Porn Generation

by Ben Shapiro

  So is there a “gay mafia”? Not in the sense that a group of powerful Hollywood homosexuals get together at night to plot out the course that Hollywood must take. But it would be disingenuous to say that there’s no “pro-gay mob” at the top of the Hollywood chain. Many powerful Hollywoodites are gay, but the rest are massively liberal and back the gay lobby to the hilt. How else to explain the fact that Hollywood fare has spearheaded the charge for homosexual normalization?

  The death of film masculinity

  Steve McQueen must be spinning in his grave. A new breed of Hollywood leading man sets the tone for the porn generation—purely metrosexual, with the old values of masculinity re-envisioned as homosexual fantasy.

  As described by Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times, “the women’s and gay rights movements irrevocably altered how we look at men, on screen and off. Aided by new media outlets, these liberation movements freed the male body (or enslaved it, depending on your view), turning it into a socially acceptable field of desire and one very hot commodity. Finally, straight men could be exploited for their looks just like women by conforming to an ideal of beauty—ripped and stripped of hair—largely borrowed from gay culture. Gay or not, male actors and stars are more brazenly sexualized now, namely because they’re also more feminized. In the past, Hollywood stars were unmistakably he-men; these days, they all whisper ‘come hither’ like hard-bodied Marilyns.”54

  The gay movement took the initiative in shaping perceptions of male beauty because women are far less focused on male beauty than gay men are. Yes, women want a guy who doesn’t look like Michael Moore. But women typically focus on a man’s physical appearance as part of the whole, while men focus on physical appearance first and foremost. Because the gay movement defined male beauty, young women began identifying that vision with their own vision, and gay standards of beauty were accepted as normal. Hence Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, and the other girly-men who permeate the silver screen (a six-pack and shaved chest do not a male make).

  These feminized male stars are expected to be “comfortable with their own sexuality”—so comfortable, in fact, that they can’t make their bones without playing a homosexual. In 1951, Humphrey Bogart said: “The only honest way to find the best actor would be to let everybody play Hamlet and let the best man win.” Today, that might read: “The only honest way to find the best actor would be to let everybody play Richard Simmons and let the best man win.”

  Actors can’t wait to imitate Tom Hanks, who leapt to true glory in 1993 when he played AIDS-stricken gay attorney and victim of homophobia Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia. Kevin Kline attempted to match Hanks’ homosexual hamming in the 1997 comedy In & Out; in 2004’s De-lovely he tried again, playing gay songwriter Cole Porter. Leonardo DiCaprio took one for the team in Total Eclipse (1995), and Russell Crowe got some man-lovin’ in The Sum of Us (1995). Dennis Quaid went gay in 2003’s Far From Heaven and garnered great reviews. Robin Williams hooked up with a transvestite-ing Nathan Lane in The Birdcage (1996), and they both patronized Gene Hackman’s conservative senator to the tune of millions.

  The newer faces are ready and willing to hop in the sack with a guy to boost their acting chops. Colin Farrell, best known as a wild party-boy, played a homosexual who goes straight in A Home at the End of the World (2004), but it’s his bisexuality in the epic Alexander that is bound to raise a few eyebrows. Alexander isn’t just an art-house pic; it’s directed by Oliver Stone and stars Oscar-winners Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie alongside Farrell. Nothing like some good, old-fashioned fun with pagan morality! According to reports, Troy star Brad Pitt wanted to play Farrell’s gay lover, but wife Jennifer Aniston told him to reject the part.55 That homophobe!

  Jake Gyllenhaal is slated to play a gay cowboy (yes, a gay cowboy—can it be long before we get Lone Ranger and Tonto: A Biracial Love Story?) alongside fellow young up-and-comer Heath Ledger in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. Ledger plays a ranch hand and Gyllenhaal plays a rodeo cowboy; they fall in homosexual love on the plains of Wyoming and Texas in the 1960s. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has already lauded the film, saying “If what we are hearing about this film is true, this is a significant and groundbreaking step for Hollywood in terms of mainstream movies.” Apparently, Ledger and Gyllenhaal weren’t the only Hollywood stars hot for a chance to bugger on the prairie—Farrell, Josh Hartnett, and Billy Crudup were interested in doing the movie as well. Hartnett is the only one without a gay project on his plate right now, since Crudup plays a gay Elizabethan actor in Stage Beauty.56 Jude Law, nominally heterosexual gay icon, will join Paul Bettany in a jaunt into the world of gay flirting in Brideshead Revisited. Brendan Fraser, last seen playing in George of the Jungle and The Mummy, will take up the part of James Bond’s homosexual alter-ego in Gay Secret Agent.57

