Author: Wyatt Sanderman Day | Published: March 22nd, 2009

    
The Outing and the Fall of Harvey Milk

    There are many films that I consider important, of which, that my wife, and many others, may not heartily concur. "Full Metal Jacket" is one that my wife just doesn't get. "Milk" is another. I, however, realize that "Milk" is an important film and on a variety of levels of perspective for many people. Let me explain to you why it is an important film to me and why I gave it 3 1/4 stars. And then, possibly, you should see the film and make your own judgment.

    "Milk" is important to me because it shows how style over substance has gained a foothold in the USA, and tenuously holds this nation in its sway. Style, and the life choices that style provokes, is at the heart of Harvey Milk - the gay rights and gay community organizer turned amateur politician.

    Harvey Milk, portrayed by Sean Penn and who won the Oscar for the role, begins the film in 1970 as a sensitive gay man from New York, who, with some urging from the his gay lover Scott Smith played by James Franco, decides to seek a change and moves to San Francisco.

    Once he leaves his home of New York City and his native Long Island, Harvey becomes very candid in respect to his alternative lifestyle in San Francisco. When his early neighbors in the Castro District of San Francisco are repulsed by his open display of same sex affection, Harvey labels them as bigots.

    Harvey discovers that networking with other openly gay men in the Bay area and in other locales is a excellent manner of bringing them to the Castro District as new neighbors. It doesn't take long before the opportunist Harvey uses his local networking and activist prowess to run for elected office every year, until he is eventually elected as a city supervisor from a newly drawn district; that mostly includes the burgeoning homosexual population, who choose to live close to one another in San Francisco.

    Once elected, Harvey energizes the effort to defeat Proposition 6, a California ballot initiative to limit homosexual's access to public school jobs. In San Francisco, Harvey uses this issue, and others that are important to gay men, to whip up public support and to promise that same voting base to other politicians - such as Mayor George Moscone. In less than two years of public office, Harvey uses the gay voting block as a political weapon to reward friends and punish those who do not bend to his political will and in a political instant - Harvey becomes what he abhorred.

    In some regions of the Old South, political patronage helped enforce the racist "Jim Crow" laws, and in the Tammany Hall of New York City, the political patronage of giving the oppressed Irish jobs as policemen or firemen as political favors set an example for patronage in the North that eventually led to some of the most corrupt departments ever known. Now in, and surrounding San Francisco, most politicians fear that they will never be reelected, or elected for that matter, if they do not politically promise every liberal position and every gay issue, regardless of how inappropriate to good governing they may be. Harvey Milk is the first openly gay man elected in the United States and this is his legacy.

    Another issue promoted by director Gus Van Sant and original screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who won the Oscar for this category, is that gay men live on such an emotional edge that they will say and do some of the most outrageous things - especially when it comes to sexual promiscuity. Harvey Milk's sexual dalliances led to four out of five of his gay partners, by his own admission, committing suicide. How ironic.

    Even though the subject matter of "Milk," may be disturbing to many people, I consider it a must see for one to gain the perspective of the San Francisco homosexual community in the late 1970's. It is a well done film, irrespective of it being devoid of any concrete entertainment value, and that is what some important films are - vehicles to witness another side of life.

    Rated R. 128 minutes of runtime. Released on DVD March 10, 2009.

<< Vicky Cristina Barcelona

House Bunny >>