GANDOLFINI IS A GOD

Forget Brad Pitt. James Gandolfini is the sexiest man alive. He’s also a much better actor than Pitt, as anyone who has seen “The Mexican,” can attest. I saw it last night and concluded that the culture war over homosexuality is over. Sorry, Gary Bauer. We won. You can’t see a TV show or a movie these days without some non-stereotypical homo stealing every scene. This is just a phase in our popular culture, of course, and it will probably die down. But what a relief from the days of Ellen, where homosexuality became the only thing the series was about – and homosexuality itself was some horrible, generic ‘lifestyle’ with a fully accessorized politics to boot. Gandolfini’s portrayal of a mobster homosexual couldn’t be more different. In a couple of hours, he just about destroys every anti-gay shibboleth you can dream of. Gandolfini’s Leroy is gruff and dangerous and masculine and effective. He has a waistline even Richard Hatch would worry about. He has casual sex but he isn’t immune to love. He murders but it isn’t a function of any homosexual pathology. Yep, he does suffer the fate of most gay men in movies – he’s dead soon enough. But since the cast of “The Mexican” ends up pretty much like the cast of “Hamlet,” that’s not saying much. And then the same actor pulls off his brilliance again in “The Sopranos,” this time as a straight mobster. More and more, it seems, the categories are less interesting than the human beings they are trying to describe. More and more, gayness doesn’t usurp someone’s humanity – it’s just a part of it. It has taken centuries and decades for our culture to reflect this reality. And as the culture also stops forcing gay men and women into defensive roles, their gayness will recede even further and their ‘normalization’ intensify. This is the real reason gay civil equality is inevitable. Reality bites – and liberates.