Do I Sound Gay?

When we hear someone speak, instantly biases start to form. This person sounds old/young, educated/uneducated, local/foreign, male/female, urban/rural, etc.

While this documentary is not the best material for discussing the topic, it does focus on one mostly untouched topics in the gay community. How a specific nasal speech pattern has become coding for gay in the U.S.

We start the documentary with David, a man in his forties who recently ended a relationship with his boyfriend. One thing that has been bugging him is the way he sounds. The elongation of vowels, nasality, and crispness of diction that make up a gay stereotype that has endured for decades.

The film covers some interesting topics like discrimination against men perceived as effeminate, a possible origin of the gay accent, and the deconstruction and progression of David's voice as he continues speech therapy.

However, this would be much better at half it's length. This film has a fair bit of star power behind it, but most of the celebrity cameos drag the pacing and should have been cut. The film loses focus at times.

If the topic of the film doesn't sound interesting to you, give it a pass. Otherwise, rent it/stream it. As of this review being posted, it's on Netflix.

I am going to get a voice coach. My voice is so important to my work & I have never liked it. David hits on so many reasons for paying attention to how we sound. He touched on the identity of how people sound & how people change the way they sound due to environment & survival. This is the light on human condition to a judgmental society.

I found the documentary interesting. It covered some issues I hadn't considered before. I enjoy documentaries that face the "elephant in the room" type of situation. I did feel like something was missing from the film, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Worth a view when you want something light and easy to watch.

The film explores the whole issue of identity although it focuses on how someone speaks.

The way we speak, whether with southern or British or Boston or bland newscaster accent or gay intonations, does have practical implications. Should it matter? Probably not, but we don't live in an idealistic world.

Obviously it will matter in a negative way a whole lot if you're a high school student in Beaver Dump Idaho, whereas if you live in the Village in NY and work in a gallery it may be both acceptable and an asset to sound gay-ly intellectual.

Should a Black man from the south be ashamed of sounding like a Black man from the south? Of course not. But if he wants to get a job as an announcer on CNN and stand a realistic chance of rising in the ranks, he'll probably have to modify the way he sounds. We each have to decide what matter most to us and whether changing something about ourselves really matters.

But this website isn't really about the validity of the supposed issue being addressed, but about how it's been presented. In this case, I think it was handled superbly.

The issue is addressed honestly in terms of influences in childhood, celebrities who we've regarded as exemplifying all the stereotypical behaviors of gay men or situational experiences that we've lived through ... not solely in terms of speech, but in the whole constellation of behaviors that define us and those that will likely elicit certain reactions from those around us.

By the end of the film we can see that the issue of how we sound is simply one aspect of our identity, both as we think of ourselves and how others may think of us. Is our reasoning behind wanting to change idealistic, realistic or symptomatic of something deeper? Some people are certain that plastic surgery or a hair piece will transform them into something they are not. Maybe cosmetic changes will increase our sense of self-esteem. Maybe we'll realize that superficialities are meaningless and that we're grasping at straws.

I think this film explored the whole issue of self-identity very well in terms of the influences, both internal and external, and the need for each of us to come to terms with who we are and what really matters.

Well worth watching to better understand ourselves and what things we focus on that are irrelevant to who we really are.