I am watching the film Good Night and Good Luck and strongly advise Director-General of the BBC, Mark Thompson to watch it. And interestingly it is on the BBC! The film is set at the height of McCarthyism, which exposes the hysteria and fear surrounding the so-called ’red menace’ of Communism.
Journalist, Ed Murrow, who bravely took on McCarthy, makes a speech in the film about impartiality…. and Thompson really should listen to it…
Tony Benn on the BBC giving details of the Gaza appeal much to the consternation of the woman interviewing him. Well done Tony! He was also in fine form at yesterday’s rally.
The excellent speech from Jeremy Corbyn MP at yesterday’s rally.
Hat tip: RickB
So the Beeb have received 10,000 complaints by email and 1,000 by telephone. And now there’s an Early Day Motion (EDM) tabled by MP Richard Burden.
Protesters are occupying the Beeb’s headquarters in Glasgow.
Keep the pressure up!
“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door” (Harvey Milk)
On the same day, 4th November 2008, that Barack Obama became President, California passed a reactionary and homophobic measure. Proposition 8 bans same-sex marriages. It was passed with 52% of the vote. There are fight back campaigns that oppose the validity of this vile measure, broad based alliances coming together to strike down Proposition 8.
Harvey Milk would have spearheaded a campaign against Prop 8.
Milk is a film with a heart. It’s thoughtful and politically passionate. And to be honest, at the end watching the candle lit demonstration held in memory of the assassinated lesbian and gay activist, Harvey Milk, was poignant and emotional to watch. The film was about a real man who fought tirelessly against oppression and discrimination.
The film starts with the death of Harvey Milk, real footage included. Then it goes back to when Harvey meets Scott who became his partner. Harvey worked in insurance. But being dissatisfied with his job he sets up a camera shop in Castro Street, San Francisco.
By the 1970s the political landscape was changing for lesbian and gay rights. More real life footage is mixed in with the film and you get an understanding what it was like for lesbians and gay men, the homophobia and police harassment. And similar to the other liberation campaigns of the time, lesbian and gay rights were being vocalised (the Stonewall riot in ’69 was a turning point for lesbian and gay activism). The political times were a-changin’…..
Harvey ran a couple of times, unsuccessfully, as city supervisor. He made successful alliances from trade unions and other oppressed groups. The campaigns took its toll on his relationship with Scott. He eventually won in 1977.
The film depicts Milk’s dramatic change from ‘hippie’ to suited/booted would be politician. The ensemble of activists who help and support his campaigns. An interesting part of the film is when he brings in lesbian activist, Anita Kronenberg as campaigns manager. Her presence makes the men in the team wary but the tension is defused.
Harvey is eventually elected in 1977. He meets Dan White, polar opposite to him. A fellow city supervisor for a more conservative Catholic area who ‘tolerates’ Milk and his campaigning. They originally get on but Milk refuses back to back one of White’s measures. At around the same time, there was the Briggs initiative. Proposition 6 made sacking lesbians and gay men who worked as teachers and indeed any employee who supported lesbian and gay rights mandatory.
At the Gay Pride march in ’78, thousands demonstrated against the homophobic Prop 6. Milk spoke at the San Francisco rally:
We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets … We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.
Proposition 6 was gaining support. It was defeated eventually (you see old footage of Jimmy Carter calling on voters to vote against Prop 6!). And organising in tangent was bigot Diane Bryant with her crusade against equal rights for lesbians and gay men.
What was impressive was Milk’s tireless campaigning, tenacity and political passion. Grass roots activism and making alliances. As Milk acknowledges it was the minorities and oppressed who voted for him. While Milk’s career is ascending, Dan White’s is crashing and burning and politically degenerating. He resigns his position as city supervisor as he can’t to live on the salary. He asks to be taken back but is refused.
White visits Mayor Moscone office and shoots him dead, he asks to see Harvey and likewise he too is shot dead.
Harvey Milk never believed he would reach 50. You see Milk dictate his will on tape in the event of assassination (and he received many death threats). Giving testimony of his work and campaigning through out the film. It is not just devoted to his political campaigning, his friendships and lovers are equally important yet his campaigning overtook him with tragic consequences for one of his lovers, Jack. One scene in the film that exposed bigotry and ignorance is where a young man rings Harvey and tells him that is he gay and that his parents want to send him away to be ‘cured’. He’s scared and doesn’t know what to do. Harvey tells him to get away and move to a big city. The young man responds that he can’t (the camera pans to the wheelchair the young man is sitting in) and the line goes dead. Sometime later the same young man rings and tells Harvey he did indeed escape with the aid of supportive friends and now he was campaigning against Prop 6.
I think that is what is at the heart of Milk. He was an inspiration and dynamic in his political activism. Gus Van Sant (who has spent years trying to get this project off the ground) portrays a very sympathetic character in Milk.
Sean Penn is pretty impressive in his interpretation. The political landscape of the time is well documented by Van Sant and the splicing of real documentary into the film adds to the potency. All the characters of drawn sympathetically, their sense of political defiance coupled with their vulnerability.
Josh Brolin delivers an excellence complex portrayal of Dan White, who starts off as kind of sympathetic towards Milk yet there’s a residue of anger and hate towards Moscone and Milk built up over time. It would have easy to have created White as a 1-dimensional bigot but fortunatelyVan Sant nor Brolin does. My only quibble is we aren’t given a clear understanding of where this anger and hate came from in White.
The sub-text of the film posits White as the political embittered degenerate, he is the one who drinks too much becoming aggressive (scene at Milk’s birthday party) concluding with him murdering two men. While Milk is a positive political force, White has no principles just a right-wing careerist who is fired up by ignorance, insecurites regarding social change and self-loathing.
We never get to see much of the interaction between Milk and White, which I think is a weakness of the film. As the credits roll, you see pictures of the actors in their characters next to pictures of the real life people they play. It gives it that extra poignancy and humanity.
Watching the film reminded me of the fight back campaigns in the UK against bigotry and homophobia. Campaigns to equalise the age consent and the vicious Section 28. The dawn of the 1980s saw a renewed bid to attack lesbian and gay rights by the right, to roll back the gains made by liberation campaigns with the help of the media (the appalling attack on the lesbian and gay campaign Positive Images in Haringey led by the media). And now the latest attack by Pope Benedict and to quote Harvey Milk:
More people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, my friends, is true perversion.
If you want to see a film about a man who changed the political landscape on lesbian and gay rights who stood against oppression and was an inspiration to many then go and see Milk.
My complaint to the BBC regarding the DEC appeal via email.
I think it is an utter travesty and disgrace that you will not air the DEC appeal. It is laughable that you argue that it is about ‘impartiality’ when you are in actual fact taking sides. This is about humanitarian help and the DEC are not making a political protest. The people of Gaza need aid and you are obstructing it.
Shame on you, BBC, you disgust me and it pains me to pay my license fee when it is obvious you capitulate to bias while insulting the public’s intelligence!
The BBC are still standing firm over their politically inept decision. Keep the pressure up, complain by phone or by email. Tell the Beeb what you think about this disgraceful decision.
