I have not seen Small Town Gay Bar (also by Ingram), but I will look for it now. I enjoyed Bear Nation, Ingram's SXSW festival entry, and feel that though it is not perfect, there is something there that everyone can appreciate. The focus presented is a sub-culture (bears) within a sub-culture (homosexual men). Unlike "twinks," bears do not fit common gay stereotypes because they are usually larger, occasionally hairier, and always more masculine. It is a branch of the lifestyle that has not been officially addressed before, and Ingram does it in style.
Follow the mayhem as you sit in on a bear convention in Chicago that brings burly gay men together from all over the world; enjoy the uniqueness of a couple of bear hotspots in London; listen first-hand to interviews with numerous gay men who either are attracted to, or are bears themselves"”all while learning a thing or two about this quickly developing culture.
The phenomenon here stems from the fact that bears used to be an outcast group, simply because they weren't "˜gay' enough. Through the understanding that everyone really is different, and that is okay, their culture was known for their acceptance of all kinds of people to their events. Now, there seems to be a demand for these overly masculine men as they have formed a unique, cult-style following. Even better, now with everyone talking about them, divisions like muscle bears, big bears, and everything in-between have sprung up from within the group of outcasts. The only question now is whether these new divisions will threaten what the original group worked so hard to develop: openness.
Bear Nation is enlightening for clueless straight people. However, the information is only surface level, and does not dig much deeper. The film briefly interviews a number of different gay men many times without closely following the story of anyone in particular. As a result, it becomes difficult to indentify with any particular subject since we are not attached to any specific story or couple.
For a film solely giving an informative look into a growing culture, it went on a little long. There are some good laughs thanks in large part to archival bear footage, but even that seems to get repetitive before Ingram was done. I was anxiously looking forward to this documentary, hoping to better understand the culture; sadly, the film was just average as I feel I was only slightly entertained, and educated even less.
