The Dead Are Gone: Harvey Milk and Me

When Harvey Milk was assassinated on November 27, 1978, I was in my senior year of high school in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. I was at that stage of life when I knew I was queer, but hadn’t fully figured out yet that I was gay. I honestly don’t have any memory of Milk's and Moscone’s murders, Dan White’s sham of a trial, or the White Night Riots, although  I must’ve seen and read news reports at the time since these obviously were huge stories. What I do have a very strong memory of is the prior year’s anti-gay ballot initiative Prop 6, the Briggs Initiative, which would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching, and which Harvey so famously campaigned strongly against. 

Working as the announcer that year for the school band during a football game half-time show just after the initiative didn't pass, I made an impromptu, unscripted reference to our band director, who was widely rumored to be gay, announcing over the loudspeaker: "... and Mr. Morgan would like to personally thank each and every one of you for voting NO on Proposition 6!" Needless to say, I was never let in front of the mic again! When I graduated high school in 1979, disco was in full swing and sexual freedom was at its peak, though I wasn't quite ready to join the party just yet. But when I began taking those initial, tentative steps into the gay community in the early Eighties, the AIDS epidemic hit, and all the gay lib frivolity that I had just begun to get a taste of vanished almost as fast as thousands of young gay men were beginning to.

By 1982, I was fully out, and quickly becoming an activist, inspired in large part by this book, which began my radicalization (and which I still have, and is which still rather provocative, almost 40 years later!) So when Randy Shilts published The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk on February 1, 1982, I was first in line at my local B. Dalton Booksellers to buy it, and devoured it in one sitting. Thus I first learned the details of Harvey’s life story, his dreams and accomplishments, and his tragic premature death.

On November 1, 1984, I was in the audience at the Castro Theatre when Rob Epstein’s film The Times of Harvey Milk premiered in San Francisco. By then, I had been living in SF for 11 months and a man I was dating at the time somehow managed to get us tickets. I was working at Gramophone Records, which was right across from the theater, and when I saw the line snaking down Castro and turning the corner on to 18^th, I got off work early so I could go get a spot in line. The theater was packed to the gills, and after they let in all the VIPs, we still ended up in the balcony, way up in the corner of the theater, where the seats are really tiny. I will never forget that evening, only because of the incredible group catharsis that occurred. To say there wasn’t a dry eye in the house is a major understatement. To this day, I never again have experienced a circumstance in which such a large number of people were openly sobbing in public. Milk’s murder was only 6 years in the past at that point, this was his hometown, and the theater was full of people who personally knew him. And those that didn’t actually know him, like me, had already begun to canonize him. So much sadness and grief in the Castro Theater that night. The queers were full of tears, but little did we know what great devastation and despair was headed directly our way.

When Dan White committed suicide on October 21, 1985, I had been in SF for almost two years and AIDS was fully “happening” by then, although not yet for mainstream America. I was volunteering for both the Stop AIDS organization and the Shanti project, and was fully immersed in the SF Gay Community – politically, socially, and recreationally. As word of White’s demise spread, queers spontaneously began to gather in the Castro to celebrate, growing in number until the cops shut down Castro between Market and 19^th. We were all singing “Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead” from the Wizard of Oz, and I remember how happy we all were – momentarily -- until the party became more somber and turned into yet another candlelight down Market Street to City Hall, a well-worn path that gays had been trodding since the days of Harvey’s activism, a route that showed no sign of being decommissioned any time soon due to its continued heavy use now for AIDS vigils. Yes, Dan White is Dead. Hooray! But Harvey still is too, and hundreds more are dying weekly.

Fast forward 23 years to 2008, and Hollywood finally gets around to its biopic treatment of Harvey, a film I’ve probably seen 5 or 6 times, since I used to show it in my classes. I’ve seen Epstein’s film even more than that, since I used to show that in my classes as well for many years. Yet I find that, at this point in the assignment, I feel wrote-out, and I haven’t even discussed the films yet! I will say briefly that I prefer the documentary over the biopic, although that’s usually the case for me. I’ll echo my critique of Frida for Van Zandt's film: I’ve got no major complaints with it. It’s got cred, with good queer participation in its production, and it reintroduced Milk to a whole new generation of people. (Plus, I'm in it, and you can see me if you know where to look!)

Fast forward again to 2020, and I find myself feeling like Harry in Leslea Newman’s short story that’s obliquely about Harvey Milk. The dead are gone, many of them have been gone for a long time now, one just went yesterday, and pretty soon, I’ll be gone too. What a long, strange trip it’s been. But Harvey’s quote about a bullet through his brain busting through every closet door had a profound effect on me when I first read it back in 1982, and he inspired me to pursue my path as an educator and activist. I hope that I have had a similar effect on some of my students. In this manner, we are indeed “still here” even after we’re dead.

