Queerness In Movies Essay Samples

Film Studies

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Queerness is a generalized term meaning odd but over the years has come to be used a term signifying homosexuality in a person, man or woman. The subject of queerness has been a taboo for major part of cinema and still isn’t popular with the public except in limited roles and comedy.
The presence of such said queerness in people has been there for a long time but restraints and restrictions have be placed on the mention or so called promoting or any such behavior and they never overtly show any characters in one way or another steered clear of even mentioning that one such individual can exist.
But if there was no overt presence or representation with the president down there but there have always been subtle and covert ways in which films in Hollywood shown gay individuals.
In the movie ‘Top Hat’ Alberto Beddini is a character and it goes without saying that the character is shown as a gay person. Some of his habits being particularly the same as many other gays are depicted in that era, rather still in these times as well.
Shown as a small in stature person, talked in a high pitched voice and was somehow associated with the fashion industry. He is also shown as a vain and self-obsessed person. This is also a recurring theme in movies that show gay characters. They show them as vain and self-obsessed.
Thus even by those early times, a certain cinematic stereotype of homosexuals or queerness had taken root and was then established further on with the same type of role casting for men that were openly or not so openly queer. This is as early as the year 1935 and just with certain acting, scene settings and just a hint in certain dialogues, the queerness was displayed and the message was given to the audience in subtle and quiet ways but they were perfectly understandable for the audience.
During the years in which the Hollywood production code was implemented, queerness was never openly expressed in a character, even if the character was fictional. No movie could have an open debate on such a topic, but still through subtle means the queerness of a character could be expressed and an intelligent audience could easily pick up on the signs and the message could have still been conveyed easily and clearly. This was to be used continually by Hollywood till the later year when homosexuality became more open in the US culture.
However in the later era, the after Hollywood production code times era, movies were very clear and open about the concept and idea of queerness. Bold movies were made. Some even say this post Hollywood production code era was a time of controversial movies. Such as the movie ‘The Boys in the Band’ which was directed by William Friedkin and was released in 1960.This movie boldly dealt with homo-sexuality.
But more than sexuality the movie deals with human relations and human feelings. Feelings of love are evoked when a married man phones his male friend and dies over the phone. There is tension as the party scene progresses into a long brawl. But the queer theme is explored here. It is a party of gay men who are going through turmoil .Someone is confused, another person is consumed by self-loathing. By the standards of the modern world , heavy and extreme stereotyping is done in most of the scenes , men breaking down here and there , showing the queer men as cruel sometimes and at other times highly over-sensitive and touchy and along with all that very argumentative.
However despite all that the boys in the band was a landmark movie for awareness about homo-sexuality and at the time of its release, it was a ground breaking movie. Considered to be very bold, however it also fell into the category of controversial movies. It is said about the movie that homo-sexual men either loved the movie or hated it. Loved it because it communicated that the boys were just a group of human beings going through a difficult time in their lives and learning how to cope with all those emotions and obviously most drunken parties tend to have some people bowling and fighting in it.
And along with the sensitive and mature handling of the topic, the movie still somehow managed to stereotype homo-sexual men. And this is the reason some gay men abhor the movie. But for its time, this movie brought about an utterly new concept and changed (even if slightly) the way in which Hollywood handled queerness. The era of the film dictated that the manner of the acting be portrayed in such a way.
The signs or codes of queerness do seem to change from decade to decade but the basic stereotyping still remains the same.

References

Sperling, Millner, and Warner (1998), Hollywood Be Thy Name, Prima Publishing; ISBN 559858346, p. 325.