Beyond the Screen - HNC Media (Clydebank) students

Culture Page 16
LGBT+ Cinema
Does Hollywood’s LGBT+ community capture the complexity of real life?
By Jonathan Cairns
LGBT+ cinema has long
been around. In fact, the
first film to portray homosexuality
was the 1895
The Dickson Experimental
Sound Film. It introduces
to the audience a scene
in which two men share a
dance.
However, events didn’t
progress in such a positive
manner from there. From
the 1940s onwards, the
Hayes Code restrictions
prevented major US studios
from presenting complimentary
films featuring
LGBT+ characters to
the world audience. It is
reported that films could
only bypass Hollywood executives
by portraying gay
men and women as anti-social,
psychopathic, sadistic
villains. This represented
the world’s views at that
time; that homosexuality
was a mental illness. A film
that articulates this fear was
Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’
(1948).
The depiction of homosexuality
in general at this
time would have persuaded
many a gay men and woman
to remain living a lie.
Furthermore, Rope opened
the idea to many Americans
that homosexuals had
infiltrated the art world.
By the 1950s and 1960s
thanks to the well-known
film The Wizard of Oz, the
expression “is he a friend
of Dorothy?” was slang for
“is he gay?” The character
Dorothy meets a Lion,
a Tin Man and a Scarecrow
- and their individual
oddness has been taken to
suggest queerness.
Rupert Cadell: Portayed by James Stewart in 1948’s Rope.
Despite its impact, both
negative and positive
on the gay community
‘The Wizard of Oz’ was
still a film about a white,
heterosexual female. Unfortunately
most LGBT+
characters were cut from
the final edit because it
was culturally recognised
that American consumers