I had the exact same reaction when I watched the HBO mini a few years ago. When I mentioned this in a forum I frequented at the time, one of the other participants - who I got the sense was roughly contemporary to the characters, i.e. a gay man who had lived in New York in the 80s and 90s - reacted very vehemently, saying that he'd known people like Joe and that for all their pretense of inner conflict and half-hearted coming out, they always stayed on the fence, and that to his mind Joe deserved no sympathy. I didn't (and still don't) know how to respond to that, but it's led me to believe that there's a specific type that Joe is meant to represent that I'm not familiar with.
The more I think about it, the more it seems that there's an argument to be made for condemning Joe for his politics, and for standing by Cohn even after learning the sordid details of his career (and maybe this is what the guy on the forum meant when he said guys like Joe never change), but I'm not sure the play makes it. As you say, his greatest sin is made out to be his abandonment of Harper (which in the HBO version is heavily paralleled with Louis's abandonment of Pryor). Either way, what truly bothers me about Joe is less that he's condemned (and apparently damned) and more that his mother isn't. If Joe is to blame for not being able to overcome the culture that raised him to hate himself, how can Kushner forgive the person who did most of that raising?
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-07-25 06:00 am (UTC)The more I think about it, the more it seems that there's an argument to be made for condemning Joe for his politics, and for standing by Cohn even after learning the sordid details of his career (and maybe this is what the guy on the forum meant when he said guys like Joe never change), but I'm not sure the play makes it. As you say, his greatest sin is made out to be his abandonment of Harper (which in the HBO version is heavily paralleled with Louis's abandonment of Pryor). Either way, what truly bothers me about Joe is less that he's condemned (and apparently damned) and more that his mother isn't. If Joe is to blame for not being able to overcome the culture that raised him to hate himself, how can Kushner forgive the person who did most of that raising?