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A Man of No Importance, Albert Finney, compassion, David Kelly, film, Gender, legislation, LGBTQ, Michael Gambon, morality, sexuality
I recently watched the 1994 film, A Man of No Importance. Set in 1963, Alfie (Albert Finney) is a middle-aged bus conductor in Dublin. He is a closeted gay man with a passion for theatre—his fellow Dubliner, Oscar Wilde, to be exact.
The plot unfolds to reveal that Alfred is besotted by his young bus driver, Robbie Fay, played by Rufus Sewell. Despite his name, Robbie appears to be a very straight young man with an active heterosexual life. Robbie plays along with Alfred’s not quite kosher habits of recruiting stage actors from his regular passengers and turning a blind eye to the poorest of the lot when they cannot afford to pay their fare. But Robbie rebuffs Alfie’s attempts to join the stage production, insisting that he can’t act and perhaps wisely avoiding spending too much off-the-job time with Alfie.
The local Catholic Church is to be the venue for Alfie’s production of Salome, a feat which he slips past Father Kenny by focusing on the importance of “Art!” to the dark and plodding lives of parishioners caught up in Victorian rigidity. It helps that Father Kenny is myopically schooled in the Catechism but not so in the artistic ramifications of Aestheticism. As Alfie skillfully whips his amateur actors into reasonably convincing characters, his traitorous friend, Ivor (Michael Gambon), whose eye is firmly planted on Alfred’s spinster sister, approaches the Church Council to educate them on what is going on in their sacred auditorium. To their shock and shame, Ivor incorrectly parrots the actors’ dialogue with words like incestuous, harlot, fornication. You can imagine the result of this tattling traitor.
By today’s standards, this delightfully comical character sketch seems tame and devoid of shock value. But during the rigidly Catholic era of 1960s Dublin, the subject matter might have provoked intense squirming if not audience boycotts. While Alfie’s truest friend, Christy, played by David Kelly, counsels Alfie to find a “good woman to cuddle him,” Alfie struggles with the love that dare not speak its name. Will he break out of his prison? Will life go on for Alfie? Will he find love, acceptance, cuddles? I won’t add spoilers.
What struck me as I watched this film, was its relevance to political movements in America 60 years later. In my own state, a dedicated group of LGBTQ activists has worked for ten years to Add the Words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the state’s human rights act. Incredibly, they have been unable to add those four words—words which would protect people outside of given gender and sexuality norms from physical abuse, and workplace and housing discrimination.
In addition, our State Legislature has been bogged down with senseless arguments over proposed bills that would disenfranchise transgender individuals. As one righteous Senator claims in discussions about legislation to prohibit changing gender markers on birth certificates, “Your sex is your sex—to me, that doesn’t really change.” This very statement highlights how little he (and his majority colleagues) knows about the difference between sex and gender, and how little he understands about the reality of intersex babies whose genitalia fail to distinguish male or female gender.
Sex and gender are not black and white issues. Those with strong religious beliefs should leave moral judgements to their maker, rather than criminalizing behavior and physical conditions that they fear and do not understand.
I don’t think I ever saw that movie, but it sounds like a good one for my Netflix queue. I am so tired of politicians who not only don’t understand the facts behind the legislation they are voting on, but they have no interest in educating themselves.
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Oh my yes. The latest from a young war veteran who’s throwing his hat in for the state legislature, “after a lot of prayer, me and my wife decided it was the right thing to do.” I keep thinking if we could rid of some the ancient ones who haven’t been in a classroom for over 60 years, maybe things would be better, but this guy looks like he’s gonna follow those old worn treads…
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Well, if God insisted, what was he supposed to do? 🙂
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Excellent response. So logical.
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From what you have written, this would be such a good movie to watch. I have no doubt that it echoes today. Protection of rights for all should be in every jurisdiction and in every heart. Amazingly, because our province has swung to the right, the conservative government here in Alberta does not want to revisit the issue of gay rights or abortion although there are a good number of people who would like to. People do change their outlooks. I heard on a radio show today the comments and outrageous opinions from Canadian politicians about 40 plus years ago. There was so much fear and sexist talk about women’s rights. We lost half our congregations in the church in the 70’s when we voted to accept and ordain openly gay ministers, but we are still here. Now we have affirming congregations not just in our church, but other churches and religions as well that welcome LGBTQ2 people as fully serving members.
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I know there are incremental changes and shreds of light to grab onto. The fact that an openly gay man actually threw his hat in the ring for a presidential nomination in the States is remarkable. And I keep hearing/reading that the younger generation doesn’t care as much about labels as our own generation does.
But golly, when fear grabs ahold of people, reason and logic fly out the window. I believe a lot of Caucasians, particularly, the male variety, feel that they are losing their long-held majority power. They feel emasculated and afraid. (Maybe they should be afraid, given their historical treatment of anyone non-white and male.) My state is filled with scared white men and their subservient women who have been raised in a culture that fears “the other.” Sigh.
I think I found this film on Amazon Prime, BTW.
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My unsolicited opinion is that, if you are of a religious bent and truly believe that your god is almighty, all knowing, and could create humans in any form he desired, he would not make a mistake. So if he made androgynous humans, homosexual humans, transgender humans, or any other kind of “non-standard” male/female human, it was intentional. Respect his wisdom.
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I love that. But of course, I am pretty sure there are a certain set of “true believers” who believe god would never create a “defective” human, but that some humans stray from their “goodness” and are therefore evil. The devil is playing with them and they just need to buck up. Homosexuals are just giving in to the devil. They don’t equate gender/sexuality with eye color. Unfortunately. But I still say, let god be the judge and just take care of your own dang life. People! I’m in a grumpy-assed mood tonight. Sorry.
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