I just thought I'd publish this review in celebration of the victory of the Democrats in the US. The victory in both the House and the Senate is a good start for gay issues. But it's just that, a start. I don't think that the Democrats are really any better on the gay issues and given the additional state bans on same-sex marriage in many states, I guess that start may actually be more troublesome than previously anticipated. You can read more about the elections at Towle, and you should read Richard's interesting (but grumpy) take on the election.
Now to our movie. I was not really expecting much from it, I am not crazy about Robin Williams or Christopher Walken, but Man of the Year surprised me. It still is just a mediocre movie, but it painted an interesting scenario for an election.
In Man of the Year Robin Williams is a comedian who decides to run for President. I don't think that scenario is too far from what could actually happen in the near future considering the prestige the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert enjoy with the public. And talking about crazy scenarios, how about Arnold being re-elected? How effed up is that? Really, anything could happen.
Robin Williams plays an independent candidate, alleging both Republicans and Democrats fail to deliver, miserably. As far as the gay issue is concerned, our fictional candidate could not have been more correct.
Just on October 22 I saw Nancy Pelosi, now the speaker of the House, on 60 minutes (watch some of the clips here). In that show Nancy was asked about gay marriage and she just shrugged it off: "Well, that's an issue that is not an issue that we're fighting about here." (you can read about it here).
And she is supposed to come from one of the most liberal constituencies in the US, San Francisco. I know there is a huge difference between being "only" a coward (to put mildly the stance taken by a lot of Democrats) and being a mean-spirited a-hole advocating the writing of discrimination into a federal constitution, which would make things much harder for us gays for much longer.
Man of the Year had quite a bit of gay content.
We had seen a bit of it in the trailer. In a televised debate Robin's character says something about marriage being always about same sex.
We had a few additional bits of gay content, all pretty positive. Robin Williams mentions Christopher Walkens' character supports gay marriage, if anything because gays should be as miserable as straight people. Christopher Walken talks about J. Edgar Hoover being heavy-set but being able to dance well because he was "light in the loafers." Initially I thought that was a little negative, but that can be seen as criticism to a man who persecuted gays while being gay himself (we never saw that before, that sort of thing just can't happen, right?). Robin Williams considers a cabinet made up of lesbians, and considers a show about gay farmers. Kudos!
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