Overall 0.5 / 5.0 (don’t bother)
Gay Inclusve? Very – mostly gay, some hetero secondary characters
Gay Positive? No – I don’t think they meant to be homophobic, but jeez…

Wow. I actually watched the whole thing, and in hindsight, how did I manage that? I feel like Superman now, able to watch awful movies in their entirety.

Here is the most positive thing I can say about this movie: the performances seem very earnest and enthusiastic, so kudos to the cast for bringing that energy to the show.

Unfortunately, it is far, far… far… from enough to save the film from its choppy editing, godawful camera shots, and aimless plot.

In theory, the movie is supposed to be a satire of a gay man (Jaime, played by Brian Campbell) looking for love and self-understanding via a search for a “straight lover who will be gay just for me.” The movie’s own blurb states, “In the end, Jaime is amazed to discover the one person he never thought he would – himself!”

That’s a stretch. Jaime comes from a background of casual, anonymous sexual encounters in the back of an adult bookstore. One gets the sense he’s never had a real relationship based on commitment and intimacy.

Meanwhile, at his job at an auto shop, he’s closeted. He develops a “bromance” with a (straight) fellow employee (Ray, played by Matt Edwards) who turns out to be a homophobe who tries to get Jaime into deep trouble in a completely contrived plot twist.

Somewhere along the course of the movie, the self-loathing Jaime tries to convince a peer from his backroom sexcapades to move to the suburbs with him and a pair of lesbians to pose as straight couples, so they can try to seduce married straight men. They detour on the way, however, with a series of bathroom encounters with gas station attendants. The film also includes an odd subplot involving a young man (Monty, Michael Gonring) with a self-professed fetish for “trolls” (older gay men). Monty is engaged to be married, and he leaves at the end of the movie for his bride.

I think I’m so disappointed in the movie because its foundational ideas are actually interesting to me. The fetish for straight men (and certainly for straight-acting) is prevalent throughout the gay community, so a satire about a gay man looking for a straight man who will be gay only for him suggests the possibility of both a lot of comedy and a lot of insight. Similarly, youth is highly fetishized in the gay community, so Monty’s subplot could have been woven into the story to enhance and reflect the main story’s theme. Alas. The script is a mishmash of barely coherent scenes and nonstarter plot threads.

My recommendation: Skip it.

Overall Quality 4.0 / 5.0 (engaging and interesting)
Gay Inclusive? Very – the subject is a gay man and his beginnings in gay porn
Gay Positive? Mostly – a positive tone undercut by negative implications that go unexplored

A fascinating look into a culture and man full of unexpected contradictions.

Jeffrey Schwartz’s documentary explores the evolution of Jack Stillman – a small, unathletic child of Beverly Hills privilege – into Jack Wrangler, who epitomizes rugged male sexuality. The evolution is far from linear. Jack begins in gay porn at a time when pornography was produced for the big screen, and acting was actually expected of the stars. Sometimes adult films could even get reviews in venues like Variety.

Stillman forged Wrangler in the fire of the gay porn business in the 1960s, during the time of the sexual revolution. The gay experience was fraught with peril; the documentary largely ignores that and focuses instead on the sexual openness of the pre-AIDS period.

The documentary strikes me as a bit one-sided in this sense. In fact, with Jack as the chief narrator, the film seems more like an autodocumentary. The overall tone is self-congratulatory, although to his credit Jack seems as startled by his successes as anyone. Still, I can’t help but think there’s another side to this story not being told.

I do deeply appreciate one of the themes of the documentary: a presentation of gay men counter to common stereotype. In fact, he’s one of earliest media images that counters the stereotype of gay men as effeminate sissies; it’s interesting that his image is not just masculine, but powerfully sexualized. Jack Wrangler represents a “manly man” – rugged, handsome and sexual – who is also gay.

