Update 2: Review of the only Oscar Nominated Movie I saw

Milk
What the hell is so radical about this movie? Sean Penn and James Franco are hot, the acting is good, and there is nothing blatantly offensive about the general production of the movie. I totally enjoyed it. I cried. It made me realize I need to do more to stand up for things I believe in. But now I am going to bitch about why it’s not really that groundbreaking.

I can’t get over how people think that just because two guys are kissing each other in a coupled, monogamous way that this movie is at all divergent from any major paradigm or theme in any other movie about overcoming adversity. Oh my god, this is a story about a bunch of white guys who got together, rallied as white guys using the system, and accomplished something for a bunch of other white guys. Totally blows my mind. Not. Stories about people overcoming obstacles by being scrappy (and white, and male, and middle class, and educated) and working the system are a dime and dozen and feed into the idea that the system works and that if you just try hard enough you will be rewarded with victory.

Here’s what really pisses me off. These guys didn’t organize in any radical kind of way. They were just part of the general masculine-centered activist paradigm. If you made a movie about a bunch of women who did something together and organized in a non hierarchal, peaceful, feminist way, no one would go see that movie. Every one will go see a movie about hot guys who do sexy things like yell into microphones and march militaristically and you know that secretly everyone is excited by the fact that these dudes have penises and they put them each other’s butts. Whatever.

I realize there about 100 places to punch holes in this argument, but I don’t have time to write the most well-reasoned argument. But you get it, right? That this movie isn’t telling us anything new or radical?