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Culture_Voyeur
Culture_VoyeurWednesday, September 30, 2009 at 8:43:00 AM EDT
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The long-awaited, Diablo Cody-penned horror flick, Jennifer’s Body, opened two weeks ago; but despite the promise of Megan Fox engaging in a little girl-on-girl action, the film has not performed so well at the box office.
In the weeks leading up to the release, co-stars Fox and Amanda Seyfried appeared on numerous talk shows, magazine covers, and gossip websites promoting the film. And although a few interviewers inquired about the movie’s plot, most had only one question on their mind: What was it like to kiss each other?
Fox, who in the past has described herself as bisexual, seemed to have no qualms about the kiss. Seyfried, however, lamented it being “uncomfortable” and saying that “it was harder to kiss a woman.”
While I doubt the star of Mamma Mia! was purposefully being homophobic (to some degree), this kind of exchange with the press always frustrates me a bit. Whenever celebrities go gay for a role, they seem to have a knack for going on and on about how difficult it is to kiss someone of the same-sex. It happened when Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal made Brokeback Mountain, and then again with Sean Penn and James Franco for Milk. Actors will describe their anxiety over a same-sex kiss but then have no qualms simulating sex on screen with an opposite-sex performer.
Maybe that’s why there is still so much stigma about playing a gay role? Not because the public will perceive you as gay; but mainly just because some actors really don’t want to play gay.
Props to Franco, though, because when David Letterman simply could not get over the fact that he had to kiss Sean Penn, Franco played it off and had no qualms about it. Perhaps it’s because Franco has been plagued by those pesky gay rumors throughout his career.
I don’t particularly understand the media’s interest in same-sex encounters because I honestly don’t see what the big deal is (then again, I’m gay). Regardless of who they are kissing, these people are actors. They are paid to pretend! Kissing and mimicking sex with other actors is part of their job – regardless of gender.
I might be less critical of this fascination if journalists were equal-opportunity offenders. When Gwyneth Paltrow starred in Shallow Hal, no one ever asked her if she had trouble kissing someone as gross and repulsive as Jack Black? Did she have to do a shot of tequila after every take just to get through it? Did she have to text her husband, Chris Martin, after shooting the sex scenes just to remind herself that she had a hot man waiting for her at home?
I guess we’ll never know. But I’m sure if she so much as gives Scarlett Johansson a kiss on the cheek in Iron Man 2, we will never hear the end of it. Yet, Portia de Rossi has never been quizzed on what it is like to kiss a man, despite being married to Ellen DeGeneres.
Looking back at the depiction of LGBTQ people in cinema over the years, I guess some progress has been made. It’s only in the last few years that Hollywood has shown two men or two women having sex on screen. It used to be unheard of to see two men kissing on screen, let alone in bed together (see Philadelphia). So maybe in another ten years, interviewers won’t be asking actors what it was like to kiss someone of the same-sex; but instead, asking which actor they enjoyed kissing the most?
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I would like to see an actor or actress who had to kiss a person of the same sex for a role, when they're asked about it, to treat it as normally as any other kiss. If they're straight, they're more used to kissing people of the opposite sex, but that doesn't mean that kissing someone of the same sex has to be such a dramatic ordeal.
# Posted By Mahayana
| 10/2/09 01:33 PM
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