Getting Straight

Even for its period, I found this film's attitudes to women and gay men disturbing and this took away from my appreciation of it as a well-made film which, in many ways, has its heart in the right place. Women seem expected to serve their men both domestically and sexually and Candice Bergen's character puts up with some horrendous abuse from Elliott Gould's character - more so than most liberated educated women of that time would do. Then there is a crack early on about Arizona being a good place to live because of its low rate of homosexuality. And Nick tries to get out of the draft by pretending to be a stereotypically effeminate gay man, with Gould repeatedly using the 'F' word to describe him. And then there's the argument in the last scene. I suspect the writers just wanted the academic to say something absurd but the choice they made suggests that there is something inherently wrong in being gay and/or that academia has been taken over by gay men pushing their "homosexual agenda". Of course it is then up to our heterosexual male hero to violently protest against this. Perhaps the students' rights campaigns of this time were paternalistic and homophobic and this film just reflects that, but I hope at least some of the people at that time had a more progressive way of looking at the world.