Avoiding Southern Comfort

Despite having intentionally moved it up on my netflix queue so that I would get it sooner, for the last three weeks I’ve been avoiding Southern Comfort.

The first week I told myself it was because classes had started, and I was too busy with school. The second week I told myself it was because the summer television season finales were on, and I was spending my time watching those instead. The third week I knew I was just avoiding it, but told myself that I didn’t have to watch it if I didn’t want to--that the benefit of netflix was exactly that there were no due dates, and you could keep movies as long as you wanted.

Yesterday, I finally recognized that it was time—that if I waited until I was ready to watch it, then I might never see it. (Besides, just two days before I was telling a friend that she should follow her heart and despite her fear, take the risk of opening her heart, and it just didn’t feel right to not take my own advice. Okay, the circumstances aren’t really comparable, but the point was that we shouldn’t/couldn’t let fear keep us from living full lives.)

As a docudrama, Southern Comfort is far from the romantic comedies and action movies that I usually indulge in as part of my leisure viewing. In many ways, however, Southern Comfort would fit well into my Introduction to LGBT Studies course. I already assign texts about the medical discrimination faced by LGBTQ people, and this movie certainly sheds more light on the subject (especially in its “special features” section). I’ll definitely recommend it to students this semester, and seriously consider adding it to my syllabus for next semester. I don’t know, though, that I feel in a space to watch it with students…to teach/discuss it…

It feels too close to home (literally) and too raw to talk about cancer, and about death and dying. As I watched the film, it struck me that that’s exactly what the film was—the chronicling of the last year of Robert Eads’ life, the chronicling of his dying. Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautifully done film and certainly earned its rewards. I just mean to say that at the heart of the film is not only Eads’ life, but his death.

The film opens up in “Spring” when Eads gathers together friends and family for an Easter celebration. He is clearly joyed to have his friends come to his land and to cook for them, and be in community with those he loves and has made his family. His friends are certainly happy to see him, but it’s also clear that they’ve made this time to spend with him because he is dying.

While there are moments where Eads speaks about his cancer on camera, and where his friends do the same, I don’t readily recall scenes where they talk about it amongst themselves. What more easily comes to mind are confessional type revelations spoken directly into the camera. In this way, it’s not so much a film about cancer, but about the family (biological, and perhaps more importantly chosen) that gathers around and the love shared in the time left, every moment precious.
I guess in the end, while it is still about the words finally being said that for so long had been left unsaid, more importantly it’s about the actions taken--the being there--that counts the most.

(I wonder then, what am I doing here.)