On Blockbuster Fails and Pop Culture’s Poliphony of Centres

2018 has been such a prolific year for the gay image it might be easy to assume all of our issues, culturally, are all but over. Call Me by Your Name was released into a world largely hungry for its narrative; Love, Simon was received with as much enthusiasm and acclaim as a tween blockbuster could possibly garner under the current conditions. Boy, Erased has earned numerous accolades from serious industry figures. Last year, movies like Moonlight seemed to break open those doors wider than they had been before, suggesting a cultural swing toward audiences who were not only accepting of homosexuality but actively inviting of it. Homophobia is cancelled, sis! The moral trajectory of history is arcing towards justice!

The cultural proliferation of non-heterosexual imagery is obviously exciting. Though perhaps it’s wise to consider the way these narratives are being forged rather than simply interpreting their existence as meaningful on face value. The liberal media is keen to inform us that representation is emancipation—and that a differing ‘identity’ is dichotomous with human experience. Though these surface level gains could be indicative of something, history shows us that ‘progress’ is so often tenuous, non-linear, and rewarded on a conditional basis. It’s not unlike trying to press the air bubbles out of plastic packaging—as soon as pressure is removed from one area, it (annoyingly) rises to the surface somewhere else. The underlying issue cannot be addressed unless we play the long game. Despite great strides in terms of LGBTQ visibility, huge issues continue to plague the lives of gay men, such as the shockingly high rates of suicide, loneliness, and addiction. ‘Gay rights’ have not solved gay loneliness and, as the writer Michael Hobbes claims, may have even exacerbated inter community conflict. In a piece for the Huffington Post they quote Alex Keuroghlian, a psychiatrist at the Fenway Institute’s Center for Population Research in LGBT Health: