A Rovolution Before My Time

For the last few days, I've found that I've kind of forced myself to get back in my 'documentary groove.' It's simply amazing to sit down and watch something that was put together by someone that had so much passion for something, even if it's something that you've never really thought twice about (Spelling bees? Really?)

Gay Sex in the 70's is another great film by Joseph F. Lovett. Following the 'gay explosion' (no pun intended, of course) from 1969-1981, you can't help but feel a sence of euphoria, a longing to be included in the radical ideals of that time. Sure, random sexual encounters were a way of life, but the fact that that just screamed a huge fuck you to the oppressional decades prior really hit home with me. I know that it seems...slutty. But you really need to learn how to look past the actual act and wonder what it is, subcontiously, these people wanted. What they were expecting. What they thought that they were going to accomplish. Well, what they did accomplish.

It was just so much more than sex in that time. It was the fact that now you could go out and find other people that were, for lack of a better term, living 'in the now' right along with you was, what I feel, what a lot of people were looking for. A longing to be accepted will drive you to do many things much worse than annonymous sexual episodes, in my opinion.

Towards the end of the film, it of course brings you through the inevitable downfall of the gay movement. The beginning of AIDS awareness and the change in social climate in the early 80's was a huge change. (PS: Did you now that before AIDS was called AIDS it was simply known as 'the gay cancer' because of the unusual, melanoma like rashes that were common. I didn't know that, either!) That is the one thing that I really hate about most 'gay' documentaries, they always crush all the happy times with the upheaval of AIDS at the end. Not a very good happy ending.

One can't help but hope that in one of these decades to come, a shift will happen again to bring change. Change that will make people less inhibited, less judmental, and more willing for change. There's an amazing difference between willing for change and accepting it.

I can only hope that it happens in my lifetime.

s.