Which makes it so odd that Wrangler moved into straight pornography. He had his first sexual encounter with a woman on-camera. He managed to become successful even in straight adult films, including The Devil in Miss Jones 2 and Debbie Does Dallas 2.

He’s also one of the few porn stars to bridge the gap from porn to mainstream theatrical work.

Perhaps most curiously, Jack became romantically involved with vocalist Margaret Whiting, a woman twenty years his senior. They have since married.

I’m not straight, and I’m not bisexual. I’m gay, but I could never live a gay lifestyle because I’m much too competitive. When I was with a guy I would always want to be better than him: what we were accomplishing, what we were wearing — anything. With a woman you compete like crazy, but coming from different points of view, and as far as I’m concerned, that was doable. (1)

It’s a puzzling development in the personal life of an otherwise openly gay man. Watching this portion of the documentary, part of me shrugs it away: to each his own. At the same time, I can’t help but notice that it’s suggestive that gay men can “change” their sexual orientation, and that the image of a manly gay man “turns out” to be straight … or at least turns to a straight lifestyle.

The most interesting-and perplexing-event of his life is his relationship with Whiting. Wrangler is a self-professed gay man who, according to the film, can´t see himself living with another man. As a condition of moving in with Whiting, and subsequently getting married, the actor agreed to give up performing in porn films as well as having encounters with other men. He makes light of it, saying he has a healthy masturbatory life. However, for a generation of gay men who looked up to Wrangler-not to mention the era he ushered in-I have to think this is a slap in the face. Certainly there is not a list of requirements to be considered gay; what fits one person doesn´t necessarily fit another. But a out gay man married to a woman and abstaining from sex with other men? Does that even qualify as being gay anymore? (2)

Again, I return to the point that the documentary doesn’t present “another side” to the story. Despite including interviews with colleagues from his work in porn, the documentary never delves into what it all means.

—————————

Theatrical trailer:

—————————-

(1) Brother, Job. “The Anatomy of Jack Wrangler.” The Advocate. 5 November 2008. http://www.advocate.com/print_article_ektid64690.asp (retrieved 30 November 2008).

(2) Vargo, Jason. “Review of ‘Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon.’” DVDTown.com. 26 October 2008. http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/wrangler-anatomy-of-an-icon/6426 (retrieved 30 November 2008).

This movie can’t decide what it wants to be. The script tackles serious, heavy topics like abortion, divorce, children dying, and infidelity as though they’re sources of humor. In fact, the movie bills itself as a comedy, and while it elicits a few chuckles here and there, it’s largely unfunny. Meanwhile, Everyone fails to probe the dramatic issues enough to yield any meaning or purpose.

Ryan (Matt Fentiman) and Grant (Mark Hildreth) are having a commitment ceremony, attended by family members, all of whom bring their current relationship foibles to the event. The title seems to suggest that “everyone” suffers relationship woes, including the couple tying the knot. In one scene of pre-wedding jitters, Grant asks Ryan if he knows any happy couples. Ryan retorts, do you know any happy single people? And that seems to be the central message of the movie: everyone is miserable!

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition: After Everyone, I watched Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). In that, the protagonist Frodo (Elijah Wood) wishes that the terrible circumstances of that fantasy tale had not come to pass. The wise wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) replies, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

This powerful message easily applies to the misdirected couples of Everyone. In great movies, the stories place their characters into terrible or challenging situations and then depict what they do with what is given to them. But this movie ends where it begins, without any sense of growth, evolution, or insight. Only one couple seems to find any healing: Grant’s brother (Andrew Moxham) and his wife (Anna Williams). Even that felt forced.

The movie enjoys high production values and passable performances, but I felt disengaged from all the characters, and plot-wise and thematically the movie just doesn’t take the viewer anywhere new.

Overall: Tepid. At first engaging but ultimately unsatisfactory.

Positivity-wise, the movie started off strong. Grant and Ryan seem at first to have the strongest relationship of any of their siblings. Unfortunately, the movie heads in the direction of several negative stereotypes, and those incidents fail to contribute any value to the story. Very disappointing.

