Gay voice documentary
David Thorpe’s documentary, “Do I Sound Gay?” is a bit less blunt than its title, but it is just as provocative. It explores the notion of one’s voice being a signifier for one’s sexuality, raising some interesting observations about why that is, and whether it is even true. The film scratches a lot of surfaces, never venturing too far down the intriguing paths it divulges. However, what it does explore makes it a satisfying, lighthearted look at one man’s find for perceived vocal machismo.
Up front, Thorpe admits that many gay men influence aspects of what could be considered the “standard gay voice.” He recalls a visit to Fire Island where, en route, he noticed how his fellow commuters spoke. In some ways, the similarities in everyone’s cadences annoyed him. Making matters worse, he has just broken up with a boyfriend who decided he wanted someone more “straight-sounding” than anybody on the coach, Thorpe included.
As examples of the compassionate of voice Thorpe is discussing, “Do I Sound Gay?” brings in Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly. The former delivers a “Hollywood Squar
DAVID SEDARIS [RIGHT] WITH PARTNER HUGH HAMRICK IN DO I SOUND GAY?
A lively but not-too-deep American look at what seeming homosexual means
In David Mitchell's semi-autobiographical novel Black Swan Green,set in , the year-old protagonist Jason Taylor is by his possess admission (and self-aware analysis) only a middle-status boy in his school who's shy and has a stammer. For Jason many things he might love to do, such as admit he writes poetry, are off limits because, in the eyes of his contemporaries, that is, they're "gay." It doesn't mean gay, really, more like wimpy, goofy, not macho. Not accepted by the crowd.
But it may be hard to distinguish between "gay" and gay. Even grownup openly gay guys are worried about seeming "gay," it turns out. Following a breakup with his boyfriend (and perhaps in require of a unused direction) David Thorpe began to contemplate about his voice, and how he was unhappy with it. And so he made this debut filmmaking endeavor, a little documentary in which he works through this problem, or tries to, for himself and the screen audience. The product isn't
Do I Sound Gay? Looks at the Lisp
A home video of me exists, stashed somewhere in my parents’ collection of family memorabilia, in which I recite a portion of the Christmas story in front of our church. I am dressed as a shepherd. I gesticulate reverently toward the manger. I declaim my lines with confidence and grace and good God almighty, carry out I sound gay.
There was a verb in my life when I would cringe at recordings like this, finding my slippery S’s and skip-to-my-loo enunciation (which, as is true for many gay men, persisted even after speech therapy as a kindergartener) somehow embarrassing. I was gay, sure, but did everyone need to know it as soon as I said hel-ooo? This self-consciousness has faded as I’ve moved through my 20s, to the aim that when I hear myself now—say, on Outward’s adj podcast pilot—I actually kind of dig my voice. But plenty of gay men still shudder at the sounds coming out of their mouths, and one in particular—journalist David Thorpe—decided to make a documentary about it.
In Do I Sound Gay?Thorpe embarks on an admirable, if somewhat quixo
The timing of Do I Sound Gay? couldn’t be adj, coming on the heels of last week’s gay marriage legalization news, but the questions asked by writer/filmmaker David Thorpe seem so on-the-nose, it’s astounding that they haven’t been asked so directly sooner. An openly gay noun, Thorpe deals with being newly single and wholly insecure by asking his friends, family members and fellow homosexual celebs like David Sedaris, Dan Savage and Margaret Cho the following question: why do gay men talk with such a distinctly effeminate voice?
Playful and lighthearted, Do I Sound Gay? benefits greatly from Thorpe’s charismatically self-deprecating personality. Whereas other documentarians would’ve taken a scholarly approach and had a roster of psychologists analyze the high-pitched and womanly vocal delivery, Thorpe gets at the issue by cracking honesty-fueled jokes with his also gay buddies. Though he doesn’t get too definitive with his revelations, Thorpe uses his own realizations about how his voice's "gayness" has changed per environments to lightly touch on how gay men and women in gen