National Anthem
A monograph was published by Luke Gilford in 2020. It was called National Anthem, and it documented the queer community within the International Gay Rodeo Association through pictures. The photos are arresting and beautiful. Growing up in the Southwest, rodeos were always a passion for Gilford. However, being that the culture was not very accepting of queerness (or anything else that isn’t heteronormative), he didn’t feel included in it. So he left behind rodeo culture until he found himself at an IGRA event. “It was like a revelation because I was just like wow you can be safely existent in these spaces and find community and do so many things that I love doing but with queerness,” he told Vogue during an interview about his work there over two years traveling throughout Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona documenting this vibrant sub-culture within a sub culture. His first feature length film “National Anthem” is set entirely within this world.
Dylan is twenty-one years old but already has the weight of someone much older on him. His mother spends her nights drinking with men who change every week, leaving Cassidy, Dylan’s much younger brother, to be taken care of by Dylan alone all day while their mom sleeps it off until dark again when she calls one of them over once more, then she disappears back into her room until morning comes around yet another time without having seen either child for hours upon end.
Dylan works as a day laborer $15 an hour under the table cooking meals for Cassidy; making sure Cassidy does his homework, having conversations with him about things. Being tender with his little brother patient. He saves up money to buy an RV: freedom.
Does Dylan have friends? Doesn’t look like it. Girlfriend or boyfriend? No time. Nobody really knows where they’re going in House of Splendor notably because, much like Twelfth Night’s Viola, they didn’t know what country they were in when they got there. The only thing Dylan is told about the ranch he’s going to work at is that it’s a two week gig in the desert. As the pickup truck that took him there pulls up to an entry gate, Dylan stares up at the black-painted words above it: House of Splendor.
To say that House of Splendor is not your average ranch would be an understatement. What strikes Dylan first are three women in billowy dresses riding horses around what seems to be a garden or something. He sees everyone working (driving tractors, feeding animals, gardening), but everyone looks happy doing whatever it is they’re doing especially the people on horseback. For a second he almost feels like he shouldn’t even get out of the truck because clearly these people are rich and don’t need his help and won’t want some random kid around for two weeks who doesn’t even really know how to use a hammer anyway. Then Pepe opens the door and tells him to grab his bag and come inside.
Dylan quickly learns that the work at House of Splendor is hard but fair; boring but tolerable, hot but doable. It also turns out that anyone can ride if they’re willing to learn this includes Dylan.
He quickly gets a crush on one of them. Sky, a trans woman who doesn’t just ride horses well but makes them look good too.
The other thing about Sky (and all her friends) is she’s very welcoming which unfortunately isn’t something Dylan has grown accustomed to being met with when meeting new people.
The idea of “chosen family” rings particularly true for individuals whose actual families have shunned or abused them so when queer rodeo riders from all sexual, gender identities found themselves living together under one roof after having been brought together by their shared love for each other as well as animals and country living, it became clear pretty quickly that House of Splendor was going to be one of those places. For Dylan, this is not just exposure to different sexualities but never before has he ever seen people (especially adults) be genuinely nice or respectful towards each other. These happy people live together on the ranch, eat food they grow, take care of animals and go to rodeos one weekends inviting Dylan along every step of the way.
The community looks like paradise (or at least paradise for people who do not crave alone time). We only really meet three characters in this community: Sky, Pepe and the radiant Carrie, played by Mason Alexander Park with such warmth and intelligence it smoulders through the screen. Dylan is crushing on Sky, she’s his first love, but Carrie is the guide, the warm mother figure (who also lets Cassidy into the fold on a day when they all go to a county fair). All these people have experienced non-acceptance from families and wider society. The political element Tennessee banning drag performances or harmful legislation being passed isn’t mentioned, but its omission gives this community even more poetic resonance. These people are not just “survivors”. They are flourishing. The rodeo is their world. They have created the world they want to live in.
“If you show up you’re accepted,” says Gilford in an interview. “One thing that I love about this community is that if you show up, you’re accepted. There’s something really beautiful about that. That’s what America is supposed to be.” Hence the title of Gilford’s film. National Anthem. His cinematic eye has always been attuned to detail and there’s a documentary feel to many of the sequences here particularly those set at the rodeo itself because these are real people doing a real thing. He’s also attuned to Dylan’s awakening, as is Plummer whose face is so open and transparent it catches everything held in front of it by the camera lens; every dawning look of love; every “finding my people” (as Sky observes) smeared across his face.
He helps us enter this world lovingly and intimately with cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi, presenting it lovingly and intimately with her; these big skies, this earth; these sunsets, how people’s skin reflects light; this collage like presentation of all the people who live at House of Splendor it’s a lot, but no one ever said Gilford didn’t know and love this world with his entire heart.
These people participate in all the “tropes” of Western life: ranching, farming, rodeo, and line-dancing. These people take their cowboy hats off and place them over their hearts for the national anthem. They don’t do it ironically or snarkily either. This is their culture too; whether or not the mainstream accepts them. The romance between Dylan and Sky and the slightly fraught “love triangle” with Pepe leans into cliche a little bit, but luckily Gilford and the actors fight against it every step of the way. The film’s visual language is so strong; so poetic; so palpable that you can feel in your bones from very early on that National Anthem is not about whether Dylan and Sky will “make it” as a couple. National Anthem is about this shy young man finding his people; finding his chosen family. Whether or not he stays with them doesn’t really matter. He knows now there’s a wider world out there somewhere, he knows now there’s hope for him (and Jamie).
In his introduction to the National Anthem monograph, Gilford wrote: “One of the great powers of the queer rodeo is its ability to disrupt America’s tribal dichotomies that cannot contain who we really are liberal versus conservative, urban versus rural, ‘coastal elite’ versus ‘middle America.’ It’s incredibly rare to find a community that actually embraces both ends of the spectrum.” National Anthem is tender and sweet and if you let yourself sink into its visual language expresses all these things without saying anything at all about any of them out loud.
The theme of the film is not monologued by anyone. It’s in every frame. Gilford’s love for these people shines through, and I’m glad to have met them, to have been allowed into their world for a little while.
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