Film and History In-Class Write

1) Before the 1970’s, American kids were growing up in a society of heteronormativity. Arguably, that is still the case nowadays though in the past 50 years massive strides have been taken to protect and accept members of our society that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex: people who don’t identify as heterosexual, or sexually attracted to someone of the opposite gender.

The movie Milk by Gus Van Sant opens with images of police discrimination and brutality against homosexual men in bars and follows the life of one Harvey Milk- one of the first openly gay men elected to public office in the United States. The movie accurately portrays society’s disgust of gay men in a scene where Harvey and his lover, Scott Smith, open a shop in a small Irish Catholic neighborhood called the Castro. When they demonstrate interest in becoming a part of the merchant’s association, a neighbor informs them that if they try, the merchant’s association will pull their license and inform the police. He tells them that not only do they enforce US laws but also God’s law. Other political figures oppose Harvey as he fights against the stigma towards homosexuals. Anita Bryant moves millions with the claim that homosexual individuals are sinful and obscene, that it is a crime to identify as such.

It is obvious that in the 1970’s and 1980’s the United States is grappling with a powerful truth. Just as African American kids grew up a century before, treated as less that equal under a law that says the opposite, gay kids were growing up and realizing that they don’t have the same rights as people who loved as society told them was right. Even though the constitution proclaims that “all men are created equal”, homosexuals were being denied jobs in states across the country because their sexual orientation was towards someone of the same sex.

2) The tape that Harvey Milk made that predicted his assassination and its key role in the movie leaves out very little of his life and massive struggle in the campaigns for city supervisor. The movie directors followed everything through and painted a very accurate account of his story. The fight in San Francisco and across the country during Harvey’s life. What it lacks is what came afterward.

Though it mentions several achievements of his friends quickly the aftermath of Harvey’s murder, the story ends with Harvey Milk’s death and candlelit walk from The Castro to City Hall as a tribute afterward that amassed over 30,000 people. What happened soon afterward was the trial of Dan White, the man who murdered Harvey Milk and George Moscone, and his lenient sentencing of five years for voluntary manslaughter- the minimum charge for the two murders. The verdict set off the White Night riots, the most violent uprising in the gay movement. After all the progress Harvey had made in his life working to ensure that gay citizens were treated the same as heterosexual citizens, his killer made out with an extremely limited sentence and Harvey was dead.

Another major event in the quest for equal protection under the law was the Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution which was shot down before ever coming to light because while many came to support that women should be equal to straight men, people didn’t like the idea of homosexuals being equal to straight men. The NPR podcast “Sex Appeal” talks about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her brilliant leadership in the Equal Rights movement.

What I was left wondering after the film was whether there was any dialogue between the leaders fighting for women’s rights and the leaders fighting for gay rights and who the conversations would have been between. Who were some of the other nationwide leaders? Did Harvey work with them?

3) After reading an article that interviewed a friend of Harvey’s, he said that the film was quite spot on except for one detail: Scott and Jack weren’t the only lovers of Harvey’s. He had a number of partners and while some might say this isn’t especially relevant to the film, its true that many of Harvey’s friends and thousands of other homosexual men died of AIDS across the country, a disease spread due in part to the number of sexual partners they had. In the extra twenty minutes I would include more references the the beginning of the AIDS epidemic because the gay community was fighting for their lives not just in a political sense but also a very literal one. I would include as the story leads up to the climax (Harvey’s death) scenes of his friend’s being diagnosed with AIDS since almost all of them died from it. These scenes would link the AIDS epidemic to Harvey’s life and work in San Francisco.