Image: https://aestanteladecasa.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/garoto-enxaqueca-oliver-tate-e-christopher-boone/
This week, I watched the film Submarine by Richard Ayoade, based on a novel by Joe
Dunthorne. It’s a quirky coming-of- age story that features an adorably dysfunctional
Welsh teenager. It’s similar to Rushmore in its rapid, Wes Anderson-quality banter, but
with the aesthetics of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie. It’s a brilliant film.
Central to Oliver Tate’s prepubescent social agenda is proving that he’s not gay. This is
very important to the plot because it drives him toward Jordana, who will become his first
girlfriend. Upon learning that her son has a girlfriend, Oliver’s mother is incredibly
relieved.
I have a girlfriend now.
Really?
Yeah.
Do you?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Of course. Yes, of course. I mean, why wouldn't... I didn't...
Did you think I was...
No, I didn't. Come here.
This moment of levity is only allowed by making clear: Oliver Tate is not gay. This story
is about other things…. Continue on. But if Jordana had been Jordan, then we would not
have passed go. Submarine would be a gay film, and secondary to that it would be a
Welsh film, and maybe it would be allowed to have some other peripheral qualities as
well. The joke was deployed at the expense of Oliver’s mother, who laughably jumped to
conclusions. But the joke also delivered a particular message: Submarine is not a gay
film; it’s about other things.
Or is it? To quote a dear friend, “his possibilities are as wide-open as the concluding shot
on the beach.” The film is saturated with queer potentialities, from Oliver’s bizarre
relationships with his family, peculiar first girlfriend, misfit identity, and “strange”
personal interests. We don’t know what ends up happening to Oliver, or who he becomes.
But for the purposes of this story, Oliver is not gay. While I find that queer potentialities
often drop out of storylines, it particularly surprised me in this film—a story otherwise
well suited to carry an L/G/B plot. Somehow “gay” films seem to belong in some
alternative narrative, constitute the anti-hero, or the way things could have been, but are
not.
A few years ago, when I came around to realizing my sexuality, I remember feeling like I
was standing on the edge of a precipice. I had a looming sense that my life had to be re-
written. After watching the film this week, I recalled that feeling. I remember a visceral
fear of not wanting to fall into the other plotline, (no thank you, I liked my story very
much and it was not the gay movie). The feeling of standing on a ledge dissipated over
time. I started to enjoy writing the queer plot, the alt-story. The alt-plot hasn’t been
written as much, which meant that I had more creative license, room to live in ambiguous
territory before taking pen to paper. Creating my life as a gay/queer life has involved
exploration, production, and ingenuity. But a certain “drop” from the first story line
preceded it (okay, maybe a slow-mo tumble).
What bothered me about Submarine is that I wanted it very much to be “my plot.” I can
connect to the Oliver: his family drama, his social precarity, his awkward first love, etc.
But something about that first joke, the distancing from a specifically L/G/B plotline,
made me sigh and role my eyes. I like to imagine a world in which queer potentialities
can exist without being negated from the outset. I want Oliver to be… maybe a little bit
sexually ambiguous at least. Can the story lines move closer together? Can we let live an
explicitly queer imagination? That sounds like a lot more fun to me.