[Director Elegance Bratton tells Jezebel how he, like his films
protagonist, survived homophobia, homelessness, and the military.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘THE INSPECTION’ EXPLORES ‘DON’T ASK DON’T TELL’ THROUGH
THE EYES OF A YOUNG BLACK MARINE  
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Rich Juzwiak

Jezebel
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_ Director Elegance Bratton tells Jezebel how he, like his film's
protagonist, survived homophobia, homelessness, and the military. _

, Image: A24/Patti Perret

 

“Every movie is a miracle,” writer/director Elegance Bratton told
Jezebel while discussing his debut feature, _The Inspection_
[[link removed]], last
month. Some miracles, though, are more miraculous than others. The
six-year process Bratton went through, from putting words on the page
to having his semi-autobiographical film produced, is impressive by
any measure, given its optics: Its protagonist, like Bratton, is a
Black gay man who finds refuge in the military, and the movie takes no
apparent stance on the greater implications of the manufacturing of
human war machines. But it is even more so when Bratton’s complete
biography is taken into account. The Jersey-born Bratton’s mother
kicked him out at 16 as a result of his sexuality, and he spent more
than 10 years on the street. When we meet French, his onscreen avatar
played by Jeremy Pope, he’s living in a shelter.

“I had grown up with the notion that I was worthless because of my
sexuality—that my life had no meaning and I had no future,”
Bratton said. “And then I joined the Marine Corps at that moment of
desperation, and my drill instructor informed me that actually I was
important, that I did matter, because of my ability to protect and
serve the person to my left and right—that my life depends on them
and their life depends on me. That was a really transformational
moment in my life.” After leaving the Marines, Bratton attended
Columbia University and got his MFA at New York University. He went on
to direct the 2019 documentary _Pier Kids_ about queer youth in New
York, as well as the Vice ballroom series _My House_.

If this redemption arc were neat, though, Bratton wouldn’t have had
the reference material to make the nuanced film that he did. For one
thing, he enlisted when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still very much
in effect, which meant that his refuge wasn’t an entirely safe
space. Like French, his sexuality was sussed out fairly early at boot
camp.

“Well, my name is Elegance,” he said to display his lifelong
inability to hide in plain sight. That name was, ironically enough,
given to him by his mother, who rejected him for being gay. “This
is why [the movie] has to be nuanced, because the tragic and the
comedic are literally hand-in-hand,” he added.

Bratton said that _The Inspection_ is “100 percent
autobiographical when it comes to the desires, hopes, and fears of
the main character,” but not everything that happens in the movie is
a strict reflection of his life. During a climactic scene, French
applies camo makeup with the heavy hand of a drag queen (replete with
a smoky, lined eye). That didn’t happen. Earlier, French’s body
inadvertently outs him to his fellow recruits as they bathe alongside
each other. “I never got an erection in the shower,” recalled
Bratton. And then, after a beat: “Well...not _that_ way.”

That shower scene is particularly ingenious because the fantasy that
leads to French’s arousal is predicated on the slightest of shifts
from the homosocial to the homoerotic. In French’s mind’s eye, the
light changes, and he and his extremely good-looking peers (including
McCaul Lombardi and _Only Murders in the Building_’s Aaron
Dominguez) saunter around in towels, leaning on each other
seductively, as if in a bathhouse (or the steam room of virtually any
New York gym’s men’s locker room). There was something very real
about the charge that scene gets at.

The Inspection | Official Trailer HD | A24

“I came into the Marine Corps as an out gay man,” said Bratton.
“And so I had all this experience. I’d spent plenty of time in
Chelsea and the West Village—you know, the club scene and all these
places that were undeniably gay. And there’s just all of this wild
overlap [in the Marines].” One example he noted occurred during his
inspection, in which various officers gathered to judge the fit of his
uniform.

“I would be surrounded by men who are literally feeling me up, every
part of me: ‘Come over here, look at his ass,’” he continued.
“And I’m like, ‘Wait. I’m not allowed to get turned on by this
at all? _You’re_ not turned on at least a little bit?’ I find
that to be funny. You either make it funny or you get your ass kicked.
And that’s how I grew up.”

YOU ARE IN SOME WAYS PROMISED AN EARLY AND UNREMARKABLE DEATH AS A
BLACK GAY MAN IN AMERICA.NOBODY CARES. BUT YOU DIE IN A MILITARY
UNIFORM, ALL OF A SUDDEN YOU’RE A HERO.

It would be a mistake to call _The Inspection_ apolitical—the
politics of this story of a Black gay man’s survival are inherent.
But, Bratton concedes, “Boot camp is not a place for political
discussion,” and his generally well-received
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condemnation of the military has been perceived by some as a sign
that it is propaganda. In the beginning of our interview, Bratton
stated that he had a Notes document in his phone with talking points.
He did consult it once during the 20 minutes or so that we talked. In
response to the question of propaganda, though, what unspooled in real
time was akin to a live essay.

“On some level, all art is propaganda, right?” he began. “It
doesn’t necessarily exist if not to represent points of view, and
in its bare essence, that’s what propaganda is, right? In that
sense, this movie is not pro-military, it’s not anti-military.
It’s pro-truth. This is about a young man who’s willing to do
anything to win back his mother’s love, even if it means going to a
place that he may find dangerous.”

“It’s not pro-military propaganda,” he continued. “There’s
actually a lot of statements and satirical things being applied
[regarding] how I have come out of this experience to be who I am. For
instance, that scene in the trailer where he’s like, ‘If I die in
this uniform, I’m a hero to somebody,’ however you feel about it,
that’s true. You are in some ways promised an early and unremarkable
death as a Black gay man in America. And it’s not an event. Nobody
cares. But you die in a military uniform, all of a sudden you’re a
hero. For me, that was enough. I was homeless. I was in a shelter.
What was I gonna do? So it’s not to say that the Marine Corps is an
idealistic place, but it is to say to this generation of queer people
and young people who are inheriting a world that is going to be
remarkably more difficult to grow up in than anything you or I have
ever experienced: Find your tribe where you need to find it. Your
survival matters. We need you here.”

For Bratton, _The Inspection_ was not merely a chance to uplift and
affirm potential viewers, it was a chance for him to work through his
own trauma. His mother died shortly after the movie was greenlit,
which made playing out their fraught relationship on screen cathartic.
Gabrielle Union depicts French’s mother in the film. She packs
years’ worth of emotion into just a few onscreen minutes and seems
like a shoe-in for a Best Supporting Actress nod.

“I’m so grateful to Gabrielle and Jeremy, because they brought my
mother back to life,” said Bratton. “[Union] gave me an
opportunity to revisit things that had been said to me, things that
had been done to me over and over and over again.”

The director said that working through his pain for the sake of
potentially inspiring others has brought him to “the most healed
place I can possibly be.” But he wants to make clear that he’s
been doing that personal work—that sloughing off the injustices of
the past is a process. “This movie is not the representation of me
dealing with it for the first time,” said Bratton. “This is the
celebration of me getting through it.”

* don't ask don't tell
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* Gay Rights
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* Black Queer Film
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* human sexuality
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