The Hours, again: As my previous post about this film made clear, I responded to this film partly because the bisexual angle resonated with me. I make a point of saying the "bisexual" angle rather than the "gay angle" or the "lesbian angle," because I am wary of what some might call "queer" essentialism, favoring instead a "bisexual" essentialism. That is to say, I fully believe in the Kinsey continuum. As a result, I believe that sexual politics and desire underlie more human interaction than we sometimes like to admit, that closeted same-sex desire is fairly widespread and that the number of people who are either completely straight or completely gay is overshadowed by the rest of us who fall somewhere in between. Men's Health magazine, which I discussed below, is only one example of the homoerotic in the service of the allegedly heterosexual. I mention it because, years ago I subscribed to that magazine, hoping to get more insight into the world of straight male culture which I have never fully participated in, but what I found was that, once I looked past the questionable claims about male and female essentialism (not quite John Gray, but close), I was interested in the fitness tips partly because I was turned on by the images of the guys throughout the magazine. I doubt my experience was all that uncommon. One needn't be Camille Paglia to recognize the sexual personae all around us. In fact, since today is Superbowl Sunday, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Alan Dundes' important essay "Into the Endzone for a Touchdown: A Psychoanalytic Consideration of American Football" (the essay is collected in his volume Interpreting Folklore, published by Indiana University Press). There Dundes examines football as a male homosexual fantasy game. Although his Freudian approach is not without its problems, he manages to explain a lot of details with much persuasive force.
My point is not to be so reductive as to claim that everyone is bisexual, although I can imagine trying to make the case. It is, instead, to suggest that where sexual orientation is concerned, the categories "gay" and "straight" are just that, categories: they're more useful as a kind of shorthand to use in understanding experience than as the definitive answers some think they are. Desire--both heterosexual and homoerotic--is part of the human condition, and what matters is how one reacts to it.
Returning now to the movie, one of the things that intrigued me about it is that in The Hours, Julianne Moore's 1950s housewife is in many respects the inverse of the character she plays in Far From Heaven. Where her husband's (Dennis Quaid) same-sex desire disrupts her character's life in the second film, in The Hours, her character struggles with many issues, among them same-sex desire. We don't know for sure how large a part that plays in shaping the decision her character makes in the film, but it is fair to think that it plays some part. At the end of the film, she tells us that, faced with unrelenting despair, she chose life. It is a profoundly moving moment. Her decision has been a difficult one for her, and it has come at a great cost to her and to her family. Although it might be easy for some to judge or find fault with the ethics of her choice, that choice is--however flawed--better than the alternative she faced in contemplating the abyss of despair she inhabited. May we all have the courage to find our way from the abyss if and when we face it.
