We all like to daydream to escape some of the confines of our everyday reality. We can think we are superheroes, we can think of our lives if we have made different choices, we are full of endless creativity, and can apply that to our though process for our escapism. After all, that’s pretty much what all of Hollywood is about. Director Lovell Holder’s film Lavender Men explores one person who applies their own creativity to their everyday boring job, but with a little twist.
Unbeknownst to me, there has been some discourse about Abraham Lincoln’s sexuality. Not only in pop culture, but also in academic circles, there have been some who believe that, based on some of his writings, Abraham Lincoln might have been bisexual all the way in the 1800s. Based on the stage play of the same name, Lavender Men ponders Lincoln’s sexuality through the imaginations of a stagehand working on a mall theater play about the 16th president of the United States.
Taffeta (Roger Q. Mason) is the stage manager for a local theater production of an Abraham Lincoln play. They have a crush on a member of the production crew, but their charms are going unnoticed. In addition, it seems as though everyone in the crew is unappreciative of the work that they do. Even the lead actor who plays Lincoln won’t even use Taffeta’s correct pronouns when they speak, even though he makes an aggressive (and almost violent) pass at Taffeta. Taffeta realizes that things are amiss in their life, and then they proceed to daydream a stage production about Abraham Lincoln, but in this case,e Lincoln is bisexual and is entangled with his legal clerk Elmer Ellsworth, who history knows as one of Lincoln’s closest friends.
One thing in Lavender Men that stands out is it is not sensational about the idea of a “gay Lincoln.” In fact, the film contains almost no sex, other than the occasional dick pic on a dating app that Taffeta uses and one sequence towards the ends of the film which shows Lincoln and his lover embracing each other. Taffeta also doesn’t let Lincoln off the hook as most of history does, as Lincoln was not a fan of completely freeing enslaved people, he just wanted to preserve the union, and even proposed sending enslaved people to Liberia instead of freeing them as a compromise. This daydream of a queer Lincoln allows Taffeta to exercise their own conflicts with working for a production of a man so complicated, but then it also allows Taffeta to work through their own trauma.
Lavender Man gets to display some of the pain that a queer, overweight person of color may face. A lot of Taffeta’s pain comes from wanting to express themselves and find love and happiness, but unfortunately, they are often not anyone’s “type,” the subject of a fetish, or should just be “lucky anyone wants their fat ass.” This contributes to an eating disorder Taffeta has, which consists of binge eating food to mask the pain and purging it, not to gain any additional weight either. The desire for happiness and the unfulfillment from work allows Taffeta to explore the idea of a queer Lincoln maintaining a relationship with his best friend in secret is what allows Taffeta to realize that they are enough and to seek out happiness instead of validation from others.
Since Lavender Men is based on a play of the same name, the entire film is done within the narrative format of a local theater production, even the different stages of Lincoln’s life being told in chapters like you would see in your Playbill booklet. The man actors of the film within Taffeta’s narrative play format are Pete Ploszek who plays Lincoln, Alex Esola who plays Elmer, but also Roger Mason who plays supporting roles as Mary Todd Lincoln as well as delivery some incredible monologues, some of which are directed right at the audience which allows you to completely understand their intense feelings as they are staring directly at the camera. Keeping the film within the stage format instead of trying to do some weird play adaptation without adapting the “play” part of the play also helps keep the story contained and intimate. As much as the film tries to ask the question “was Abraham Lincoln gay,” it’s really about one queer person’s struggle with not only acceptance of themselves, but also not to deal with other people’s expectations of them.
Lavender Men is now playing in select theaters.