Many modern gay-themed films seem to feel the need to disparage the gay film canon as portraying gay life in stereotypical and derogatory ways. They’re right. Then they succumb to the exact same problem.

The script of “AOTG” slams “In and Out” (the Kevin Kline vehicle) for presenting a stereotypical, self-hating gay man, and then proceeds to present a stereotypically self-destructive, promiscuous drunk (a hard-to-like Tom, played by the likable Richard Ruccolo). Tom meets Eli because their respective best friends are getting married. In theory, romance and hilarity ensue.

But the movie failed to make me believe in the romance between the two leads. Why did Eli (Dan Bucatinsky) keep trying after Tom was such an ass to him? Why would Tom keep pursuing someone who was so self-righteous and critical of him? Why would either character care about the other when the actors portraying them had so little chemistry?

The entire film is predicated on their on-again, off-again relationship, but I never understood why they kept trying. It doesn’t help that Tom is more caricature than character. I applaud Ruccolo for actually giving Tom some humanity (which helped the Gay Positivity score), because the script just presents him as Drunk-and-Unable-to-Commit Gay Guy.

Tom comes from an emotionally abusive background, raised by alcoholic parents, and now he himself is an alcoholic. The movie suggests his problems make him incapable of serious commitment. His best friend Jackie (Sasha Alexander, one of the highlights of the film) points out that he’s so self-hating he falls out of love with anyone who falls in love with him.

Meanwhile, the other problems that plague true alcoholics are absent or glossed over. Tom drinks throughout the film, but not only does the rest of his life seem unaffected, he still tends not to emote. He’s not an angry drunk, not a loving drunk, not a sweet drunk, not a quiet drunk. Wait! How do we even know he’s drunk? Oh, right, he’s in Alcoholics Anonymous, and he has a drink in his hand. Ergo, he’s a drunk.

In other words, his drinking is a plot device without the goods backing it up to make the drama believable or emotionally moving.

While I compliment Ruccolo for making an irritating character into an engaging role, the flip side is the character becomes less credible. I wanted to see some rage, which is hinted at, but the film never delves too deeply – being a comedy and all.

I wanted to see his life falling apart around him so that he would pull himself together, and then I could cheer for this basically good guy overcoming some serious personal problems. But at the end of the movie, the characters are more or less where they were at the beginning.

On the positive side, the movie does have its funny moments (mostly provided by Sasha Alexander and Adam Goldberg) and features some great acting talent. And yeah, it’s better than a lot of the trash that’s out there. It’s a good watch if you’ve exhausted the slim library of other gay romantic comedies. And while I won’t say this is a gay-positive movie, neither is it overtly gay-negative. Fortunately, there’s no “I’m gay, woe is me” subplot, no homophobia.

In the end, this movie irritates me because it could have been so much better. It’s a potentially credible drama posing as a romantic comedy. But the script’s uneven attempt to make light of something so serious bleaches the story of realism and impact. The result is a tepid and mediocre film.

Propsero lives in a veritable garden of Eden with his daughter Freia, but inwardly he seethes: his brother Avril took the crown that Prospero felt is rightfully his. The story begins with Prospero planting the seeds of a rebellion to seize the throne. Into the story wanders a powerful but strange sorcerer named Dewar with secret connections to both sides.

Hm. I’m actually making the book sound more interesting than it really is. I found the plot uninventive and formulaic, with the only surprises (most notably Dewar’s connection to Prospero’s interests) seeming contrived. The language didn’t help: Prospero and a few other characters speak something that I can only call pseudo-Shakespearean, which interrupted the flow and pace of the story.

