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Onegin
With Ralph Fiennes, Liv Tylor, Toby Stephens
How to order High Fidelity
Directed by Stephen Frears
With John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor, Natasha Gregson Wagner
How to order

Gay critics and audiences have long debated how queers should be represented on stage and screen. Fights about "good" vs. "negative" images have raged. One queen's psychotic homosexual who wants to spread AIDS is another queen's high-strung Byronic hero (The Living End). While these arguments will last so long as there are two queens left in the world, they miss a more interesting point: why doesn't anyone debate these points about heterosexuals?

When was the last time you went into a straight bar and heard, "I don't care. I think that both Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks gave really negative portrayals of heterosexuals in You've Got Mail. They were cartoons of human beings. I'm personally offended."

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No, you've never heard this. But why? Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks portrayed shallow characters who-- bumbling through an inane plot-- make average American heterosexuals look like fools. Where is "Heterosexuals Against Defamation of Encroached (upon) Straights" (HADES) to defend the rights of straight people to be presented in the best possible light? Two recent movies-- one lowbrow, the other "arty"-- have hit theater screens and give terribly negative portrayals of heterosexuality: High Fidelity and Onegin.

High Fidelity is directed by the usually talented Stephen Frears (noted for, among others, Prick Up Your Ears, about gay British playwright Joe Orton, who was murdered by his lover (the movie was a cultural high point in the negative portrayal of queers). Based on a novel by Nick Hornby, High Fidelity tells the story of Rob Gordon (John Cusack), a sad-sack straight man unlucky in love. The reason soon becomes clear: Rob may be cute enough, but he's selfish and shallow. The most interesting thing is that he runs a used-record shop and obsessively makes lists of his top five faves: "top five songs to play when you are depressed," "top five songs to play at a funeral," "top five songs to play when you need something to think about during a boring movie."

Rob's lover Laura (Iben Hjejle) leaves him. Rob tries to figure out what he's done wrong. This takes us through a veritable heterosexual house of horrors. As he recollects one failed relationship after another-- Charlie (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is an insincere artist type, Sarah (Lili Taylor) is too needy, Carolyn (Natasha Gregson Wagner) is too whatever-- it becomes clear that the problem is Rob himself and his emotional immaturity. When Rob and Laura finally get back together-- the turning point is when they fuck in her car during her father's funeral-- it's clear that neither has grown much, pointing up that heterosexuality is more an arrested stage of develo pment than a valid orientation. The only bright lights in the film are Dick and Barry, two geeky clerks in Rob's store who, while apparently heterosexual, seem so queer that they emerge untainted by the film's negativism toward all things straight.

Now in the art houses things are not much better. Onegin-- based on the poem "Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin-- is a long, dreary mediation on heterosexual obsession and the dangers of romantic love. Eugene Onegin is one of those classic stories of doomed het-romance that achieves a greatness conferred by sheer repetition: it has been the basis for an opera, a ballet, some tone poems, and several earlier films. This repetition indicates that heterosexuals, apparently self-hating in the extreme, cannot get enough of negative images of their behaviors. The plot is all-too-typical for its genre: Eugene Onegin (Ralph Fiennes) toys with the affections of the lovely Tatyana (Liv Tylor, she of the trembling lower lip), who loves him in an unrequited way that straights think is dreamy. This leads to misunderstandings, and finally Eugene is challenged to a duel by Vladimir (Toby Stephens), who wants to be manly and defend Tatyana's honor, but only succeeds in getting killed. Years later, Tatyana has married well-- apparently for money (a frequent failing for many heterosexuals who would rather have money than good sex), and Eugene falls in love with her only to be rejected. All in all an unpretty picture.

Onegin parades out the usual ugly "truths" with which heterosexuals have always been branded: the inability to love, attraction to wealth and social status in lieu of commitment, tendencies to violence, and inclinations to depression. This is the sort of movie that could push straight youth to suicide. (Luckily, since Pushkin's poem is considered great literature and was not written in simple English, there is little chance of students being exposed to it in American schools.)

So the question remains? Why do heterosexuals allow these movies to be distributed without a peep of complaint? Where are the defenders of heterosexuality? Where its champions? Where the voices who will claim for heterosexuality the same lofty ideals and vision that homosexuality has? One can only presume heterosexuals believe the lies about themselves in these films. Or maybe, just maybe, they admit deep down that these movies are not lies, but well, the truth.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com