Sheldonshells

There's been more than enough said about Midnight Cowboy being that it's high up on the AFI list and been in the National Film Registry since 1994. And I don't think I could say anything better about it than Pauline Kael or Stanley Kaufmann ever could so I'll just focus on the theme of friendship in the movie and give my own little subjective opinion on that.

Many people have and do believe that the relationship in this movie between the two men in the lead roles is a gay relationship, or at least a clandestine kind of gay or perhaps homosocial relationship. But I don't think this is necessarily so, or at least doesn't necessarily have to be interpreted that way.

I think it can read as simply a film about friends, straight friends. Yes I know the book on which the screenplay is based was written by a gay person (James Leo Herlihy) and I know the director (the great John Schlesinger) is also gay. But the screenplay itself, written by a fierce heterosexual named Waldo Salt who married four times, doesn't seem to have to be perceived this way. The movie has a gay subtext that is hard to ignore it's true, but there can be multiple of such subtexts. There can also be a subtext of what one may call now a "heterosexual life partner" subtext, ie, a bromance.

And I think that's essentially what this movie is, a bromance. Not a movie about a subtly gay relationship between two gay men. For one thing, it's fairly clear Joe Buck, the male prostitute protagonist to which the title refers (played awesomely by Jon Voight), is not a gay man, bisexual at best but probably not even that. Nothing in the film definitely points to him being gay. As for the Rico "Ratso" Rizzo character, played insanely awesomely by Dustin Hoffman, there is some minor suggestion of him being perhaps bisexual but there's just as much of a suggestion of him being asexual, when Joe alludes to the real possibility that Ratso never had sex and Ratso doesn't seem to argue it.

No, rather I think the relationship is a platonic one based on mutual desperation and need. Ratso is literally dirty, literally sick, and always scheming and thieving like an overgrown modern day Artful Dodger. He is the reluctant new buddy of Joe's when Joe gets to New York fleeing a nightmare existence back home in Yokel-land, Texas. Apparently Joe was so desperate crazy to leave that he was willing to take up working the streets as a male prostitute in New York's then burgeoning red light district. Just a corn-fed, beef cattle raised kid from Texas. But the cruel circumstances that happened to him while there made it mandatory for him to do so (he and his girlfriend were gang raped and he was falsely accused of raping her). Not to mention he was abandoned by both his parents and forced to live with his paedophilic, degenerate, prostitute grandmother. Likewise Rizzo was in very desperate circumstances himself, basically dying of some very bad and advanced bronchial disease (it's not made clear in the movie what exactly it is) who's also physically disabled (a severely disfigured foot that causes him to stumble and wobble when he walks), who never caught even a remote break in life who lives in poverty in a collapsing and condemned housing project hovel, in other words he's about to be homeless and in ill health on the street.

It's these ridiculously desperate circumstances that draw Joe and Ratso together, certainly not physical attraction or even a meeting of minds. Being desperate sometimes I suppose is reason enough to befriend someone. When you begin to see it this way it's very easy to view the film as a basic friendship between two straight men, or even if Rizzo or Joe are bisexual this is still not the factor that draws them together. It's just not sexuality, which is somewhat ironic in a movie that is full of other sexual themes, symbols, and images. However this need not be the cause for their relationship. Sex turns up in a lot of other places in the movie, but not between them.

This has made the film enjoyable to me on a different level than before. As a straight person I appreciate seeing this kind of straight male friendship in a movie. A straight male friendship based on something other than brothers in arms in war (extend that also to police), or a comedy film, or men working in criminal consort (yes they do commit crimes together, but it's for their survival in desperate circumstances). It's really kind of rare to see a male relationship like the one in this movie. I can think of only Shawshank Redemption right now. And even if the film is predominantly about a straight friendship it's no loss to gay representation in film. There's plenty of better films about gay relationships anyway. Boys In The Band, released just a year after Midnight Cowboy, is a much better example (or rather I should say would be a much better example) of a movie with complex gay relationships.

So don't worry, Queer Cinema will surely survive without Midnight Cowboy being in its catalogue. Truth is, a gay director made one of the most profound films about a (predominantly) straight male relationship in movie history. For that I think John Schlesinger should be applauded.

For being an attempt at a corporate cash-grab for the various sponsors and moneyed interests involved, it would seem the mentally disordered neurotics who made this porky pigwash have forgotten one of the golden rules for making a movie a cash-grab: sex.

Space Jam 2 doesn't even provide this (along with any other enjoyable entertainment) as they've, in a paranoid rush to avoid any Weinstein associations perhaps, completely de-sexualized Lola Bunny to the point where she could just as well be some 13 year old boy bunny. Taking a body away from a cartoon bunny is really psychologically overcompensating for real or perceived sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood, like to a pathological extent. I love how the makers of this pat themselves on the back as if they are doing a great social good.

They didn't even make sensible changes to the Lola Bunny character's appearance. For example an actual smart change would have been to make her fitter, with some muscle tone. I mean she is supposed to be an athlete, right? That together with slightly smaller breasts, not a flat chest, would have been ok. But instead she looks like underdeveloped muck. Her face even looks disgraceful. This Lola is just Lo, without the La.

Lola Bunny was one of the few good things about the first Space Jam, and now this one doesn't even have that going for it. Old media like Hollywood seem to know this kind of thing annoys people, yet they do it anyway. Which then begs the question why are people still supporting these weak, brain-disordered invalids who just want to mess with you?

In a time when social media is crawling with real life Lola Bunnys and Jessica Rabbits, and dressing up as Furries is a phenomenon, Hollywood goes ahead and keeps demonstrating its irrelevance and apparent lack of market sense. Do they really think women are so depressed about their bodies that they can't handle seeing hot female characters, even if they are cartoon bunnies? Not expecting an answer to that, I'll just go to where the actual hot bunnies are, thanks.