Contents:
- BRET EASTON ELLIS ATTACKS 'GATEKEEPERS OF POLILLY RRECT GAYNS'
- BRET EASTON ELLIS: THE YEAR THE OSRS FALLY GOT GAY RIGHT (GUT COLUMN)
- BRET EASTON ELLIS'S TWEETS PROVOKE 'BAN' OM GAY MEDIA AWARDS
BRET EASTON ELLIS ATTACKS 'GATEKEEPERS OF POLILLY RRECT GAYNS'
Bret Easton Ellis, the novelist who turned beg a bad boy to a lerary form, has now ployed his nsirable powers of vective to attack what he lls the "gatekeepers of polilly rrect gayns" a lengthy diatribe Out magaze Ellis begs by bemoang the way that the recent g out of basketball star Jason Colls was handled by the media.
Colls was treated, the novelist says, like a "kd of baby panda who need to be honored and praised and nsoled and – y – fantilized" rerv particular ire for the gay mpaigners he acc of imposg a sanized and sanctified visn of homosexualy upon the plited liv of ordary gay people. "Beg 'real' and 'human' (ie flawed) is not necsarily what The Gay Gatekeepers want straight culture to see. " The group also bridled at a tweet which he qutned whether the openly gay actor Matt Bomer was well st to play the role of the straight Christian Grey the film versn of Fifty Shas of lnchg to a cricism of Glaad bee he was unved om s party opens Ellis up to the accatn of sour grap.
But he argu his Out piece that Glaad's censorial attu was symptomatic of a wir malaise wh some gay muny activists – what he lls "the gay lie". "An anizatn holdg an awards ceremony that they thk reprents all gays and also feels that they n choose which gays n and nnot be a member of the party is, on the fact of , ridiculo.
BRET EASTON ELLIS: THE YEAR THE OSRS FALLY GOT GAY RIGHT (GUT COLUMN)
The fact remas that if you aren't prentg yourself as a happy homosexual promotg healthy mastream gay valu and pimpg for Glaad, then you're somehow famg The Cse, " he 's Rich Ferraro, asked for a rponse to Ellis's attack, said: "Given the c remarks he's ma about the gay muny and people livg wh HIV/Aids, this publicy stunt is not surprisg. Glaad asked for a time to s down wh Bret and planned to ve other lears the gay muny as well as the HIV/Aids muny. He has scribed his own sexualy different ways to different terviewers over the years, but most recently has referred to himself as says he has been cricized for beg a self-hatg homosexual, but says though he may be self-hatg, has nothg to do wh beg gay.
He plas that the strajacket of sweet, sexually unthreateng and super-succsful gays that is beg forced on dividual gay men like him is stiflg – "a new kd of gay victimizatn". And while the nversatn do tend to foc on the edg of his work and his spiratn, also touch on a subject we're most fely terted : his, Ellis has always wrten wh what seems to to be a pretty gay sensibily.
BRET EASTON ELLIS'S TWEETS PROVOKE 'BAN' OM GAY MEDIA AWARDS
"I fely don't intify as gay, " he told Metro Weekly 2002 when asked pot blank how he intified. This percentage means that we are overreprented at the Osrs this year terms of the number of gay or bisexual characters played by nomated actors — a rerd seven out of 20. It also suggts we’ve e a long way om the agoni of Tom Hanks dyg om AIDS 1993’s Philalphia; or om the tortur of forbidn same-sex romance 2005’s Brokeback Mounta (a movie about shame that ends ath); and om Sean Penn as gay martyr Harvey Milk, assassated bee of his sexualy 2008’s Milk.
That’s bee none of the movi where the seven nomated performanc ri are about gayns at all.
Homosexualy and disease and the closet isn’t the pot, sufferg and victimhood is not at their center, and iology is phed back favor of simple storytellg. As I wrote Out magaze when the movie was released, felt post-gay bee wasn’t about the closet or AIDS or bullyg or polics or beg a victim (all topics much of queer cema has been enthralled by). Wh the exceptn of 1970’s The Boys the Band (which was a play first), Amerin mastream movi didn’t dare approach the topic of open homosexualy for more than a after the Stonewall rts and only briefly somewhere the 1970s edic form (1976’s Norman … Is That You?, which Redd Foxx disvers his son is gay, and that same year, The Rz, a farce set a gay bathhoe and starrg Ra Moreno; both also were based on plays).