On Harvey Milk, despair, and letting the past be the past.

When doing a close reading of this photo of Harvey on the History.com webpage, here's what I see:

I’ll start with Harvey himself. He looks kind, “a mensh with a heart of gold” to quote Harry in Leslea Newman's short story, and in this pic, he has a peculiar Mona Lisa half-smile. Maybe he’s a bit tired? He’s known for the tremendous energy he brought to his work. He’s also known for his rumpled suits and disheveled hair, both of which are on display here. I wonder if Anne Kronenberg took this photo? I know she was a photographer, but I don’t see her credited for the pic.

On the wall behind him is what I’m assuming is an SF District Map, although I can’t be certain. But that would make sense given Milk’s position and his dedication to his job. There’s a blurry photo of Milk speaking at a microphone – perhaps taken by Dan Nicoletta? – that looks like a publicity still from the “Milk” film!  There’s lots of sticky notes tacked to the wall (before they were sticky) with various names and phone numbers, and notably, what looks to be a business card from a sheriff’s or police department, all of which reflect Milk’s intense commitment to working across a broad range of communities to achieve common political goals.

The most interesting thing to me in the photo is that 50-gallon steel drum! What the hell is that? Is that where he dissolves the bodies? There are also cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling behind a very dirty and disorganized bookshelf. Clearly, he’s not in his City Hall office (at least I hope not), assuming this is after his election, which I suspect it is, given the tie. Maybe this is his office in the camera shop? I’ve seen some pictures taken there, but they weren’t “behind the scenes” as this appears to be.

So overall, I’d caption this photo: Another day at the office with Harvey.

OK. Now that I’ve composed myself somewhat after reading Newman's short story, I’ll try to share my thoughts about it: 

Given the state of the world – politically, environmentally, pandemically – (as I write this at 11am on Wednesday, it still looks like orange night outside) – I tend to cry rather easily these days. I feel like I’m grieving for something nameless, lost forever. I’m not clinically depressed – not any more than any of us have a right to be, given the circumstances -- I'm just easily prodded to tears, usually when watching TV. So when Newman gets down to serious business halfway through her story, when Harry gets pissed off and asks “She wants we should cut our hearts open and give her stories so she could write a book?” and lets loose with the story of Izzie and Yussl, I just let myself feel the pain of having the scab ripped off along with Izzie, and sobbed away in front of my computer.

The older I get, and the crappier the world gets, the more I try to filter what what I let myself think about, since it's just so easy to slide down the pole into grief and despair.  In this way, I’ve become like my mother was, especially regarding films and other art forms. I remember once when I was 19 or so, “Carrie” was on TV. I was a huge fan of the film, but my mom had never seen it. I called her into the room to watch the final few minutes of the film, knowing it would give her a great jolt when the soft-focus, beautiful-music images of Amy Irving wrench into the shot of Carrie’s hand pulling Amy into the grave in Hell.  Well, my mother nearly had a heart attack and then got pissed-off at me. I remember her saying “I just don’t want to put images like that in my head” which I thought was funny at the time, but now I know what she meant. I fully realized this when I tried to watch “Requiem for a Dream.” It was undoubtedly a spectacular film, but one I couldn’t bear to watch.

To bring this back to Newman’s story, sometimes I think “never forget” may have limits, which I never would have conceded in my youth. Now, sometimes I think it’s best to say the past is the past. The dead are gone. Memories are often unpleasant and sometimes are best left unremembered. As Harry says, “Better to live for today.” This becomes more acute, the older I get.

I find myself identifying quite strongly with Harry these days.

 

Work Cited

History.com Editors. “Harvey Milk.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 7 June 2017, 
          www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/harvey-milk.

 

Frida: The Film

I saw this film when it first came out, so it was nice to revisit it. I remember thinking then that Frida had become a superstar who already far eclipsed Diego Rivera. And of course her star has only continued to shine ever more brightly since then, especially in San Francisco, which I think has adopted her as a patron saint. (Has Frida gone uni-name yet, like Cher and Madonna, to match her unibrow? Oh wait. There's already Frida from ABBA. That would be too confusing.)

One part of this film that has all of the "trappings" of Hollywood in it was also a part that I quite enjoyed: When Taymor creates a mise en scène that replicates one of Frida's paintings, and then brings it to life. Delightful and arty, pretty and "creative". But haven't I seen that in at least a dozen music videos?  Maybe Taymor did it first. (When I think of Julie Taymor, I think of the staging and direction of "The Lion King" on Broadway.)

