Barbra Streisand is one of the last great stars who emerged at the end of the old star system and embodied what many of the greatest talents in the history of film and music had, which was intense charisma and star voltage that electrified both stage and screen. Beauty was often secondary and emerged as the result of genuine talent and hard work that would cripple today’s media parasites, such as the Kardashians.
It is that star voltage that is lacking in pretty much every female “star” under 40 today. Barbra displayed talent that none of the creatures in Hollywood today could begin to possess and a drive to persevere in a male-dominated, beauty obsessed world of 1960s Hollywood that would have destroyed most others. She not only survived but succeeded beyond measure. The gay male initially supported her in abundance, because she, like he, was an aberration to convention, and her voice spoke and sang in kinship with his oppression. She was different and, for the first time, “different” was being celebrated. Conventionally attractive, no. Alluring features, yes. Film is not about truth, it’s about illusion, and Barbra epitomizes that notion. When illusion is manufactured to precision, it not only becomes truth, it transcends it.
Barbra has evolved into the butt of tremendous hostility and derision among the gays. Maybe it’s the millennial and Gen-Z gay who was raised on modern musical sensibilities and doesn’t process the torch singer aspect. Why would a gay today want to hear a woman singing about the man that got away? And how would they know about oppression, when they’re in a time when being gay is just so “in” and they’re the sought-after guests at every party, the child that every parent longs for, and the new breed of parents who are going to teach the straight world how it’s done.
I can always remember Barbra as a “do-no-wrong” amongst the gays and the performer for whom they anticipated and held their breath for every new project, album, and the "impossible" possibility that she would sing live again. Well, that happened in 1993-94. If you could afford it, you had your opportunity to witness her beauty for yourself. But there would be a change. Perhaps, the change happened after “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” That seemed to be the turning point in her career, at least film wise. There was the constant deliberation about “The Normal Heart,” which as Larry Kramer emphasized, could have been financed by Streisand for as little as 15 million dollars as a high-end independent film. Instead, she chose to recreate Nantucket on her 17 acres in Malibu complete with man-made ponds of color-coordinated fish, grandma’s ranch house, and a subterranean shopper’s world.
Perhaps, this was when the gays began to see Barbra in a different light, and perhaps, not as beautiful as she had once seemed to them. Maybe it’s because she didn’t descend into a train wreck like Garland, but emerged with tremendous wealth and her musical legacy intact. Or maybe because illusion fades with time, and the real being underneath comes to the surface. Like the old adage: “When you’re young, you get the face that God gave you. When you’re old, you get the face that you deserve.” When do you feel the turning point began for Barbra? When the voice aged, when politics overtook artistry, when the mad attempt to stay relevant compromised innovation? When the elder gays who worshipped her went home to Jesus? Talk amongst yourselves...