Between grief and activism: a (dis)encounter of chronotopes in the film Prayers for Bobby (2009)

Abstract

Prayers for Bobby (2009), directed by Russell Mulcahy and produced by Lifetime TV, is based on true events in the 1980s. It is set in Walnut Creek, California, near San Francisco, where Sigourney Weaver plays Bobby Griffith, a homosexual son played by Ryan Kelley. In the first moment, we have Mary Griffith, an evangelical woman who detests gay people. In the second moment, after Bobby has "revealed" himself and tried in vain to be cured, Bobby kills himself. After Bobby's suicide, Mary understands that her son did not choose to be gay, and from that moment on, she joins the Association of Parents, Family, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and becomes an activist in favor of the causes advocated by the LGBTQIAPN+ community. From this point of view, we intend to use verbal-visual language to examine the relationship of space and time, which, at first sight, appears to be distant from one another, but which, on closer inspection, we see as complementary. On the one side, we have the chronotop of the (dis)encounter, represented by the bridge/viaduct where Bobby's suicide took place. On the other side, we have the chronotop of the road/street, where different people gather to celebrate the San Francisco's Pride.  We believe that such chronotopes are connected in a dialogical way. Thus, we draw on Luciane de Paula's concept of verbivocovisuality and, mainly Bakhtin's concept of chronotope.