The Birdcage
Yes, I wear foundation. Yes, I live with a man. Yes, I'm a middle-aged fag. But I know who I am, Val. It took me twenty years to get here, and I'm not gonna let some idiot senator destroy that.
Last year, for the first Monday of Pride Month, I covered Howard, a Disney documentary on Howard Ashman, who I believe was the heart of Disney’s 90s renaissance. Before transitioning into my Summer series at the end of this month, I decided to continue dedicating the first newsletter of Pride Month to a film that celebrates the LGBTQI+ community. This year, I chose The Birdcage.
What I love so much about this film is the story Nathan Lane, who plays Albert, told Willie Geist about his co-star and comedy legend, Robin Williams. At the time, Lane wasn’t publicly out of the closet, but in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the former talk show host asked him if he thought his role in the film would have the public questioning his sexuality or influence type casting from Hollywood. Quickly, Williams jumped in to deflect. This friendship and bond played nicely into the film and its overall message about authenticity and family.
The Inspiration Behind The Birdcage
The Birdcage, written by Elaine May and directed by Mike Nichols, was adapted from the French film La Cage aux Folles, which translates to The Cage of Madwomen in English. The film was an adaptation itself of a 1973 French play of the same name. On August 21st, 1983, La Cage aux Folles opened on Broadway as a musical with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman and a book by Harvey Fierstein.
Hiding & Inauthenticity
The main message I took from The Birdcage is that everyone should be able to embrace their most authentic selves without someone else's judgmental opinion telling them that there is something morally wrong with who they are. In The Birdcage, Val's decision to marry a woman (Barbara), whose father is a conservative politician puts his own father, Armand, a gay man who owns a Miami drag club and is in a relationship with a man, in an uncomfortable position.
Throughout the film, we see how Barbara and Val go to extremes to lie about Val's family, turning his father into a cultural attaché instead of a nightclub owner and even redecorating the whole house to make it less gay. While Val loves his father, a part of him seems very ashamed of who his father is. Even if he's only trying to impress his soon-to-be wife's family so they can be together, his desire to hide his truth stems from a much deeper place.
There's a scene where Val reminds Armand that when he was in kindergarten, he told Val that if his teacher asked what his father did for a living, he should tell her he was a businessman. Armand explained he did this because he believed Val's teacher to be "small-minded" and didn't want the fact that he was gay and owned a drag club to affect him in school. However, unknowingly, he instilled into his son that who he is and what he did for a living was shameful and should be hidden from others, even if he intended to protect Val.
Despite Armand having to pretend to be a straight man married to Val's biological mother, who didn't arrive for the family dinner in time, resulting in Albert dressing up in drag to play the role of Val's mom, the film dives into the ways all of us try to conceal our truth to appeal to others. Barbara's parents might desperately want the world to believe they are the perfect All-American family, but this is far from the truth.
In fact, her father, Kevin Keeley, is in the midst of a scandal as the co-founder of his conservative group called the Coalition for Moral Order was recently found dead in bed with an underage Black sex worker. This is a disaster for Kevin and his image, and he and his wife think that if the world finds out that his daughter is marrying into a good family, it will take attention off the scandal. On top of hiding from Barbara's parents that Armand is gay, Val also lies about their religion, changing their last name from Goldman to Coleman so no one knows they're Jewish.
The film goes much deeper than just sexuality but the many ways society tells us we are tarnished. To Kevin's standards, a good American must be wealthy, have an impressive job, have good family values–he even applauds Armand for never having been divorced, be Christian, and of course, be in a heterosexual marriage. All the while, Kevin's public image is crumbling because no one, even the most conservative senator, can upkeep with these ridiculous standards, and by trying to, you are caging yourself.
As Hal Hinson wrote for his movie review in The Washington Post: "While politicians like Keeley talk a good game of family values, it's Armand and his nontraditional clan who have the stable home life. They are a family."
Val & Barbara VS Their Families
The second strongest message I got out of The Birdcage was about family and the lengths we will go to protect and please the ones we love. In 2017, Lane said of the film's legacy, "It's ultimately about family, what you do for your family, why you love your family even though they drive you crazy. Then, ultimately—not to sound corny—it's about love. It's about love in both families and coming to accept one another in their differences."
Armand is initially insulted by Val's requests to please Barbara's family, but he goes along with the plan anyway because he loves his son and wants him to be happy. No matter how disrespectful Val acts toward his father and his lifestyle, Armand is willing to go to extremes, even contacting Val's biological mother to get her to play along with the plan, because, at the end of the day, he doesn't want Val to have to end his relationship with the woman he loves because of who he is.
Even though the plan is exposed by the end of the film, and I don't condone hiding who you are to appeal to other people, I still find it heartwarming to see what families will do for each other. As Lane said, this message resonates with so many people, not just the LGBTQIA+ community, because it's universal, which is what makes it so powerful.
“Life’s Not Worth A Damn, Til You Can Shout Out I Am What I Am”
Among Hilary Duff and all the music played on New York’s top station, Z100, I was raised listening to classic Disco because my mom loved disco, especially Gloria Gaynor. While “I Will Survive” is her most well-known hit and is undoubtedly a gay anthem in its own right, her song “I Am What I Am” resonates most with the LGBTQIA+ community and even those not in the community, myself included.
I wish this song had been played in The Birdcage, as, despite being recorded by Gloria Gaynor, it was introduced in the Broadway musical adaptation of La Cage aux Folles. For me, this is the moral of the film. As the lyric, “life’s not worth a damn, til you can shout out I am what I am,” best puts it, life is not worth living if you have to hide who you are. The best part is while reading the comments on the YouTube upload of Gaynor’s performance of the song, hundreds of comments seemed to say the same thing; whether gay or not, people all over the world have related to the feeling of having to lock their truth away in a closet out of fear of what others might think of them. This song tells us instead, we must embrace who we truly are to live freely.
This perfect all-American persona Kevin Keeley promotes in the film doesn’t exist, not even within his own family. This may seem like a bold statement, but I believe the people who need this song more than anyone are the homophobes and the lawmakers trying to put restrictions on drag performers, acting as if these things are somehow a danger to society. I learned genuine authenticity from the LGBTQIA+ community, and I always believed the ones who stand against the community are threatened by their authenticity because they haven’t fully accepted themselves.
I wouldn’t try to tell someone else how to raise their kids or what they should or shouldn’t expose their children to, but for the parents who were in an uproar over the idea of children being around drag queens, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are more dangerous men in this world for children to be around than ones dressed up as women lip syncing to Cher songs. What I hope everyone can get out of this week’s newsletter is to be more open-minded and accepting of others, which becomes incredibly easy to do the more you are open-minded and accepting of yourself.