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Death at a Funeral is a film that connects with the Carry On tradition with a touch of Benny Hill. Forget any thoughts of political correctness as the incontinent elderly shit themselves, persons of restricted height and homosexuals are the butt of seaside postcard insensitive jokes. A dead body falling in and out of the coffin provides the catalyst for the basic plot.
Briefly, the setting is a funeral service in the living room of a smallish stately home as the grieving family, at odds with each other, assemble for the ceremony. A mystery guest, self evidently a dwarf, attempts to blackmail the corpse’s sons with the threat to reveal compromising photos of himself and the body having sex unless money changes hands. The family drug the dwarf with what turns out to be a home produced hallucinogenic cocktail.
The dwarf knocks himself out and is believed to be dead. Whilst the congregation are outside in the garden watching a naked man on the roof threatening suicide having also partaken of the same drug believing it to be mild valium, the dwarf is put in the coffin in the 69 position. Unfortunately he comes round during the service, knocking on the coffin lid, shocking everyone when it is lifted. When the photos are delivered there is much Daily Mail homophobic prejudice revealed as elderly relatives disapprove of gay sexual antics. Er, basically that’s it.
The subplots involves the sons arguing about paying for the funeral and being jealous about their literary successes as novelists; there is an element of farce as drug-crazed characters upset the decorum of the occasion with silly behaviour; Jane Asher as the glamorous grieving widow has a touch of the vapours when the corpse falls out of the coffin and of course she never, ever, suspected her husband was gay.
This is a film of slight merit and you would probably only want to go and see it on a wet winter’s afternoon in a deserted seaside resort when everything else was closed down. It is annoying that limp jokes about poofs are repeated and gay sex is seen as a perversion. But clearly there is still a market for such cinematic dinosaurs and this is to be regretted.
Even on mainstream TV the demeaning stereotype of gay characters is still alive and kicking even in Coronation Street. Sean just seems twitter around, camply ineffective, incapable of doing much beyond gossip and failing to develop a mature relationship. Even Norris has more backbone as a character. When gay Todd returns for the wedding, having failed to sustain a relationship in London his role seems to just involve sitting around looking overweight. There is deafening silence about his sexual orientation and the reasons that drove from the street. Some dramatic opportunities have been lost here as neither character have been given interesting storylines to develop. But perhaps the script writers might consider outing a gay twist to the machinations of Devil Child David? A malevolent gay is preferable to a bland gay?
The notion that male ballet dancers are invariably queer is a persistent stereotype. This was refreshingly and totally ignored in one of Alan Yentob’s programmes in the Images series on BBC1 when it looked at the burgeoning career of 15 year old Henry Perkins who is on a scholarship to the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. The focus was on the gruelling training routine for young dancers and the relentless demand for artistic perfection without compromise. Henry is an extremely articulate and reflective young person who understands that his dancing success comes from hard work. He accepts his bullying teacher’s injunction that nothing else matters in life other that being a first class dancer. The programme showed endless shots of the young dancers at the barre in the studio. There is no discussion of Henry’s life in Moscow and how he copes with a different culture part from a brief mention of his loneliness at missing Christmas at home with his family. Yentob brings him a bag of Mars Bars as a present. But everything turns out rosy in the end. Henry’s motivation and creativity improve after the winter gloom and he seems set on a future career with the Bolshoi. He is sick of parallels with Billy Elliott. His family is thoroughly supportive and no reference was made to any problems in the playground he might have faced in pursuing his dancing interests since the age of five.
Film and TV images powerfully inform popular perceptions of queer culture and there can be no assumption that toleration has effectively replaced homophobic prejudice. We do need to be active in confronting stereotypes by perhaps turning off offending programmes, not going to unsuitable films or complaining to programme makers. Whingeing in the safety of a gay club is probably not very productive.
But there is a heretical final thought - that well behaved, suburban gays, daily commuting to admin jobs in offices, mowing the lawns and pegging out the washing is perhaps taking normality a bit too far?
Nick Tyldesley
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