Queer Cinema in America
» Gay films
From a survey of LGBT people in Hollywood movies:
Indeed, matter-of-fact portrayals of gay male sex remain virtually absent from Hollywood films. “Mainstream people dislike homosexuality,” says the late memoirist Quentin Crisp in The Celluloid Closet, “because they can’t help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. When you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don’t like that.”
The many faces of gay Hollywood
Comments
Wow! Thanks for linking to that article; it’s a very nice review of the situation. I disagree, however, that “Psycho” and “Cruising” uphold negative stereotypes or damage the gay movement. Negative stereotypes come from an internal idiocy. Anyone who watches “Basic Instinct” and thinks beautiful blond women are ice-pick killers is just as stupid as someone who watches “Psycho” (or “Silence of the Lambs”) and thinks transvestites are confused serial killers.
“Cruising” was, of course, directed by the same man who bravely set Mart Crowley’s “Boys in the Band” to film.
Posted by: Paul | December 18, 2005 11:41 AM
I never connected Psycho with transgendered persons myself. (And they have played a large role in my life.)
Honestly I never watched Cruising. It has been to long for me to remember why I felt uncomfortable with the way the movie looked in ads.
Posted by: Richard | December 20, 2005 4:23 PM