A Real Writer
A real writer writes for pay.
A real writer writes for nothing.
A real writer makes a living off the craft.
Or enjoys the grocery money.
A true writer publishes with traditional houses.
A true writer self-publishes.
A real writer writes for others to see.
A real writer writes for himself alone.
A real writer has done all of these things.
Or maybe one.
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As with any genre, gay romance has its duds (looking at you, Happiest Season), its all rights (Boy Erased), and its overhypes (Call Me by Your Name). But many of its films are immensely powerful. After all, the most compelling romance writing involves forbidden, secret love and associated dangers, and — tragically for the real human beings who experienced and experience this — these elements are inherent to many gay stories. The following is a selection of movies that you will not soon forget.
Supernova — Love in the time of dementia. Stars Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci.
Disobedience — Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz find love in an orthodox Jewish community.
The World to Come — Farmers’ wives fall for each other on the American frontier. With Vanessa Kirby, Katherine Waterston, and Casey Affleck.
Carol — Cate Blanchett’s character meets a younger woman (Rooney Mara) in 1950s New York.
Ammonite — Searching for fossils and companionship in the early 1800s. Stars Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan.
Brokeback Mountain — The undisputed classic. With Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Anne Hathaway.
Moonlight — The Best Picture winner, a journey from black boyhood to manhood. With Mahershala Ali, Ashton Sanders, and Naomie Harris.
The Power of the Dog — Benedict Cumberbatch’s character abuses his brother’s wife and son (Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee) while struggling with his feelings for the latter.
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women — A throuple in the 1940s evades discovery, while inspiring the creation of Wonder Woman. With Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, and Bella Heathcote.
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I noticed something interesting during the Trump era. As the nation completely lost its mind, I saw incidents here and there of Republican senators seeming to keep their heads a little better than House Republicans.
For example, after Trump’s lies about voter fraud led to the January 6 riot, 14% of Republican senators (seven individuals) voted to convict him, whereas in the House only 5% of Republicans voted to impeach (ten individuals). Or look at who still voted against Arizona and Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results two months after election day, after (Republican) states had recounted and certified their results and Trump’s own administration officials and the federal courts had rejected the myth of voter fraud. 66% of House Republicans (139 politicians) voted to object to the validity of these states’ elections, with no actual evidence for their position. Only 6% of GOP senators (eight officials) did the same. And sure, the Senate has its Josh Hawleys, Lindsey Grahams, and Ted Cruzes, but doesn’t it usually feel like the most insane people are in the House? Like Majorie Taylor Greene (QAnon, space lasers owned by Jews causing wildfires, 9/11 was an inside job) or George Santos (pathologically lying about his career, relatives experiencing the Holocaust or 9/11, and founding an animal charity)? Why does the Senate at times seem like a slightly more sober place? Perhaps it’s nothing, but such things reminded me a bit of what the Constitutional framers wrote about the Senate and House.
For the Founding Fathers, the Senate, which would not be elected by voters but by state legislatures (this was true until 1913), would be comprised of more serious, intelligent people. A nation must, James Madison wrote in 1787, “protect the people agst. the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.” The foolishness of the citizenry had to be tempered. Because the House of Representatives would be elected by the people, it would also be infected: the voters, “as well as a numerous body of Representatives, were liable to err also, from fickleness and passion.” Thus, “a necessary fence agst. this danger would be to select a portion of enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness might seasonably interpose agst. impetuous counsels.” This was the Senate, the upper chamber, following closely the House of Lords in Britain that operated beside the House of Commons, the lower chamber.
Madison positioned the Senate as a check on the “temporary errors” of the masses-representing House, whereas the masses-representing House would be a guard against the abuses of the Senate, small and unelected by the citizenry. (He then went on to stress that one had to keep power away from the people, whose sheer numbers would threaten the interests of the rich. So the president, senators, justices, and so on would not be elected by ordinary voters — and only men with property could vote for House reps. See How the Founding Fathers Protected Their Own Wealth and Power.)
“The main design of the convention, in forming the senate,” the New York publisher Francis Childs wrote in 1788, “was to prevent fluctuations and cabals: With this view, they made that body small, and to exist for a considerable period.” Indeed, “There are few positions more demonstrable than that there should be in every republic, some permanent body to correct the prejudices, check the intemperate passions, and regulate the fluctuations of a popular assembly.” Childs was railing against the idea of senators not serving for life.
Alexander Hamilton’s plan was for life-term senators. “Gentlemen differ in their opinions concerning the necessary checks, from the different estimates they form of the human passions. They suppose seven years a sufficient period to give the Senate an adequate firmness, from not duly considering the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit.” Senators would “hold their places for life,” to achieve “stability.”