  Established actors, too, want to revitalize their careers by playing “friends of Dorothy.” Hot competition broke out for the part of sexologist Alfred Kinsey in 2004’s Kinsey. Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks, Kevin Spacey, and Harrison Ford (Han Solo and Chewbacca—more than meets the eye?) all considered taking the part of the bisexual doctor.58 Liam Neeson got the role, and made out with Peter Sarsgaard; Sarsgaard, meanwhile, revealed his genitalia for the film. Laura Linney, who plays Kinsey’s wife, Clara, sums up the reaction to the film: “People just flip out. They feel like the fabric of American society is coming undone.”59

  It is. The standards of the audience are being lowered. Hollywood has enormous propaganda power; it can paint homosexuals as saints, and intolerant moralists as sinners. It can paint amoralism as a “tolerant” standard, and traditional morality as close-minded. And that’s exactly what it does.

  When girls go wild—with each other

  While male homosexuality has become an almost constant presence in film, lesbianism has become even more popular as filmmakers seek to cater to the porn generation. The market for male homosexuality is limited—some women, a few men, the gay community—but the market for lesbianism is much broader. Hollywood filmmakers have churned out hundreds of films with lesbian content within the last decade. Of late, actresses appearing in these films often make sure to mention that they enjoy their lesbian encounters, just to heighten their sex appeal.

  One of the most common types of lesbian-content movie is the “sexual experimentation” film. Generally, this stuff is soft-core pornography masquerading as art. One example is Cruel Intentions (1999), in which Sarah Michelle Geller plays the stepsister of Ryan Phillippe. When Geller’s boyfriend dumps her for Selma Blair, Geller wants revenge, so she goes after Blair herself, telling her that most girls learn to kiss by practicing with other girls. A long, wet, tongue exchange ensues between the two girls, with Blair realizing—surprise, surprise!—that she likes kissing girls. Audiences loved the lesbian titillation so much that Hollywood concocted Cruel Intentions 2 (2001), a prequel. And not only is there lesbian action, there’s “every man’s fantasy”: lesbian action, in a shower, with a guy in the middle.

  Wild Things (1998) tried both the lesbian discovery angle and the ménage-a-trois angle. First, Denise Richards and Neve Campbell discover lesbian love in the pool. Then, both of them hop in the sack at the same time with Matt Dillon. Like Cruel Intentions, Wild Things also spawned an atrocious quickie sequel with requisite lesbian action and threesome—it still ended up in the bargain bin.

  Just as with male homosexuality, showing lesbian behavior on screen in any context desensitizes the audience to lesbian behavior. The most obvious brand of these “agenda” flicks is the “lesbian normalization content movie,” which simply purports to show how lesbians are just as normal, loving, and/or socially valuable as straight couples.

  This is the Kissing Jessica Stein (2002) model. That movie centers on Jennifer Westfeldt’s character, a straight woman, who responds to a personals ad from a bisexual woman, Heather Juergensen, on a whim. The two women immediately fall into lesbian love, complete with graphic make-out scenes. Westfeldt’s character is em
barrassed about the affair, and reluctant to have sex with a woman, but she eventually gives in. The two women eventually split up after Juergensen’s character gets fed up with her partner’s lack of sex drive and commitment to the relationship.

  The issue in the movie isn’t whether this is right or wrong—it’s assumed that either way Westfeldt’s character decides to swing is right. Amoralism is the standard. The basis for the movie is that any type of relationship, straight or gay, is legitimate.

