Educational Media Reviews Online

The Year of Paper begins, “Little girls will often dream of their wedding day, of finding a soul mate, and one day walking down the aisle….” This “year of paper,” then, examines not only the first year in the marriage of three wedded, apparently “soul-mated” couples, but also, significantly, the paper license that allows two of these couples—gay men and women, respectively—to legally marry in their particular locales.

With archival and documentary footage as well as via interview techniques, the film highlights the similarities as well as the differences between the various married couples. Importantly, though, the film also includes interviews and statements made by proponents and detractors of gay marriage.

Explaining that marriage was first extended to some United States’ gay couples in 2004, The Year of Paper begins with the examination of the three couples, introduced individually, and first seen at their respective weddings. While the film is largely balanced in its purely documentary and non-biased portrayal of the couples, there are immediate differences obviously to the perceptive viewer. For example, the first couple shown, the lesbian couple BluJay and Alma, are apparently legally wed in a hallway in, it seems, the San Francisco City Hall; Joel and Steve, a gay male couple are at least attended by two witnesses; and the heterosexual Adam and Sharon exchange government-sanctioned and social vows with a full attendance of bridesmaids and guests. There is a subtlety already presented in these disparate images that underscores the necessary difference between the marriages. Sharon admits that marriage is “such an interesting tradition that people have been going through for centuries,” though this is of course contrasted by the non-heterosexual couples rushing to get wed as the legal opportunity had never before presented itself.

But more than the differences between the couples—much less straight versus gay marriages—are the obvious similarities. Individuals naturally express “cold feet” and some trepidation in entering marriage; but some common emotions might be more surprising to viewers. For example, Joel and Steve banter about having a certain “Donna Reed” syndrome, wanting the “perfect” marriage, and even having had wanted to marry women and have children. The eventuality of this proved naturally impossible, but the commonality of the desire is fittingly and easily juxtaposed to the more “standard” marriage model shown by Adam and Sharon.

To people who are pro-gay marriage, the similarities will almost certainly come as no surprise. But the same emotions and ideas expressed by the individual couples are, somewhat surprisingly, not at all the most evocative elements of the film. Insofar, perhaps, as happy families are all the same, the power of the film comes from the unhappiness: The histories of the gay individuals, the mother who would not appear at the wedding; the familial fear expressed at a “coming out,” are touching moments that evoke thoughts of the arguable unfairness and socialized discrimination that the gay marriage debate is most essentially about.

In the same way, the various experts, researchers, and religious and legislative leaders that are quoted provide the most useful and thought-provoking tension in the narrative. The interposition of these scholars into the stories of the “happy couples” is quite masterfully done in the film; and their commentaries play off the expressed emotions of the newlyweds. As the couples talk about their excitement at marriage, for instance, the various experts explain historical points of unions and weddings. One researcher notes that until 1754 England, no license was required by the state and that what “many religious people don’t recognize” is that the Catholic Church required only “words of consent” (and no witnesses, priests, blessings, etc.) for an effective legal union. In the same way, marriage for love, as opposed to familial alliances and other non-romantic reasons, is a surprisingly recent event. Naturally, the counter-point, which believes that the United States was founded on “God-ordained institutions” such as marriage, is expressed as well, leading to incisive comments and interesting factoids on the rites and rights of marriage. While many audiences will be familiar with the lines of reasoning on both sides of the issue, it will perhaps be surprising to see one religious representative decrying the parallels between gay- and other civil rights (“choice” versus phenotype, so to speak) who is contrasted to another leader supporting the gay unions since “God is love” and standing in the way of “loving one another” is a pointed type of hate. While these are largely subjective, emotive arguments, the narrative’s message is certainly heightened insofar as these are specifically the voices that are arguably most heeded in the national debate over gay marriage.

Similarly, when discussing and showing some couples in the process of having and/or trying to have children, a “reproductive specialist” notes that the argument against gay unions being non-procreative and artificial insemination as being “unnatural” is demolished prima facie by straight marriages not requiring child-bearing and that ,em>all medicine interferes with what would “naturally” happen.

Indeed, these various experts and leaders provide sometimes “typical” arguments both for and against gay marriage, but often provide surprisingly useful thoughts like the ones above. In this way, the debate narrative might provide a much more useful springboard for thoughts and debate among audiences than the primary filming of the three couples.

The gay couples insist on a necessarily political aspect to their marriages that is missing from straight unions; and this assertion is underscored by the recitation of some of the (over 1000!) federal benefits denied gay couples when legal marriage is not an option. The experts play off this politicism by examining Loving v. Virginia and the statistics that 70% of the U.S. population was against interracial marriage while the Supreme Court was arguing these rights of minority populations. (Indeed, what, then, is the “Rule of Law”?)

Toward the film’s end, though, the imposed legal dissolution of gay marriages overall is discussed, though it might benefit audiences to highlight this aspect of the (suddenly “non-”) marriage more. Additionally, given the speed with which laws regarding gay marriages and the debate over civil unions (with their many fewer associated and non-transferable state-level rights) within and outside the gay community are evolving, dissolving, and being reinterpreted, The Year of Paper has a somewhat antiquated “feel” already. Much of this is not at all the fault of the filmmakers: While the sedate music and excitedly pleasant thoughts of the newlyweds is quite low-key and softens the narrative’s edges just a bit, the recent instance of California’s Proposition 8 overturning the legality of gay marriages necessarily dulls the happiness of the progressive unions, and that central theme of the film is diminished and address too late in the narrative. In this manner, the audience’s thoughts on the gay couples’ happiness are made necessarily ambivalent, but the views of the other experts are certainly made that much more incisive and relevant to current political debate. The homosexual couples, the nominal center of the film, are in a real state of uncertainty; and while this flux casts a strange shadow on the film, it surely makes the piece more essential to those viewers interested in an understanding of any side of the gay marriage debate, and utterly necessary to the understanding of the legalities and impacts of these unions. As a point-in-time piece representing where things stood in 2007, the film is essential, but the film cannot (as, of course, no film at the current time could) provide an overview of the current state of gay marriage. The Year of Paper, thus, is heartily recommended for collections that specialize in American studies, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, and some aspects of contemporary United States law.