That sounds gutting and wonderful. And the way you write about it really brings it home.
Thank you. It just went consistently beyond the marks it had to hit for its message—it could be cautious or naive, but it was never simplistic. Mel feels real, fifty-seven years later. The world through which he moves feels like a real world, not an argument. His moment of truth is electrifying; aftershocks from it crackle throughout the film, a blackmailer's sneer that he won't say as much in court and Mel's whip-thin smile, almost jaunty: "Oh, yes, I will." There's an earlier scene where he suggests almost casually to another closeted victim of blackmail, a West End star played close to the bone by Dennis Price, that he might use his position to raise awareness: "You're a star, Calloway. People like you set a fashion. If the young people knew how you lived, mightn't they think that an example to follow?" only for one of Calloway's boyfriends to cut in, smoothly missing or derailing the point: "Of course youth must be protected, we all agree about that." Mel lets it go, but it's one of the first signs that his thinking has begun to move beyond individual justice for Boy Barrett and into the realm of social justice. He'll set that fashion himself if he has to. Bogarde may not have been able to do the same as himself, but it is not a small thing that he did it as Mel. Like Leslie Howard at the end of Pimpernel Smith (1941), the actor speaking directly to history. And he was right that it would make a difference.
--Been thinking a lot about that cultural wall...
It's been smashing a lot of people in the face lately.
--AMEN. That's a point that the the YA novel The Hate U Give (about a police murder of a Black kid) makes. And it's so, so important.
It feels lately like we're fighting this point out all over again, in different branches of activism, and it's a distraction. People deserve human rights because they are human. Of course this administration doesn't want to say so, with its love of power games and shifting goalposts: ask nicely and we'll think about it. No one should have to ask nicely for air; you just breathe.
no subject
Thank you. It just went consistently beyond the marks it had to hit for its message—it could be cautious or naive, but it was never simplistic. Mel feels real, fifty-seven years later. The world through which he moves feels like a real world, not an argument. His moment of truth is electrifying; aftershocks from it crackle throughout the film, a blackmailer's sneer that he won't say as much in court and Mel's whip-thin smile, almost jaunty: "Oh, yes, I will." There's an earlier scene where he suggests almost casually to another closeted victim of blackmail, a West End star played close to the bone by Dennis Price, that he might use his position to raise awareness: "You're a star, Calloway. People like you set a fashion. If the young people knew how you lived, mightn't they think that an example to follow?" only for one of Calloway's boyfriends to cut in, smoothly missing or derailing the point: "Of course youth must be protected, we all agree about that." Mel lets it go, but it's one of the first signs that his thinking has begun to move beyond individual justice for Boy Barrett and into the realm of social justice. He'll set that fashion himself if he has to. Bogarde may not have been able to do the same as himself, but it is not a small thing that he did it as Mel. Like Leslie Howard at the end of Pimpernel Smith (1941), the actor speaking directly to history. And he was right that it would make a difference.
--Been thinking a lot about that cultural wall...
It's been smashing a lot of people in the face lately.
--AMEN. That's a point that the the YA novel The Hate U Give (about a police murder of a Black kid) makes. And it's so, so important.
It feels lately like we're fighting this point out all over again, in different branches of activism, and it's a distraction. People deserve human rights because they are human. Of course this administration doesn't want to say so, with its love of power games and shifting goalposts: ask nicely and we'll think about it. No one should have to ask nicely for air; you just breathe.
Did you write about this novel?