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On the queer internet, Christmas isCarolseason.
Heralded asthegay Christmas movie, dykes of all stripes excitedly post about the 2015 film come December.
Its hardly the stuff of tidy memes.
The still image Autostraddle choseas the No.
1look directed at men when ranked by contempt is rightfully recognized as Carol wishing death upon a man.
Nowhere in any of the 30 days is thereasonfor that look of contempt mentioned.
It is not a moment of pure misandry.
It is a moment of pure desperation.
Carol realizes that she may have just lost the thing she loves most in the world: her daughter.
I thought we were in the process of trying to amicably co-parent.
I felt as desperate as Carol did when she pulled out a gun and aimed it at a man.
The custody case was like having the rug pulled out from under me in the most violent way.
The message was loud and clear: You cannot leave this cis, straight marriage and go unpunished.
Carolthe film is based on the 1952 novelThe Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith.
She originally wrote it under a pseudonym because she wanted to avoid being dubbed a lesbian-book writer.
ButThe Price of Saltis not a love story, nor isCarol.
Yes, the women end up together, but at what cost?
These characters fucking win.
She agrees to attend conversion therapy.
She spends months trying to fit into the box she has been coerced into to not lose her child.
Its because shes choosingherself.
What use am I to her, to us, if Im living against my own grain?
she says to the room, as her lawyer begs her to stop talking.
Catherwoodlost custody of her daughterin divorce proceedings that involved tape-recorded lesbian trysts in hotel rooms.
In creating a nonheterosexual family, the lesbian mother sets a dangerous example for all women.
What if women refused to marry men who were not emotionally or sexually nurturing?
Carol, as a film, asks these questions, too, albeit subtly.
Caroltakes place in the 1950s, but my experience happened in 2021.
It is no wonder that a community reads into the film what they cannot find elsewhere.
But in doing so, they miss the point of the story.