I forgot about the saucy lesbian scenes! Salma Hayak almost got my propeller turning! In that sense, it was somewhat defiant of usual Hollywood norm of defining lesbianism through the male gaze, probably because of the female-centric production core of this film. Hayak was sensational in this film! Memorably, the scenes of her stoically enduring the sadistic torture of the various devices she was put into over the years. Some of those looked like they were purchased at the Folsom Street Fair. But of course, unlike Frida, FSF-goers enter their devices by choice. When Hayak delivered the line: "I don't feel pain." OMG! Definitely not Madonna and probably not J-Lo could have pulled off this role as well as Hayak did.

Overall, I'm not going to complain about the film. It is what it is, and it's not bad, and sometimes that's good enough!  I'll be interested to read about what aspects of Frida's life my classmates would like to have seen covered in the film, since I don't have strong feelings about this. I was happy to see they filmed at Frida's actual Casa Azul in the suburbs of Mexico City. I was able to visit there a couple of years ago, and I recognized it right away!

Frida: The Artist

I first became aware of Frida’s work in the mid-1980’s, not too long before she shot into superstardom. I’m pretty certain it was a retrospective show at the old SF MOMA when it was still on Van Ness. I loved her work immediately, for one primary reason: it was trippy! As a young gay man in my mid-twenties, living on my own for the first time in SF in an era when AIDS wasn’t quite yet on the radar, I partied hard and did a lot of drugs, with LSD being one of my faves at the time. So OF COURSE I was going to be attracted to Frida’s work, in the same way I was attracted to Salvador Dali’s burning giraffes:

Francis Bacon’s distorted monstrosities:

and Hieronymus Bosch’s maniacal demons:

This art looks really good when you’re really high! Of course, since that initial exposure, I’ve learned a lot more about Frida’s life and how it informed her work, but I still react to her work most strongly on that primary level of “What nightmare is this artist taking me into?”

So in this sense, I have escaped the trap Jonathan Jones describes in his article for The Guardian: “evading the question of aesthetic achievement” in Frida’s work due to her now-famous biography. I’m glad I was exposed to her work early and could experience it on its own terms without being influenced by all we’ve come to know about her since. For me, it was always about the effect the work had on me.

Salma Hayek sees Kahlo's greatness in her “Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves” attitude. Hayak states “What I respond to with Frida is her courage to be unique; her courage to be different. She lived her life exactly as she wanted and never apologized" (qtd. In Jones). Hayak responds to criticism that the film presents too “upbeat” of a portrayal of Kahlo, with all her life’s attendant pain, by saying that Kahlo didn’t see herself as a martyr or victim, and neither should we. “She would wake up in the morning and make an art form of herself; and spend hours decorating herself to go to the market to buy some food, you know, or to stay in the house and paint. This spirit of waking up and transforming yourself into a walking work of art - you're not telling me this was a depressive, obscure person.”

 

Work Cited

Jones, Jonathan. “Salma Hayek on Why Frida Kahlo Was a Great Artist.” The Guardian,
          Guardian News and Media, 14 Feb. 2003, www.theguardian.com/film/2003/feb/14/artsfeatures1.

Todd Haynes's “Far from Heaven”

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Todd Haynes's film “Far from Heaven” again; I think I liked it more this time around than when it first came out. Back then, I think I was trying to take the film seriously, at face value, but this time around, it felt more like a satirical farce – almost  a comedy! To me, the queerest thing about “Far from Heaven” is the artificial, false reality it lives in.

Much has been written about the “fakeness” of the old “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” TV shows (shows I grew up watching and loved). Yes, gender roles were more proscribed then and children were better behaved, but we all know real life wasn’t as sanitized as depicted in those shows, even for middle class white people. 

I saw a lot of that sort of ridiculousness in Haynes’s film, especially in the domestic scenes with the children. The son’s “Golly Gee Willikers, Dad!” dialogue had me in stitches, and I can’t help but think Haynes was playing it for laughs. Even when the film dove into themes that the TV sitcoms dared not touch – like domestic violence and spouse abuse – the dialogue borders on caricature: “I know it was an accident, dear. You didn’t mean it.” Now of course I’m not saying this wasn’t/isn’t the way it happens in these circumstances and that there isn’t truth in Haynes’s vision, but by dealing with these issues in the context 1950’s, with its gender roles and social conventions, but also using the filmic conventions of 1950’s melodramas (in a film made in 2002, not in the actual 1950’s, like the TV sitcoms Haynes emulates), Haynes delivers a twice-removed, double-dose layer of artifice that I found super-entertaining and often humorous, even though the situations being depicted were anything but that

And oh, such situations! Such drama! That is also a very queer thing about the film. The stereotype of the “melodramatic queen” is real, and Haynes really flexes that muscle here. 

