Documentary Summaries Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Documentary Summaries - Essay Example Lars Larson, a gay man, is the documentary’s first interviewee and speaks positively and in an undisguised manner about being a homosexual. The interview is followed by a CBS News poll that shows opinions from Americans that homosexuality harms America even more than prostitution or adultery. Another gay man is interviewed and he talks about coming out and being treated like a wounded animal, which differs from the opinion of the next interviewee, Warren Adkins, who claims his family treated him warmly. The documentary then talks about homosexuality’s legal aspects with North Carolina Judge James Craven, who notes that the US should decriminalize homosexuality like in England. Frank Kameny, the co-founder of the Washington D.C. Mattachine branch then makes an impassioned plea to allow security clearance for homosexuals. There is also a debate on homosexuality between Albert Goldman and Gore Vidal who argue for and against homosexuality respectively. The interviews end w ith a family man who claims he is gay and that the US was too narcissistic for two men to form a long-term relationship. The documentary ends with the filmmaker contending that the homosexual in America is anonymous, displaced, and an outsider. One of the most poignant moments in the documentary is the short interview involving the gay man, Warren Adkins, who contends that one’s sexual orientation is their innermost aspect and that, just as a heterosexual would not give their orientation up; a homosexual like himself would not either (Kraemer 1). He responds to a question on what causes him to be a homosexual by saying that he does not concern himself with it, putting his homosexuality in the same category as having blonde hair. He contends that he does not dwell on why he is gay, just as a person with blonde hair would not worry about the chromosomes or genes that caused them to have blonde hair. As a part of the broadcast documentary’s research, the TV station carrie d out a demographic survey, which found that at least 90% of people in the US considered homosexuality to be a sickness (Kraemer 1). Majority of them even favored legal punishment for acts of homosexuality carried out anywhere, including sex between two consenting adult males in private. One fascinating aspect of this segment is the manner in which it completely neglects to do a survey on lesbians as part of the society of homosexuals, while also portraying homosexual men as incapable of being monogamous long-term unions and as naturally promiscuous. Even as this point to the failures of civil rights and general trauma that these issues caused in the late 60s, it is interesting that the same debate rages on to date as the world argues on gay marriage and the right of gay men and lesbians to legalize their monogamous relationships in the long term. It leaves one wondering whether a documentary made on lesbians and gays today would sound as antiquated and foreign as this documentary f ifty six years from today (Kraemer 1). While this documentary was made and released at a time when the United States had transgender people, bisexuals, gay men, and lesbians had come out, these people were fewer than they are today, as well as courageous (Kraemer 1). This documentary is particularly important when looking at the people, in this case men, who have fought for the equality of homosexuals in society. Because these people were courageous enough to be on a documentary, including Albert Goldman and Lars Larsson, they made things happen and were important in the progress made towards equality. This documentary, especially its uninspiring and biased ending that claims homosexuals are