The Damaging Power of Microaggressions in CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
In 2017, Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino saw the biggest success of his career in the form of Call Me By Your Name. Adapting the André Aciman novel of the same name, the world seemed instantly charmed by the tale of two young men coming to terms with their identities and falling in love over the course of a 1983 Italian summer. Out of all the areas of praise given to the film, a common thread identified is the film's refusal to play into the typical tropes of LGBTQ+ features by having the drama and the conflict within the film not rely on homophobia or queer trauma. The enemy within Call Me By Your Name is time as the summer winds down and the blooming relationship between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) is forced to end as Oliver moves back to the United States. While this is undeniably true and it is beyond refreshing to see a queer drama embrace this more human and universal story as other major pieces of LGBTQ+ cinema continue to play into the tired and forced tropes put on the genre often by straight filmmakers and studios, homophobia is far from absent within the film. In a manner that mirrors everyday life for plenty of queer individuals, the homophobia and prejudice within the feature are hidden and scattered in the background of everyday life with its impacts still being massive.
The one place within the film where homophobia is explicitly named is when Elio's parents invite a gay couple, Isaac (Peter Spears) and Mounir (André Aciman), to dinner one night. While Elio tends to be hospitable and outwardly respectable to the various guests seen throughout the film, this couple draws a tantrum out of Elio. Despite the demands of his father (Michael Stuhlbarg), Elio doesn’t want to play piano for them or indulge them by wearing a shirt they got him as a gift. He not only rejects them but makes fun of them calling them “Sonny and Cher”. His father directly calls out the judgment Elio feels regarding these two as being because of their sexualities which gives the character an immature complexion considering his queer identity. At this point in the story, Elio sees their queerness as something to ostracize, reject, and attack. This is, at first, a strange move for Elio as from the outside, it seems both the community he lives in and the family he belongs to are rather open and accepting which is further proved in his father's beautiful monologue at the end of the film. The film offers only a single clue at where the root of Elio's views might be when he claims the nickname originated from his mother, Annella (Amira Casar).
When the topic of homophobia is discussed, it is often easy to let conversations become dominated by large expressions of hate and violence. While these are clearly worthy points of focus, it is also important to recognize and identify the power of microaggressions and the impact they can have on the queer community. While it is impossible to fully comprehend what the history of Elio's mother is with the queer community, it is clear that she has, intentionally or not, created a space of ostracizing Isaac and Mounir for their queerness which has rubbed off on Elio. While there is no good outcome to breeding ideals such as these, it is made even worse when one considers the self-struggle within Elio. Call Me By Your Name is a story of a confused young man who is trying to decipher the complex and impossible emotions that pop up in his journey to adulthood. While this is hard for anyone, to hold an inner judgment towards a self-identity as Elio seems to for his own queerness can make this journey even more difficult and volatile.
When one creates the idea of the “other”, it draws a clear line between them and oneself. Even if Elio is aware of the desires he holds for men, he has no guidelines to identify what that means for him. One is not born with a chart that shows what is love and what is desire. These are forces of emotion that one identifies based on the descriptions of those around them. If Elio grows up with the definition that desire is what a man feels for a woman, then that is what he will believe desire is. Whatever he feels towards a man will be discarded and mislabeled. This is one of the key reasons that representation is so important. One has to have their mind open to recognizing the truth before they can ever accept it. For whatever reason, Elio has decided that queerness is something “other” than him, and therefore cannot accept or understand that really it is something that is within himself.
Luckily for Elio, he finds a pathway through the presence of Oliver. While Elio desires Oliver, he also finds power in using Oliver as a point of strength for self-identity. Not just in sexuality but also Elio's religion, something Elio also expresses feeling a sort of hidden shame for due to the lack of confidence by his parents, Elio turns to Oliver and finds a role model whom he can have an example of confidence. If it wasn’t for Oliver, Elio might have never confronted these feelings leading to a lifetime of uncertainty and self-combustion. This should be seen as a responsibility for those raising and taking care of children, especially if the society around them is judgmental and hurtful.
Homophobia might not be something explicitly discussed often within Call Me By Your Name, but it is clearly an implicit force that defines the character arc and identity of Elio. Even from just small microaggressions, Elio had been set up to fail and had been thrown into a confused and conflicting sense of self-understanding that many queer youth deal with themselves. This is just one of the many beautiful layers of authenticity found within Call Me By Your Name which make it a defining modern queer text and one of the most authentic looks at queer adolescence in cinematic history.
