Rami Malek as rock icon Freddie Mercury in the upcoming film “Bohemian Rhapsody.” (Twentieth Century Fox/New Regency)
In the South, we have a place called Zaxby’s and they serve buffalo wings in 4 flavors- “wimpy”, “tongue-torched”, “nuclear” and “insane”. Each flavor obviously increases in spice and therefore heat on your taste buds. It is with this delicious metaphor that I would love to explore a debate that I am observing with the film, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY. Let me disclaim that I am not an authority on Freddie Mercury and his sexuality, so this is less about how accurate the film is to his story and more a look at what we really might be debating underneath it all.
“How Christian is Christian enough?” and “How gay is gay enough?” can look a lot alike on film. There was a season of my life when I worked with writers of faith who wanted to blend their faith with their storytelling. The question always came up as to what made something “Christian.” I realized two things really quickly: 1) Everyone…and I mean everyone had a different idea of how Christian is Christian enough and 2) what they really were after was how much and how good faith was represented on film. As a way to deal with this constant debate, what emerged for me was my Zaxby’s buffalo wings metaphor.
When a person who wants insane wings gets tongue-torched wings, they view it as being watered down. Likewise, there are people who would never think of getting nuclear wings, whose pallet can only handle wimpy. If you think of the spice in the wing sauce as faith representation, or in the case of BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, gay representation, you can understand that some people just want their wings spicier and some people just want their wings not as spicy as others.
How does a wing get spicier in terms of film? By adding more representation. For example, many of the subcultural Christian movies like GOD IS NOT DEAD are insane wings to a lot of people. Most of the characters are Christians and the movie represents faith in what they do, how they talk and what jobs they have in great quantity. You see churches, pastors, praying and ultimately proselytizing. However, there are those Christians who would say that GOD IS NOT DEAD is tongue-torched to them, while they might view a movie like THE BLIND SIDE as wimpy, even though you get full-frontal Christianity with the character of Leigh Ann Tuhouy who doesn’t shy away from faith language throughout the film.
With BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, I think the gay representation is playing out much in the same way. For some people, this film as it is would be nuclear wings, as far as seeing a film about a gay man who expresses his sexuality both verbally and actively throughout much of the film. They may have expected to see a film about a famous rock band and got something way spicier than their pallet could take. On the other hand, you have many critics of the film who call the movie “straight-washing” or “de-queering” Freddie Mercury’s life. I can’t speak for them, but I would imagine that the problem lies in not being faithful to Mercury’s real story and sexuality. It would be the equivalent of making a movie about Billy Graham and leaving out the magnitude and details of how his faith played out in his life. However, to do this, the film would need more gay representation, where we see more and hear more of Mercury’s sexuality in greater quantity. The reality, for good or bad is that the more faith or gay representation, the more you take a film from Zaxby’s most popular wing sauce of tongue-torched(yes, I asked) to an insane wing that may not be consumed by the masses. Which brings me to the real question- is it good chicken?
I wonder if much of the current debate around BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY is surrounds dismissing a film that is actually good chicken but isn’t the right wing sauce for many critics of the film. You see, with Christian films, most of the time it’s not the spiciness of the wings that is the problem only. It’s exacerbated by the fact that they are poorly made chicken. With BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, I don’t feel like this is the case. Scott Derrickson, director of DOCTOR STRANGE and other films, found himself in a twitter storm when he tweeted, “I really enjoyed BOHEMIAN RHAPSODAY. Most of the criticism I’ve read about the film say it could’ve been something more. But I refuse to judge a film by I wanted it to be, I receive it for what it is.” Derrickson seems to express a desire for critics to not give a film bad reviews just because the wings were not your flavor of spiciness but instead to acknowledge the film as good chicken first. I tend to agree. In this age where rotten tomato scores drive box office, I think causing a person to not attend a film just because a film is not spicy enough for you does a disservice to people who might like the chicken or who need to expand their pallet from wimpy to tongue-torched faith representation or gay representation.
And finally, the reason I like BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY is something that all films should strive to give us more of- universality. In this divided culture we live in, shouldn’t we celebrate films that allow us all to find our story within them. For me, as a human being, I found myself haunted by the loneliness and aching for love I felt from Rami Malek’s portrayal of Freddie Mercury. I cannot shake the image of Mercury alone in his huge cat-filled mansion turning off and on his lamp with no similar response from “the love of his life”, Mary. It is a beautiful representation of what it feels like as human being to need one another. I am not advocating for films to not explore subcultures and lives with great specificity and detail. Often times this is where we find the most universality. I am advocating for understanding our own biases that naturally cause us to want more or less from films, and therefore, with Scott Derrickson, I agree that sometimes it’s enough to take a film for what it is and just have some good chicken.
Bryan Coley, Chief Creative Officer, REEL EXPERIENCES
