Milk Analysis

Milk The movie “Milk” was based on a true story of a gay activist in San Francisco, Harvey Milk. Milk shows his story through his statements through a recording made before he was assassinated. He narrated what happened to him during the last eight years of his life (40-48). It showed how confidently Milk went out of the closet and fight for the rights of gays. Milk became the representative of the growing population of gays in San Francisco. Milk eventually ran for the office because being in the office will be the best way to easily fight for gay rights.

Milk won and at the same time, another politician who was against the ideologies of Milk won also, Dan White. This marks the growing conflicts between the two. White regards gay as social deviants. Not only did he consider gays as social deviants but also Asians especially the Chinese people but Milk showed no hostility towards White in fact he tried to work professionally as co-politicians with White but in the end of the movie, Milk was killed by White.

Relating to the course, homosexuals can be considered as deviants because they violate the gender norms which includes only male and female but for me, homosexuals nowadays should not be cons idered deviants at all because a large percentage of the world’s population includes homosexuals already and as I can remember through our discussions in class, in order to be considered deviant, these people should represent only a small number of people but relating to the movie, what Milk has done can be considered as tertiary deviance. Tertiary deviance is a deviant act when an individual tries to label a deviant act as non -deviant.

As portrayed in the movie, Milk fought for gay rights. He wanted people to regard gays as equal with the heterosexuals and normal people. In the movie, Milk managed his being homosexual through his charismatic characteristics as a gay activist he believed that he can be an effective re presentative of the gay community because a lot of people liked him whether gay or straight. A lot of people supported his ideas since he was the first ever gay who had been elected for a position in the government. The society had different reaction to Milk’s actions.

There are people who like him and supported him and there are also people who stayed as homophobic and believed that gay people should not be given jobs as teachers because they believe that these gays will just teach their children to also be gays. Reactions of people were different from one another depending on the perspective of the people and the belief that they hold onto. If these people are openminded, they would react to the gay activism as a normal behavior b ut in the movie it seemed that there are people who cannot take the fact that there are other people in the society who hold different beliefs.

A lot of factors can be considered why these people stay close-minded to the social realities. This is may be because of how they were brought up. Family, especially parents has great impact on your beliefs while you grow up. Another factor is religion. Religion has the power to make people follow its beliefs and hold onto it as much as possible. I also consider Dan White as deviant because he committed murder against a co-politician who is against his ideologies.