Early on in college, I was a big fan of Christian Bale. If I didn’t consider him “the best,” then he was definitely up there. How could he not be? I was following the summer of The Dark Knight (2008) and discovering a period that would be fruitful for him. Two years later, he would win Best Actor for The Fighter (2010), which ranks as one of my favorite wins from my time watching. Looking back, you also had an amazing diversity of roles including American Psycho (2000) and The Machinist (2004) which reflected an actor willing to do anything for a role.
As I found other fans of Bale, we would discuss different movies that I should check out. In 2011, I was told to give Velvet Goldmine (1998) a peek. This was the same friend who outclassed me on Facebook in a pun-based game involving David Bowie song titles. The only reason I wasn’t more discouraged was because glam rock wasn’t really my thing. I understood how Bowie was an icon, but to say I knew more than the hits would be farcical.
So, in 2011, I watched this film that was allegedly based on the careers of Bowie and Iggy Pop. The story goes that The Thin White Duke saw the script and threatened a lawsuit if it so much as alluded to his private life. As a result, the film was at best an amalgamation of a culture and less about an individual. Sure, Bowie was there symbolically in Brian Slade, but it wasn’t his life story. We weren’t getting the Ziggy Stardust experience. Instead, it was Bale playing a reporter looking back on an incident that would not be dissimilar from that era of Bowie’s career. Following a staged (but fake) murder, Bale tries to understand what happened. Why did Slade end that era with an image so violent that it led to public protests and record burnings?
Velvet Goldmine is a film that has lingered in my mind for all the wrong reasons. I think there’s a rooted guilt in how I perceived the film at 22. Up until recently, my Letterboxd reflected a one-star rating that felt very, very petty. Even looking back on a post I wrote on Facebook at the time, I wince a little at my lack of media literacy skills:
Got to say, watching "Velvet Goldmine," I am reminded on how much I believe that glam rock didn't make much sense beyond David Bowie. I understand the theatrics (and some decent music), but the rest really seemed like it was just used as a marketing ploy to be "different" and "misunderstood." Don't get me wrong, I try to be open minded, but if you want to be different, make it stand for something.
I’m sure there are dozens of films that this reputation could apply towards, but few of them necessarily have a similar trajectory. Velvet Goldmine was a film by director Todd Haynes. He’s the same Haynes who created one of my favorite films Carol (2015). It made no sense. The more that I watched, the more that I loved Haynes. Even going back to his early work like Dottie Gets Spanked, you see this unique commentary on New Queer Cinema that was saying something about a much more complicated time for LGBTQIA+ culture. He was personal and self-effacing, finding individuals at odds with the society they were born in. It’s the type of stuff I love. So… why did I hate Velvet Goldmine so much?
Given that this is approaching 13 years ago, the best that I can do is speculate on a memory that’s long faded. Unlike a lot of In Media Res entries, there isn’t this profound zenith that I can look back and say, “That explains everything.” At best, I can say that at 22, I had a very different view of queer culture. I compare it to how reluctant I was to embrace Lady Gaga for years because she was “weird.” To me, being “weird” was less a celebration of identity and more of an excuse to be seen and noticed. You did it to get attention. There wasn’t any greater depth to what you were doing. Everything was performative and hiding something more mundane.
I think this all stemmed from topics I explored in my essay on But I’m a Cheerleader (1999). When I was a teenager, I was into punk music and believed that the only way I could be accepted was to mess with people. Sometimes I’d give thin white lies to others just to amuse myself with their reactions. It was all a game. This isn’t to say that I didn’t crave any chance to wear make-up or discuss cross-dressing, but even in my prose I recognize there was less a celebration of identity and more a push for annoyance. I’d mess with “the normals.” Ultimately, this would lead to years of not being sure I had a real identity, but it explained that my view of the world was to play games with it, not realizing that it may have been revealing truths through exaggeration. Instead, I felt because it was all “fake” to me, then it was all an act for everybody else.