According to Wikipedia*, melodramas are films in which “the plot, which is typically sensational and designed to appeal strongly to the emotions, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue, which is often bombastic or excessively sentimental, rather than action. Characters are often simply drawn and may appear stereotyped. Melodramas are typically set in the private sphere of the home, and focus on morality and family issues, love, and marriage . . .” Sounds like what you’d find in the conversations at the Twin Peaks bar on a Sunday afternoon – people wringing out every drip of drama from their stories, both flattening and exaggerating the characters to intensify the sensationality, their frequently shrill and emotion-filled voices rising above the din of the crowd. Haynes ticks off all the requisite boxes for a melodrama in this film. Put on a blindfold and throw a dart, and you’ll find an example, so numerous they are. So I’ll just mention one of my favorites here: The scene when all the other mothers at the ballet school were protecting their daughters from the demon spawn of the n****r-lover and homo!

Once again, the racism and homophobia depicted in the film is nothing to laugh at. The problems depicted in the film were (and are) real. Haynes’s intention is not to belittle their significance. But by portraying them in a melodramatic format, he has created an immensely entertaining and humorous soap opera of a movie. Sort of like the “lost episodes” of  “Ozzie and Harriet” that were deemed to controversial to air. Maybe Haynes and Ryan Murphy should collaborate on a “dark version” remake of  “Leave It To Beaver”! That would be terrific.

 

Work Cited

“Melodrama.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Aug. 2020,   
               en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodrama.

 

* Yes, I know I shouldn’t cite Wikipedia in an academic paper, but it had a really good definition I couldn’t find replicated elsewhere, and unfortunately there was no primary source listed for it.

The Films of Todd Haynes

I'm writing this after having read John Lah'rs article in The New Yorker about Todd Haynes but before rewatching “Far from Heaven,” which I saw when it first came out. For better or for worse, I remember very little of the film, but that's par for the course for me these days, as my memory cells just don't seem to work as well as they used to! I do remember its mood, its color palette, and its credits believe it or not, all of which harken back to one of my favorite films, Douglas Sirk's “Imitation of Life.” Upon its release, I remember reading all the press about how the film was Haynes’s homage to the Sirkian melodramas of the 1950’s, a genre I quite enjoy, so I looked forward to the film then, and look forward to seeing it again with fresh eyes and brain cells.

I have been a fan of Todd Haynes ever since “Poison” came out, a film which I absolutely love. After seeing “Poison”, I immediately tracked down a VHS copy of “Superstar”, which was very hard to find at that time due to the Carpenter family lawsuit against Haynes – Or was it Mattel Toys that sued? I’ve sought out and watched nearly all of Haynes’ films as they were released. (I missed “I'm Not There” and “Wonderstruck”.) I’ve enjoyed all of them, but they’ve felt less “edgy” to me ever since “Velvet Goldmine”, which is Haynes’s first “mainstream” film IMHO.

From the article, I learned that Haynes and I are the same age and both grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles. That might explain why I resonate so much with his aesthetic (and his bizarre obsession with the Carpenters! I enjoyed learning about the nearly life-long friendship between Haynes and Elizabeth McGovern. I fell in love with her after seeing her in her debut “Ordinary People” when it was released in 1980. That was back when I still used to get semi-heterosexual crushes on girls, and her role in that film played right into tragic teen-age boy melodrama, so I’ve been a fan of McGovern’s ever since! I enjoyed learning more about the intimate nature of their friendship.

I believe I’ve seen “Poison” at least three times, always on the big screen, so I enjoyed reading Lahr’s recap. It inspires me to do the extra credit essay, since through writing, I may discover why I love this film so much! The recap of “Safe” reminds me of how bleak it was. Not sure I could withstand a re-watch of that nowadays. Too close to home! Maybe I’d say that “Mildred Pierce” is my least favorite of Haynes’s films, not that there’s anything wrong with it. But why bother to toy with perfection? (I feel the same way about a lot of “cover versions” of songs too.) I remember I saw “Carol” at the Paris Cinema in NYC when it was released.

 

So that’s my collection of random thoughts upon reading Lahr’s article, a very thorough career overview – a great introduction for a newbie to Haynes’s work, and a great review for those of us who were there from the beginning! (I also just remembered that Lahr wrote “Prick Up Your Ears”!)