A Gay Couple Murdered By A Religious Extremist? Oh…Come Now…
Jeannett Catsoulis of the New York Times finds Hate Crime a bit tiresome…
On the surface, "Hate Crime" may seem like a movie about violence rooted in religious bigotry, but underneath it’s a poorly disguised argument for vigilantism. The writer and director, Tommy Stovall, uses the same extremism and rigid stereotyping his film purports to rebel against.
When half of a young gay couple is viciously beaten and eventually dies, suspicion falls on the new neighbor, a fundamentalist preacher’s son with a brush cut, a permanently clenched jaw and a nice line in homophobic curses. Stacking the deck unnecessarily, Mr. Stovall dresses him in tight, white T-shirts accessorized with beer cans, gives him a Southern accent and a criminal record, then lights him like Robert Mitchum in "The Night of the Hunter." And just in case we’re still not clear where our sympathies lie, the gay couple is seen purchasing wedding rings and discussing adoption.
I can’t tell from this review whether this movie is any good or not…only that this reviewer thinks that violence against a gay couple by a religious nutcase is a ridiculous concept for a movie. Oh…and that showing a gay couple buying wedding rings and talking about adopting is a over the top. Oh come on…I’m supposed to believe this…?
With a little more subtlety — and a lot less predictability — the movie might have played more like a thoughtful drama and less like an outrageous exercise in wish fulfillment.
Translation: don’t you think you’re laying it on a bit thick here? You know what Jeannett…fuck you:
Murder suspect says he was following God’s law
A jailhouse visit between accused murderer Benjamin Matthew Williams and his parents in which Williams compares himself to Jesus Christ and jokes, ”Oh, the devil made me do it,” came into more vivid focus Wednesday when a transcript of the tape was released.
The tape itself was entered into evidence Tuesday at a preliminary hearing for Williams, 31, and his brother, James Tyler Williams, 29, who are accused in the slayings of a Happy Valley gay couple found July 1.
…
Sally Williams also asks her son if, as reported, he was heavily armed when arrested.
”Yeah,” he replies, also acknowledging that he wore a bulletproof vest.
Then Sally Williams, apparently worried that her son might be suicidal, urges him to ”stick it out, however hard it is. Don’t take the easy way out. Don’t.”
”We put five dollars in the commissary for each of you,” interjects Matthew Williams’ father in one of only two remarks on the transcript attributed to him.
The elder Williams also asked what time the brothers would be arraigned.
”They, they’re not doing the death penalty a whole lot here anymore, are they?” Matthew Williams asks. ”Are we looking at 20, 40 years or something? Then I don’t expect to serve that, though.”
His mother assures him ”the Lord can do miracles, he has.”
But then she tells him that after the detectives’ searches ”they had a tablet you took to the church and they had some of the notes you, that you said, was going to get blamed on you.
”Well, someone ratted, um, I, I don’t know, were there other people involved?” she asks. ”I don’t want to, don’t ans–, this is monitored … Um. I don’t, I don’t think you did what they say you did.”
”What do they say I did?” asks Matthew Williams.
”They say you took out two homos,” she responds.
”Huh. Why wouldn’t you think I’d do that?” Matthew Williams returns.
”Not under those circumstances,” his mother says. ”And Tyler, also?”
”I think they have pretty good evidence,” her son says. ”So I, I don’t know what an attorney could do for you other than take your money.”
His mother suggests an attorney might help with a plea bargain.
”Plea bargaining for what?” Matthew Williams says laughing, adding, ”Oh, the devil made me do it. Yeah.”
A little later in the visit Sally Williams worries about Tyler Williams, his sore knee, diet problems and hypoglycemia.
And she seems to chastise her older son.
”I knew the Lord was going to humble you and I’ve been praying for you for a long time,” she said. ”Some of the things you believe are wrong. … I’m sorry that I have failed you.”
But Matthew Williams suggests that God may have put him where he is because he can use the witness chair as a kind of pulpit and ”a lot of people will hear.”
”Basically, basically, um, society now calls what’s bad good and they call what I’ve done as bad and I want just, just to tell them, you know, if you love me, keep my commandments,” Matthew Williams tells his parents, adding that he has ”followed a higher law …
”I have to obey God’s law rather than man’s law.”
His mother warns that ”a lot of people will hear it with their ears, but not with your understanding.”
Matthew Williams then suggests that ”they” might think he’s insane and ”that might be to our advantage.”