Nowhere is that truer than Velvet Goldmine. Like I’ve said, there is no way to properly say what I took offense at, but I have some theories. For starters, glam rock isn’t my favorite genre. While I’m likely to enjoy a song if I hear it, I don’t go out of my way to put on a record. It seems silly and bombastic in ways that don’t speak to me. As someone who grew up on punk, I was into storytelling and bluntness. Fantasy is ultimately a genre that I struggle to enjoy, and it always felt like glam was stuck on another planet. For example, I think that “Moonage Daydream” is a fun song, but at 22 I would’ve thought it was dumb because I didn’t want to be extraterrestrial. I wanted something much more banal.
On its surface, this remains the big reason that Velvet Goldmine fails to connect with me. Even if Haynes pulls some classics for the soundtrack, the reality is that this is not my style. I watch the stylized music videos and don’t feel entranced by them. The extravagance doesn’t speak to me, nor does the random blue guy wandering around. I get that it’s something queer, but to me, this is a side of gay culture that I’ve struggled to connect with. I get the importance of expression, but I’m still pondering as to how I’m supposed to care. It’s all style to me. It’s lacking a substance. Given that I tend to focus on writing/lyrics first, it’s hard to admire a vulgar form of camp that is mostly showmanship. I see the debauchery on display and a fantastic vision of bisexual hedonism, and yet… I just don’t care. 13 years have passed, and I still struggle to get what’s so great about Brian Slade.
In some respects, I have evolved to recognize that showmanship has its purpose. Androgyny has its place. Seeing someone donned in elaborate make-up and flamboyant gowns is a perfect contrast to conservative culture. It’s thrilling to witness someone confident enough to express a deviance from fashion norms. It’s an ultimate good for culture, and figures like Slade make sense in that manner. Having a man willing to dress a tad feminine and have taboo relationships with men is a great way to normalize attitudes. Not only that, but I’d argue recognizing that this is far from a “contemporary” matter allows for queerness to be seen as something more real and natural. The fact this opens with Oscar Wilde alone suggests the timeline goes even further back.
I think part of my rejection of Velvet Goldmine comes from something much more internalized. Up until fairly recently, and even then, I have had a difficult relationship with masculinity. As an AMAB individual, there are certain rules you’re told that ultimately harm your worldview. There is a need for dominance, to be strong and resourceful. It drew me to nihilistic corners in my early 20s, maybe liking Taxi Driver (1976) while misunderstanding its text. I didn’t realize I was really responding to its cautionary tale of how loneliness can harm us. Instead, it was being a fool who saw themselves as a hero. I needed to learn to open up and be vulnerable, but I couldn’t.
To me, Velvet Goldmine probably was a sign of vulnerability. It made you a target that, as the film showed, could cost you a career. Women could be vulnerable and maternal. They could be the expressive ones. They could kiss and be cheered on while men would get Brokeback Mountain (2005) where audiences joked about breaking the other guy’s back through anal sex. If you were a gay man, you were the flamboyant best friend who was seen by most audiences as a disposable joke. Given that I couldn’t see myself in that way when watching Sex and the City, it made it hard to think that I was queer because it felt more monolithic in the 2000s. You couldn’t be normal-looking.
In all of this, I return to a factor that had plagued me in high school. Because I didn’t see my identity as something to take seriously, I chose to mock it into insignificance. This may have just been a response to the times, but why was I so against my best interest? I think it could be that I don’t come from a family that started at the most tolerant point. Anything that was seen as different was to be questioned. Even in 2011, I don’t think the discussion of queerness was where it is now. Looking at old journal entries, I’ve discovered some less-than-favorable comments about transgender culture. I imagine the idea of blurring boundaries was difficult for me to process. As a result, I probably watched Velvet Goldmine and rejected it because I didn’t see something recognizable, or more importantly, logical.
And so I rewatched it with hopes of getting a greater understanding of why this film didn’t click with me. Around 2018 when it celebrated its 20th anniversary, I recall someone posting the scene of Bale pointing to a TV of Slade and saying “That’s me!” and writing an essay about how it was a pivotal film about understanding one’s sexuality. In that sense, I can respect where that writer was coming from. The only other difference was that since 2011, I followed David Bowie’s sudden death by having a trans woman give me a list of albums to check out that made me appreciate his cultural impact. This isn’t to say I was a glam rock fan, but it did make “Blackstar” hit like a ton of bricks. That, and I am much more open to genderqueer ideology and celebrating fashion existing beyond the conventional.
