Comments on Slate Seeks to Rehabilitate Cruising

How does it not understand that being portrayed as perverted murderers would reasonably cause offense? And that portrayal of leather daddies was totally inaccurate, as it failed to portray them as the boring dentists and bankers that they really are.

I always get the impression that guys into leather see themselves as unique and individual but in reality they all copy a well defined formula void of much individual expression. I have met people that hate the mainstream leather scene and are far more creative but the two do not mix much so you get most going to bland leather parties at boring leather clubs acting like they are the most far out, unique, alternative group around but in reality I find them mainstream and boring.
So when you start talking about the movie Cruising that portrayed the leather scene as something dark and cool, something that creates a mysterious backdrop for a movie about a serial killer then it pushed the fantasy further away from the truth and distorts the reality of who most leather men really are
(see post #1) everyday guys conforming to a dress code based upon leather cliché.

The "boring leather daddies" of today have nothing to do with the milieu portrayed in the movie. Remember, time is context. That world is gone. Most of the folks who lived that life died in the 80's. It was anything but boring. Had you ever been to a real big-city sex club you would know that it was very real and truly transgressive. You forget that at one time wearing full leather on the street still had the power to shock. Think of Marilyn Manson, is anyone shocked today? They were once.

That is what upset so many gay activists about the movie at the time. They were working very hard to create an image of normalcy for homosexuals and Cruising showed a small but very real part of gay culture that did not fit in their program. That said, Dan's remarks that "Gay spokes-people" are not focusing on denying that queers stiil cruise and instead are decrying an individual's hypocrisy are much to the point.

Oops, not Dan's remarks, it was a Slate column. Dan just referenced by posting.

Yes, it was such a classy, smart movie. Especially when Karen Allen puts on Pacino's leather cap at the end--look how that filthy gay leather lifestyle is infecting the straights!

The only way Cruising is bearable is as a double-feature with Boys in the Band--two remnants of a time well put behind us.

offensive or not, it's still just an awful movie.

It was over-reaction from an over-sensitive new movement. There really hadn't been mainstream films before that acknowledged there were places for some men to go and get slapped around, peed on, and to have their scrotums twisted into a very painful knot.

So when that particular gay ethic, BDSM, was displayed for the first time on screen to a wide audience, the Gay Lib faction was angered that it was coupled with psychopathic murder.

In trying to conjure an analogy, perhaps its similar to what the civil rights movement felt about Amos 'n' Andy or when classic old films referred to African-Americans as darkies. Since that movement has had nearly a half-century to mature, I think most African-Americans are able to laugh it off or at least realize that it's of its time.

What's left of Gay Lib hardly gives a whit about "Cruising." I'd say most gay men and women under the age of 40 either see it as kitsch or haven't the vaguest idea who Friedkin is.

Friedkin: The French Connection, The Exorcist, To Live and Die in LA. He's still working, apparently.

@ # 3
I did go to the "Big-City sex clubs in the 70's and 80's.
Any yes I found the cliché leather scene boring even then. Being a punk boy in the 70's tended me to want something far more interesting. So by the time the mid 80's came along I had progressed from 70's punk leather to skinhead look it was was far more powerful instead of the 70's leather guy image. Just try going into a gay bar as a Homo Skinhead in the 80's, talk about not even being accepted there even never mind on the street. Of course it had nothing to do with racism but more to do with the homo erotic nature of the skinhead. This is where the Attila Lukacs reference should be mentioned. It was a big deal here in Vancouver in the 80's.

http://www.dianefarrisgallery.com/artist/lukacs/truenorth/index.html

Also documentary "Drawing out the Demons"

Cruising just portrays a leather image I found boring then and still find boring now since it has regressed back to a safe old school image.
Ya and I survived somewhat intact.

The outrage at Cruising wasn't because gays were "too sensitive", or embarassed of the leather scene. The outrage was due to the simple fact that the only portrayal of gay men in films were swishy wimps, evil madmen, or victims of brutal crime.

It's very easy to forget that there was a time when gay visibility wasn't was it is today. And in that climate, EVERY portrayal of gay people was important.

I still find it very hard to watch that movie - it's really nothing more than stylized gay lynching.

No link?