The story of George Washington calling the Senate the cooling saucer for the hot coffee of House legislation is probably untrue, but captures the general mindset of the framers.
Of course, the idea of senators being significantly more “enlightened” and level-headed than House reps from 1789 to 1913 deserves skepticism, but it would take lengthy historical study to form a coherent position. The modern observations that opened this writing can’t really support the opinions of the Founders, for modern senators are elected by the voters, not state legislatures. The 17th Amendment gave us different rules for the game. What this means is I can only ponder whether the framers were accidentally right: perhaps they theorized that senators would be more serious people on average, but this only became so after 1913. It is true that they could simply have been right, with this phenomenon defining the Senate no matter how senators were elected, but this cannot be answered without careful analysis of the political realm from the early republic era to World War I. Not that my musings can at present be fully answered either, as they are merely based on a few random observations, not careful, systematic analysis of modern behavioral differences between senators and representatives. All this is highly speculative.
However, it seems obvious it would be a little easier for crazy people to enter the House than the Senate. You simply don’t have to convince as many voters to support you. In 2022, there were 98 House districts (out of 435) where turnout was less than 200,000 people. The lowest districts had 90,000 to 140,000 total voters. If you’re a dunce who can get 50,000, 75,000, or 100,000 people to vote for you, you can make it to Congress. Districts are small, less diverse, sometimes gerrymandered. More people within them think and vote the same way — the average margin of victory among U.S. House races is 29%, versus 18-19% for Senate races — meaning it’s a bit easier to beat your rival candidate from the other party, if you live in the right district. If you’re running in a safe district — a blue candidate in an extremely blue area or a red one in an extremely red area — all you must truly worry about is beating your primary challengers from your own party, meaning you can secure a seat in Congress with even fewer votes.
Candidates for Senate, while naturally still courting voters on their side of the political spectrum as well as moderates, seek supporters across entire states, in wilderness and small towns and suburbs and big cities. Potential voters are more diverse geographically, racially, economically, ideologically (the poor rightwing farmer is not precisely the same as the rich rightwing business tycoon). To make it to the Senate, you’ll need more votes. 100,000 supporters might be enough in sparsely populated states like Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, or the Dakotas. But beyond that you’ll need hundreds of thousands or millions of voters to beat the candidate from the other party. This is true regardless of the fact that you could win a primary with a relatively low number of supporters and would have a much better chance of winning a safe state.
Entering the House also requires far less money. Which may be a benefit to crazy people who lose funders when they do and say crazy things. (Admittedly, you may see the opposite effect these days.) It also opens the door to more self-funded candidates. Overall, it’s five to seven times more expensive to win a Senate race than a House race.
All this is to say it may be more difficult for the worst clowns to enter the Senate. There are more opportunities with the House; you need fewer voters and less cash. This may sound ludicrous in a world where Donald Trump could dominate the Republican primaries, indeed it is frightening when extremists like Trump or Greene beat normal conservatives, but more voters may nevertheless function — imperfectly — as a bulwark against irrationality, a check on dangerous candidates. (Recall that Trump lost one popular vote by 3 million and the next by 7 million, once the decision was placed before even more voters.) Someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene can garner 170,000 votes, and George Santos 145,000, but it may be more difficult for them to be taken seriously by their entire states, by the millions necessary to beat rival candidates. It’s not impossible, as Trump has shown, and enthusiasm among the rightwing masses for lunacy (authoritarianism, conspiracy theories, demagoguery) is only encouraging lunatics to run and helping them win, but “more voters, fewer clowns” may nevertheless be a general principle of democracy that held true before the Trump era and may yet hold true today. (Enough popular extremism, of course, will dismantle this principle entirely.)
If the Senate is in fact a more serious place, it’s possibly a product of the system established in 1913. You have those factors making it difficult for loons to get there. Consider the setup before this. A propertied resident of, say, Virginia would vote for state legislators to go to Richmond to represent his local district. The legislators in Richmond would then elect two senators to serve in Congress. (Meanwhile, House reps were elected as they are today; that Virginia resident would vote for one directly.) Now, perhaps state legislators somewhat paralleled the sobering function of voters today, in that they came from all over a state. Between this and being elected officials themselves, perhaps legislators really did ensure more serious people were generally sent to the Senate compared to the House. The Founders could have understood this; perhaps it played into their visions of enlightened politicians. (Perhaps the vision itself, the mere idea of a more serious Senate, partly made and makes it so, changing behavior, a self-fulfilling prophecy.) But maybe there was no difference whatsoever — if state legislators were elected by the stupid herd, why would they be serious, enlightened enough people to send serious, enlightened people to the Senate? And is convincing a few score legislators — fewer people — of your suitability actually easier than convincing thousands of voters? Creating just as big a door for nincompoops? We saw earlier how fewer voters might be beneficial to such candidates. An answer is elusive, but if the Founders were wrong in the beginning, perhaps they were made right with the reforms of the early twentieth century.
