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From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: What, no comments on "Consenting Adult"?
Message-ID: <1308@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 6-Feb-85 23:31:36 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1308
Posted: Wed Feb  6 23:31:36 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Feb-85 07:41:50 EST
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 37

Gee, I wonder why there have been no comments at all here subsequent
to the broadcast of "Consenting Adult".  Was it really as good as I
have been hearing from assorted friends and media?  Or maybe everyone
on the net who's seen it has simply been stupefied beyond comment.

I thought it was poor, dramatically and thematically, completely
compromised by the equivocating nature of network television.  Most
fascinating and disturbing to me was how little TV has advanced in 13
years: it still can't get past the sanitized sanctimoniousness that we saw
in "That Certain Summer", which was retrograde even in its day.

It was wildly erratic in its handling of gay sexuality, from the nadir
of the kid's (whatshisname?) "first experience" cruising a guy in the
diner and then accepting a "ride home", a scene filmed in an almost
comically unsavory Rechyesque manner, to the apotheosis of a squeaky-clean
relationship between the kid and an equally blond, WASPy student with
straight, white teeth.  Sex?  They might as well be angels, so incorporeal
their relationship.  This must be safe-sex in the 80's.  I'm not looking
for extended petting scenes, of course, but it would be nice if TV could
show casual affection between two men without aiming for either of these
extremes.

What's more, everyone's reactions seemed slightly out of kilter, as if
we were looking at the 60's set in the eighties.  "Mom, I'm a ho-mo-sex-u-al"
just doesn't seem to ring true these days.  Also, while I can grant that
some gay teenagers are still isolated and alone, if this movie purports
to present what is reality for most gay young people (and let's face it:
TV movies aren't serious art, they are latter-day miracle plays), it would
have been much more realistic to show him investigating his local campus
rap group, maybe reading some local gay newspapers, to establish a better
self-definition before coming out to his parents.

Anyone else care to comment?
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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