  Hollywood also pumps out movies with “lesbian moments” in order to turn on male viewers; these are typically raunchy comedies, bad action flicks, or cheesy horror films. In the hit movie American Pie 2 (2001), one of the characters presumes two women who live with each other are lesbians; he goads them into making out with each other. Later in the movie, he winds up in bed with both of them. The PG-13 rated Anger Management (2003), starring Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson, contains a scene where two porn star lesbian lovers passionately exchange spit.

  Titles in this “lesbian moment” category are too numerous to list anywhere near comprehensively. A very sparse sampling: 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002), Bowfinger (1999) starring Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) starring Winona Ryder, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000), Almost Famous (2000) starring Kate Hudson, The Devil’s Advocate (1997) starring Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino, Dodgeball (2004) starring Ben Stiller, The Fast and the Furious (2001) starring Vin Diesel, Femme Fatale starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, The Girl Next Door (2004), From Hell (2001) starring Johnny Depp, The Haunting (1999) starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Hot Chick (2002) starring Rob Schneider (this somehow received a PG-13 rating—someone had to have been drunk), Not Another Teen Movie (2001), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) starring Woody Harrelson, Nurse Betty (2000) starring Rene Zellweger, Romeo Must Die (2000), Rock Star (2001) starring Jennifer Aniston, The Salton Sea (2002) starring Val Kilmer, and Starsky and Hutch (2004) starring Ben Stiller (yup, PG-13!), among many others.

  Actresses realize that a quick way to the top is titillating the male audience with lesbianism, so they’ve adopted bisexuality in their everyday lives. A few tabloid photos never hurt the market price! As nut job Angelina Jolie explained, “Whether I’m loving a man or a woman, it makes no difference to me.”60

  Of course it makes no difference. That’s Hollywood. In reality, actresses aren’t necessarily straight or gay or bisexual: They’re simply sluts. The stories about Hollywood casting couches are true, and sex has no meaning for many actresses. Meanwhile, the Hollywood pro-lesbian lobby continues to churn out legitimizing lesbian films. By producing mass quantities of lesbian exposure, films lauding lesbianism as equal or superior to heterosexuality, Hollywood prevents moral outrage against lesbianism. And then Hollywood pats itself on the back and says it’s doing the right thing.

  Oscar and Steve

  Gay men and women aren’t just portrayed sympathetically on screens across America—critics around the country are lapping it up. Take the Oscars, for example. Play a gay man, receive an Oscar nomination. Play a lesbian, receive an Oscar nomination. Make a film celebrating homosexuality, receive an Oscar nomination (or at least get great reviews). Virtually every film with gravitas that depicts homosexuality in a positive light becomes “important.”

  In the last decade especially, Oscar has found a special place in his heart for homosexuality. In 1994, Tom Hanks won an Oscar for his portrayal of a gay man dying of AIDS in Philadelphia. In 1998, As Good As It Gets swept into the Academy Awards—the movie revolves around an obsessive-compulsive, homophobic writer (Jack Nicholson) who falls in love with a waitress (Helen Hunt), and learns to accept an openly gay artist (Greg Kinnear) severely beaten during a robbery. Another 1998 Best Picture nominee was the silly, if likeable The Full Monty, about six out-of-shape English fellows who decide to go nude to raise some cash. Two of them are closet homosexuals.61 In 1999, Ian McKellen grabbed a nomination for his role as the gay director James Whale in Gods and Monsters, and Kathy Bates received a nomination for her role as a lesbian political guru in Primary Colors.

  In 2000, films with major homosexual plot points—including Boys Don’t Cry, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Being John Malkovich were all nominated for awards. The cliché-ridden American Beauty won Best Picture and Best Director for Sam Mendes. The film was an attack on the “dark underside of suburbia” written by a gay man; the only normal people are a gay couple, and a closeted homosexual military colonel kills the main character because of his own homophobia. The main character himself re-enacts a thinly veiled “coming out” story—he find fulfillment by discovering “forbidden love” with a teenager (yes, that’s statutory rape, folks!).62

  In 2002, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive earned the director a Best Director nomination, while Kate Winslet and Judi Dench snatched nominations for the film Iris, playing the young and old versions of bisexual author Iris Murdoch, respectively. The 2003 Oscars found films like The Hours, Far From Heaven, and Frida—all of which were enveloped in the issues of homosexuality and sex—literally drowning in nominations.