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The third Guardians of the Galaxy film fits neatly into the post-Endgame tradition of mediocre Marvel products. A 6/10 is not a bad movie in my rating system (that’s fives and below), but it is decidedly meh. It’s fairly surprising that the IMDb average — usually a reliable metric of quality — currently stands at 8/10. That’s what I would give the original Guardians (perhaps even higher), the best Marvel film there is. Guardians 2 was about a 7, a good, solid movie (though it always irked me that Peter and Gamora switched positions, abruptly, on whether Peter should get to know his father, just to manufacture some cheap tension). Many viewers have praised the third installment, but I was not impressed — despite its lovable characters, good humor, and some genuinely emotional moments, something just felt off.
The first thing I noticed was that a couple characters had lost their edge. Nebula seemed far less hostile and brooding than normal. Rocket was of course a child (in flashbacks) for most of the film, so he wasn’t sarcastic, nasty, or argumentative either, but didn’t return to form in his adult scenes. I tried to let this slide, as the Guardians have become friends over time and in finding such a family have been able to let go of some bitterness. It makes some sense, they’ve grown. Still, part of what made the characters memorable and interesting was that they had dark sides, would bicker to the point of dysfunction, and so on. The happy family vibe takes some protagonists out of (original) character and is a bit dull. Thank goodness alternate-timeline Gamora was there to add back in some selfishness, conflict, spice.
It should be noted also that Groot felt somewhat absent. Sure, he was there, got his line in, but left no real impression in the way that Drax, Peter, Rocket, and others did. You’ll never forget Baby Groot dancing in Guardians 2, nor Groot sacrificing himself with a “We are Groot” at the end of the original film. Here he’s in the background, forgettable, forgotten. Was there even an emotional scene between him and Rocket, who’s on his deathbed? Aren’t they best friends and the OG pair?
To me, everything in this movie feels unnatural or forced. What would actually make sense is ignored in favor of achieving certain goals, whether plot or style goals (this mistake often turns sequels into ridiculous caricatures of original ideas). Consider, for instance:
And so forth. There is more that makes little sense (why is the final scene the Guardians charging off to kill wildlife when the climax of the film saw them valiantly saving wildlife?), but one gets the idea.
As a final, unrelated gripe, as creative as this world has been in many ways, this particular production felt like a strange mix of too-familiar IPs to me — a Power Rangers villain, Arthur, The Rats of NIMH, Willy Wonka, the monsters from Maze Runner, and GOTG / Marvel all put in a box and shaken as hard as you can.
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Roald Dahl’s books — James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — were recently rewritten to excise terms like “fat” and “ugly” (“enormous” and “brute” are apparently more palatable). Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels got the same treatment for racism, as did Agatha Christie’s works. Disney has edited everything from Aladdin to Toy Story 2 to remove offensive content, with as much care as it devotes to wiping out LGBTQ stories from films in production and finished films streamed in the Middle East. Movies and shows for adults — The Office, The French Connection — have been altered. And while no one is picking up the paintbrush just yet, the names of old art pieces in museums are being revised as well.
These practices are not fully new, of course. Movies shown on television have long been edited for language, sexual content, length, and so on. The radio has traditionally muted vulgar lyrics. It wasn’t exactly the Left pushing for such things. (In general, conservatives and the religious have a long history, and present, of cancellations and censorship, from book bans to moral panics over films and music, but this piece aims to focus specifically on changes to previously published works.) But people of all stripes and times have participated. In 1988, The Story of Dr. Dolittle (1920) was scrubbed of racist elements long after the author’s death. Residents of past centuries did pick up tools and modify paintings and sculptures featuring nudity — even a Michelangelo or two. And so on. Yet the modern age has brought a new, perhaps unprecedented intensity to the alteration of past works of art. Driven by the Left, it is the responsibility of the leftist to consider its ramifications.
Publishers, studios, and streaming services want to offer people classic, beloved works, but recognize their racist, homophobic, sexist, nonconsensual elements are wrong. There is no doubt that the decision to act can stem from a sincere desire to address harm, but some institutions lack any real principle or spine, modifying art and then reversing course immediately after the inevitable backlash, racing in this direction to avoid one mob and then in the opposite direction to avoid another, whatever can be done to protect image and profits. Capitalism at work.
As for individuals, while the independent thinker will always find institutional overreactions, things that really weren’t that bad, she will likewise be unable to deny the horrific nature of some scenes and terminology in older media. That something should be done to curtail the impact of bigoted ideas and portrayals is right and reasonable.
