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07/15/2010

'NY Post' columnist: 'Kids' the one she loathes

by Jeremy Hooper

First of all, she's factually wrong in just her second paragraph:

In the first frames of the new flick "The Kids Are All Right," two boys snort coke

Bullcrapballs! It's not coke. The "bad" friend crushes up some pills (Adderall, I believe) and uses peer pressure to convince the "good" kid to snort it. It's a one-time thing -- something the "good" kid clearly doesn't really want to do. And its made clear throughout the film that the "bad" kid is seen as bad news. Not as a monolithic stand-in for bad men everywhere -- just a stand-in for one this one particular "bad" kid.

But why should any fact get in the way of New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser's truly gross attempt to paint The Kids Are All Right as a propaganda film (a "brazen attempt at trend-setting," in fact) that's out to destroy America? After all, she clearly has her own pre-set agenda to fulfill:

Choose your lifestyle wisely, moviegoers. For this film is set to go down in history as the first major motion picture to make a family led by gay women -- A-lister Annette Bening, as the control-freak doctor Nic, "wed" to A-lister Julianne Moore, as the weepy, infantilized Jules -- seem not just normal, but close to godly.



It reaches further than the gay-cowboy romp "Brokeback Mountain," whose characters maintained a sense of otherness while shielding the kids from their shenanigans. In this movie, exposing kids is the entire point.



And this is how Hollywood does an end run around morality.



"Hollywood has set the stage for the gay agenda, nothing new," said Laura Bailey, Brooklyn mom of two boys. "Why do you think they did propaganda films in the 1940s? They're setting the new norm."



"The movie industry is doing its best to undermine the American family," said Patricia Whitehead, Connecticut mom of two girls. "Hollywood -- we don't care about the sick lives you lead behind closed doors. Just don't bring children into it."

...

It doesn't take a genius to glean the truth: Folks are happy with gays living together. But bringing children into the equation is a deal-breaker.

*Read more: 'The Kids' are not all right [NY Post]

So hostile. So overreaching in its grandiose, ham-fisted lumping ("Hollywood"; "American family"; "gays" in general). But where Peyser is most wrong: In her basic thesis stating that the film tries to make the on-screen family seem "close to godly." That could not be further from the reality of this script! The whole point of the film seems to be that this family and these parents are as mixed and messy and flawed and good and weak and right and wrong and EVERYTHING as any other American family! In fact, the crucial plot line revolving around broken trust (with which we had our own problems) makes this couple seem in some ways more troubled than many other American families (even though, tellingly, Peyser saw the straight affair as the "only hot and natural relief to this movie's stifling awkwardness"). This is not a glamour shot of a lesbian family in ANY WAY -- it's a realistic portrait of one specific family!

This is what makes Peyser's assessment so much worse. If we were talking about the kind of over-the-top rom-com that fills so many cinemas, then her point about there being some kind of mythical element would be somewhat more salient. But as actuality stands, it 100% seems like Peyser went into this film with her piece already written, and what went on in the 2 hours while she was in that darkened room mattered as much to her as did finding gay-supportive locals to send her some soundbites! Bad, bad form, Andrea Peyser.

***

**UPDATE from Chris Geidner, with specific emphasis on Peyser's quoted therapist: Parenting Questions [Metro Weekly]

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