On the one hand, I totally can see what this film does right. Haynes more than anyone understands the thorny challenge of being gay in the 20th century. Slade’s career could’ve just as much imploded as it did excel because of who he was. I’ve read essays suggesting that this film is as much about self-expression as it is the commodification by mainstream culture, and I think that read is interesting. However, I still am taken aback by the artifice of everything. Even in its intentional nature, the idea of watching the film slowly becomes more stilted and fantastical never sits right with me and Slade becomes less sincere and recognizable as things evolve. Given that there’s Bale’s arc on top of this, nothing is playing out in a timely manner. It wants to frame itself like a gay Citizen Kane (1941) with multiple interviews, but you forget about the framework so often that it never feels sure of itself or what it’s saying about the character talking. Others have suggested that it’s the equivalent of a fever dream, but it’s not enough for me. Still, having a film that uses tabloid headlines use “He’s gay!” as a derogative reminds me of growing up with Lance Bass doing something similar. It may have not killed either of their careers, but it does feel like they each ended up much smaller than they wanted.
That may be the big difference between Bowie and Slade. Bowie would live another 18 years and produce even greater work. Still, somewhere in the story of breaking down myth, we still don’t get a sense of who Slade was. We can assume a lot, and I’m sure some get plenty out of that. However, I think Haynes is more interested in how Bale comes to terms with his own homosexuality than anything to do with glam rock. I think it’s about finding community and feeling welcomed by people who act and dress like you. In that regard, the ending of Velvet Goldmine is beautiful. I love the sentiment of ending with a tribute to those who have passed because, much like Wilde, their legacy will live on thanks to everyone who stood in that room and felt something.
More than anything, Velvet Goldmine deserves major points for going against the grain of queer cinema of the time. When Boys Don’t Cry (1999) came out the following year and marked the only significant FTM trans story to be nominated for Oscars, it focused on the brutal death of its subject. Velvet Goldmine may exist in tragedy, but it’s not of tragedy itself. It’s very much a celebration of identity and discovering oneself in the art that helped define a life. As I become more aware of the celluloid closet and the bury your gays trope, there is something that always makes me feel happy to see gay characters get to be happy… even if I don’t actually like the movie in question.
The truth is that I’ve wanted to write an In Media Res essay on this movie for months now, especially since Haynes’ latest May December (2023) came out. It felt like a good chance to revisit this sore thumb in my movie history. I didn’t even feel comfortable trusting my own opinion all these years later because I had changed as a person so much since those days. Whatever animosity I had at the time I assumed was a byproduct of intolerance or ignorance. I still imagine there was a part of me that was actively insecure about what I was seeing. If nothing else, it would speak volumes of how much the tide has changed in the years since.
Beyond everything I’ve said, I think that Velvet Goldmine has aged very well. If you can get past the Bowie/Pop elements, you’ll see a conversation that is still going on. With recent rainbow capitalism conversations and false accusations of gay people brainwashing kids, the idea of a media cycle being driven by the paranoia around Slade’s identity is unfortunately still relevant. As much as being gay isn’t that much of a career killer anymore, there still exists the sense that art as a medium is returning to something more conservative and less expressive. Even then, I think the greater point of Slade’s rebellious spirit eventually being assimilated and repurposed by mainstream creators speaks to how many want to treat individuals now.
I get the film on those grounds. Haynes has thankfully done little to nothing to bow to corporate overlords. He makes the cinema he wants and does a fantastic job with them. However, I still think Velvet Goldmine is a manic mess that mostly endures off of its oddities. I would say that my issue is that I’m not into glam rock, but then I look at Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) and see a musical that I absolutely adore because it feels honest and visceral. It’s saying something authentic to its characters. Even in the echelon of New Queer Cinema, I much prefer how Orlando (1992) explores identity over time. Maybe I say this to cover my butt from accusations of intolerance, but I think it’s just the reality that not every movie appeals to every person. Once I can accept that, I think I can come to appreciate what Velvet Goldmine does very right. I’m glad this movie speaks to someone and I hope it encouraged them to be their better self. For me, it was just another night of speculative fiction.
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