Harvey Milk, 1978
Thirty years ago today, Dan White, a former member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, emptied a handgun into Mayor George Moscone. White calmly left Moscone’s office, reloaded his weapon, walked to the Supervisors’ offices and pulled former colleague (and rival) Harvey Milk aside with a “Harvey, can I see you a minute?”
A minute later, Harvey Milk was lying dead, three bullets to the body and two — at close range — to the head.
I saw Gus van Sant’s remarkable Milk yesterday, with transcendent performances by the entire cast — especially, of course, Sean Penn and Josh Brolin — and cannot recommend it enough. I do hope the DVD will arrive chock-full of extras and, if anyone has any sense, bundled it with the incredible The Times of Harvey Milk, from which quite a bit of material was used in the making of Milk.
(I regret, though, that in Canada the DVD will probably be produced by Alliance-Atlantis, an company well-known for actually removing extras from US releases and, of course, completely fucking up the graphic design with ugly and unnecessary bilingual packaging. As Alliance is wont to do.)
In any case, the film is not just a incredibly moving piece of biographical storytelling (with a few well-placed directorial flourishes) but also a chilling reminder of how far we’ve come… and how little bigotry changes. The film is full of the kind of doublespeak favoured by people of “faith” — you know, that whole “I love homosexuals, I just don’t love what they do and therefore will do everything in my power to prevent them from enjoying the rights I enjoy” bullshit. Anita Bryant, are you happy now?
And, indeed, the mystery of Dan White resonates today, too. I’m not talking about the theory floated by Milk himself, that White was a deeply-conflicted closet case (brilliantly portrayed, by the way, by Brolin). While the brutality of Milk’s assassination and White’s previous, lone vote against the city’s gay rights ordinance might indicate that the murder was motivated by homophobia, White also stated “I respect the private rights of all people, including gays” during the debates.
Sound familiar? During the recent (and successful) drive to remove the rights of lesbian and gay Californians to marry, we heard a lot of this contradictory rhetoric. That Proposition 8 supporters had nothing against same-sex people, but that a certain way of life needed protecting. And that the rights of the faithful to maintain their way of life, even at the expense of other’s freedoms and rights, is of paramount importance.
And this, of course, is but one example of how some forms of irrational thought are accepted and protected by societies which, more than ever, are in desperate need for rational, logical solutions to very concrete issues. The passive acceptance of outright lies — fueled by ludicrous definitions of “free speech” and “protected fath,” and the even more ludicrous notion that all ideas (and philosophies) are to be encouraged and treated as equal in value — in a society which prides itself on rational thought is a schism which desperately needs addressing.
It’s a mental illness, a societal version of Dissociative Identity Disorder, characterized by “attitudes and beliefs that are dissimilar to each other, distortion or loss of subjective time, depersonalization, amnesia and depression.”
It’s Church and State locked in a truly perverted embrace. It’s Anita Bryant and John Briggs, 30 years ago, preaching their god’s love but stealing the rights of one in ten. It’s the Mormon Church, preserving their (and only their) definition of marriage while destroying the partnerships of those who already had the right to marry. It’s gay men and lesbians attending church services and reading from a book in which they are identified to be murdered for what they do. It’s Dan White, respecting the rights of “all people, including gays”, and then blowing the fucking brains out of one of them, one of the “radicals, social deviates, incorrigibles” which he accused of ousting him.
There are myths and fictions and then there are lies. And there’s reality. This denial of reality must stop. When one group’s myths tread on another group’s real lives, there is no polite way to say it: This is war on truth. Which side are you on?
I’m on Harvey’s.
I’ve posted this before and, especially today, it bears another listen. I mean, if for no other reason than my uncontrollable sobbing in the cinema yesterday caused me to miss much of it:
From The Times of Harvey Milk
We must destroy the myths once and for all, shatter them. We must continue to speak out and most importantly every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family, you must tell your relatives, you must tell your friends, if indeed they are your friends, you must tell your neighbors, you must tell the people you work with, you must tell the people in the stores you shop in, and once they realize that we are indeed their children and that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all. And once you do you will feel so much better. — Harvey Milk
Every myth, every lie, every innuendo… will be destroyed. Humanity depends on it.
10 comments
That is so powerful, and so, SO true. – It’s amazing that he was preaching this 30 years ago, in a much more hostile enviroment, and today there are still so many of us still closeted.
Thank you so much for the video.
Great review and commentary.
I know this is sort of off topic, but as a graphic designer, I took umbrage at this line:
with ugly and unnecessary bilingual packaging
Are we to put wordless icons on the DVD for the Quebecois? Create a more costly product (in duplicating it’s packaging) so English readers aren’t offended by French text?
Inclusive, indeed.
bstewart23: Thanks for the kind words, but I’m a bit surprised that a graphic designer might defend the ruination of his hard work by foreign distributors.