But the real failing of the novel are the characters. I simply don’t care about any of them, and I dislike more than a few. But even those I dislike don’t engender enough passion for me to, at minimum, admire them as villains. In fact, I wonder if the clear lack of a villain hobbled the story. I suppose the author intended Avril the Emperor as the central antagonist; but he plays a relatively small role, mostly off-stage. Prospero is certainly no more likeable, but Willey can’t seem to decide if she wants to reader to root for, or against, Prospero.

At any rate, lacking a worthy adversary, perhaps protagonist Dewar never really has a chance to shine. As it is, Dewar is lackluster. It doesn’t help that he makes a couple of morally questionable choices. Additionally, the book is filled with all kinds of subtle inconsistencies. For example, Prospero supposedly loves his daughter dearly, but he’s consistently mean and demeaning to her. Now, if the story had centered around Freia escaping the yoke of a sexist, manipulative, controlling father bent on world domination – that might have been interesting.

Additionally, the introduction of the book is jarring – it focuses on Prince Josquin as though he’s the protagonist, but then he turns out to be a very minor character. The tone of the book is also inconsistent. The story mostly reads like high fantasy, a happy-go-lucky tale (which matches Dewar’s happy-go-lucky attitude) in a Medieval-esque setting with magical elements.

But then the story would dip into very dark territory, most notably with a couple of violent assaults on women. Dark fantasy can make for compelling reading if handled well (see George R. R. Martin for evidence), but Willey doesn’t seem to have the stomach for it – the story would diverge into a darker area, usually offstage, only to return to the high fantasy tone. The darker elements make for an uncomfortable fit into an otherwise lighter story.

The ending is also underwhelming and certainly poorly foreshadowed: a whole lot of buildup for not much payoff.

The story does contain some gay content in the person of Prince Josquin. The story opens with the Prince being ensorcelled by a mysterious, handsome man, and it’s made perfectly clear that the Prince is quite fond of the company of handsome men. Ahem. But then it’s revealed later that his dalliance with the mysterious stranger was perfectly chaste. Go figure.

Unfortunately, Prince Josquin is not terrible impressive. He has no personal agency; he goes where and does what others tell him. But then, he doesn’t seem to have any particular goals of his own, nor the strength of will to pursue any. The narrative also implies that he’s irresponsibly promiscuous, as when his uncle warns him against “fraternizing” with the soldiers. It’s also stated fairly explicitly that he’s borderline incompetent, especially in manly endeavors like war. In fact, I see similarities in Josquin’s relationship with his family and Freia’s relationship with her father. If Freia and Jos had been built up as characters more, it might have been interesting to see those relationships play out in tandem.

Overall, I’m not impressed. But I am frustrated. Despite all my criticisms, I see a lot of potential in this story. A tighter narrative, more elaborately contoured characters, different emphases, and I think “A Sorcerer and a Gentleman” might have made a fascinating read.

Ugly, brutish, and more than a little dumb. If that describes your perfect film, knock yourself out. As for myself, I am underwhelmed.

On the bright side, I thought the cinematography was surprisingly well done for a low budget movie. The grittiness meshed well with the material. The principal actors, particularly Bret Roberts as Travis and Brian Austin Green (yeah, that one) as Jacko, did great jobs with their role. Green in particular lent a natural believability to his role, even when the script itself was wooden.

Travis is an aspiring boxer with hopes of moving to Vegas as a professional. His best friend, Jacko, is a mildly psycho and hugely homophobic loser. The main thrust (ahem) of the film lies in how homophobia in the run-down, urban setting plays out in their lives.

Unfortunately, the plot has a couple of serious flaws. For example, it’s too small a movie spread over too long a time. In other words, the movie begs for tighter writing and editing. I’d almost argue the basic story is better suited to a short film: a shorter format would force the filmmaker to be clearer, more concise, and more focused on the central theme of the movie, without muddying it with subplots that don’t really go anywhere (such as Travis’ and Jacko’s family situations).

