The Boys in the Band is an American stage play from the 1960s to the 1970s. It has been a great success since its debut in a small theater, and later landed on Broadway, becoming a classic show performed year after year. Limited by the characteristics of the stage play, the story mainly revolves around a game in a party. This kind of setting is placed in the space of the movie, the advancement of the plot is mainly carried out by the game in a single scene, it will appear to be a thin story, and the lines that are originally interesting on the stage will become too many and complicated. But it is precisely because the story is simple, and the screen on which the movie is played makes the distance between the actors and the audience closer, so the audience can better observe and appreciate the performance of the actors. This feature of the movie also makes the stage play itself.
The waves of the whole party were mainly caused by the arrival of Alan, a heterosexual. Alan clashed with Emory in the middle of the party, beat Emory, and uttered bad words and attacked homosexuality. As a heterosexual, Alan attacks homosexuals in words and behaviors and acts classified as homosexual by him, such as feminization and so on. This is an attack outside the group that homosexuals are subjected to as a group. This is a typical homophobia. Of course, at the beginning of the movie, there is also the subway, and the side eyes of other people in the stairs are also a manifestation of homophobia.
Homophobia is not limited to this. Michael, an openly gay man. The party hadn't started yet, and the possibility of Alan's arrival made Michael extremely nervous. He started to draw everyone's attention to his behavior, but other people's joking showed that they didn't seem to care as much about it as Michael. The arrival of Alan made Michael feel dangerous, and he began to prepare for this danger. But Alan comes alone, no matter how dangerous he is, he can't beat the eight people including Michael. So the arrival of Alan itself is not dangerous. What is dangerous is that Alan is different from other participants in the party. Alan is heterosexual. The appearance of heterosexuality scared Michael. As a homosexual, he is guessing the likes and dislikes of heterosexuality to make his gay friends pay attention to and conceal their own characteristics. This actually reflects Michael as a homosexual, but he agrees more with heterosexuality.
Emory, as a representative of Michael and Alan’s disapproval or fear, did not suppress his seemingly feminine so-called homosexuality. This caused the two people in this gathering to explode, as heterosexual Alan and as homosexual. Michael is more recognized for heterosexuality. Alan attacked Emory. And Alan's attack on Emory intensified Michael's inner struggle and fear, so Michael became very aggressive in this place. His aggressiveness towards his friends was to force them to play games and tell his past. He wanted to see the pain of other people, and those who he understood as other homosexuals also did not accept their own pain. His attack on Alan is very interesting. As a homosexual, Michael logically attacks heterosexuality by attacking heterosexual traits, but he is not. He forced the heterosexual Alan out of the closet because the heterosexual traits are what he yearns for. , And homosexuality makes him painful, and he wants to drag Alan into pain. This also echoes the beginning of the film. Michael leads a gay life that seems to be endlessly fun, luxury goods, travel, parties, etc., but he will also struggle to say what it is for, because he does not enjoy it. The film finally reveals that in fact, he has always wanted to be heterosexual, and he does not accept that he is homosexual. As a heterosexual, Alan's attack on Emory, who is a homosexual, made Michael's desire to become a heterosexual become precarious, and it also made his rejection of himself homosexual even more pronounced. So his own pain forced him to bully other people, making everyone hate themselves like him. This is internalized homophobia. This homophobia comes from the open homosexuals themselves, or within the homosexual group, so on the social level, it is not as prominent as the homophobia outside the homosexual group represented by Alan.
Michael's own homophobia comes from the social rejection of gay groups in American society in the 1960s and 1970s, which led him to live on the margins of society and never enter the mainstream of society. Another point comes from his own rejection of himself and his longing for heterosexuality (which may be related to his beliefs). The combination of these two leads to the helpless pain and struggle of him in a homosexual identity. The role of Michael created by Jim Parsons is very successful. His performance, several emotional transitions and his inner struggle make this role very vivid.
Another unexplained thing in the film is whether Alan is a deep cabinet or not. For example, in the end, I asked what happened to Alan and his wife, and Alan expressed his approval and praise to Hank, and so on. This shows that Alan may be a deep cabinet, but of course it may not be. The film did not give too much explanation here, leaving it in a vague state. This is a good deal. Alan may be "homophobia or deep cabinet", or it may not be. But it has nothing to do with Michael’s recognition of his homosexuality, because other homosexuals represented by Emory in the same social environment are under the same external homophobia, but they can be relatively free, which is even more important. It embodies Michael's inner dilemma as an individual.
The breakthrough of the band boys is that in the last century when homosexuals as a group were not yet accepted by American society, when the external homophobia was widespread, the creative team had begun to focus on the internal homophobia of the individuals in the group.
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