Denby's Interpretation of the Movie Milk

David Denby, in his movie review of "Milk" (Dec. 1) writes: "Astonishingly [Dan White] wants to be liked by Milk." From this observation he concludes "In the film maker's interpretation, there is a suggestion of repressed homosexuality in Dan White, which is a familiar liberal explanation of why seemingly straight men murder gays." The first part of this conclusion (the suggestion part) has furthermore been included in the condensed review of "Milk" in every episode of The New Yorker since Denby's original article. Not even minding the fallacy that not all times a heterosexual man kills a homosexual one is the murderer repressing his homosexuality, but, after watching the movie, Denby's take of Van Sant's interpretation seems less than accurate.

Milk's character does, in fact, say of Dan White to his political cohort "I know what it is like to live that life, that lie. I can see it in Dan's eyes, that fear of oppression." But it should be remembered, especially by a first rate movie critic like Denby, that an interpretation of a character's words or actions may not be the same as the film maker's interpretations.

Saying that White might have murdered Milk out of some urge brought on by repressing his own homosexuality would neither make White entirely culpable for his actions nor would it have promoted Milk's agenda. What it would do is reaffirm straight people's fear of homosexuality (If I am afraid of having sex with members of my own sex than I should also be afraid of maybe murdering somebody too), which is what Rolling Stone author Tim Dickinson recently claimed was the same effect of the faulty political ads dooming gay marriage in California. He wrote:

"The No campaign refused to reassure voters by presenting positive depictions of gay and lesbian couples in ads. Instead, in a bizarre approach, it opted to effectively affirm the homophobia of swing voters it was courting." (Dec. 11, 2008)

It is a bit ironic that "Milk" which so clearly champions the start of the gay-rights movement would come out so soon after such a set-back in the current movement, but Van Sant's movie being a faithful interpretation of Harvey Milk's underlying intentions to promote gay rights, rather than offering any sort of interpretation on the book of Dan White, does not suffer the same mistake as the No campaign. Van Sant should be lauded for displaying White as only a minor character in the over all story of Milk's political life and for offering no deeper interpretation on him than known facts rather than interpretations.