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God's Own Country: A Happy Ending for Gay Film

In Yorkshire, northern England, 24-year-old Johnny Saxby lives with his father, Martin, and grandmother, Deirdre, and runs a family farm together. Johnny has to do endless farm work day in and day out, so in his free time, he often numbs himself with alcohol and sex. One day, a Romanian migrant worker, Gheorghe Ionescu, was hired by Martin to help with the busy lambing season. Johnny does not get along well with this quiet and handsome 27-year-old young man until one day he tackles Johnny to the ground and warns Johnny not to call him "gypsy" again. On the next day, they have a rough and passionate sex in the dirt and later gradually become closer. When Martin suffers a second stroke, Johnny realizes the responsibility of running the farm falls entirely on his shoulders. He asks Gheorghe if he can stay with him and maintain the farm together, but Gheorghe believes if they cannot redefine their relationship, this plan will not survive. Johnny then gets upset and drinks to excess and has a random sex with another man, which is found out later by Gheorghe, so Gheorghe leaves the farm with sorrow and anger. But in the end, Johnny brings Gheorghe back and Gheorghe moves into the house from the original caravan.

The above description is about the British film God's Own Country, written and directed by Francis Lee in 2017, which won the world cinema directing award at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival as the only UK-based production. This film is partly based on Lee's own experience, who is a gay people used to live in Yorkshire. As an uncommon gay film with a happy ending, God's Own Country expands queer media territory into the countryside and migrants. While God's Own Country presents a new perspective to view gay people, it also reinforces problematic narratives through its depiction of traditional masculinity, representation of migrant, and "normalization" of gay identity. With three main themes presented, this review post also discusses the connection between masculinity and gender performativity, migrant and intersectionality, and gay identity and homonormativity.

From the character setting, and storyline, to the environment, God's Own Country is permeated with a traditional and binary "masculinity". The protagonist, Johnny, is a young sheep farmer living in the Yorkshire countryside who often engages in binge drinking and furtive casual sex. When he finds the one he wants to stay with (Gheorghe), he messes up since he does not know how to deal with this romantic relationship. And when he tries to bring Gheorghe back, it seems very difficult for him to express his apology. The depiction of such character is easily connected to a kind of traditional "masculinity" that is unemotional, violent, strong, high self-esteem, etc. Or, to put it in another way, an aggressive young man lives in a wild farm who does now know how to start an emotional communication.

Judith Butler (2006) argues that "there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results" (p. 34). In other words, "our gender is our expressions and behaviours (rather than those expressions and behaviours being the result of some underlying gender identity)" (Barker & Scheele 2016, p.79). People's gender then is more like an expression that is believed to be appropriate and correct within their cultural environment rather than a fixed nature within their bodies. In this sense, the masculinity of Johnny is more like an "intelligible" way to perform within his condition - a young sheep farmer in the countryside. The "good" thing may be Johnny, as a gay man, is not depicted in a stigmatized or stereotypical way that happens in many shows, but its depiction seems to reinforce the binary understanding of gender.

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God's Own Country was released in 2017, which coincides UK's attempt of withdrawing from the European Union. Gheorghe, as a Romanian migrant worker in the film echoes the issue of migrants in Britain. Both as gay men, the nation, race, and class of Gheorghe is quite different from that of Johnny. Such demographic factors are greatly influencing the way Gheorghe interacts with Johnny who is a white, work-class, native British. When they first met, Johnny called Gheorghe a "gypsy". Later when they are in the bar, a white racist there also deliberately teases Gheorghe because of his identity.

Intersectionality refers to the overlapping of social categorization and how it is linked to the interconnected oppression. Doty (1993) also argues that cultural factors such as "class, ethnicity, gender, occupation, education, and religious, national, and regional allegiances influence our identity construction" and "can exert influences difficult to separate from the development of our identities queers" (p. 5). Although Gheorghe's identity of being gay does not bring him too much direct discrimination in the film, his race and class affect how he interact with Johnny and other people (such as the white racist in the bar mentioned above). And Gheorghe's conflict with Johnny is raised due to his identity, i.e. how Gheorghe as a Romanian migrant worker has a romantic gay relationship with a white, British farmer.

