A rainbow flag both in the cinema and TV. The issue of LGBT has been approached in the small and the big screen much earlier than we might think. A slow but steady development that has given more and more space for sexual differences in all their many faces. It all started in the cinema shortly after the debut of the Lumière brothers. In fact, it was in that same year, 1895, when the first trace of homosexuality appeared on the big screen. It was portrayed in Dickson Experimental Sound Film, in which we can see two men dancing waltz together. In the first decades of the history of the Seventh Art, if we go through the various films of silent cinema, there are different characters that could be related to the representation of diverse types of sexuality, and among the most famous we must mention Charlot machinist from 1916. In the film, Charlie Chaplin himself appears kissing a woman dressed as a man. Then, interrupted by the character of an effeminate man, he gets rid of him in a rough way.
The pictures of sexual diversity can be seen in many other works, from the appearance of characters that reflect homosexuality to the first gay bar portrayed in Call Her Savage from 1932. The representations and references to the homosexual sphere begin to fade, however, with the arrival of the Hays Code (taken from the name of the American politician who established it), adopted in 1930 by Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, which limited the film industry productions, establishing what was morally acceptable in a film. Among the rules introduced by the Code, the main one set an absolute prohibition of showing or alluding to sexual perversions, and one of these was homosexuality.
And this is how the cinema encountered censorship. Dialogues, scenes, characters, and even plots were modified, and anything that could be considered to go against the premises of the Code. That was the case, for example, of Crossfire, 1947, taken from a novel on the killing of homosexuals, who, in the film adaptation, were “converted” into Jews. Real manipulations that forced the Seventh Art to limit its creations in terms of narration, content and artistic expression.
Despite the Hays Code, sexual diversity, however, did not completely vanish from the screens. Thus, what was initially a complete limitation, became instead an opportunity. The filmmakers made a greater creative effort and continued to include certain aspects and references that could be considered transgressive, sometimes resulting in exasperating situations or by forcing characters. This is the case of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca in 1940, where Mrs. Danvers – played by Judith Anderson – had a morbid attachment to her former dead mistress, Rebecca, thus eliciting a possible homosexual passion.
Meanwhile, with the arrival of television, and the presence of the sexual diversity issue gradually arrived to the small screen. The first appearance could be considered that of Russell Paxton, the languid fashion photographer starring Carleton Carpenter in Max Liebman’s Presents “Lady in the Dark”, 1954, a TV adaptation of the homonymous musical. It is also interesting to mention the first TV documentary devoted to homosexuality, The Rejected, aired in 1961, where Dr. Karl Bowman explained to the audience the Kinsey scale, the sexual orientation classification system devised a few years earlier by the famous American biologist and sexologist. Meanwhile, in the big screen, the portrayal of characters with different sexual orientations was still limited to hints and “winks” to the audience.
By the end of the 50’s a breaking point took place with the arrival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a film by Richard Brooks, in which there was a clear homosexual reference in the attraction between the main character and his friend. The following year, in 1959, in Suddenly, Last Summer, the screenwriter Gore Vidal was forced to eliminate all traces of one of his main homosexual character, having to abide by the Hays Code. In spite of this suppression, the character was not completely eliminated from the plot, and although it was not shown to the public, his role was maintained. In recent years, moralism slowly began to fade, as evidenced also in Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey (1962), which, unlike the previous films, depicts a formerly homosexual character who has an important presence in the plot.
The diffusion of these topics came slowly hand in hand with the appearance of the LGBT movement in the 70’s. This new wave could be inaugurated thanks to the ending of the Hays Code, which was finally abandoned by the film industry in 1967. At that time The Boys in the Band (1970) landed on the big screen, a film in which all the protagonists are homosexuals. So far the sexual diversity issue had often been portrayed without explicitly references, Cabaret, in 1972, brought us in a big leap forward, with the main character openly coming out of the closet and proclaiming his homosexuality. As times changed, so did television. In 1971, in fact, the series All in the Family included in its first episode an open chat about homosexuality. A year later, in The Virginian, the first regular gay character in a TV series made his appearance.
Despite these exceptions, most of the feature films of the 70s link the homosexual image to a negative stereotype, as we can clearly see in Freebie and the Bean, where the gay character plays the part of the villain. A cliché that was only questioned in 1980 with the release of Cruising, starring Al Pacino, which tells the story of the vicious nightlife in certain gay clubs of New York. Its release in the theatres led to many protests from the gay community and its distribution was boycotted because it was considered to be homophobic. The critics also followed this wave of negative comments, underlining how Al Pacino’s character himself, once he discovered his sexual nature, was becoming psychotic and homicidal. For this reason, the production included a warning at the beginning of the projection in which it was said that the film was by no means intended as a real representation of the lifestyle of the gay community.
After this great turmoil, the productions made a few more steps forward and managed to abandon this negative image associated to homosexuals, until 1982 with Personal Best, a film that tells about the relationship between two women. The eighties thus became a turning point, in which sexual diversity was expanded, focusing also on lesbian love. A great example in this sense is certainly Silkwood, in which the character played by Cher lives openly her sexuality and without fearing the judgment of others. In short, it is a development not only in terms of quality, since the character is no longer perceived as a negative stereotype, but also of content, as it shows homosexuality among women, a topic that has not been widely addressed before in the cinema.
The representation of diversity both in the cinema and on TV will change radically from the 90’s onwards, a time in which the characters in the films and series exponentially increase their number, abandon at the same time the “sketch” status that previously was often assigned to them, to become main character roles and models of glamour and tolerance. One of the most welcomed cases has been the TV sitcom Will & Grace, which tells about the life of an unusual couple of roommates in Manhattan formed by a gay lawyer and a heterosexual decorator, their acquaintances and their social realities in a fun and harmonious cohabitation. Will & Grace have become the TV pioneers of a rainbow universe that representing the entire LGBT community.
To be continued…
The dates for all the referenced films have been taken from their Italian distribution year.
