The Mattachine Family: The Rainbow Family Movie Everyone Must See
The Mattachine Family is a movie that gets (almost) everything right about rainbow family building while also delivering on comedy, emotions, and queerness in an extremely refreshing take on the LGBTQ+ community in film.
Why Is This Movie Important?
The movie focuses on Thomas, whose world is changed forever after fostering a six year old boy for one year with his husband, Oscar. When the boy is reunited with his birth mother, Thomas has to work through his feelings that fatherhood - something he never thought he wanted - is very much something he needs in his life.
Throughout this storyline, we meet Thomas’ chosen family in Los Angeles, including his queer best friend (played by Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire) who is struggling through the emotional, financial, and physical burden of repeated IVF attempts with her wife.
These two characters showcase what this movie gets right about the queer family building experience: Diversity.
Through the remaining cast, we are exposed to queer singles and couples who are all experiencing the challenges, successes, joys, and hardships of fostering, IVF, IUI, adoption, and/or surrogacy.
There is no one way to build a family for queer people, and this movie does an exceptional job of showcasing the variety of options while highlighting some of the nuances of each path.
This is why I think this movie is incredibly important. The queer community is always evolving and challenging the status quo of society norms. Rainbow families are the latest iteration of this evolution, and this is the first movie I have seen that successfully shows this new stage.
The movie seamlessly connects queer history around ‘chosen family’ with the newer concept of a ‘rainbow family.’ Thomas’ chosen family of LA friends are his confidantes and support network as he tries to understand his own desires to be a father compounded by his emotional and physical distance from his husband.
The title of the movie also capitalizes on this theme of queer history. The Mattachine Society was an early gay rights movement that was established in the 1950s (1). In the movie, the characters frequent the Mattachine Steps, a historic landmark in Silver Lake, a queer-forward neighborhood in LA.
(2)
The drama and emotion of the movie center around the desire to become a parent. While this desire is not universal, as there are plenty of straight and queer people who do not want to become parents, the movie successfully normalizes the desire to parent for LGBTQ+ people by showcasing their lives in a way that their queerness is not the focus of their journey but rather just another aspect of their lives and path toward parenthood.
Why Does This Movie Feel So Personal?
I cried four times throughout this film. Because my husband and I are on our first journey to fatherhood now, this film felt very personal. I also was extremely emotional given the chosen family context. I have no relationship with my own parents, and so my chosen family of friends are my true family.
Not having my chosen family around has been the most challenging aspect of living abroad in Sweden. While my husband and I are successfully navigating our own IVF and surrogacy journey, I did get jealous of Thomas’ community of support and love as he navigated this same path. Our friends in Sweden are amazing, but they are not in the same place as we are, or they are not interested in becoming parents. Also, Sweden is culturally and legally much less open with regard to surrogacy for gay men, and so there are just fewer options to connect with people on this journey.
Even though I feel sadness for not having my chosen family more accessible during this time, I have found support and community online and through BabyMoon Family. I have learned that the struggles for queer people to become parents are even greater outside the U.S., given regulatory and financial restrictions in places like Italy (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/italy-attacks-surrogacy-rainbow-families).
If I were going through this journey while living in the U.S., I don’t think I would have started BabyMoon Family. My temporary isolation has led me to reach out and create something new and extremely important to me. I love researching, writing, and sharing what I can about ART for queer people and rainbow families through BabyMoon Family, and so I will always be grateful for the growth and change I have experienced during this time away from my own chosen family.
Queer People Can Be Anything, So Why Are They Becoming Influencers?
One of the most beautiful lines of the movie encapsulated how far queer people have come in society:
‘I could be gay, be married, and be a father. It used to be that being gay only meant one thing, but now it could be anything.’
The film does a great job of embracing this ‘anything’ by not ranking or denigrating any queer lived experience. Becoming a parent is the focus of the film, but the characters equally celebrate leather daddies and actual dads, as well as threesomes and monogamy. The film’s message is that all queer experiences are valid.
However, the film does poke fun at the queer parent social media influencers. Maybe this is because the writer and director live in LA, where it feels like everyone is an influencer, but this is something I have noticed as well since starting BabyMoon Family.
So many queer parents share their family experience on social media. While I celebrate this expression and love that it showcases rainbow families, sometimes it does feel a little like they all are trying to be influencers. In the film, there is a queer woman who quit being a lawyer in order to be a full-time mommy influencer with her gay sperm donor friend and their child. Another gay couple showcase their daughter, Poppy, on social media wearing oversized hats and serve as ‘the face’ of their fertility clinic for prospective intended parents.
While I think this is accurate and done for comedic purposes in the film, it does denigrate the rainbow family experience a bit, especially when it comes to the portrayal of gay men who pursue surrogacy as a path to parenthood.
What Do I Think Could Have Been Improved About the Film?
Surrogacy is the family building topic that I believe the film deals with least well. In the movie, one character describes surrogacy as ‘strange if you think about it too deeply, but you know, it’s what we have to do.’
I don’t agree with this at all. Surrogacy can be beautiful and amazing. It’s something that can bring immense joy to a gestational carrier (GC). I have researched and written about the women who choose to be GCs (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/why-gestational-carrier) as well as interviewed a GC who exclusively partnered with gay man given the strong connection and chosen family that she wanted to create with them (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/stories-rachelle-myers-nelson).
Because surrogacy is not discussed a lot in the film, this quote stands out to me. The only other aspect of surrogacy that the film discusses revolves around sperm donation at a fertility clinic. Thomas’ experience is hilarious but not incredibly accurate. I have written about this experience myself (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/clinic-masturbation), and I will agree that ‘puppy pads’ are used and very important to the process.
However, given that the process of surrogacy is described as ‘strange’ and functions as a sperm donation punchline, I don’t feel the film gives it the respect that it gives other family building options for queer people. It would be interesting to know how the writer and director, a gay married couple, had their own daughter. I could not find out if their own experience was the same as in the film with adoption, or if they ended up pursuing surrogacy.
This is the other aspect of the movie that could be improved: How ‘easy’ adopting a baby is portrayed.
In the film, Thomas ends up waiting a short amount of time before he receives a cute baby girl through adoption. I know several gay men who waited years and spent a considerable amount of money on adoption agencies and lawyers only to have to give up and pursue surrogacy. Even now, more and more queer men are building families through assisted reproductive technology (ART) given the insecurity and emotional rollercoaster that is fostering and adopting (https://www.babymoonfamily.com/original-articles/rainbow-family-planning).
I know it’s Hollywood, so we shouldn’t expect reality, and this movie has done the queer community and rainbow families proud in so many ways - even giving a gay dad shout out to Ricky Martin. However, I believe they could have made a slightly more balanced portrayal of surrogacy and adoption for queer men.
I will say that this movie’s most egregious failure is in its portrayal of LA as a walkable city. The characters are almost always filmed strolling around the streets and parks of the city. Hollywood can create any fantasy it wants, but I feel like it is a blatant lie to make LA ‘walkable.’
I believe this is a queer classic in its modern portrayal of chosen families and the challenges of rainbow family creation. The story is beautifully told, and like Thomas, I too cry every time I hear the song, ‘Moon River.’ If you do too, it’s yet another reason to watch this incredible movie.
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