Rise and Fall of Gay Culture (Paperback)

In this book, which explores the effects of the increased acceptance of homosexuality on gay lives and culture, Daniel Harris often comes across like my grandfather crankily chanting about the 14 hour work days and 12 mile homeward walks of his youth, back when folks really knew what life was about. Clinging desperately to an old, one-dimensional view of gay men based on the fact that they once pretty much universally shared tastes for Hollywood divas, ballet, and brawny heterosexual men, Harris is surprised and saddened to find that those similarities--all of which resulted more or less from pigeonholing by an intolerant society and some of which (even according to Harris himself) were little more than defense mechanisms against that hostility--are now fading away. He grudgingly admits the reason for this, which happens to be an overwhelmingly positive one--i.e. greater freedom, acceptance, and social contact for gay men than ever before. Once admitted, however, this fact is repeatedly lost in Harris' lengthy ode to the good old days.

A jacket blurb for this book calls Harris' insights "bravely critical". Well, certainly critical at any rate. Reading this book, the average homosexual will be enlightened to learn that not only is he boring, superficial, shallow, greedy, and conformist, but he is also incapable of romance--which is just as well, really, since he soon discovers that he doesn't know how to have sex correctly anyway. And even some of those "insights" seem . . . well, not terribly insightful. We learn that gay mens' worship of divas has nothing to do with the divas' femininity, an insight which is accompanied by references to Katherine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and characters like Holly Golightly and Auntie Mame, but, astonishingly, not a single reference to a male actor or character. Harris goes on to bemoan the increased diversity and economic power of gay culture, as a result of which it is now possible to market magazines to a specific portion of the population, including some directed at younger gay men which Harris accuses of "perpetrating pictorial genocide on men over the age of 40"--which is much like criticizing "Young Miss" for not featuring a lengthy interview with Eartha Kitt. He slashes magazines like "Out" for idealizing gay life and squelching the real stories of our gritty, dark, horrible lives; which, apart from being a questionable accusation, suggests that gay culture is far too advanced to harbor its own escapist equivalents of "Vanity Fair" or "People". Harris does, however, eventually let us into the secret that pretentiousness is one of the main defining characteristics of gay men, a statement which sheds a lot of light on Harris' viewpoints and on the rest of the book.

There's little question that the gay community could use the kind of shaking-up this book promised to give it. To be effective, however, a shake-up needs to jolt people into the future, not push them into the past. For now, we'll just have to take as a sign of progress the fact that the gay community is now diverse enough to have its own brand of fogies, led by Daniel Harris, tsk-tsk-ing and fearing that today's irresponsible young people are, as my grandfather would have put it, "going to hell in a handbasket".

The complete review may be found at:
http://www.daimonix.com/fictions/harris.html