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White Milk
By admin | January 21, 2009
I saw the film “Milk” starring Sean Penn a of couple weeks ago in a theater in Santa Monica. Last night I went to view the academy-award-winning documentary film “Times of Harvey Milk” (which “Milk” was based on) at the Santa Monica Public Library. I wanted to see whether the documentary did any kind of exploration into the relationship between Harvey Milk and Dan White. Unfortunately, it did not, and I am left wondering. In the Penn film, that relationship appeared to contain elements that based the tragic shooting in interpersonal difficulties between Milk and White, rather than the seemingly homophobic light in which I had (poorly) understood the event due to not having all the facts.
I was not living in California when Harvey Milk made his 4 bids for public office, nor when he was at last elected as a City Supervisor in San Fransisco. I genuinely appreciate the story-telling in the documentary, and in the film “Milk,” for the fact that the positive force that was Harvey Milk, his political savvy, and the gains he made for the LGBT community, do come through, as well as any elements of who he was and how he lived that are worthy of exploration and question.
That 3 former lovers of Harvey’s would commit suicide, and that Dan White himself eventually commits suicide, is a strange coincidence. In “Milk” we see a rather unsupportable connection between Harvey and a Latino or Hispanic male who becomes his lover, the third lover who takes his own life. The man seems to have no self beyond Harvey, and Harvey himself has a larger personality and purpose than what an intimate relationship can contain or support. For this reason, his former lover Scott leaves him, unable to tolerate a 4th bid for public office.
I would recommend “Milk” as well as the documentary Times of Harvey Milk. The documentary did win an academy award. I don’t think it really matters whether “Milk” does or not. The story is worth having been told twice, and the Hollywood version is well done, true to the documentary, and with more details viewers want to know, especially after seeing “Milk.” The acting is very believable and real.
“Milk,” the film, succeeds in bringing to light the meaning and value of sexuality in our daily lives. It’s not just about having sex; it’s about having the freedom to love. Sexuality has long been a murky area where humankind’s inhumanity to itself has thrived without bounds. Rather than respectful boundaries, we have instead had those imposed by religious rules that do not spring from trust or love of the body, of the genders, or of mortality. The story of Harvey Milk’s and Dan White’s lives as they intertwined via the events depicted in these films calls to the heart of humanity: “Come forth now! Choose hope instead of fear.”
I was left wondering why all murderers are not given the same consideration as Dan White received. Why shouldn’t they be? The issues addressed in these films are not “black and white,” so to speak. Where prejudices and fear blind us to our complexity, the life of Harvey Milk as told through these films sheds some much-needed light.
Got Milk?
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