Stonewall delivers nothing but disappointment
Walking into a screening of the film Stonewall, I tried my best to watch the movie as an ignorant audience member with an open mind. I wanted to be ignorant of the controversy that surrounds the film. I wanted to forgo my knowledge of Stonewall and the riots that started on June 28, 1969. I wanted to enter this movie with an open mind that the writer, Jon Robin Baitz, and director, Roland Emmerich, were producing art. I really tried to enjoy this film.
Stonewall starts out with a black and white, slow-motion reenactment of the historic night that the riots started, with explanations typing across the screen about how it was illegal to serve alcohol to gay people in 1969. True, homosexuals were considered mentally ill, and serving them alcohol would be wrong. It explained that many of the gay bars in NYC were run by mobsters that paid off the cops to keep it running. True, three mafia men from the Genovese family took ownership of a heterosexual bar on Christopher Street and turned it into one of the only dancing gay bars in the city, Stonewall.
The film then jumps back three months and introduces us to our main character, Danny. Danny is a gorgeous, white, corn-fed Hoosier who plays football but gets a little “tight end” action on the side from the quarterback. When two classmates catch them performing fellatio, Danny’s world comes crashing down. He gets kicked out of Indiana and moves to the concrete jungle, New York City.
First stop, Christopher Street. Cue the stereotypical “I’m confused by all these gay people, but I really want to be all their friends” scene, where Danny meets a ragtag group of hustlers. Most of the hustlers are white. Three are effeminate and one is a man of color. Danny has found his friends, and the supporting cast throughout the movie.
Over the course of the next 45 minutes we see Danny discover that his friends turn tricks for money, meets Marsha P. Johnson (briefly), and sleeps on the streets for two nights before Stonewall is even mentioned. And while the appreciation for his backstory and character development was appropriate, I was ready to see the inside of Stonewall. I wish the movie never delivered on that hope.
As soon as Danny walks into Stonewall his eyes light up with confusion and admiration. Simultaneously, my eyes glazed over. The bar was filled with white people. Actually, it was filled with white men, who act and dress like men. I saw one lesbian couple. I saw at most three drag queens. I saw maybe two people of color, one being Marsha P. Johnson.
Danny was enamored. I was disgusted.
Fun Fact: Stonewall was a bar that minorities within the already marginalized gay community could come together. There were people of color. There were trans women. There were drag queens. There were butch lesbians. Of course there were white men, but a lot of them were poor and turning tricks, or they were professionals hiding their sexuality.
The movie carries on for another hour of Danny figuring out where he fits in the world. He turns a few tricks, but quickly decides that he cannot do it. He will not. He is too beautiful, white, and heteronormative to partake.
This made my stomach turn. Many of the men in the film can’t get a regular job so they turn to sex work. This is the reality for many of our queer predecessors, and continues to be a reality for many of our brothers and sisters in our queer community. Our protagonist turns his nose down to this work. He thinks it is below him, and I could feel his judgment of his ragtag group of friends with every tear that he forces out of his perfectly chiseled face.
Even the movie’s climax comes as a smack in the face. Spoiler alert! The riots that were started out of frustration of being targeted and abused by the police, is portrayed as a way to get the mafia man who owns the bar out of police custody. Or that’s how it starts, before good ole Danny takes a brick from the hands from a person of color and throws it through the window exclaiming “Gay Power,” which could easily be translated as “CIS White Power.” I wanted my own brick to throw at the screen.
I had officially had it. I couldn’t even enjoy the final minutes of the perfectly packaged ending for Danny. I really, really tried to enjoy this film. But they made it really, really difficult to.
Stonewall hits theaters this Friday.
