Why "The Power of the Dog" Is NOT a Queer film, Recognizing Toxic Positivity

Why “The Power of the Dog” Is NOT a Queer film

I follow NBC Out on social media and I was surprised to see that they were sharing information about Oscar nominations for that awful movie, The Power of the Dog, and they were referring to it as a “Queer Film.”

It’s only a Queer film to straight people. But most gay men should know the difference. First, the film is a product of Jane Campion who is not a gay man. This is Campion’s interpretation of gay men on a ranch. And it’s not totally accurate. Campion portrays her allegedly gay characters as dark, dismal people, which is the typical stereotype that non-gay men use whenever they write about gay men. What’s most interesting is that Campion based the film on a book by Thomas Savage…a straight man married to the same woman for many years.

Of course, the word gay wasn’t used back then, but whenever I research the topic of gay men in the old west I find articles like this one…

The most surprising thing about homosexuality in the Old West is not that it was rare in the rugged, macho world of the cowboy, but that it was so common and so not a big deal.

Here’s more about this topic.

Here’s another link about gay men in the old west.

With that said, The Power of the Dog is truly not a Queer or a Gay film. It’s more of a self-indulgent long-drawn-out heteronormative mess that tries to be deep and meaningful but winds up amateurish.

I think what really bothers me the most is that once again non-gay men have hijacked gay content and taken gay culture as their own. And as long as we allow this to happen, it’s not going to stop.

Recognizing Toxic Positivity

I am a firm believer in the power of positivity. I really do believe in living my life that way. But there are limits and I think too many people out there these days aren’t aware of these limits. If you are able to recognize toxic positivity you can at least know how to deal with it. And there is so much of it going around on social media from some very insincere people.

Toxic positivity takes positive thinking to an overgeneralized extreme. This attitude doesn’t just stress the importance of optimism, it minimizes and denies any trace of human emotions that aren’t strictly happy or positive.

Here’s the rest. They go on to give some excellent examples of toxic positivity. It’s really an excellent piece.

On Amazon

Stepbrothers in the Attic

On Amazon

Reader Reviews: This is the first of its kind not only a gay retelling of Flowers in the Attic but the first of any kind of retelling of any of the V.C. Andrews books. Usually, two fears strike for fans of any book that is going to get a new twist.