There’s really no doubt that gay-bashing is a serious topic, and it’s not too unexpected that most gay films throw in a gay-bashing scene whether or not it seems appropriate to the rest of the movie’s tone. Leather Jacket Love Story, Relax It’s Just Sex, Defying Gravity (the worst gay film in all existence… review coming soon) and Better than Chocolate all succumb to the urge to talk about how persecuted gays are. (Go Fish deserves credit for premeditatedly satirizing these scenes by including a segment where a woman is verbally attacked by her lesbian friends for sleeping with a man)It was really only a matter of time before someone made a TV-movie based on the Matthew Shepard murder case. After all, it’s a politically-heated topic that probably got more attention than any other gay-focused event in history. MTV, that aging barometer of social change dumbed down to reach mass audiences, launched the first out of the gate with Anatomy of a Hate Crime, while a major-network teleflick due out this summer.
In the director’s chair is, of all people, Tim Hunter, the man behind two of the best teen movies ever made, River’s Edge (as director) and Over the Edge (as writer). Hunter seems to occasionally be trying to make a slightly different, and more potentially interesting, film than what MTV intended. However, it’s obvious that the network won out in the final cut, and what remains is a bland, obvious, controversy-free resuscitation of events rather than an actual exploration into the motives behind “hate” crimes.
The first problem is that Anatomy of a Hate Crime is narrated, awkwardly enough, from a beyond-the-grave Shepard (played by Cy Carter, who looks like a young, blonde Eric Roberts) sitting at the bar while waiting for his killers. This is just a bizarre, creepy and oddly-confusing effect, and it results in flashbacks-within-flashbacks. Making matters worse is the fact that the movie follows both the lives of Shepard and his killers’, which means that Shepard gets to comment on his murderer’s lives.
Of course, as expected in a movie like this, Matthew Shepard is played as a boy without sin. He’s intelligent, charming, angel-eyed, and even when his voice-over muses about his own death (“Where does that hate come from? Are we born with it? Or are there moments in our lives that create that hate?") he’s oddly philosophical. He corrects his professor on the life of Jean Genet. He makes friends with everyone that doesn’t instantly hate him for other reasons. He’s so nice and cute and sweet that he doesn’t seem the least bit human at all. You get the feeling that he may have been killed just so it could be proven that he wasn’t some evolution of the robot from “Small Wonder.”
On the other side, we have the obvious villains of the piece. Aaron (played by openly gay, and perfectly talented, actor Brendan Fletcher) is a crude, drug-dealing, abusive guy who squandered all the money he got from a settlement involving his mother’s death. In case that’s not enough for you to understand that he’s bad, he also says “faggot” a lot. Russell (Ian Somerhalder) is, by default, the nicer one of the two, his personality traits coming mostly from the fact that he wishes his mother wouldn’t drink so much. He’s also not as much of a huge asshole as Aaron.
They might as well have had a halo over Shepard and horns on Aaron, for all the depth they’re given. Some time is given to Shepard’s involvement with a campus closet case (Richard Stroh), and Shepard’s reluctance to admit his positive HIV status as a reason for not getting more physically involved. (As it stands, it seems perfectly reasonably that Shepard just wasn’t interested.) But in the end, guess what? Stroh declines the opportunity to go out drinking with Shepard on—wait for it—the night he’s killed. So Stroh, not Shepard, ends up looking like an asshole.
You need only look at Boys Don’t Cry to see why Anatomy of a Hate Crime doesn’t work at all beyond the quick-fix TV-movie viewing. In Boys, Brandon Teena is a flawed, real human being. He fits in with the group, socializes, is kind of a jerk sometimes, lies, and does some stupid things. Teena’s end came about only after the group she’d been hanging out with discovers that she’d been deceiving them. The ending is not only tragic but compelling; Teena’s death is about a human being whose life is ended, not just the “important event” that Anatomy of a Hate Crime turns Shepard’s murder into.
As I mentioned before, Hunter does try to add a couple points that, if explored a bit more, may have incited more controversy (and thus, discussion) than standard TV-movie fare. Aaron is portrayed as someone who loathes his position, an ignorant redneck who doesn’t know where his life is going. He squanders money he has and feels jealous of those that have it better than him. When he sees Shepard in the bar, dressed fairly nicely and talking grammatically correct, he hates him because the Shepard character is something he’s not; financially well-off and intelligent. For a moment, Anatomy becomes not about a crime of gay-bashing but of class-bashing, as Aaron finally gets to have power over someone “better” than he is.
The bar scene also features one of the Shepard character’s only faults. He doesn’t blend in with the Wyoming natives, and his desire to “be himself” just results in his failure to adapt. By not taking on their vocal or physical mannerisms after entering their territory, he becomes an alien that sticks out. His death, then, is a result of cultural Darwinism; By failing to adapt (being “the fittest”), he doesn’t survive.
Of course, MTV doesn’t want it that way, and commercials for their Anti-Hate programming send out a clear, simple message that everyone can understand without having to burden themselves with thought: “Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was gay.” This certainly is at least partially true, but by not acknowledging that the problem probably goes much deeper than simple hatred toward a sexual orientation is a crime against intelligence.
The film was shown on MTV letterboxed and edited—all the swear words (except, natch, the omnipresent “faggot”) are bleeped out. (Wasn’t this made for TV? What’s the deal?) Busy Phillips does a fine job as Russell’s girlfriend, who ends up meeting Shepard, and the rest of the cast is fine, but they’re all pretty much given one-dimensional, obvious parts to work with.
Okay, okay, so maybe I'm being to hard on Anatomy of a Hate Crime. After all, it's good that MTV is trying to teach kids that it's okay to be gay and all that. But I really believe this isn't the best way to do it--it comes off as preachy. Everyone's had the "gay is okay" message crammed down their throats so much already. The only reliable way individual opinions change is by peer pressure or by personal experience. Anatomy of a Hate Crime is MTV trying to be important, not trying to make a point.
If you need more nits to pick, Anatomy of a Hate Crime screws up a bunch of facts as well. Shepard majored in political science, not art history. His "final pick-up" took place at a bar called Fireside, not the "Double D." And Laramie is in Albany county, not, in fact, Laramie County.
The network TV Shepard movie may be better, but I’m not getting my hopes up. Shepard is far too much of a martyr for his story to be portrayed in any less than a completely black-and-white light. In a recent local far rag poll, gays under 25 voted Shepard as the most important “Gay hero.” Either kids today are pretty ignorant or the definition of “hero” has changed since I last checked. Shepard was a gay kid who was killed. This is tragic, but by no means heroic, and the fact that Shepard outranked Harvey Milk is just kind of silly.
(Speaking of heroes, why the hell are these soldiers from the China hostage crisis being revered as “heroes?” Are we that desperate for heroism these days? I’ve gotten into a lot of car accidents, and was “held hostage” at a police station after one of them, and nobody ever called me a hero. I was, however, called a “moron who can’t drive.” Where’s my damn parade?)