Justin Wright Post 9

1. “The modern concept of homosexuality, essentially the way in which gay men and lesbians are comprehended, is generally felt to date to the mid-late nineteenth century. That makes homosexuality, as we more or less know it, approximately the same age as the movies.” (Barrios, p. 3) Up until the development of the motion picture, homosexuality was too taboo to ever be mentioned. Some nineteenth century novels such as The Picture of Dorian Gray contained homosexual overtones, but the vast majority of literature and art ignored this aspect of sexuality because of the prevailing attitude that it was a sinful choice.

With the development of silent film, emphasis was placed on visual cues due to lack of sound. Thus, more information had to be crammed into visual aspects and this led to the wide use of stereotypes. Homosexual characters were cast in the “pansy” stereotype – “the flower in the lapel, the little mustache, the waving handkerchief were all ways to code a gay man’s presence onscreen…For lesbians, a jacket and tie, slicked back hair, and an occasional cigar or monocle would do the trick.” (Barrios, p. 18)

These first portrayals of gay people were the first representations of them seen by most people. Homosexuality was rare during the beginning of the twentieth century, and something to be hidden. Anyone who encountered a homosexual would probably not know, because this fact had to be concealed. Thus, the pansy and the manly woman were the first images of gay people, and these stereotypes lasted for much of film’s history.

Once sound film was developed, the stereotypes largely stayed, but now homosexuality became a bit more realistic and prevalent in film. Gay bars were portrayed in the 1930’s, and new words such as “lavender” came to flag a gay character. The Hays Code was developed as an effort at getting the film industry to censor itself, but since any discrepancies had to be moderated by filmmakers themselves, Hays was completely powerless and ignored. Social forces in the movie industry continued to push the Hays Code to the limit, if not for any reason other than that being what other studios were doing.

Once the Breen Code was implemented, homosexuality went undercover. The Catholic Legion of Decency, and the Production Code Administration headed by Joseph Breen, united to essentially ban homosexuality from film, among a laundry list of other “sins.” The penalty for noncompliance was boycott, and the Legion of Decency had millions of members, which could seriously harm profits during the Great Depression. Film studios complied with this new censorship until it was relaxed in the 1960s.

Breen’s censors were strict, but missed quite a bit. “Pansy” became a banned word, but “flower” was not, and this substitution was made in some films. Scriptwriters found ways to be subtle and get films approved, even if it was with the “morally questionable” rating from Breen rather than “acceptable.” The censors did manage to hack more than a few scripts to pieces, sometimes leaving the resulting film hard to understand.

The 1940s brought film noir, and a darker tone. The darkness and urban environment contained plenty of places to conceal homosexual references. “Never, of course, were gays allowed to be heroes, although they were sometimes the villains of noir, or the victims…” (Barrios, p. 185)

Thus came the villianization of gay people in the late 1950s, with homosexuals always meeting an unsavory end. These endings were required, because no bad deeds could go unpunished by the film’s end, according to the Production Code.

By the 1960s everyone began to feel that the Code was obsolete, and the provision forbidding “sex perversion” was removed. Suddenly gay visibility began to increase, but the negativity associated with it remained.

Suddenly, things stopped changing. The negativity against gays and lesbians declined very slowly over the 1970s to the present, and except for an occasional film every few years, homosexuals were confined to minor roles. Since censorship was no longer an issue, the film industry moved on to other things, as homosexuality still remained an unpopular subject unlikely to generate large profits.

2. In the silent film era, homosexuals were often something to laugh at. In the film Algie, the Miner, the character Algie “is heterosexual only in that he has a girlfriend. Otherwise, he’s a card-carrying flamer.” (Barrios, p. 17) Since there was only the image of the film to characterize him, more gay mannerisms had to be put into his actions and dress. “The dandified air, fluttering hands, pursed and apparently rouged lips, sly smile, and eyes that he bats while fondling the barrel of a pistol” (Barrios, p. 17) are all the symptoms of a stereotype. Enter the pansy.

Adorno posits that the existence of stereotypes in culture industry film is used to save time and reuse characters. These stereotypes are good for “entirely unproblematic, cliché-like characterization,” (Adorno, 217) which helps the audience figure out what is going on sooner, and thus decrease the amount of thinking they need to do. The pansy becomes a popular but often overlooked stereotype that recurs throughout the next fifty years, and is always discriminated against or required to “prove his manhood.” If the pansy is a major character, he must convert to straightness by the end of the film or die, in order to follow this culture industry formula. One of Adorno’s observations was that “the outcome of conflicts is pre-established” (Adorno, 220) in culture industry products, and the fate of the pansy is a good example of this.

