The film, Far from Heaven
(2002), centers around a woman whose husband turns out to be gay. That this is
set in 1957-1958 in socialite Connecticut is all the more telling, as the
Caucasian woman finds her groundskeeper, who is a Black man, to be “beautiful.”
The film is arguably a remake, or at least informed by, the film All that Heaven Allows (1955), in which a widow begins dating a younger, muscular
man who tends to her trees. Although race and homosexuality are not issues in
this earlier film (which, after all, was made in the 1950s), that a woman who
socializes with friends who belong to a country club in New England would dare
to date a younger man of a lower economic class—albeit not as low as the
woman’s son and friends stereotypically suppose—was scandalous enough in the 1950s
to furnish a tantalizing plot. That a filmmaker in 2002 could get away with
portraying an interracial extra-marital sexual interest and a gay or
bisexual husband having anonymous sex with men (even showing the husband
kissing one of the men), whereas a filmmaker in 1955 would not have been able
to get away with including such taboos (much less making them central), says
something about the cultural trajectory of western civilization temporally.
By 2002, American society had changed
markedly since the late 1960s, which ushered in the Black, women, and gay
rights movements. Also, film censorship had let up appreciably since 1955. From
the standpoint of the early 2020s, even American ideological culture in 2002
could be looked back at as antiquated. As one indicator, gay sex had
increasingly come to be shown in film. The European film, Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo
(2016), for example, begins in a gay bathhouse and shows the two men with
frontal and back nudity having anal sex. Such a film would have been
unthinkable even in 2002, and without a doubt back in 1955. In 2023, it was not
clear whether such explicit displays were at the forefront in an evolution of
freedom or a manifestation of lude displays going too far.
To be sure, American society as a
whole cannot be said to have shifted so dramatically. This is evident because
after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the court’s Roe v. Wade (1973)
decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022),
restrictions on abortions were enacted in several member states. Regarding
state-level legislation pushing back on gay rights, at least 417 bills had been
introduced in state legislatures as of April 3, 2023 for that year, with a
focus on banning access to gender-changing health care for minors and
regulating curriculum in public schools.[1]
Because discussion of sexual identity
has been subject to bans, significant resistance to pro-transsexual material in
films would exist even twenty years after Far from Heaven was made.
To homogenize the U.S., moreover,
is to ignore the very different centers of gravity geographically in the
various states in regard to the ideological “culture wars.” The “woke,” or identity-politics
ideological movement, was also getting some push-back in the early 2020s. The
resistance objected especially to the restriction of freedom of speech that ironically
undercut the progressive claim of a Hegelian expansion of freedom since the 1950s
in America. Indeed, the hegemony of group-identity ideology could be said to
have become oppressive by 2023, dominating interpretations of cultural objects,
including films.
Notwithstanding the
politically-correct topics of race and sexual
orientation in Far from Heaven, I contend that the film’s message transcends
identity-politics to something about the human condition regarding emotionally
intimate human relationships. Cathy
and Frank Whitaker do not exactly present a loving marriage, and he
does not seem to enjoy his work. In contrast, Raymond Deagan, their Black
gardener who actually owns his own business and is educated at least in
art-culture, is at peace enough that he ventures out to Cathy in friendship and
perhaps more. Her sexual attraction to him is more apparent, and she becomes
the driving force for any romantic relationship after Frank leaves her to be
with a man. Before then, Frank is having sex with men anonymously, and rather
than being comfortable with his homosexuality, it is a cause of mental
anguish—especially since a psychiatrist advocates “conversion” therapy as if it
were medical science. Cultural convention, including even ideology, thus makes
use of natural science albeit without the latter’s empirical basis. Frank is in
inner turmoil, and, meanwhile, that both Cathy and Raymond are the targets of
mean stares and worse in public renders even a platonic relationship
problematic. In a drunken rage, Frank angrily forbids his wife from having
anything to do with that black man even though Frank’s homosexuality is perhaps
even more societally taboo at the time. To be sure, in the 1950s, Connecticut
law forbid both miscegenation (interracial marriage) and homosexuality. Even
birth-control was illegal! In fact, it was not until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme
Court struck down the Connecticut law that criminalized the use of birth
control.
Bracketing the taboos of miscegenation and homosexuality (especially as
adultery), however, we can zero in on the human relationships involved in terms
of emotional intimacy. Just before Frank and Cathy break up, she indicates the
emotional toll on her from Frank’s pattern of secrecy. Regardless of the
specific content of the secrets, secrecy itself decimates the emotional intimacy of a relationship. Trust is
absolutely fundamental. Even the relationship—even just in terms of
friendship—between Cathy and Raymond can be critiqued on the basis of trust.
Race is the context rather than the content here. Neither Cathy
nor Raymond trusts the other enough to feel protected in the other’s world. To
be sure, both worlds are segregated, but the matter can be generalized to that
of trusting the other person to stand up in the midst of push-back from the
other person’s social acquaintances.
In All that Heaven Allows, the younger man, Ron, does not trust the
widow, Carie, not only to fend off her judgmental socialite acquaintances, but
also to not care what they think or say. Ron doesn’t care what people think
about him; he is comfortable in his own skin. Carie capitulates to the
prejudice of her country-club friends and even her college-aged son and
daughter, and thus justifies Ron’s lack of trust. Race and homosexuality are
not in the picture, literally! Even the “younger man” and economic prejudices,
which are salient in that film, pale in comparison to whether Carie and Ron
trust each other enough to commit to starting a new life together. For Carie,
that means leaving the house that she had had with her husband and kids, and
all the security that a familiar surrounding offers even after the others have
lived there. Ron, his friends, and his country house are so different from the
life that Carie knows that she has trouble trusting Ron enough to make the
leap. In short, the issue is trust, which is necessary for emotional intimacy,
rather than age or economic class.
Race, homosexuality, age, and money are each capable of stirring up angst and prejudice, but more fundamental is the question of whether two people trust each other enough to have emotional intimacy. For without that, any relationship, of whatever color and stripe, is doomed or otherwise just a perpetuated shell within which two people escape life. Frank lies to Cathy in continuing to have sex with men. What is striking is that as he does so, she senses that he is keeping secrets. As Rose Castorini, Loretta’s mother in Moonstruck (1987), says of cheaters, eventually the other person in the relationship finds out. Her husband, Cosmo, a plumber, has been having an affair with Mona. “I want you to stop seeing her,” Rose tells him at the breakfast table with the rest of the family present. Cosmo “comes clean”—all he needs to say is, “Okay!”—because he knows that Rose really knows him, and therein lies the intimacy. In contrast, Cathy does not know Frank, and he does not know her. In bracketing identity politics, we can directly contrast the two couples without getting distracted and thus get a snapshot of what is essential for human relationships. Life without emotional intimacy is like living in a hollow shell far from heaven. So in the end, it doesn’t matter that Raymond is Black and Frank is gay; to get caught up on these attributes of the characters is to neglect the more fundamental point that trust is vital to any emotionally and physically intimate relationship. To borrow Nietzsche’s expression, we are all human, all too human.
1. Annette Choi, “Record
Number of Anti-LGBTQ Bills Have Been Introduced This Year,” CNN.com, April
6, 2023 (accessed December 13, 2023).