The most serious flaw is also the most crucial plot point: the idea that Travis, a boxer who specializes in a body-to-body move called the “Clinch,” habitually gets an erection during that move. I found it hard to believe. Outside of that single moment, Travis doesn’t read as gay. In fact, he seems pretty resolutely heterosexual, with no evidence of even internal conflict or uncertainty. About the gayest thing he does in the film is to refrain from joining his friend Jacko in gay bashing some poor soul. In fact, by the end of the movie, I was not questioning Travis’ sexuality as much as Jacko’s. Someone with that much to prove has something to hide.

Oh, and throw in a whole lot of clichés … the broken families, the girlfriend, the aging trainer with one last hope (Travis), the violent northside/southside rivalry, the local cop … yeah, call me underwhelmed.

I also scored the movie low on the Gay Positivity scale, though I have tried to think about this film a little more deeply. Is there a positive side I’m not seeing because I’m so upset about the gay negative stuff? Moreover, am I being overly reactive? That is, am I saying, “Omigod, they’re dissing gay people!” and get all angry, without realizing that’s the point of the film – to explore the issue of dissing gay people, what it means, how it works, why it exists?

On the positive side… Well, for one thing, the one and only clearly gay person portrayed is just a regular guy. Well, sort of. Insofar as regular guys happily duck into a dark and dirty alley in a bad part of town to give a blowjob to an unknown albeit cute boy.

Oh, and then he gets bashed so badly he ends up paralyzed. Maybe not so positive.

Still, the sheer amount of homophobia shown in the movie reflects poorly on the homophobic characters, an important component of off-setting the negativity of homophobia. And yet, the film never really demonizes the homophobia, per se. Rather, the homophobia ends up being part of the texture of the landscape, of the psychology of this particular micro-civilization. The group dynamics that act themselves out over the course of the film take place within a framework of homophobia, with significant plot points prompted by the egregious anti-gay attitude.

But the film never really explores that there’s a deeper underlying connection between homophobia and violence (I mean more than just the gay bashing violence), and it never clearly indicts homophobia as destructive on oneself, not just on others.

Yes, of course, the destructiveness of homophobia is shown in the film: the gay bashing, or how graffiti alleging a gay relationship prompts a vicious, violent triple assault. But is it clear how, say, Jacko’s own homophobia is destructive to himself, his own sense of self, his own healthy self-regard, to his personal experience and hopes for the future? I see it, but it’s an issue I’ve thought about. Would your average person watching this film make the mental leap? Given what’s in the film, probably not.

One Amazon.com review comments that the portrayal of gay characters in this movie is a refreshing change from “easily digestible, non-threatening image of gay men” such as the characters of “Will & Grace.” I disagree completely. Only one (minor) character is clearly gay, and he gets violently bashed. We may question Jacko’s or Travis’s sexuality, but the film presents no real evidence to say either is gay. So, instead, we have a film in which the sole gay, after flirting with Travis, is threatened and victimized. To be a refreshing change from a non-threatening gay like Will, we’d need a tough gay character who can stand up emotionally and physically to the homophobia and triumph in the end. I would love to see that character. But s/he is not found in this film.

On the whole, I like this movie. Despite its many flaws.

The film benefits from some great acting. Certainly, it enjoys a caliber of talent unusual for an independent feature. Jacqueline Bisset as Lila, despite the schlocky role, gives a performance that provides an emotional heart to the movie. Steve Sandvoss is pitch perfect as the sweet, conflicted, not-quite-naive Mormon (Aaron). Rebekah Johnson brings a feistiness that brings the stock fag-hag character (Julie) to life. Wes Ramsey as protagonist Christian does a good job as well, with the exception of a couple of overwrought monologues. But the monologues were written that way, so it’s hard to blame Ramsey too much. (Wait until he tells the story of getting left behind in the woods. You’ve got to be kidding me.)

