Written by:
Ariane Conrad
It’s one thing to find a vacation spot that welcomes you and your same-sex partner; it’s another thing entirely to find one where you can comfortably bring your children, especially if you’d prefer to be in the company of other queer parents. That’s the premise behind Kelli and Rosie O’Donnell’s R Family Vacations, and the family-friendly cruises they offer to “your entire family, in what ever way you define it.”
R Family’s premiere voyage, which set sail in July 2004, is the subject of the HBO documentary All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise, which was directed by Shari Cookson and premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Rosie is, of course, the star of the show. She cracks us — and the Caribbean-bound audience aboard the Norwegian Jewel — up with her bittersweet, real-life account of declaring her undying love for Kelli to Kelli’s unreceptive mother. We get to witness tender and intimate moments of Rosie’s parenting, and she’s fabulous and heroic in her strong stand in favor of foster parenting.
But she also shares the limelight with others, particularly the teenagers aboard the vessel, who reflect on their parents’ coming-out, their own sexual identities and what it’s like to grow up with two parents of the same sex (which is incredibly great, from everyone’s accounts). One girl tells a story about having had a dream in which she found herself kissing a boy and enjoying it. When she woke, she says, she began sobbing from disappointment that it might mean she was straight. She ran and told her mother about it, who assured her, “It’s OK, honey. Lots of girls like to kiss boys!”
All Aboard! could be criticized for the high cheese factor and melodramatic scoring, but more significantly, R Family Vacations could be criticized for its somewhat classist packaging. With tickets starting at $999 per person for the regular R Family cruises, going all the way up to $4,999 per person for the top-end suites, this is clearly an experience restricted to upper- and upper-middle-class families. In addition, the vast majority of passengers on the cruise are white and clean-cut, with nary a tattoo or piercing to be seen. It may be that butch women and transfolk would feel uncomfortable on board.
Green-conscious families may shy away from contributing to an industry that heightens air and water pollution, destroys natural ecosystems and fragile ancient cultures, and produces, on average, in a one week cruise: eight tons of garbage; 1 million gallons of gray water; 210,000 gallons of sewage; and 25,000 gallons of oil-contaminated water.
Nevertheless, one has to appreciate Rosie and Kelli for utilizing their celebrity status for some good in this world with their ongoing advocacy for queer rights. The safe space afforded by their cruises is no small accomplishment, as is evidenced by the experiences some of the travelers have when the ship pulls into port in the Bahamas.
Christian protestors holding vicious, anti-queer placards line the streets to greet the families who venture ashore. “You are a nasty sissy!” shrieks a particularly unpleasant local. We see shots of the couples yelling back or ushering their crying children past as fast as they can go. It’s deeply saddening and also very real — a foreshadowing of the trauma and culture shock that some of the families say they expect at the end of the cruise when they re-enter the unfortunately “real” world. Some of the travelers gush about being able to kiss in public on the boat; we can only assume this means that wherever they usually live, that isn’t OK.
All in all, All Aboard! is a touching documentary that brings a host of interesting issues to the fore, including the challenges of queer parenting and the value of acceptance and belonging.
For more on All Aboard! visit: http://www.hbo.com
|
