Postcript: Outing and 'positive images' in Hollywood

In this post, reflecting on discussion of 'positive images' in mainstream movies, I noted how:

Something like William Friedkin's Cruising can now be looked at by bleeding-edge film-maker James Franco as a sexy artefact to be examined. Back then it was yet another movie in which gay people receive their just desserts: death. Both that and the now seen as camp Basic Instinct, made 12 years after Cruising, attracted demonstrations when they were being filmed.

Huffington Post reports that Friedkin, like Silence of The Lambs director Jonathan Demme before him, has now expressed regrets.

I thought there might be some negative criticism of it, but I thought that that would come from more of the so-called 'straight community' who were not used to seeing those events depicted. To be accurate, the film was about the S&M world. It was a murder mystery set against the backdrop of the S&M world at that time, in the late-seventies. It was not about the gay community at all. But, here's the historical fact about it. Gay liberation had begun to make powerful steps forward and I'm sure when 'Cruising' came out, it was not the best foot forward for gay liberation. I recognize that in hindsight but I didn't at the time.

To say the movie is "not about the gay community" is disingenuous to say the least but, hey ho, regret ...

Outing and 'positive images' in Hollywood

A speech last week arguing for an end to anti-LGBT stereotypes by a Hollywood studio leader has received much attention. Amy Pascal, chair of Sony Pictures, said:

Old stereotypes still exist. The most benign stereotypes would have a gay kid believe that they will end up being the asexual, witty best friend of the pretty girl, or a drag queen, or a swishy hairdresser. The list goes on.

Of course, there are great images, too, like the family in The Kids Are All Right. The way the boy in Perks of Being a Wallflower and the middle-aged man in Hotel Marigold and the 75-year-old man in Beginners come out to a better, richer, more fulfilled life. It’s treated as a celebration.

I hated The Kids Are All Right. I hated the people depicted, just the worst sort of self-absorbed Californian liberals, I hated the dialogue, but what I most hated was how they treated the help, the Hispanic gardener, something which received no comment in any review I saw. So, one persons 'positive image' is anothers waste of time and money.

Pascal led off by citing The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo's seminal history of gay representation at the movies. Tellingly, Pascal referred to the documentary, not the book.

Russo's book is about how representation was there right from the beginning of cinema, if you knew where to look. But in the later years Celluloid Closet shows how so much of this became relentlessly negative. This is hardly surprising. Just as is happening now in Africa, increasing gay visibility in the United States at that time created a backlash.

I thought of this time when reading Richard Smith's take on Pascal's speech:

It's a bit simplistic and resurrects a rather tired 80s argument about "positive images" in popular culture. Haven't we got over this by now?

During those 'tired' 80s and well into the 90s, Hollywood representation became a leading gay political issue. This was the time of the AIDS crisis, of Act-Up civil disobedience, and of a movement challenging Hollywood on the streets. There were protests at the Oscars, twice. Location filming was disturbed.

The power of the culture to impact facts on the ground is self-evident now, when we see something like the Vice President of the United States citing TV show Will and Grace for why he changed his view on marriage.

Actor Wilson Cruz, who starred on cult classic TV series My So-Called Life in the 1990s, explained on Melissa Harris Perry:

We cannot overstate how powerful that is when someone walks through a story and experiences a life on their television screens in their home. They really understood who we are as a people. So now they're voters. Now they're legislators and running the country. So story is important because we get into the heart and the mind of people.

Back then the power of the culture was self-evident too, if only to some, and that was because the negativity was relentless. Something like William Friedkin's Cruising can now be looked at by bleeding-edge film-maker James Franco as a sexy artefact to be examined. Back then it was yet another movie in which gay people receive their just desserts: death. Both that and the now seen as camp Basic Instinct, made 12 years after Cruising, attracted demonstrations when they were being filmed.

'Inning' Jodie Foster