O Dia da Transa

I came here after watching it yesterday to write a review of Humpday, but when I found a few excellent reviews already here I changed my mind. Now I've changed my mind again. Although existing reviews express many of my problems with this movie, they do not adequately cover the most important issue.

Although reviewers who liked this movie have correctly noted that it is not about being gay--not even about "going" gay--this movie does present a vivid and disturbing picture of most straight men's attitude toward male homosexuality. To them, sex between two men is deeply repugnant, grossly unnatural and disgusting. The prospect of themselves touching another man sexually is so disturbing that they pee in their pants and act like terrified babies. Is that funny? Not to me. Is seeing it enacted brilliantly on screen enlightening and liberating? Not to me. I've seen it all my life.

I'm going to assume (because it's almost surely true) that the vast majority of Humpday's ardent fans are women, both straight and lesbian, and probably some straight men who consider themselves liberated and enlightened enough to laugh at the foibles of their less enlightened brothers or even at themselves in their own pre-liberation pasts. I suppose I have to allow also for a few self-loathing gay men, because I know they're out there. I'm going to address this review to those women and straight men; the self-loathing gays I'll pray for.

The fact that at least one of the men in Humpday is himself relatively enlightened does not make the movie's offenses any less offensive; it makes them worse, because it also shows how shallow and unreliable that enlightenment actually is. Those straight men who under ideal conditions are wonderfully tolerant of male homosexuality run away in disgust if it gets too close to them personally. It's not unlike the old liberal hypocrisy of advocating racial integration as long as they don't try to move in next door or marry our daughter.

It's never wrong to expose hypocrisy or shallow virtue. It's never wrong to shine the light of truth into the dark, nasty recesses of fear and hatred in all our lives. Humpday does that brilliantly. For the billions of men who are like the two in this move, watching it could be a blessing of incalculable value. And I would never want to deprive the long-suffering and universally abused female majority of any opportunity to see how fundamentally flawed and foolish men can be. I just don't enjoy watching it myself, and here's why:

I am a gay man. Having sex with another man is as natural and healthy to me as breathing. The prospect of sex with a woman is as unnatural and repugnant to me as sex with each other is to the guys in Humpday. But I would never want a woman to have to sit through a movie that shows her brutally and graphically how very disgusting she is to me sexually. However well-adjusted she may be, being told that she disgusts me could hurt her, unnecessarily, and I wouldn't want to do that.

That's exactly how Humpday makes me feel. It reminds me that the world is full of very powerful and likable men who find me disgusting, who would rather die than have to be like me or even risk seeming to be like me, and who would rather have ME die than get too close to them. What I AM disgusts and repels them.

It doesn't matter that the movie is not advocating that attitude. By simply reminding me how prevalent that attitude is, it digs into old wounds and causes me pain that does not add anything good to me.

I don't NEED to be reminded how much straight men despise me underneath whatever civilized veneer they may have put on, any more than African Americans need to be reminded how most in the white majority REALLY feel about them inside. It's painful, and although it IS important information, I'm not one of the ones who needs to see it.

So I appreciate Humpday's artistic excellence. It is one of the most powerful and well-realized movies I've ever seen. But it's not for me or for anyone like me, any more than a beautifully executed movie about rape would entertain or enlighten a victim of rape.

If a man had written and directed this film, it would have had a different ending. With that said, Lynn Shelton takes us on a feminist ride--after all, two women having sex on film is sometimes considered "art," so why not explore that angle with men? In the final seconds of the film when Andrew stops laughing while looking at what was recorded, I was left with this sense of his longing--for completion of something (as he said), for something more intimate with his good friend, for being part of something greater than himself--all things Ben already had. And even though the idea was booze- and drug-induced, it was Andrew who came up with it to start. Sooo...something else is going on in Andrew's mind, heart and soul. At the end of the day, I ask "Do I care about these characters?" The only one I really cared for was Anna--she had the most to lose and gain from Ben and Andrew's really implausible scheme. Acting okay...Alycia Delmore really stood out, especially in the two scenes when the truths come out.

Surprisingly good. The central plot was so bizarre and risque that I thought it shouldn't work, and would just come out as pretentious. In the end it does work, mostly, because of the wordplay, humour and natural feel to all the relationships and dialogue. The whole movie had this great home movie-type feel.

Great acting all round, especially by the two male leads, Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard. Apparently a lot of the dialogue was ad-libbed, contributing to the "real" feel.

It's simplistic and inaccurate to say this is a movie about homophobia. The two guys are not homophobic in the least. If anything it's about peer pressure and machismo, albeit in an unconventional, post-feminist context.

The movie's framework, two straight guys considering whether or not to have sex with each other for an Art/Porn movie, generates an absurd dialog. Does Art justify a willful, forced, deviation from the norm, or is a willful, forced, deviation from the norm automatically Art? The subtext is about moving out of your comfort zone, and your motivation for doing so.

I went into this not knowing what to expect. As a gay man, I resisted it, finding the plot line forced. But as it went on, I bought into it. I think it was the two main actors who sold it, primarily.

The premise sounds comic and coarse, but the storyline is actually subtle and gentle. Not easy to sell that kind of bait and switch.

I know of a situation very similar to the one presented in the film. This two guys challenge the other about having sex with each other without changing their own perceptions about who they were. It became a big joke because although they got very near, apparently, never ever happened. Funnily enough they both had, separately, an homosexual experience with a stranger. It is absurd to think that two human beings could not make love if there is a minimum of attraction, physical, intellectual, emotional. We have been brain washed about this factor. Homosexuals have no fear, not really, about straight sex but heterosexuals have an irrational fear of gay sex because, I believe, they are terrified of the fact they may like it or feel comfortable with it and then a flood of insecurities will follow. Under that umbrella "Humpday" gets it absolutely right. They don't get to it because of fear of themselves, plain and simple. But the whole thing could have been told in 30 minutes. Improvisations are fun if one has the sense to administrate and cut. Edit, edit and edit leaving the surprises alive and "Humpday" spends an inordinate amount of time saying the same things. However I had fun and the three leads are terrific.