Alteration is not the only option available, of course. New introductions, content warnings, serious discussions before or after a film, and so on have been and can be utilized, offering context and critique rather than cuts. Then there’s the nuclear option, which is a removal but one that preserves the work: no longer publishing texts (auf Wiedersehen, Dr. Seuss), removing a creation from your streaming platform, etc.
These may be comparatively beneficial — even the last one — because they avoid certain problems. Despite the noble motives behind changing past art, there is something a bit bothersome about it: doesn’t this make past artists out to be better people than they were? If Roald Dahl or Hugh Lofting employed harmful language or stereotypes, why would they deserve a more polished, progressive image for today’s readers and those of the long future? The awful caricatures of Native Americans, unabashedly called “injuns,” in Peter Pan (1953) should quite frankly be a mark upon Disney forever. What interest have I in making Walt Disney of all people, or his studio, or the film’s many directors and writers look better? This isn’t precisely the same as whitewashing. In history, or the present, whitewashing is intended to glorify individuals or events by ignoring crimes and horrors. The Founding Fathers need to be heroes, so their enslavement of human beings and vile racism can be downplayed and swept under the rug. Here the motive is entirely different: awfulness will be surgically removed so that bigoted ideas and behavior are better contained, an attempt to avoid infection of children and adults alike while still letting them enjoy beloved works. Nevertheless, the effect is rather similar. Sanitization may have a clear benefit, but it inherently creates ahistorical representations of past artists. They are positioned as fundamentally different, more moral people. This does not seemed deserved, and it is troubling to voluntarily create any false view of history, whether of its cultural creations, its artists, or anything else. This may not be a big deal for those of us who know edits have been made — but children and future generations may not have such a firm understanding, resulting, to some degree, in a rosier view of authors, filmmakers, and studios of the 1950s and other decades.
One must further wrestle with the larger question. Is it right to change someone’s art without his consent? What if she wouldn’t want her piece altered? This provokes a couple answers. If it’s a work judged to be benign, everyone would be outraged at the suggestion of tinkering — don’t change Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, leave alone the works of Beverly Cleary, A.A. Milne, and Beatrix Potter! They may not approve and are not around to object; let their creations exist as they intended. (Studios and publishers have the legal right to tamper, of course, but that does not mean they should.) It’s easy to say that problematic art and artists have forfeited that right to preservation and respect of intention. “It’s racist, he’s racist, who gives a shit?” But as a writer, I’m horrified at the thought of someone changing my books or articles when I’m gone, even to make them better, less offensive, more moral. Beyond constructing a false view of who I was, it would be without my consent and against my strong-felt wishes and beliefs (verbalized here, with any luck forever). I imagine that most artists, whenever they lived, did not want other people meddling with their creations. There is too much obsession, care, and satisfaction involved in the creative process. So, if this is a treatment and right I want for myself — respect for my consent and control over my own material offspring — I have to extend it to others. No matter how innocent or flawed their pieces. Only those who would sincerely have no issue with a song, book, article, painting, film, sketch, photograph, or other work they made being changed a century from now in an attempt to purify it can support editing Dahl or Disney (one cannot say “that would never happen” or “there’d be nothing offensive to cut” because it is likely that few of the impacted creators of today could have imagined any of this happening to their work either). The rest of us must begrudgingly respect the consent of artists (though not the content of their art) or else fall into hypocrisy.
It seems worth adding that not only do our views on preservation and the artist’s consent change when speaking of benign art versus offensive art, a change that is questionable, it also appears that the form of art matters. The idea of brushing over an offensive painting in a museum is far less comfortable, and still nearly unthinkable, compared to tinkering with entertainment and books. How about altering old photographs? Or imagine Spotify offering new versions of old, beloved songs and simply wiping out the originals. Surely one is a bit slower to defend such things. But why? Why would the form matter? Similar feelings have lurked in the back of my mind as this writing has progressed. Perhaps understandably, I find the alterations of books more troubling than films and shows. I also find tampering with films and shows for impressionable children less irksome than doing the same to entertainment for adults. Yet those distinctions and biases don’t seem to matter much. Art is art, no?
The other strategies noted above avoid all of these challenges completely. Artists may not deserve (in more than one sense) to have their work modified by others, but people have the right to discuss, condemn, or ignore art. All that’s expected. Content labels, new introductions, serious discussions, and cancellations are fair game. Of course, people will disagree over which works should be pulled from platforms or publication and which should be offered with commentary and criticism. I have little hope of solving that. It is the intention here to simply highlight these possibilities as more acceptable choices, and encourage some skepticism of changing past art of any form.
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