HOWL the film

"The poem is misinterpreted as a promotion of homosexuality. Actually it's more like a promotion of frankness about any subject. If you're a foot fetishist, you write about feet. If you're a stock market freak, you can write about the rising sales curve erections of the standard oil chart. So when a few people are frank about homosexuality in public, it breaks the ice. Then people are free to be frank about anything and that socially useful."

-James Franco as Allen Ginsberg

(at about 1:12:40)

For me, this is the moment that explains the meaning of the entire film and poem in the most concise way. This may be an obvious significant moment because it involves Ginsberg telling the audience exactly what his intention was when writing the poem. However, I think such information is of incredible value because readers and viewers of art and literature don't always receive such specific information from a writer or artist, especially over a piece this controversial. He explains that though the poem is saturated with sexual imagery, that does not mean that ultimately the poem is about sexuality. Homosexuality was extraordinarily controversial during this time period and since Ginsberg was homosexual himself, he wrote about what he experienced as a young man in such a society. "Howl", he argues, is about being frank about your reality. He wanted to promote openness about one's life experiences and his intention in writing it was primarily to encourage frank social conversation about the human experience, no matter what that experience entails. Snuffing out people who experience or desire or think about things that don't fit the mold of "normalcy" only adds "fuel to the fire of ignorance", as the defense lawyer played by John Hamm so eloquently explained (1:08). I think Ginsberg ultimately wrote "Howl" as a cry for freedom from convention and a demand for acceptance and honesty in a society that was stifling individuality. 

Q: How relevant is this text still to us today? How doe the controversiality of homosexuality compare now to back then? How can we relate/compare/contrast HOWL with modern times and issues?

-Annie B