While reading the study by Bond et al. the first thought that came to mind was the movie starring Jonah Hill called The Sitter. The movie is about a young college-aged male who takes a baby sitting job for his mother so that she can go out on a date. While on the job he is responsible for watching over three young children (two boys and one girl). During this job he goes on a range of crazy adventures because he is promised sex from his girlfriend. Over the course of the movie the sitter learns some new things about not only the children, but himself as well. These new discoveries helps him grow up in the and make the children less of a pain to deal with.
What drew me to think about this movie was the fact that one of the boys, Slater, that Jonah Hill was watching turned out to be a homosexual. Throughout the movie he is stereotyped as weird, an outcast, and mentally unstable. He is on prescription medicine and goes to see a doctor several times a week. He goes throughout the movie feeling that something is wrong with him until this clip (I apologize for the video quality):
Once he comes to terms with the fact that he is a homosexual he feels relieved and free to finally express himself. For the longest he fights his true feelings about one of his good friends and other males because it was seen as socially acceptable, especially for someone his age. It was not until Jonah Hill's character ousted him about his homosexuality was the young character able to come to terms with who he was.
I took this into consideration when reading Bond et al because I wondered how many participants of this study came out of the closet on their own terms. It would have been more helpful to the study to consider how many participants were ousted by someone else or asked if they were gay when they may have not been ready to disclose such information. This is especially important when dealing with youth because they have more pressure on them to fit into societies gender norms. When these adolescences do not fit into hetero-normative society, their sexuality is immediately questioned. Like Jonah Hill's character explained that high school would be rough for the young preteen but once he gets to college no one will care whether he is gay or straight because by then he would have grown out of the adolescence stage and into the adult world where people are more informed and aware of different sexualities.
The other unique part of this situation is that Slater was receiving help for his "mental illness" and taking prescription medication. I feel that this is another issue within society because it is easy to throw labels on children when no one is concerned about their true feelings or getting to the core of the problem. This could be a cause for when adolescence come-out and look to seek for more information about their sexuality because the information was not presented to them in more traditional fashion such as school or parenting. This clip and the reading helped be realize how much of a challenge it maybe for adolescence to come-out in such a hetero-normative society where people may see your sexuality as a mental disorder or just socially wrong.
Denzell, this was a great blog! I really enjoyed reading it. While completely agreeing with what you included in your blog about he challenges of coming-out in such as hetero-normative society, I also thought that Bond et al.’s article did a good job at showing the measures that were looked at in the study through Slater’s character. I felt as though Slater’s character did a good job demonstrating the loneliness and family openness measures, which are a part of Bond et al. piece that I feel you could have also tied into your blog. This is how I saw the two measures being displayed in this clip your provided. While Slater obviously no longer felt that he was alone in the situation, by, as you said, coming to terms with his sexuality, the scene still representing that fear of “openness”. I still saw this dimension of fear at the end of the scene when Slater asks Jonah to “not tell anybody yet,” shows that even thought he has been told that it is okay and that there this nothing wrong with being gay, there is still noticeable discomfort when it comes to sharing with his other peers and family.
ReplyDeleteDenzell I was really intrigued by this blog post! I personally have never seen this film but your post brought up some very interesting questions particularly the notion of LGBT individuals being ‘outed’ by someone other than himself or herself. As I mentioned today my interviewee from my LGBT representation in the media class mentioned the pressure he felt from his boyfriend to ‘come out’ on Facebook. He described a hesitation in coming out over social media for fear of his friends from home finding out before he could tell them face-to-face. It seems that the fear of being ‘outed’ is very real for many LGBT individuals during the coming out process. As Brittnee mentioned the hesitation and fear associated with coming out publicly is evident, as Slater seems to want to wait until he publicly comes out as gay. The acknowledgment by Jonah of Slater’s homosexuality seems to be an enormous relief for him. While this relief may derive from feeling trapped by being unable to tell the people in his life, perhaps talking to Jonah about his sexuality is also a relief because he has only had the media to turn to for an understanding regarding sexuality. As Bond et.al study found the mass media was consistently used as a source of information more frequently than interpersonal relationships during the coming out process. Slater seems to be reflecting these findings, we can assume that prior to his conversation with Jonah Slater’s primary source of information and discussion regarding his sexuality has been the media, therefore talking openly face-to-face for the first time with someone about this would be particularly liberating.
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