A lesson about homophobia for the "Home and Away" set, this glossy little flick is not terrible, but it is, unfortunately, everything you’d expect it to be, and more. Thirty minutes more, that is: it’s way too long, stretched out by a number of budding subplots that wither on the vine, and one too many angst-jammed monologues.
Steven Carter (Ben Silverstone) is a diligent gay schoolboy with a public toilet sex habit and a major crush on King-jock John (Brad Gorton). Steven and Will embark on a tentative affair, and hit every thorny coming-out/homophobia bump along the way, such as suspicious parents, judgemental and potentially violent peers, and their own confused identities. How can they get it worked out, and in the process, teach everyone to be a little more tolerant?
Apparently, one of Get Real’s aims was to approach gay adolescence and coming out from a new angle, and show how gay teenagers don’t necessarily find it any easier to come out and “be gay”, even though they’re supposed to after all those decades of gay pride. Gay activism and its resultant increases in visibility, changes to age of consent and other restrictive/prohibitive laws, etc., has really been of benefit only to inner-city gay communities, adults who’ve long moved away from their family homes. In a way, gay-lib has made life harder for gay teens, in the way that it’s removed any ambiguity from their eccentricities. No longer are they just pansies or artistic types, they’re homosexuals, far too politicised for the playground jungle and also lightning rods for any fear or hilarity teenagers find in AIDS, anal sex, or the “other”. People aren’t suspect of gays because people tell them to be. Being like others is an instinctive preference, and there are serious social drawbacks to being different, particularly in the school yard. In the words of Patrick Wilde, whose play "What’s Wrong With Angry", was the basis for this film adaptation:
"I wrote the play because I had something to say. I was sick of being told by people -- even gay people -- that it's easier to be gay now. Maybe it is easier to be gay, once you're out. But I don't believe it's easier than it ever was to come out. All the pressures from your peers, from your parents, are still there, and no amount of legislation is going to change that."
Well said, Patrick, and good on the film makers for picking up such thoughtful material.
Shame, then, that they haven’t really incorporated it into their film, which instead is fifty percent teen romance, and fifty percent Gay Pride March. There’s no real criticism in the film about the failures of the gay movement or the fact that gay teens, now as always, are left to find heir own way, in the dark, to some kind of meaningful gay adult identity. Instead, Get Real is a timid story about how much better things would be if people didn’t force other people underground and punish them for acting without check on love and desires. The fascinating theme of the eternal difficulties of coming out, difficulties unassuaged by city ghetto gay pride successes, is hastily reformed into the same old rainbow flag statement. Gay is good, leave gay people alone, they’re nice and only want love.
Though it’s unfair to nitpick, I have a few questions. Will addicted beat queen Steven kick the habit if dreamboat John comes around to the idea of being Steven’s lover? How does sixteen year old Steven see the world, given he’s been having sex in toilets with men since he was thirteen, or was it even eleven? Would a school full of adolescents really sit obediently through another pupil’s ten-minute school assembly stage confession that he was gay and they were unfair, then respond to his speech with a standing ovation?
Yes, the writers have even found a way to get their gay protagonist onto a stage in front of a microphone where he can deliver an uninterrupted speech on homophobia before a captive audience trapped on screen and off. Better film makers would have seen that the material of Get Real contains one of the most enduring story models of all, the tragedy of the two teenagers in love, who are prevented by circumstance from being together. These guys have ditched that masterpiece-engendering, millennia-old idea in favour of a socio-political gabfest, a verbose and corny cry for tolerance that looks like the kind of film Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick would make, if she made films (thank God she doesn’t).
Also, it’s confusing that Steven - who’s an editor on the school newspaper and quite intelligent – doesn’t sense that most people will at least balk at his lifestyle, given that his idea of a good time involves waiting around the stinking crapper for someone to stick their dick through a glory hole. I don’t go telling my mother or my workmates what I get up to when I get horny, let alone tell them and then expect them to nod along and chat cheerily about it all. Some activities and lifestyles are inherently anti-social: GET REAL.
Get Real didn’t have to be quite so dopey, in fact, it had all the ingredients - including good acting from its teen cast - to be a very powerful, but not necessarily depressing or socio-political, film. Instead, this British film has regrettably gone down the Hollywood gay road, where every gay character is a misunderstood angel, trying to get everyone else to understand how to construct the perfect world. Get real.
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