Thursday, April 14, 2016
Queer speech
The unspoken for many gay men:
No one, gay or straight, knows how they sound. Even if they have listened to themselves on tape or any other media.
Everything is filtered through ego and other stuff that bolixes up the brain.
That is my theory at least.
This film doesn't necessary answer the question really. The answer is self evident.
Most gay men sound gay unless they do not.
Something else is at work.
But it is not in the heart of this film to dig more deeply into the why of it.
What is in the film is pretty interesting though.
I cannot say that I have worried about this speech thing at all.
As a public speaker I was working in another direction. But I have had gay people come up to me and identify directly. So there is, at least, a tribal ring to it.
And it certainly changed after I came out.
I like this film. It asks interesting questions of interesting people. The usual suspects are there. Poor Dan Savage and George Takei must get bugged all the time for this kind of thing. And to their credit they do their job well.
There is nothing here that is going to have any of us, gay or straight, change our speech. Such a thing is not possible anyway. One can go to a speech therapist but it would seem that no one has managed to work the gay out of it.
There are a number of "straight sounding" men who are gay. Some of them can put on a camp voice. I can.
It depends on the company one keeps.
But the engaging idea is that even someone deeply imbedded in the corn belt with a bunch of hicks is likely to hear their own queer voice without and help from an outsider. No one knows why that is.
Or why it is that some of us do not.
Interesting. A 3 out of Netflix5. Good but not enough to see again.
