Eat Yer Peas, Drink Yer Milk

Surely many gay Americans have seen Gus Van Sant’s Milk through tears of joy because it marks a long-hoped-for arrival. For the first time in mainstream entertainment (at least, this is the picture that got all the fanfare), the history of the gay rights movement is presented as an elemental and welcome part of the story of the U.S., and not as a sidebar or novel supplement to the Great Historical Narrative.

Gays deserve equal rights. As a human being, that’s the only position I can possibly hold. However, you can be in complete solidarity with the cause of gay rights and not care much for Milk. (Whether you will be allowed to claim that distinction sincerely is yet another question. During the last election, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg wrote that the only reason you might oppose Obama is that you are a bigot. Is that the only reason one might dislike the similarly politically correct Milk?)

For most critics, their verdict on Milk–positive or negative–seems less their opinion of the picture than of gay rights. How else to explain a 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes for what is essentially a well-produced, cause-driven movie of the week?

Milk often lapses into hagiography–the biography of a saint. A more compelling picture would have vigorously illustrated Harvey Milk’s fears and errors; the lack of much other than praise yields a cardboard cutout and not an individual of depth and doubt. Similarly, Harvey Milk’s assassain, Dan White, is presented as a cartoonish stand-in for all Christians. Yet there are gay Christians in this world–surely Harvey Milk himself knew some. Christians will be mightily offended to see their faith smeared under a single broad stroke–just as gays are sickened at movies and TV shows that reduce them to fey stereotype.

Which, ironically, seems to happen here. The hallmark of Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk is a collection of stereotypically mincing affectations which, had they been presented in a film not made by a gay director and aimed directly at gay sympathies, would have had studio executives begging forgiveness and burning the negatives.

Milk falls short in all those details as it falls short overall: Charged with the difficult task of infusing drama into ballot initiatives and minor campaigns for office, the picture often becomes a posed exchange of platitudes that no one says aloud outside of a high-school civics class.

(Oh–and what’s the deal with the over-the-top promotional campaign all last fall for mostly-unknown screenwriter Dustin Lance Black? Who’s that for? Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in movie advertising, ever. Ever.)

Harvey Milk did some good and important things. Lest conservatives forget, his campaign against Proposition 6 was supported by no less a luminary than Ronald Reagan. Milk died far too young, and at the hands of an unstable, evil individual who got off with a slap on the wrist. Those are the facts, and they deserve consideration separate from the entertainment and artistic value of the picture that bears his name.

Milk the movie is valuable and important and necessary and, in a narrow way, interesting. Plumbing is necessary, too. Doesn’t mean I want to watch it for two hours.