The character of Christian irritates me. It’s like the writer (C. Jay Cox) said to himself, I want this person to be Gay Everyman. But his version of Gay Everyman happens to encompass a whole lot of stereotypical behavior. Meanwhile, the character of Aaron was very engaging: sweet, kind, and sincere. I really wanted Aaron to find happiness. Probably the filmmakers intended the central conflict to hinge on whether Aaron and Christian got together. But in watching the movie, I cared about that only insofar as it meant Aaron was able to exorcise his personal demons. Although I did appreciate Christian’s rather dramatic personal growth over the course of the film.

I have mixed emotions about the character of Keith (Erik Palladino), the gay man suffering from advanced AIDS. I always have mixed emotions about HIV/AIDS in gay-themed films: I tire of the association of disease, HIV/AIDS in particular, with the gay community, so I get frustrated easily when it seems like every other film throws in an HIV+ character for some kind of street cred.

On the other hand, HIV/AIDS is an important part of the history of the gay community, and remains a continuing concern. Especially since many young gay people nowadays don’t seem to take HIV/AIDS seriously.

But Keith’s role in the film is just over-the-top in a film already brimming with negative gay clichés. Christian finds meaning and depth by getting to know this gay man, who used to be like Christian, until AIDS enlightened him to the true meaning of Christmas.

That character is indicative of what’s fundamentally wrong with the movie. I can value having a guy in the movie who has AIDS, who has actually stopped and looked at the events of his life (including but not limited to the disease) and actually managed to squeeze out insight and wisdom. Consider the HIV+ character of Ben (Robert Gant) in “Queer as Folk.” But that’s not exactly how Keith’s character is portrayed; he’s too one-note, with too many one-liners, to have the depth needed for his role.

The movie is simply too heavy-handed without having the depth of character or thematic goods to back it up. One scene portrays an argument Christian has with some random trick that sleeping together is much more intimate than sex, and how the preference for the latter over the former is an unhealthy reversal of priorities in the gay community. That experience apparently helps Christian to appreciate the value of the depth and moral center that Aaron offers. It could have worked, had it been written and directed with any subtlety or nuance.

And then there’s the treatment of the Mormon Church.

In a lot of ways, “Latter Days” is an uncomfortable film. It benefits from an underlying sweetness, which mostly originates in the performances (especially Lila and Aaron). And the lead characters, unoriginal though they may be, are basically likeable – that helps a whole lot.

But the charm is undercut by a hateful edge: at the same time it’s trying to be a gay love story, the film is also attacking the Mormon Church (and, by extension, any organized religion which considers homosexuality sinful). The filmmakers have the right to make whatever kind of movie they want; and if they want to attack the Mormon Church, so be it. I’m not a fan of Mormonism, based upon what I know if it, so I have no argument with that. But using the medium of film to attack something lends a certain ugliness to the feel of the work. Trying to be a sweet love story and an assault on a particular group of people at the same time makes for a strange viewing experience. Even being unfamiliar with Mormon missionary work, I had the sense that certain facts were distorted or dramatized in order to highlight the condemnation of Mormonism. Ryder (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is too much a caricature of intolerant evangelism to really take seriously.

Consider the thoughts of reviewer and commentator Eric Snyder on this subject:

“Cox is allowed some poetic license, of course; he never claimed he was making a documentary. But I have to question his motives. As a former church member, Cox knows how missionaries really talk and act, and he knows how the church really operates. He is skewing the facts either A) because doing so helps his story progress, or B) because he wants viewers to dislike the church as much as he does. I hope it is option A, as that only makes him a bad filmmaker — good filmmakers use the facts of the world as they actually are to tell their stories, and don’t resort to making stuff up — while option B would make him something worse. Intentionally distorting the facts so your opponent looks more evil than he is smells like propaganda — which, again, is Cox’s right as a filmmaker, but which makes him seem like a guy with an ax to grind, not a guy with a story to tell” (1).