  The bottom line: Since 1994 and the “landmark” film Philadelphia, actors and actresses playing non-straight characters have been nominated for seventeen Oscars; they have won four Oscars. Clearly these films are not being made for financial gain—none of them have broken the list of historical top one hundred grossers,63 and only As Good As It Gets and American Beauty earned over $100 million in the year following their release.64

  These movies are being made by a cadre of elitists, specifically for a cadre of elitists: the critics. Audiences are not turning out in huge numbers to see these propaganda pieces. But if Hollywood can keep churning them out, and the critics can keep on praising them, maybe their message will seep into the minds of Americans as a group.

  No wonder young girls are experimenting with lesbianism and bisexuality. If movies can drive kids to have sex, they can certainly drive kids to have sex with partners of either gender. Jane Ganahl of the San Francisco Chronicle notes that the bisexual or lesbian-chic fad skews young: “I’ve noticed that whether you’ve had the experience is somewhat determined by age: Many of my friends under thirty-five have had them; women closer to my age have not. Even those of us who won Purple Hearts in the sexual revolution. I guess that means that young women today are all about openness and exploring, and it probably goes hand in hand with the later marrying age.” As for Hollywood’s overload of lesbian action, Ganahl—no pre-teen herself—notes that she feels pressured: “It’s enough to make you think you have a weird life because you don’t go around casually exploring your girlfriends’ tonsils.”65

  One movie in particular provides an insight into the issue of pop culture promoting homosexuality. In 2004, Holly Hunter was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her part in the extremely telling film Thirteen. Hunter plays the mother of a thirteen-year-old girl, Tracy (played by Evan Rachel Wood), who falls in with a popular bad girl, Evie (played by Nikki Reed). Tracy is quickly seduced by the fast-living Evie and becomes a sexually promiscuous, drug-using criminal; one scene features the two young girls kissing each other, with Tracy lying on top of Evie. During this scene, Evie goads Tracy into kissing her, taunting her with the claim that she doesn’t know how to kiss. Tracy insists that she does indeed know how to kiss, citing the fact that she has practiced kissing while watching the lesbian kissing scene from the Sarah Michelle Geller movie Cruel Intentions “like fifty times.” Thirteen is accurate in this respect: pop culture and bad parenting are a very dangerous combination. Cruel Intentions is rated R—but how many kids under seventeen have seen it?

  Even for those of my generation who do not experiment with homosexuality (generally, same-sex experimentation seems to be less common among boys because of the social stigma attached), Hollywood skews our views toward the “gay rights” side of the fence and away from Judeo-Christian standards of morality. An MTV/Zogby International /Hamilton College poll in 2001 showed that
two-thirds of recent high-school graduates supported gay marriage, including 80 percent of Catholics and 46 percent of non-born again Protestants. A shockingly low 39 percent of grads said that they believed “gay lifestyles are morally wrong.” This opposes 2001 statistics among older audiences, who are against gay marriage by a margin of two to one.66

  The homosexual community cannot argue that pop culture has not had a hand in promoting its agenda—after all, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation routinely condemns films it considers “homophobic” as the cause of violent activity. For example, in 1991 GLAAD sent out a press release announcing that according to its Los Angeles Executive Director, “GLAAD sees a definite connection between the negative images films convey to impressionable young people and the increasing incidents of violence against gays and lesbians around the country.”67

  So while the hubbub over Michael Ovitz’s “gay mafia” remark was partially understandable, there should be no controversy about this statement: There is a Hollywood pro-gay, non-organized mafia. Hollywood is run by political leftists, moral relativists, and Judeo-Christian value-phobes. Hollywood is putting out a pro-gay product. And film does have an effect on its viewers—an effect that is even more significant for the youngest members of society.

  Of standards and sexuality

  The Hays Code went out of use completely in 1968. With it went the idea of Hollywood as a purveyor of moral standards. Films were already raunchy in the 1960s and 1970s, but by the 1980s, all standards had left via the emergency exit. Gone were the days of inspirational movies and heroes. There was no longer any good and evil. There was no longer any sin. Moral relativism and amoralism had conquered Hollywood.