”That will be a good thing,” his mother agrees.
Matthew Williams also says, though he ”didn’t want to do this,” he thought ”that I was supposed to.”
Then he explains that there are ”a lot of parallels between this and a lot of other incidents in the Old Testament.” But he went on to refer to the New Testament.
”I mean, they threw, they threw our Lord and Savior in jail. They, they accused him of things that, that he did that were not wrong, but they said they were wrong, you know, and he was punished for things,” the transcript reads.
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:20 am
What you should not have cut: “”Hate Crime” deals with such an intrinsically horrible act there’s no need for such audience browbeating ”
Her complaint is that it’s obvious; too black and white. I’d say that’s a fair complaint. It’s a piece of fiction, a little subtlety never hurts, simple good guy/bad guy movies bore me too. I’m not sure where the vigilantism comes in, but I can see why that would worry her; it kinda works both ways.
The fact that this kind of thing really happens doesn’t mean you have to make bad movies about it.
March 26th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
I didn’t quote it, because I thought it was redundant. The position she takes there seems staringly obvious to me throughout the review, and in the paragraph I did quote. But by all means let’s look at it. "It’s such an intrinsically horrible act, there’s no need of audience browbeating". But take away the elements she’s bellyaching about, and "Hate Crime" stops being about anti-gay hate, and becomes just another murder/vengence story, but in the key of gay. To stop seeing anti-gay hate crime for what it is, a product of religious intolerance and sexism, is precisely what the right would like to accomplish. There is no such thing as hate crimes, they insist…every crime is a hate crime. But anti-gay violence has its own particular nature, and it needs to be looked at an acknowledged for what it is.
I don’t know what her politics are, but as I see it, it is the particular nature of anti-gay hate that Catsoulis thinks doesn’t belong in a serious film. She accuses the film makers of browbeating the audience, but the examples she gives are in fact part and parcel of the climate of violence toward glbt people, at least here in the United States. That’s a framework for evaluating films that deal with such violence that, in my opinion, makes it impossible to honestly represent it. No, no…we have to tone it down a tad. Let’s not make the gay basher a religious nutcase with a criminal past and a swaggering sense of his own masculinity…let’s not show how utterly average the hopes and dreams of most same sex couples are. There’s a common joke now among the progressive political blogs that it’s nearly impossible to satirize politics in America anymore because the right wing in this country has gone so completely batshit crazy. I would say that it’s nearly impossible to be over the top when it comes to representing the culture that produces young gay bashing males in America, and the climate of hate toward glbt people in America now. It really Is like that.
Edward R. Murrow knew once upon a time, that his retelling of what he saw at a liberated German concentration camp after the end of the war would alienate some of his listeners. But he knew that to soft peddle what he saw would be to take part in an obscene cover up and this he would not do. I’m recalling that broadcast from memory now, I heard it last some years ago, but as best as I can recall it he said to them at the end of that broadcast, simply, "If anything I have told you tonight offends you, I am not sorry in the least." Sometimes, it is just not possible to go over the top. But it’s always possible to look the other way. In my opinion, Catsoulis is telling film makers, and what is really pissing me off here is that she’s saying this in particular to gay film makers, that they need to look the other way even when it comes to the nature of the violence that threatens their own lives, if they want to be taken seriously by the mainstream. I have to assume that’s because she, like a lot of other people, would rather look the other way too. Yes…it’s an intrinsically horrible act. I know this. I would just rather know it in the abstract thank you. I don’t want to have to see it for what it is. To which I offer Murrow’s words: I am not sorry in the least…
Now…that film could have done it very poorly. It takes good actors, good writing and good directing to make believable the intrinsically horrible. Otherwise you can very easily turn a great human tragedy into cheap theatrics. Maybe that’s what this film does, I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. But that’s not her complaint. Her complaint isn’t about the acting or the direction, it’s about the representation of hate, and the innocence of the gay victims of that hate. And her crack that the film engages in the same stereotyping it purports to be against is a disgustingly cheap shot. If you look at the breadth of the gay human community, you can see clearly how ignorant the stereotypes are. I would suggest that Catsoulis take a look at the profile of a typical gay basher, at least here in America, and get back to me about stereotypes. But I don’t think she wants to see it, and in that she’s not all that different from a lot of people, who would rather not look homophobia square in the face, without at least a little equivocating, at least some sugar coating.