Seed & Spark: ‘Stonewall’ Movie Fail

 

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This is a guest post by Jethro.

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The movie adaptation of the Stonewall Riot entitled Stonewall, directed by Roland Emmerich, is harboring unprecedented criticism from the entire LGBTQI community. Countless blogs, online publications, and social media pages have each blasted the movie with comments on whitewashing and altering of the historical facts.

Huffington Post Gay Voices released an article with the headline title “#NotMyStonewall: Why I’m Not Giving the Movie “Stonewall” a Chance.” The bbc.com entertainment section focused on the petition against the movie that reached more than 20,000 signatures.

I personally feel embarrassed for the director. No matter how hard he and his team try to damage-control this situation, I don’t think they will have any way out. The director released this statement on his Facebook page:

“When I first learned about the Stonewall Riots through my work with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, I was struck that the circumstances that lead to LGBT youth homelessness today are pretty much the same as they were 45 years ago. The courageous actions of everyone who fought against injustice in 1969 inspired me to tell a compelling, fictionalized drama of those days centering on homeless LGBT youth, specifically a young midwestern gay man who is kicked out of his home for his sexuality and comes to New York, befriending the people who are actively involved in the events leading up to the riots and the riots themselves. I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film – which is truly a labor of love for me – finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.”

 

No matter how he reassures his audience against his misappropriation of a widely known struggle for civil rights, it’s almost impossible to fictionalize an important and pivotal piece of LGBT history. This is utterly unforgivable in my opinion.

Where did this director grow up? Does he live on the same planet as us? Did the civil rights movement just pass him by, and he hardly even noticed?

As a filmmaker, I would seek to educate myself about historical movements that are intersectional or closely interrelated to what I am conveying in a movie, especially one that’s so pivotal in LGBT history.

This is not ignorance but unconscious racism on the part of the director and screenwriter, which plagues most big-budget Hollywood films. The first person that threw a brick at the Stonewall Riot is Marsha P. Johnson, an African-American, transgender woman. Why on earth would you replace her with a White, cisgender gay man?

 

This is not only dumbfounding but outrageous. Is it because White, cisgender gay men have more commercial value than African-American, transgender women?

Why is this still an issue we fight at our level of cultural awareness and gender identity critical-mindedness? It’s possible that this could be a reflection of a deeper problem that exists within our cultural consciousness. Interestingly, this parallels events that are taking place today, with most of the media transfixed on Caitlyn Jenner and Black Lives Matter.

I find it ironic that on one hand we have a transgender woman who single-handedly takes the world by storm, and on the other, black people continue to be brutally discriminated against, harassed, even killed by criminal authorities.

In the eyes of Hollywood, some historical events cannot be adapted into a multi-million dollar blockbuster movie. Perhaps, the Stonewall riot is one of them. It’s impossible to replace iconic personalities in history when the point is to cater to a wider audience. I consider this a crime.

Denying younger generations the truth of history only allows it to repeat. Sadly, this isn’t a new trend in the film industry. Hollywood is known to appropriate and alter history for the sake of profit. I believe this has to stop.

When dealing with history, filmmakers have a responsibility to be accurate about the facts and events. A movie adaptation such as the Stonewall is nothing short of a failure, and it’s downright disrespectful to a movement that is still continuing at present.

 

Recently, I came across a short film that promises a more accurate portrayal of the Stonewall Riots, entitled Happy Birthday Marsha, written and directed by Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel. It’s a film about the transgender artist and activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson and her life in the hours before Stonewall.

Like any other historical event, the story of Stonewall did not start at the Riot itself. The LGBT movement had been brewing years before. In the 1960s, when it was illegal to be gay, there had been an insurgence and uprising against institutionalized discrimination both in the East and the West.

In San Francisco, a man named Jose Sarria became the first openly gay individual to run for public office in an attempt to counteract the hatred that was the norm. He later founded an organization called the Imperial Council of San Francisco, the oldest surviving LGBT charity organization in America, which later gave birth to the International Court System composing of 64 affiliates in the US, Canada, Hawaii, and Mexico.

My documentary film 50 Years of Fabulous: The Imperial Council Story chronicles the 50-year history of the organization that became the pioneering nonprofit organization fundraising millions of dollars for HIV and AIDS organizations and causes throughout the decades. The film is set for postproduction and is raising funds to finish.

Please check out our Seed and Spark campaign at www.seedandspark.com/50yearsoffab.

 

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Jethro is a filmmaker/video producer based in San Francisco, California. He is currently working for Adecco at Google producing marketing and training videos for Google Maps Street View and Business View. He is the director of the award winning documentary film My Revolutionary Mother and two upcoming documentaries 50 Years of Fabulous: The Imperial Council Story and My Name Is Protest.