Retro Review: I Told Sunset About You

The Infectious Guilt of Being Yourself

BY JOHN CARTER JR

In my most recent entries we have discussed love, self acceptance, and what it means to see others exactly as they are. These are powerful and of the utmost importance for the human experience. It is much easier to say you love yourself than to actually achieve that point in which you do. In order to love yourself, you must heal. Healing from the traumas of your past, the ones that have been inflicted on you and even the ones you have inflicted upon others. Sometimes it is simply healing from the unavoidable trauma the world inflicts upon us. 

The ways the world tells us to be and its expectation that we abide by that or we are wrong or gross or othered. We may not even realize who we are because we abide by what the world says is right, and how things are supposed to be, but we never even consider that there is another way to live. A way that more accurately fits how we are.

I Told Sunset About You (2020) is that struggle personified. It is the story of two boys, Teh and Oh-aew, as they prepare to attend college in Bangkok and leave their homes in Phuket, Thailand. When the two boys were young, they were inseparable, but after an abrupt end of their friendship the two grew to despise each other. Later during their preparation for college, the boys rediscover their friendship and over the course of their newfound relationship they discover feelings that go even deeper. 

The film discusses those themes of internalized hate and fear of rejection, but moreover it discusses why we are so afraid. Why do we shut things down before the consideration of certain possibilities? We don’t want to believe we are “one of those people” who everyone disapproves of, or we are scared to be brave in being with someone who is one of them. This is certainly important when discussing the characters’ motivations and struggles with gender identity or sexuality respectively. 

Teh is a talented and dedicated student who has always dreamed of being an actor. He has played the role of the dutiful son and classmate. We can see this through his need to get the approval of his mother that he sees his brother get. He was completely motivated to become an actor because of this reason, so when he starts developing feelings for Oh-aew he starts falling apart at the seams. This is something he can’t control and is powerless to influence. He worries about what it means to be gay and these insecurities reflect back at the person who most wants to be with him. He supports Oh-aew being interested in men but cannot let himself. 

This totally backwards kind of treatment is all too common for closeted gay men and lesbians. Many gay people fall in love with their best friends, especially ones they see themselves in, but aren’t able to pursue anything because of the lack of self acceptance. However, sometimes it is not even realizing there are things about ourselves that we have to accept. Some people go their whole lives without ever considering what it would be like to love other kinds of people in the way that we aren’t used to. They are told one way is the way it is, and if there is never a reason to question it or a means to avoid considering it, then they won’t open up.

Love is in the air. Compassionate understanding is alive. We are so happy together. Then why aren’t we? What is the hangup? This question and others are constantly floating either in the periphery or right in front of Oh-aew. He recognizes the deep connection he has with Teh, but the former only wants to see a friendship. Not only is he afraid of ruining what they have, but he is afraid of actually being with someone who loves him completely, as he doesn’t accept himself. He at first refuses to see this connection with Oh-aew and even tries to repress it by furthering a relationship with his friend Tan who is a girl.

Oh-aew even attempts to come to terms with his own identity. This unabashed self acceptance, from the perspective of Teh, is scary. It proves to him that you can be yourself, love yourself, and still be loved. Not only does it cause a foundational or deeply painful cognitive dissonance, as the self acceptance doesn’t match up with how Teh see the world, but it causes doubt even in the daring Oh-aew who eventually breaks down in front of his parents, whose disapproval he is fearful of. Although they are more than accepting, embracing even, the seeds of doubt by the one he loves the most had been sown. This happens in real life. A fully self loving, determined, and confident person can be swayed by the darkness living in their loved ones. It is a kind of self doubt that can destroy a person’s foundation and self image for a long time.

What does this show do to help remedy the consequences of familial, societal, and internalized expectations? It presents us with the only solution that allows love to flourish. Self love. After moments of extraordinary pain and after we have been rejected at our most vulnerable, the show teaches us that we must, not can, focus on ourselves. In order to receive the love that is true, and right in front of us, we must be able to love ourselves. This is through various means, going after your dreams, believing yourself when you say the body you exist in is beautiful, and believing that the love you have for other people is valid and true. 

These are just a few ways of self love. You must allow yourself the time to be yourself and accomplish the things that you want to. People must do this because they need to not forget themselves in the process. We only have one life, and if that life is lived in reference to someone else’s, we never get a chance to truly live. We cannot expect love from someone if our only quality to love is how we feel about that someone.

I Told The Sunset About You is a legendary show. It is one of the best representations of the gay struggle in all television and film history. It is painful, brutal, honest, beautiful, and exquisitely representative of a true experience. It can jumpstart our confrontation with our own internalized prejudice and affirm the progress that we have made in confronting them. The show is powerfully, moving, elegantly lit, expertly shot, and never misses. The show is an invitation, wrapped up in a beautiful envelope, to people struggling to leave their closets behind. It is the visual and auditory representation of what LGBT+ people go through to love. I will never forget what I learned while I spent time with these boys in Phuket, Thailand. It was the gay adolescence I and many others never got to have. And for that, I will be forever grateful for the experience. 

I give I Told The Sunset About You a 11/10 for being a perfect masterpiece about love, the pain we endure to be ourselves, and how to start healing.