Didn’t really expect to love this but I’m surprised by how much I didn’t like Sunflower. I truly hope this was impactful for someone (based on some other reviews it seems like it was) but I can’t help but feel like there are so many queer films that I would rather urge another young queer person to watch, even just from the past few years.
This feels like one of those queer movies from the 80s or 90s where you can easily tell it’s not the most progressive, but we often give them the benefit of the doubt, talk about how important representation was, talk about the young queer kids who could finally see themselves in something—stuff like that. Unfortunately for Sunflower, though, it’s not the 80s or 90s; we’re no longer graciously accepting any and all representation, we’re no longer yearning so much to see ourselves that we identify with characters with exclusively pain and trauma reserved for them, we’re no longer looking for a character whose only trait is being gay, we are no longer looking to wade through beatings and slurs to experience a spare moment of warmth and queer love. Why must we again make it so a queer character has to be violently punished before finally attaining a single moment of joy? I’m not saying to sugarcoat reality, but this very notion that ‘reality’ is queer suffering, that the queer character must always be the perseverant sufferer, a martyr, in order to accurately portray the struggles of being gay in high school, is what I take issue with.
It’s a clearly personal experience, which leads me to believe Gabriel Carrubba sees this as a story that would have been impactful for him to see when he was going through the events of the movie—and I assume there are others who would feel the same way. I won’t diminish that, but I will say personally I don’t see the positive impact this could have on a person in the position of Leo. If he saw this what would he think? Yes, he would likely be happy to see a gay character to relate to at all, but the predominant emotion, I think, would be fear.
Didn’t really expect to love this but I’m surprised by how much I didn’t like Sunflower. I truly hope this was impactful for someone (based on some other reviews it seems like it was) but I can’t help but feel like there are so many queer films that I would rather urge another young queer person to watch, even just from the past few years.
This feels like one of those queer movies from the 80s or 90s where you can easily tell it’s not the most progressive, but we often give them the benefit of the doubt, talk about how important representation was, talk about the young queer kids who could finally see themselves in something—stuff like that. Unfortunately for Sunflower, though, it’s not the 80s or 90s; we’re no longer graciously accepting any and all representation, we’re no longer yearning so much to see ourselves that we identify with characters with exclusively pain and trauma reserved for them, we’re no longer looking for a character whose only trait is being gay, we are no longer looking to wade through beatings and slurs to experience a spare moment of warmth and queer love. Why must we again make it so a queer character has to be violently punished before finally attaining a single moment of joy? I’m not saying to sugarcoat reality, but this very notion that ‘reality’ is queer suffering, that the queer character must always be the perseverant sufferer, a martyr, in order to accurately portray the struggles of being gay in high school, is what I take issue with.
It’s a clearly personal experience, which leads me to believe Gabriel Carrubba sees this as a story that would have been impactful for him to see when he was going through the events of the movie—and I assume there are others who would feel the same way. I won’t diminish that, but I will say personally I don’t see the positive impact this could have on a person in the position of Leo. If he saw this what would he think? Yes, he would likely be happy to see a gay character to relate to at all, but the predominant emotion, I think, would be fear.
