"We didn't pay 37 ln zlotys for the largt elephant hoe Europe to have a gay elephant live there," said Michal Grz, a nservative uncillor the Polish cy of Poznan, Rters reported last Friday.
Contents:
‘GAY ELEPHANT’ IS JT THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG
Usg mostly non-profsnal actors and featurg dizzyg long-tak to make you feel the passg of time leadg up to the horrific events at a high school Portland, the film is not immediately or easily talogued as an “LGBT” film, but mak for a fascatg entry to our long-nng project, given both s director and s oblique treatment of homosexualy. Were the only scene the film ncerned wh homosexualy, we might be quick to ame this moment as an attempt to further “other” both shooters, potg to their burgeong (or reprsed? ) homosexualy as ditive of their other abnormal tennci.
Isn’t this the allegoril ath-driven gay male figure society fears? But, this is a Van Sant film, one which giv a lengthy scene at the school’s Gay Straight Alliance meetg, so such a facile ncln is hard to make.
Seen as a 360-shot, wh s revolvg mera differently surveyg the var GSA members, the scene is ncerned wh the seemgly banal qutn: Can you tell if someone is gay jt by lookg at them? His ank and unsentimental pictn of gay youth marks Elephant as an anomaly among the recent films we’ve looked at: there’s no heightened emotnal drama to ame the characters as Alan Ball’s Six Feet Unr, and no soc-cultural amework to help unrstand this muny as we had The Laramie Project. In this stands alone treatg s characters (gay or straight) wh the same different gaze; there li s transgrsive and rehg sensibily, bee boy is unlike anythg we've looked at on here.