In the touching, award-winning short “James,” by writer-director Connor Clements, a young Irish lad feels like an outsider at home and at school. When he finally confides his burgeoning feelings to a favorite teacher, the result is not what he expected. Niall Wright, who played James, garnered praise for his performance in this role and others.
arjuna52
That was a downer.
Dave
Reality sucks. I wish society would allows us to “normalize” our lives. Then our young gays and lesbians would not be damaged like this clip shows. Normalizing would mean that the teacher would have had a chance to help. But today, he would be under threat.
Here is a video I took part in. It speaks to the normalization I am talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibVlVzGI9y0&feature=share
SteveC
That’s a very sad film. And it tells a harsh truth about how we treat our gay teens – we isolate them, and we close down access to help, for them.
Adrian
I like the video about the other loner youth Queerty posted much more
http://www.queerty.com/watch-how-can-we-add-some-funny-to-this-onion-satire-of-a-bullied-gay-teen-20120309/
At least the kid from the Onion video was “ok” being alone. The gay kid in this movie feels so alone that he rather get in cars with strangers. Not a smart cookie.
Good thing they are both fictional characters.
Codswallop
I thought it was very true to life. The Talking Heads poster on his wall and the old model Macintosh computer on the teacher’s desk place this in the late 80s, when I was the same age as this character and I made the same decisions he did. Smart? No, but it was easy and there didn’t seem to be a lot of other options.
And even though society has changed since then we’ve allowed the Religious Right and the Republican Party to pass laws like the one in Utah that forbids teachers from doing ANYTHING to help gay students so things are the same for gay youth now as they were then, though for different reasons.
Greg
This takes place in Ireland and in a “public” (private) Catholic school. It’s not surprising. The teacher is correct and in many cases as a teacher you really can’t do anything for LGBT students or even straight students.
The whole Chickenhawk thing was creepy and men like that are disgusting and at least the teenage main character ran away like he should have but it was gross how he got into a total chickenhawk stranger’s car at the end.