SWSW Film Review: Small Town Gay Bar

In Small Town Gay Bar, director Malcolm Ingram explores the lives of members of the gay community in the Backward South. A place where many people consider homosexuality a vile lifestyle choice at the least, and often a contemptible sin against God. The people featured in the movie do not have the luxury of myriad gay bars and gay-friendly townsfolk. Sadly, they are forced to hide their ‘sin’ at night in the small bars that are a beacon in the night.

Unlike bigger cities, where niche bars exist for various segments of the gay population can congregate – bars specifically for Bears or twinks or queens, etc. – the small towns in featured in the movie usually only offer one place of congregation for the gay community, a fact that actually seems to make the community even more closely-knit.

The documentary focuses on the lives of various bar owners and patrons as they try and find a sense of normalcy in a society generally seething with intolerance and hatred. One comes to feel the pain these people must endure in order to live their lives as they choose. Small-minded rednecks and a hate-preaching congregation leader form the Midwest personify the loathsome hurdles that gay people in an uninformed society must face in order to live ‘normal lives.’ The patrons and owners are, in the end, resilient. They refuse to kowtow to the unacceptable social restraints of their communities and form their own communities, offering them a place simply to be themselves.

The film offers a host of laughs (with the characters, not at them), along with some jaw-dropping looks at the sad state of affairs in our county with regard to tolerance. There is nothing in the film that will come as a revelation to the viewers: Homosexuals are still being persecuted simply for being themselves and most people in the Deep South are close-minded and hateful towards anything/anyone that is “other” than them. But that does not mean the film misses its aim. You leave with a better appreciation for the strength it requires of these people to live their lives as they choose. Someone forgot to tell the bigots in the South that unalienable rights extend to everyone. This movie is a great reminder of that and is told with a very big heart and a hopefulness that one day the South can make an attempt at another sort of desegregation.

Small Town Gay Bar
Next Screening: Tonight at 9:30pm
Alamo Downtown