Many manufactures used to provide reversible covers and in doing so managed to not sully the graphic designer’s hard work with anything more than “Français au verso”. The lazy, cheapskate decision to have both English and French on the same cover ruins the design and shrinks any type integral to the design to an unreadable size. It’s simply a matter of spending $0.005 more (on a $30 product) for a reversible DVD sleeve insert. Or swapping out English covers for French in specific markets.
As a graphic designer, would you not be royally pissed if the fruits of your careful placement of type (and other design elements) was crammed into a space half the size, and by someone not privy to (or respectful of) the design philosophy of the project?
It’s the lot of Canadian (and other multi-cultural) designers to be skilled enough to accommodate both languages, no matter how it’s done. Besides, most of the designs coming from the US don’t consider how two languages would look on the box, so I’d blame the myopic US designers! We can debate for hours the costs and weather or not the involvement of a marketing department hinders or helps. Lord knows I have done so with my conservative, English speaking, Separatist mother.
And I think therein lies my point: your comment sounded exclusive in an excellent post about equality.
bstewart23: Ted, we’re quibbling about teeny-tiny (and supersubtle) hairs on an animal we both love equally and I’d love to say “agree to disagree” but, of course, I’m not built that way (and you know it, I’m afraid). Stay tuned for an extra-special shout-out to you and this discussion in the near future.
I am looking forward to seeing the film but also remained depressed given the P8 crap in California that some things change so little…such attitudes foster violence like this, or Matthew Sheppard, Tina Brandon or other such brutal crimes…in the end the only way to truly fight stupidity and ignorance is by changing the world one step at time through blogs like yours…
“the rights of the faithful to maintain their way of life, even at the expense of other’s freedoms and rights, is of paramount importance.”
Canada happens to be founded on this type of system. Group rights to discriminate to maintain a way of life are part of Quebec society and the aboriginal reserve system.
The Charlottetown Accord was meant to entrench this.
Last night I listened in as my SO argued over the phone with his now-devoutly-Christian mother about the rights of homosexuals to be treated with the same respect accorded heteros under the law. I could tell by his responses that she was pulling out the same old, “The Bible is against it and so am I,” bullshit. We would counter it by quoting the other things the Bible is against (mixed fibers and shellfish) with chapter and verse (thank you, internet) and she’d pull something else out, which we would refute by looking up the actual verse (nothing that we could find in the Bible saying that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed due to rampant homosexuality – huh; oh, and far as we could see, Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality – for or against).
In the end she just said, “You can love the sinner but hate the sin.” And then she said something that made my SO reply, “No, you’re not a bad person, Mother, I’m just trying to show you the hypocrisy of the position of most people who say these things and use it to justify their hate.” Needless to say, she got defensive about that too.
Obviously another person who has no idea what the Bible really says. *sigh*
bstewart, does Canada have the same DVD format as the U.S.? If so, I’m sure we can arrange to have a U.S. DVD sent to you, without the stuff that bugs you about Alliance’s DVD releases. And was one box of tissues sufficient on Wednesday night?
bstewart23: Hah! Thanks, Carol Elaine, one box was sufficient, though coming home and watching The Times of Harvey Milk for, like, the eleventieth time, was probably not the best thing to do for red, puffy eyes. And thanks for your kind offer. While Canada’s DVD region is the same as yours (1), I spend as much time (and money) on Amazon.com as I do on Amazon.ca because — you guessed it — the price differential is far greater than that of our dollars.
The Times of Harvey Milk is on my Netflix queue, near the top, so I should finally see it soon. On Monday UCLA is having an interesting event re: film restoration that focuses on The Times of Harvey Milk,which looks like it’s going to be screened. I don’t know if I can make it after work, but I am going to try my damndest.
My husband and I saw “Milk” today and was blown away. One of the best movies I’ve seen in ages. The parallels to Prop 8 are just eerie, considering the film was shot, what, 8 months ago? If Sean Penn does not win the Oscar for Best Actor, there really is no justice in the world.
Saw The Times of Harvey Milk last night at the Hammer Museum last night. Now I know why you have stock in Kleenex. Whoa. Again, having a hand to hold and a shoulder to lean on helped get me through it without turning into a puddle of weeping goo.
BTW, to no one’s surprise, Fox News fucks up again in its “review” of MILK.
Idiots.
The bf and I saw Milk yesterday and it far surpassed my expectations. It is, plainly and simply, an excellent film, engaging and moving with very few compromises (mostly toward the end) for mainstream audiences.
It may not win Best Picture (I gather several more contenders are coming out before Christmas) but it should certainly win Best Actor and Best Director. And Best Supporting Actor–I had never cared one way or the other for James Franco before, but his performance was a revelation. Josh Brolin could, and should, keep him good company in that category.
All of the performances, actually, were outstanding. I haven’t seen The Times of Harvey Milk for years, but now I feel like hunting it out and watching it again.