I did wonder myself about whether the filmmakers had an ax to grind, but I was equally confused by the mixed messages in the movie, because there’s just so much gay negativity.  And not just around the conflicted Mormon boy. Of course, Aaron is the most tortured of all the characters. Sometimes literally: wait until the scenes from the prison, er, hospital trying to “fix” him following Aaron’s attempt to “fix” himself, in a manner of speaking.

The film portrays a society which persecutes and literally tortures gay people because of unyielding, unthinking homophobia. Aaron persecutes and tortures himself because he has internalized that perspective. But what is the alternative presented, the other side of the story?

Is it someone like Gene Robinson or Mel White, well-known gay men committed to spiritual work in the world? No.

Or even someone like the aforementioned Ben from “Queer As Folk,” who certainly suffers from his own inner demons but is still a person of impressive depth and learning? No.

It’s a promiscuous (even when he’s pining for Aaron, he still brings tricks home!), theatrical, superficial flake who is held up in the film to represent openly gay life. What does that say? It’s an odd juxtaposition, at the least. Take the worst of the anti-gay world and the most clichéd of gay life, and throw them together!

As stated, I like this film. It benefits from a basic sweetness and an engaging exploration of the universal human longing for affection and understanding and the peeling away of the protective emotional layers we wrap around ourselves. Some of the scenes are fantastic. I especially enjoyed the penultimate scene, the emotional climax of the movie. Even if the plot that led us to that moment was contrived and forced, it’s still a great moment.

But keep your expectations low – the film suffers from a heavy-handed approach to theme and a cookie-cutter approach to characterization and plot that prevent the film from truly shining.

—————————

(1) Snyder, Eric. “Latter Days,” EricDSnider.com, March 2004, http://www.ericdsnider.com/movies/latter-days (17 August 2007)

In the future, humanity encounters an alien race called the hwarhath. A superficially adversarial relationship develops; our two people do not declare war, but skirmishes, spying, and abducting enemy agents are common on both sides. The book opens with the initiation of diplomatic proceedings, at which it is discovered one of the human abductees, Nicholas Sanders, has been assisting the hwarhath for some twenty years. Military Intelligence attempts to kidnap Nicholas for questioning, using our protagonist Anna – who researches alien intelligence – to help them.

“Ring of Swords” makes for a fascinating, fast read. The prose is crisp and clean, unlittered by flowery language or needless subplots and secondary characters. The author has a story to tell, and she lets it unfold with a minimum of fuss or verbal excess (something that can’t be said for many fantasy novels, but which the sci-fi genre seems to do much better). The story recalls C. J. Cherryh’s Chanur series in its adept exploration of an alien culture dealing with humanity. The feminist bent of the story (and the heroine’s name) also made me think of L. E. Modesitt’s fantasy series, the Spellsong Cycle, whose protagonist Anna finds herself – through no fault of her own – in trying circumstances but manages not only to make the best of them, but to master them.

The novel definitely holds interest for the gay reader in that, as one minor character observes, “We have found an entire culture, maybe an entire species, that does not practice heterosexuality, except maybe…as a perversion” (61).

I found Arnason’s exploration of the sexual culture of the hwarhath fascinating: the separation between genders, the primacy of females over males, etc. I never really understood if homosexuality was practiced among the hwarhath because they were all inherently homosexual and always had been, and in their past had only endured heterosexual intercourse in order to procreate. Or if they were simply socially conditioned to engage in same-sex relationships because of the strict gender divide. Either way, I found the cultural norm she created very believable.

I can almost imagine a similar culture evolving somewhere on earth, under the right circumstances: women, for whatever reason, remain completely separate from men. Intercourse is allowed by the culture only under relatively rare and carefully controlled circumstances in order to procreate. Outside of that experience, men and women do not fraternize; so if they are to form intimate, romantic, and sexual relationships, it must be with members of the same sex.

That leads us to a fractious question, however. Can a person who is biologically heterosexual find true satisfaction in a homosexual relationship? Part of me thinks, why not? If the person is open-minded enough about the source that fulfills their sexual and emotional needs, what difference does the gender make?

