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Unless you're good at spotting innuendo or your gaydar is working overtime, images of gay and lesbians in films have been comparatively few over the years. But as author and historian Richard Barrios sees it, gay themes and characters can be traced to more films than you think.
Throughout June, Barrios and Turner Classic Movies have been spotlighting movies with gay themes. As the Monday and Wednesday night series has pointed out, before the Production Code of 1934 movies didn't refrain from containing effeminate or clearly gay characters.
Going outside the TCM library when necessary, Barrios' series has so far shown such movies as 1912's Algie the Miner, about a man who wants to become a cowboy, and 1933's Ladies They Talk About, about women behind bars.
Post-1934, references to gay characters were more implied, including 1957's Voodoo Island, which Barrios calls a "crummy drive-in horror movie with carnivorous plants" whose second lead is a 40ish interior decorator who spends a good part of the movie showing an interest in the heroine.
Not always were the gay themes and character "over the heads" of the production code and film goers.
TCM shines spotlight on movies with gay themes | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle (broken link)
I saw the preview of this series of movies and the examples they were pointing out. Some of the examples he said that showed homosexuality looked like men acting silly and flamboyount, they really didn't look too gay to me.
I think he was stretching it a little in some of his examples.
I think there has always been some homosexuality in older movies but not to the extent he's saying.
More agenda?
I saw the old 1963 version of The Haunting when I was a kid. Loved it. Had absolutely no idea that one of the characters was a lesbian. (Probably because I didn't know what a lesbian was at the time.) Watching it now as an adult, it's pretty obvious.
Many, many, of these films are from the pre-production code era that effectively ran from 1934 to the 1967 release of Blowup when MGM couldn't get approval for the film but released it anyway. Even then, when the MPAA rating system was introduced, an X-rated film (the old equivilent of NC-17), theater chains wouldn't carry them so there was still a pall of censorship over what was released for major theatrical runs well into the early 90s.
To look at Hollywood films before the code is to get a real eyeful of what unfettered cinema was. There was no blatant sex and or profanity, but there certainly was a broad range of mature subject matter. It's hard for us to fathom just how pervasive the production code was. It didn't just cover sex or profanity or violence. Much of it was designed to push a particularly WASPish morality that we would find ridiculous today:
Women were not permitted to show bellybuttons but neither were men.
Gangsters always had to lose in the end and had to be protrayed as being unable to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. The law always had to be one-step behind them until the gangster got caught or died.
Teachers, clergy, and the President always had to be portrayed as morally upright and if scandal was to involve such a figure, they had to be exonerated by the end of the film.
Criminals were not permitted to get away with their crimes. Criminals had to pay for their crimes one way or another by the end of the film.
Portrayal of the United States, her military, foreign policy, and her allies was always to be positive.
Women were permitted to be provacative but could not engage in outright seduction.
No interracial marriages or romances were permitted to be shown.
Use of illegal drugs or addiction to drugs was not permitted (alcohol excepted).
Any display of homosexuality or even reference to it were not permitted.
Doctors could be portrayed as villains but nurses could not!
The words, "pregnant," and, "rape," could not be used. Childbirth had to take place off-camera.
Slave owners had to be depicted as beneficent toward their slaves.
Violence had to be shown without gore or blood.
Christianity and Judaism had to be treated with strict respect and any re-enactment of Biblical events had to be faithful to the scripture.
A couple could not both be on a bed or similar piece of furniture without one member of the couple keeping at least one leg on the floor.
Nude pieces of art were not permitted to be shown at all.
No provacative dancing shall be permitted.
When you read the actual Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (which wasn't fully enforced until the end of 1934), you'll see the outline by which censors operated but, in fact, they wrote their own codes as time went on, adding to their standards like a court creates common law by issuing rulings.
1934 was a disaster for cinema. The Production Code was established and Hitler came to power in Germany, then the world's other major film production country. Creativity was stifled and controversial subjects that were happily produced earlier, dropped by the wayside. Over time Hollywood would figure out ways to skirt the code and develop its own vocabulary of metaphors to depict or say that which was forbidden to be shown or said, but it wasn't until the post World War II films of Europe brought into the US and shown in art houses frequented by a new generation of beatniks, mods, intellectuals, and hippies that America had a taste of what unfettered cinema could be like.
Whether gay-oriented or not, please take a look at these remarkable films and see what and where American cinema was going before its self-imposed exile. You'll see some surprisingly mature and frank films that remind us the America of that age wasn't so different from how it is now. Same issues, same problems; just the names and faces have changed. It's a fascinating mirror into a brief period when Hollywood could say and show what it wanted to and what the people wanted to hear and see.
We use our tv for education, not indoctrination. We block many channels, FX, MTV, Fox, LOGO, and so on.
My worry with that is like with the kid who is never allowed something who then turns 18 and runs out and gets whatever it is he wasn't allowed. I think the only way to truly instill a moral value is to show why it withstands scrutiny from opposing values. Like the 23rd psalm, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil for thy rod and thy staff comfort me. How can you know the depth of your moral value unless it reassures you no matter what you encounter? If you don't do that then that which you fear becomes a forbidden fruit inadvertently made all the more alluring by the fact it is forbidden.
A good education is one that teaches people to reason for themselves and judge independently if the morals instilled in them are worth keeping or not and by that rule a person should be able to stay true themselves no matter what they encounter later on. Otherwise what do you have? A bunker mentality? Kids grow-up and leave and enter the world where they'll see and maybe experience some very shocking things we, as parents and adults, know are out there. I'd like my kid to prepared as best as possible for what he may encounter. If the values I teach him are worth anything, he'll know his moral values can withstand anything the world throws at him and he'll be prepared for any event he may encounter.
Location: In an illegal immigrant free part of the country.
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I am sure you would not be opposed to a child being exposed to the ills in the world when he reaches an age of reason. I don't have to show a child a body blown apart by a gun to teach them how dangerous guns can be. You don't have to give a child a shot of heroin to teach him it's bad.
I know there is an element of society that completely rejects that any child should have "an age of innocence" before they are confronted with everything adults can conjure up and before they have even a modicum of maturity to reason and judge.
I was raised in a strict home and never once did I run out to try everythng. My upbringing stopped me in my tracks to really look something over before a made a judgemant whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to accept or reject.
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