In the 1940s, homosexuality was undercover due to the strength of Breen’s Production Code. But, there were no derogatory references to it yet. In the film This is the Army, a group of soldiers dance in drag to a song called “Ladies of the Chorus.” According to Barrios, “there is some crucial gay history here: the reminisces, many years later, of some of the men who did routines like this one made it clear that USO touring companies featuring drag acts were safe havens for many gay draftees, allowing them to serve while being ‘themselves.’” (p. 175)

No value judgment was made by the film about being gay, but the production code had to obeyed. This was done by making the act look like it was done in good fun, and humorous in nature rather than the performers being “themselves.” While film producers tried to get homosexual references through in any way possible, the Breen code severely limited what they could get away with. Adorno makes mention of the Production Code’s effect on the production of films. “Those who produce the material follow, often grumblingly, innumerable requirements, rules of thumb, set patterns, and mechanisms of control which by necessity reduce to a minimum the range of any kind of self expression.” (226) These controls thus increased the commodification of culture by limiting the producers’ options.

The beginnings of modern popular culture are in the novels of the nineteenth century. About these, Adorno sees that “the stories teach their children that one has to be “realistic,” that one has to give up romantic ideas, that one has to adjust oneself at any price…” (220) These trends recurred in films that included homosexuality in the late fifties and early sixties, which were required to portray it as an evil act that never went unpunished.

In the film The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, the character Contessa says: “Recently, I’ve heard her described as a chicken hawk… A chicken hawk is a bird of prey with a sharp beak, long claws, and a terrible appetite. (Cackles) She feeds exclusively on the flesh of tender young chickens. Oddly enough, the species is American!” (Barrios p. 295) The coded reference to lesbianism actually passed the Code censors, as they were beginning to become lax. But, the character Karen is chastised when described in this way as homosexuality was still reserved only for villains. The Code only allowed homosexual references when the gay people were punished by the end of the film. “Here, those who have developed the production code for the movies seem right: what matters in mass media is not what happens in real life, but rather the positive and negative ‘messages,’ prescriptions, and taboos that the spectator absorbs by means of identification with the material he is looking at.” (Adorno, 232) The Code had required that this become the new norm for homosexual portrayals in the 1960s, and this trend only slowly abated until the modern day.

3. This picture portrays gay men in a negative manner, declaring in the captions that being around them can make you “catch” homosexuality.

Focusing on formalistic aspects of the body, the three men are young, strong, and secure with themselves enough to shower publicly. The lighting emphasizes their muscles, and their expressions are happy. These aspects are the opposite of the Nazi concept of degeneracy, as they focus on the physical perfection of the male body. However, this concept of flaunted physicality carries homoerotic overtones in American culture. The film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, included in the documentary Celluloid Closet, contained a scene of scantily clothed men in a gym working out, totally ignoring an attractive actress. The scene was dependent on the emphasis of revealed physical form to convey homosexual overtones. This image above uses the same associations. According to Adorno, stereotypes are used to make easy characterizations. Here, a negative stereotype is evoked by the word “sodomites,” is used to make gay men look like sinful hedonists who have chosen an unnatural lifestyle.

This picture of a gay couple shows the two men in a relationship. Both of them appear happy to be together, and there are no derogatory insinuations.

The body is not present in this image. Only the faces of the men are visible, and the man on the right’s face is somewhat obscured by the camera angle. The upper portions of the body are concealed by clothes. There is an emphasis on desexualizing the body here, in order to emphasize the relationship between the men rather than sexual aspects that might be less palatable. Thus, the image does not glorify the body in Nazi style. Yet, it also does not portray it in a manner different from reality, so this image is not of degenerate style either. Openness towards homosexuality has increased in recent years, and a few vanguard films have portrayed it on the same level as heterosexual relationships, such as the film Making Love mentioned in Celluloid Closet. This image does the same, showing homosexuality as something natural to some individuals and still a form of love. This image is also contrary to popular stereotypes of gay men, showing them as no different in appearance than heterosexuals. No lavender or other symbols are used. Therefore, this image is not a typical popular culture product, because it does not hinge on stereotypes and formulas as Adorno says these products must, and favorable images of homosexually without stereotypes are still somewhat uncommon.

Sources:

Richard Barrios, “Screened Out.”

Theodor Adorno, “How to Look at Television.”

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

http://www.beyondchurchstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/gay%20boys.jpg