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reviews
Rock Bottom: Gay Men and Meth
A Review by Mary L. Gray, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication
and Culture
Gender Studies Department and American Studies Program, INDIANA
UNIVERSITY
Documentary filmmaking, at its best, draws an audience’s
attention to arguments through the lives of a film’s subjects
and compels us to act once we leave the theatre. Perhaps that is
why ROCK BOTTOM: GAY MEN AND METH directed by Jay Corcoran and produced
by Corcoran and Colin Weil, succeeds: it intimately engages the
lives of seven gay men facing their late 20s to late 40s as they
struggle to control their use of methamphetamines. In doing so,
ROCK BOTTOM asks us to consider how gay men’s expectations
of themselves and each another profoundly shape sexual decision-making
and how meth use fits into that picture.
One of ROCK BOTTOM’s opening scenes squarely sets the film’s
tone.
Larry Kramer, famed AIDS activist, angrily shouts out to an overflowing
community forum at Cooper Union, NYC “you cannot continue
to allow yourselves and each other to act and live like this!”
While some may interpret ROCK BOTTOM as an unflinching critique
of gay men’s recklessness with meth use in the midst of the
HIV pandemic, there is far more going on in this veritable call
to action. Taking the viewer beyond a voyeuristic tour of methamphetamine
use among gay men in NYC, ROCK BOTTOM asks us to care about the
seven men it follows for two years. The film also calls on us to
question how larger structures of oppression, sexism and homophobia
in particular, make the grip of this drug so difficult to escape.
We watch in frustration, disgust, empathy, and tempered hope as
meth envelopes the film’s protagonists. As the documentary
follows the ups and downs of these casual and more addicted meth
users it never settles on a pedantic distinction between use and
abuse. This is one of the film’s most poignant and potent
contributions: it does not judge its main characters but calls on
the audience to see themselves in their actions.
We must reflect on what it means, for example, that some gay men’s
sexual identities and practices are so thickly inculcated in shame
and self-destruction. We must think about what it means to feel
so thoroughly left out of a cultural scene if we choose not to take
part in drug use. Ultimately, ROCK BOTTOM poses the question: what
underlying causes make meth use so attractive even as they drive
HIV infections up among gay men in the U.S.? This film offers a
groundbreaking and critical exploration of the relationship between
substance use and cultural identity. ROCK BOTTOM compellingly argues
that meth use among gay men must be understood as something more
complicated than individuals “choosing” the latest party
drug. If the film doesn’t inspire you to be a part of a more
community-minded approach to drug treatment and intervention then
you’ve missed the revolutionary message of this film.
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