bars.
Pretending that homophobia does not exist will not make them all go away.
But hey— let’s look at the bright side.
I’m no longer jealous of Xavier Dolan.
