The Representation of Sexual Identity in The Kids Are Alright
The Kids are Alright tells the story of a lesbian couple whose two children decide they want to meet their sperm donor. When so-called "donor-dad" enters the picture, the perfect suburban world of Moms Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) is forever changed. Their kids, Laser and Joni have someone to show them a different way of being in the world. For Laser, donor dad answers hard questions honestly over a basketball game. For Joni, donor dad takes her on his motorcycle and agrees her parents need to loosen up. When donor dad Paul (Mark Ruffalo) hears that Mom Jules is trying to jumpstart a landscaping business, he hires her to remake his garden. Nic, a doctor, is finally warming up to donor dad when she discovers Paul and Jules are having an affair and all around heartbreak ensues.
Mainstream audiences will flock to this film, directed by Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon), and congratulate themselves on how far we have come as a society regarding lesbian marriage. In The Kids Are Alright, the troubled marriage of Nic and Jules makes for good drama. Though the more compelling conflict of the film is their daughter Joni’s battle for independence as she approaches adulthood.
“Donor dad” Paul plays a pivotal role in Joni’s break from her two mom parents. And who wouldn’t be swept away by Paul? Paul is ultra-amazing...an organic farmer, rides motorcylces, bakes pie, easy-going, successful but from modest roots, likes minorities, has sowed his wild oats but ready for a family, likes younger women and older women, sexy, a charming restaurateur, emotionally available, protective, his own boss, can play basketball with teenagers, not a jealous bone in his body, can sing Joni Mitchell, knows his wine--who is this man?
He’s ideal..in the world according to Hollywood. In The Kids Are Alright, lesbians are just fine, just dandy as long as heterosexuality is understood as everybody's default--and everybody wants a piece of donor dad. Particularly seduced by Paul is Jules, the more feminine and insecure of the parents. Jules (Moore) who clearly identifies herself as gay enters into an affair with heterosexual Paul. Undoubtedly and humorously, the first sex scene between them portrays Jules as sexually starving for a man.
Jules’s alternating sexual desire is curious. It would be admirable for a Hollywood film to represent sexual behavior as diverse, illogical, not fixed, outside labels of gay or straight and existing on a broader range. Yet, the function of the sex between Jules and Paul serves the purpose of framing heterosexuality as the ideal. The film stays true to Hollywood conventions in representing sexuality in terms of hierarchy and in The Kids Are Alright heteronormativity remains at the throne.
By the time Jules enters into the affair with Paul, the film has already established the male body as desirable to both women in an earlier scene. Nic and Jules put on a tape of gay male porn to spice things up and a sex scene gone amuck follows. When the tape is found in their bedroom—Jules explains to her son why his two moms watch gay male porn, she says, “Female sexuality is internalized and sometimes it’s nice for us to see it externalized.” In The Kids Are Alright, lesbian sex is framed as incomplete and heterosexual sex is framed as instinctual and exciting.
What does “natural” mean in The Kids Are Alright? Is there an inherent emotional connection between a sperm donor and offspring? Is sexual identity formed from our experiences or by our genetic inheritance? The question of genetics versus socialization is at the core of gay politics. Will two lesbians raise gay children? The son’s sexuality is questioned at the start of the film in a way that mocks this very concern. While Laser isn’t gay, he is lost and this leads him to a longing to know a father.
Laser isn’t just looking for a father figure. He wants to know his biological origins. The coach at the neighborhood Y, an uncle or a teacher at school just won’t do. Would there be as strong a desire for a child to seek out a surrogate mother? Perhaps there would be, if we lived in a matriarchal society. As a patriarchal society, the focus is on the father. The Kids Are Alright never makes this connection between the outside world influencing Laser’s need to know a father and his internal drive to locate him. The Kids Are Alright is not aware of its own immersion in patriarchal ideology and for that reason cannot be a progressive film about alternative families.
The opening sequence of the film is Laser on his skateboard racing through his suburban neighborhood. He is being pushed around by other boys, other boys with fathers, he hangs out with losers, and he is doing cocaine. Frustrated by his overbearing mothers and stating that he is curious, he asks his sister Joni to call the sperm bank. The request for a sperm donor’s identity has to be made by someone who is at least eighteen years old. Along with her leaving for college, the film makes a strong issue of Joni’s movement into adulthood.
The scene where Laser pushes Joni to call the sperm bank is crucial to establishing Joni’s disinterest in men and in having a father. Following this sequence, the film never takes up the son's story in a significant way again. The focus switches to Joni once she meets Paul. Joni is only helping her brother out until she discovers that donor dad Paul owns an organic farm. Joni's eyes brighten with curiosity. She expresses an interest in that which is "natural." Joni's struggle in the film reveals the film's true anxiety--the daughter's sexuality.
The character of Joni starts out not interested in sex. She puts down her friend Sasha who is overtly sexual. She calls her a "slut." She is embarrassed when Sasha makes fun of the repressed sexual feelings between Joni and her best guy friend. She is disgusted when her friend says, “donor dad is a hottie."
When Joni unexpectedly bonds with Paul--she changes. She blushes and giggles. She is open to new things. She gets drunk. She has lost interest in scrabble. She tells her parents off, one for being too strict and the other for being morally shady. She finally kisses the best guy friend. Joni is enchanted and changed by her experience with Paul--an idealized heterosexual man with authority (“authority” because of his donor dad scientific weight and his expertise on all that is “organic”).
Joni is heartbroken by Paul's affair with her mother. It is with this heartbreak that she leaves for college. The heartbreak is particularly significant if you consider the cultural anxiety around the gay marriage. Branded with heartbreak over father figure Paul, Joni has been sentenced to a life long search for that connection she once felt. The film reassures its audience that Joni will seek out male partners.
The film says—don’t worry, Joni will procreate, and the world will go on. The film shows a final scene where the son says the two moms should not break up "because you are too old." Since it has been cemented that they no longer experience sexual attraction for each other, the film concludes that the two women have been desexualized. The question of their desire is no longer of any concern because the torch of desire has been successfully passed to the daughter.