But that’s a slippery slope into the argument that a gay person could find satisfaction and fulfillment in a heterosexual relationship, i.e., that a gay person could, for all intents and purposes, change. If only they were open-minded enough. And I have a much bigger problem with that proposition. It’s very close to saying that homosexuality is not real, but some kind of illusion or disordered sexual identity. It’s obvious that situational homosexuality exists here on earth, e.g., in all-male environments like prison or under specific circumstances like adolescent experimentation or gay-for-pay pornography. Those are very different scenarios from someone whose gayness is intrinsic and inborn.

At one point, we meet a hwarhath who is, gasp!, straight. And miserable about it! Apparently there’s no organized straight subculture among hwarhath like we find a gay subculture among humans. Nicholas has a very interesting response upon discovering this hwarhath’s heterosexuality: “I wanted to say, the universe is very large, and most of it is cold and dark and empty; it’s not a good idea to be too picky about who you are going to love” (191). I never understood if Nicholas was “really” gay; or “situationally” gay because he’s a human male with sexual needs who’s only ever exposed to other men who regularly practice same-sex relationships. I generally consider portrayals of the latter kind to be less gay positive, because it’s less affirming of a gay identity, but I also consider that point to be relatively minor. It can be an awfully fine line between “really” gay and “situationally” gay, as I phrase it.

I should note, the book makes clear that future humanity still does not consider homosexuality to be “normal” and implies that it’s less socially or morally acceptable. Nicholas is amused at one point in the novel by the idea of “a bunch of people sitting around on Earth, trying to decide what kind of homosexual pornography will present humanity in the best light” (235 – my favorite line in the novel).

Great characters, a compelling plot, crisp narrative, and thought-provoking themes make “Ring of Swords” a recommended read. Check it out!

As an aside, for a (non-science fiction) movie that re-imagines human culture as predominantly gay with a different take on the relationship between males and females for procreation, check out “Almost Normal” (2005).

A fluffer is a behind-the-scenes person at a porn shoot who fellates or otherwise brings the male porn star to full arousal, so he can perform on-camera.

Young Sean (Michael Cunio) is a fresh-faced transplant to Los Angeles, hoping to find work as a cameraman. Instead, he finds himself at the Men of Janus production company, largely thanks to a porno he inadvertently watches starring Johnny Rebel (Scott Gurney). And so begins Sean’s obsession with the self-involved and self-destructive Johnny, leading not only to camera work for Sean, but also the task of fluffing the object of his obsession.

The movie offers surprisingly smart moments. It opens with a quote from Ovid about Narcissus, a theme reflected throughout the movie, particularly in a clever fantasy sequence involving a mirror.

The movie also depicts porn culture not as intrinsically destructive to those who work within it; but certainly as a wide-open gateway to self-destruction. Pleasantly, the (self-)destructiveness of the porn culture did not translate thematically into gay culture = self-destruction (which would have been a gay positivity no-no).

This content yielded a movie smarter than I expected, but it still ends up trying to tell too much story and go too many places. So while it may be smart, its edge is greatly dulled.

The soul of the movie is a comment by Silver (Adina Porter), Sean’s friend and co-worker at Men of Janus:

“People get f**ked up working at K-Mart. People get f**ked up working in Hollywood. It’s called the adult film industry. If you’re going to work in it, you’d better be an adult.”

Writer Wash West comes from the porn industry and could have written an incisive drama exploring that very theme. But about halfway through, the movie begins to unravel as it takes on too much storytelling baggage, and once it introduces the silly murder mystery, all hope of a coherent story is lost.

As an interesting aside, despite the subject and context of the film, there’s no real nudity. When Sean goes to work on Johnny, he simply dips down out of the camera frame. Perhaps the lack of flesh is meant to differentiate a film about the porn industry from a film that is porn.