Amanda D. Post # 9

1. While Barrios does not go into much depth about the historical forces that caused the changes in public portrayal of gay people, he does explain some of the social/cultural (through film) as well as political reasons for the alteration of the image of gays in society. Historically, the pressure of the Depression and the spike in nationwide morality following the liberal (for the time period) behavior of the 20s caused people to view homosexuality in society and the movies warily. Gays started to represent immorality more so than they did in the previous decade, and the humorous and eccentrically out-of-touch gay characters on film began to change along with the public attitude toward them in real life. Barrios then remarks on the general change in film and public attitude after World War II. The end of the war caused Hollywood and the people (the viewing audience) in turn, to see gays from either of two perspectives, “giddiness or gloom,” (predominantly gloom) as that is how they were being portrayed on film (Barrios 167). Gay men are seen as “mama’s boys,” spending too much time with their mothers and behaving in the ways that women should. This lack of paternal influence on film can be connected to the WWII era fear of sons adopting “pansy- like” behavior because of the lack of a father’s strong, masculine presence during the war. Thus films and society began to move away from the light and cheery gay image of the earlier decades (Barrios 171). By mid-century, the McCarthy era brought about both a fear of communism and a fear of gays, as homosexuality became associated with evil and disease. The homosexual community, though, only began to take seriously to activism later on in the century in an attempt to change their own situation and not leave it to politics or cultural changes. According to Barrios, it was not until the 1960s that “groups of gays and lesbians were preparing … to stand up for their identities” (Barrios 247). These movements tried to chip away at the general homophobia of the mainstream public, but were overall a “general failure” by the gay and lesbian community in “forming a cohesive political movement” (Barrios 315). Not until Stonewall in 1969 did a gay activist event cause any prompt for consideration at all, and even then it did not do much to propel the cause further (Barrios 347). For the majority of the century, most change in the attitude toward gays and lesbians came from political and cultural adjustments and not the energy of the homosexual community.

2. The film Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, reflects and cultivates the public’s attitude toward and the image of gays in the 1940s. Adorno points out the set patterns and formulas that are present in all films and other culture industry products, and Rebecca is no different. Hitchcock directs the character of Mrs. Danvers, the late Rebecca’s personal attendant, with lesbian undertones. Her “passion” (Barrios 186) for Rebecca is seen in her dark, particular demeanor and behavior toward the personal articles that Rebecca leaves behind and when she speaks of her late mistress. Characteristic of the 40s formula for homosexuality, her “insidious” devotion to and obsession with Rebecca must not go “unpunished,” and so Mrs. Danvers burns to death in the Manderley fire (Barrios 186). This and similar films then create the public attitude toward homosexuality through the homogenization of culture and the mass audience mindset that results from it. Because of the current idea in the medical world that homosexuality is a disease, the decade’s precedent is set for the regard of gays in these noir films, which take this fodder from the real world and reprocess it so that all such films that follow take up the same formula and in turn feed the mass, public opinion of homosexuality.

The film Pillow Talk from the 1960s is quite a bit distanced from the image of the homosexual as portrayed in 40s film noir. Whereas the 40s gay character was dark and diseased and should thus be punished, the 60s character is a source of ridicule to make the straight audience feel better about itself, an “infantile charade” (Barrios 276). In the film, the heterosexual hero pretends to be a gay man, Rex Stetson, in order to get the leading woman into bed with him. The message sent to the audience, then, is that the gay man should be pitied and laughed at, hardly taken seriously. While this may be a better image than the diseased and darkly sinister, it still is not a positive depiction of homosexuality. The formula here would be that a heterosexual disguises himself as a homosexual in order to earn the sympathy of a leading lady, who then decides that it is her duty to “cure”(as opposed to punish) him and make sure, like in this film, that he is a “real man” (Barrios 277). Once again, the film products of the culture industry homogenize culture and affect the mindset of the mass viewing audience. The film relays a certain message to the people watching about homosexuality and then teaches them how to respond to and think about it. It sets the new public attitude toward homosexuality by presenting to the straight people (the effects are felt on gays, too) the way to regard it, and through the homogenization, very few think to respond otherwise.

The film Boys in the Band from 1970 reflects a changing perspective (once again) of homosexuality in film and, as a result, in society. The film looks into the lives of nine men and revolving around their meeting at a birthday party. Both the film and the play before it send an entirely different message than the preceding cinematic culture industry products, becoming the “defining” gay and lesbian film up until the time (Barrios 356). Unlike its predecessors, this film tries to take an accurate, authentic look at the life of gay men without any of the earlier stereotypical, formulaic portrayals. For the first time, homosexuality was not punished or depicted as wrong or evil or sinister or something to be laughed at and pitied. The characters all lived at the end and did not go through any “curing” or “punishment.” For society, especially gay audiences, the film served as a “beacon” that taught gays to “embrace” themselves and “move on” (Barrios 361). The lack of a set pattern for the gay character’s life remarked a change in some straight attitudes toward homosexuality and also the beginnings of the gay community’s real fight for their rights. It did not cater to the mass mindset or so much to the homogenization of culture, but it did serve as a landmark product of the culture industry’s making to lead the way into a new public attitude toward homosexuality.

3. This image is an alteration on a WWII poster that encouraged soldiers to stay clean during the war. It represents the Christian conservative viewpoint that homosexuality is immoral and wrong. The image itself appears to be more so a product of the culture industry than an example of art, especially since it tries, like the advertisements described by Adorno, to recruit viewers to adopt the mindset that is encouraged through the image (namely that homosexuality is wrong and blasphemous). Though it was not originally such, the altered text makes the men in the image appear gay and subliminally makes gays out to be dangerous and even evil. The text in the bubble warns straight people not to turn their backs on a homosexual, lest they recruit them into their lifestyle, and the expressions on their faces are slightly sinister, with strange smiles and eyes focused, unwavering and expectant, on the viewer. The image depicted here is similar in nature to the sinister and dark image of dangerous gays as explained by Barrios about gay characters in the film noir of the 1940s. Being a product of the culture industry (in effect, an advertisement against the acceptance of homosexuality), this image does not hold too much power because of the very target-audience specific wording and thus weakens the message for a large percentage of the public who may or may not come across the image.

http://z.about.com/d/atheism/1/7/p/3/3/GayShower-e.jpg

The painting Judas Kiss by Becki Jayne Harrelson is an art image that imparts the message that one should accept his or her God-given sexual orientation. This image uses the figure of Jesus, considered the holy and perfect image by a large percentage of society, to lend justification to the acknowledgement of and acceptance of homosexuality as natural and even good. The image urges the viewers to disregard the mainstream messages of other mass-circulated art and literature that says otherwise of homosexuality and instead to look at the issue in a new light. The depiction of these holy figures is meant to reassure the gay viewers that they are not degenerate or wrong for being homosexual and to state for the straight audience that homosexuality is a natural and God-given characteristic of a number of the population, not to be ashamed of, as some of the gay community testified to feeling in both the film The Celluloid Closet and the book Screened Out. Additionally, as “fine art” is given a position of more esteem than other art forms in society, this lends, whether logical or not, a bit more credibility to the painting than the culture industry-generated advertisements.

http://www.beckijayne.com/images/judas_260_r1_c1.jpg