Moreover, how the film represents Gheorghe and his relationship with Johnny is also problematic. "The formal axe around which the film functions is the act of looking and being looked at, in particular the suspicious staring of the foreign 'outsider' by the white 'insider'" (Williams 2020, p.77). That is to say, the presentation of a Romanian migrant is from the viewpoint of a white British man. Although Gheorghe as a migrant seems to be depicted as the "savior" of British white man Johnny, Gheorghe's intersectional identity is actually not fully represented but more portrayed as the support or supplement of the main white character. For example, it is Gheorghe who saves Johnny from the heavy workload and mental loneliness, and teaches him how to "love" someone instead of just having brutal sex.

Unlike Brokeback Mountain (2005) or Boys Don't Cry (1999), queer characters do not struggle too much with their identity and social discrimination in God's Own Country. The gay identity of Johnny and Gheorghe seems to be very "natural" and "ordinary". Even when Deirdre, Johnny's Grandmother, finds a used condom in Johnny's room and realizes that her grandson may have sex with another man Gheorghe, she only emphasizes to Johnny that "he is only here to work". Johnny's family seems to accept their gay identity and relationship very well, or in another way, their gay identity and relationship are somehow "normalized" in the film. Furthermore, within their own relationship, Gheorghe is depicted as a gentle lover who is trying to tame his aggressive partner. And their relationship from the hostile beginning to the happy ending is very similar to traditional Hollywood romantic heterosexual films.

Homonormativity "is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption" (Duggan 2002, p. 50). In other words, although gay people may seem to be accepted and included in the mainstream or heteronormativity dominated system, they are actually framed and hidden under the heteronormativity and thus lose their identity. Although it may be good that the gay identity and relationship of Johnny and Gheorghe are treated as nothing special, the essence behind that may be the gay culture is depoliticized and thus loses its nature of being gay. Even gay couples may no longer be depicted as gay couples but heterosexual couples.

As an Asian, heterosexual college student, I may not be able to resonate with the film too much. Probably the scene where Gheorghe is discriminated against by a white racist can trigger some of the experiences around me. And although this film tells a story of a gay couple, the way this film puts their relationship yet is quite "familiar" to me, because of the last point I discussed above (homonormativity).

Originally, the explicit sex scene in this film makes me feel a little bit "awkward" and I feel like such scene is not very necessary. However, my knowledge in queer media studies makes me reconsider the role of sex in this film and I find that it is actually very "meaningful". Johnny used to be very aggressive in sex, but after the "tameness" of Gheorghe, Johnny gradually enjoys the touch and understands that there can be "love" (or emotion) in sex instead of just fulfilling the sexual needs. That is to say, the sex scene in this film actually sees the growth of a young man, the understanding of love, and the finding of oneself.

--- Miles

References

Barker, M. & Scheele, J. (2016). Section on Butler. In Queer a graphic history (pp. 73-83). Icon Books.

Butler, J. (2006). Identity, sex and the metaphysics of substance. In Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (pp. 22-34). Routledge.

Doty, A. (1993). There's something queer here. In Making things perfectly queer (pp. 1-16). University of Minnesota Press.

Duggan, L. (2003). Equality, Inc. In The twilight of equality: Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy (pp. 43-66). Beacon Press.

Williams J. (2020). Queering the cinematic field: Migrant love and rural beauty in God's Own Country (2017) and A Moment in the Reeds (2017). In Queering the migrant in contemporary European cinema (pp. 72-86). Routledge.

#QueerMedia #movie review #god's own country #gender performance #intersectionality #homonormativity #josh o'connor #alec secăreanu #Youtube

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