Saturday Night at the Baths (1975) - David Buckley

​An intriguing time-capsule of a specific time and place in New York City, Saturday Night at the Baths is a social conscious relationship drama that aims to deconstruct heteronormativity and the pervasive ways it informs the social parameters of acceptability when it comes to idealized masculinity in our culture. Less explicit than I was expecting in its exhibition of sexuality, Saturday Night at the Baths in a sense feels muted by design in what feels like a calculated decision in order to garner access to a greater audience and more importantly appeal to the predominate social apparatus that defines collective culture - the white, middle-class. Solely lives in a middle-class milieu, Saturday Night at the Baths ostensibly believes that any meaningful change to social status and acceptance of homosexuality much be through the adoption of the middle class. It is quite fun and subversive in how it illustrates how we as a culture place strictures on something as fluid as sexuality, Has some afterschool special vibes, but given the film's approach is a more sensual and wholesome approach to homosexuality than other films of its era, and in a certain sense it feels radical in this decision. There is one scene about two-thirds of the way through the film involving a friendly amateur football game played in the park. It's a competitive display of a game most associated with orthodox ideals of masculinity, and Saturday Night at the Baths utilitzes this association to create one of the film's most entertaining and memorable sequences that had me hooting and hollering