I saw La Mission last night with a gay Chicano friend. I asked him to join me because I knew I would need to share my thinking and emotions afterwards. Instead, he just took off without much conversation - typical of him. Anyway, I don't feel I had the chance to share my impression of the movie. First of all, let me say afterwards, I was feeling RAW emotion on the darker spectrum. You know, anger, bitterness, hatred, and yes racism but what surprised me was who sparked this emotion. Given that I'm a Chicano who is also gay, I thought for sure I'd feel more empathy for the gay son in the movie but I didn't I was angry at his disloyalty and they way he sold out. You have his owner, a white gay boy filled will white gay privilege that nearly gets him killed and rather than acknowledge the love of his family and community, he runs to the bed of the master where he seeks his approval and the status that goes with it.
I also left and could not help but miss my own dad who has been gone for a year and half now. Afterwards I was feeling my dad is ways I've not felt in years and a deep ache that I don't have him here to fight with and keep me focused on what's important - FAMILY. I never doubted that my dad loved me, I just wish it did not hurt so much. Then again, he loved me in the only way he knew and after all was said and done, I'm a much better man because of my dad. Given that I was a sissy as a kid, I was getting my ass knocked around from the time I could walk until I went away into the Marine Corp. After watching the movie I could not help but think about how Chicano men have such a fear of feminization, which hinders their ability to express intimacy with out pain. When you consider our experience as an oppressed people I can understand the need to express hypermasculanity and to push back on the world in the only way you know - with fists.
I thought it was strange that the Madonna and Mother got conflated into the same symbol in the movie. They made her a saint when in actuality many mothers can be more rejecting of their gay sons then the fathers. Anyone who knows me, knows I love my mother but she is a VERY STUBBORN WOMAN! Her constant question "Why are you that way?" haunted me all my life. It has been this question that has motivated me to find answers in the social sciences. I found my answers but it still hurts to know that so many young men and women continue to be rejected over gender and sexuality.
What I liked most was the change seen in the father. His anger was tempered by time in the prison system and his reason to live was to provide for his son. There is something about a Chicano father and his first born son that goes very deep and when you learn that he is gay you have to mourn the loss of of potential, that you will not be present in the future through grandchildren which is our wealth.
For those who've seen the movie I can honestly say that unlike the gay son in this movie I never sold out for the white man's approval and I was never disloyal to my family, not even all the years when I couldn't be with family. I know what it is to hear "your dead to me." My heart was given to a dark skinned Tejano not a gabacho - never a gabacho. What success I have has been because of family not personal talent. All to often I see Chicanos who go into the academy and seek approval from their white academic masters and will sell their cultural capital for some academic respect. Seeing the son leave his family and side with his white master made me furious. Perhaps because my corazon left me for a white man and because many Latino men seek validation in the fetish love of the white man. Oh how I want to love a Chicano and be loved by one but the women in my life show me that a good man is hard to come by, one that can love and be loved by another man, nearly impossible - at least for my generation.
Thank you Peter Bratt for this story. It is perhaps the only time in my 46 years that I've gone to a movie and seen my experience represented.
