storm in a teacup

Why are people saying BoRhap is homophobic?

it’s probably because the movie misrepresented the whole story of Freddie Mercury, a famous gay rock star who not only lived through the AIDS crisis but sadly died from the disease itself.Freddie really was the first major rock star to die from AIDS so, to make a movie about him and not cover the AIDS crisis properly is a huge blow.the biggest problem in the movie is that it carries the message “if you’re gay and love to party, eventually you’ll die”. it’s portrayed as if Brian, Rog, John, Mary Austin or any other heterosexual person involved with Queen never liked partying and social gatherings.

I’ve only seen the movie twice but I remember my first impressions being that Freddie is constantly “fighting” with two sides.the first side would be ‘bad (homosexual) people’, who introduce Freddie to the sinful world of promiscuous partying (which inspires Freddie to force Queen to make an awesome disco album), with Satan himself, Paul Prenter as the main villain. this side is mainly shown in a very predatory and immoral way with scenes of just partying and drugs (as if that’s the one and only aspect of every gay person) and Freddie misbehaving once he explores his sexuality.another side would be a group of ‘good (heterosexual) people’ who want to help Freddie and the only real family Freddie has (Queen and Mary Austin) but Freddie is being an arrogant idiot and fights with them most of the time. it’s all just very dramatic, especially the scenes with Mary whose main job is to be Freddie’s saviour from the ‘bad side’. basically it’s all between good and bad and you can guess which one is which. as movie progresses, Freddie succumbs to the ‘bad side’ and he finds out he will die. the movie tells you that if Freddie stayed with Mary and didn’t fight so much with members of Queen and wasn’t a bitchy diva, he wouldn’t catch the AIDS virus. it’s almost as if it was his fault for embracing his sexuality. he will pay the price with his own life. but first … let’s go get a drink and do Live Aid? yeah, the timeline is terrible omg

anyway, it’s not the best way to represent the life not only of Freddie Mercury, but the whole community that has been made to feel guilty for being affected with AIDS. Paul Prenter died of AIDS penniless the very same year as Freddie, still every fan hates him. I’m not saying that he was this amazing person but to put all the weight of Freddie’s life and death on to shoulders of some random personal assistant gay man, who has been dead for almost 30 years and can’t speak for himself now, is a bit unfair. because I bet Freddie has gone through life with so many people (not necessarily gay or bisexual) who treated him badly and were a bad influence and yet, they don’t get a single mention in the movie. the movie is full of inaccuracies anyway so it’s no surprise that so many other important friends and even lovers who Freddie had serious relationships with aren’t mentioned or shown at all, except for Jim. and their love story has been reduced to a minimum.

I guess what’s confusing to you and to so many others is how could anyone say that a celebratory movie about a gay man is homophobic when there’s no actual homophobic scenes or slurs in the movie. true, I don’t remember any such scenes (correct me if I’m wrong), but as you can see if you logically put some real-life facts together, you can tell the movie is not really celebrating Freddie’s life, it actually demonizes it.it’s been said that this is why Sacha Baron Cohen, who was supposed to be the main man to play Freddie, opted out of the movie because he felt it wasn’t a genuine Freddie Mercury and Queen story…