Sadly, Anglo-American hottie Andrew Garfield is by all accounts, straight. However, his sexual orientation notwithstanding, the Spiderman star has been on something of a gay spree of late, at least on-camera.
Appearing on the American comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live recently, Garfield and his real life girlfriend, Spiderman 2 costar, Emma Stone recreate their onscreen kiss atop the Brooklyn Bridge, disastrously, for comedic effect, and while the sketch is hardly riotously funny, the payoff is when musical guest, Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin, steps in and replaces Stone, and Martin and Garfield share a passionate kiss.
Less titillating, but of more interest to the LGBT community, Garfield stars as a cross-dresser in Canadian AltRock band, Arcade Fire’s video for their new single “We Exist.” According to lead singer Win Butler, the song is about “a gay kid talking to his dad,” coming out as gay to his straight father. Garfield turns in a surprisingly emotional performance, starting the video by shaving off all of his hair, donning a wig, makeup and women’s clothing and setting out to face his destiny in what appears to be rural America. As fit as Andrew the man is, even made-up, with long blonde tresses, feminine clothes and make-up, he’s still clearly a male, something that becomes alarmingly apparent as you watch him entering a redneck bar. There’s a brilliant tension in this video, from Andrew’s frustration in front of the mirror trying to make himself over, to once he has left home, the unrelenting feeling that this is going to end poorly for the drag lad. At the country-western dive bar, Garfield does his best to blend, conspicuously aware that he’s unlikely to “pass” under close scrutiny. He longingly watches an old straight couple dancing on the dance floor, and soon enough a goober takes his hand and leads him, very hesitatingly out onto floor. They allow us a moment watching Andrew, dancing with this rough-looking fella, thinking that maybe, possibly, somehow, this is going to be okay, and as soon as Andrew starts to relax and smile, it all comes crashing down, as he’s violently pushed around and roughly groped by several of the establishment’s grungy patrons, before getting shoved to the floor, and getting kicked in the face.
As Andrew is bashed, the video shifts into a dream sequence, Garfield turing in a solid take on that famous dance performance from Flashdance, followed by surreal dance performance of several big, burly men, their flannel shirts tied up, wearing short shorts and high heels, who open a portal through which Andrew goes and comes out on the ether side wearing a flowing white dress and pink makeup in the shape of a lone ranger mask at Coachella, taking to the stage while Arcade Fire plays to over 90,000 screaming fans, Andrew steps up onto a riser and basks in the adulation of the crowd who cheers for him.
The video never makes clear if Andrew’s character is gay, transgender or any other particular label, and captures the simultaneous exhilaration and fear that accompanies being “out” as LGBT, facing the world on your own terms, aware that doing so may incite mindless violence by those who hate and/or fear those who do not fit in their binary male/female, hetero-normative worldview. For all the substantive progress that has been made on LGBT rights, there are still forces that look to demean and silence those who don’t live by their rules, from the freak-out over Conchita Wurst’s Eurovision win to conservative forces upset over the Church of England looking to end bullying of gay students in their schools, for every step forward there are those who would try to force us two steps back.
