Analysis Of The Movie Stonewall

Stonewall

Trying to explain historical events is challenging because there are many sources and versions that can create confusion and misunderstanding of the real facts. In the case of Stonewall, it mostly got recorded to the history by newspapers, photography and the word of people who witnessed that night. However, the problem with these kind of sources, both from that period of time and the current ones, is that most of them are bias or are written with the purpose of influence the audience. Thus, each one of them can be taken as an opinion, leaving many unanswered questions surrounded by theories. In 2015, the released of the movie “Stonewall” about the place where the active movement for the LGTBQ community’ civil rights started, created

a conflict between the distinct groups of this community about the question of who threw the first brick in Stonewall.

The Stonewall Inn was a “private club” on Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village, NY where at 1:30 a.m. on the Saturday June 28, 1969, the police went in and got attacked by a crowd of 400 to 1000 people defending themselves for been arrested (Landlord). This event could have been influenced for many social changes such as the women’s right movement and the black civil right movements, which were happening during the 60s.

In this time, being homosexual and even wearing more than three pieces of clothing from the opposite sex were illegal. In addition to the homophobic point of view, racism and discrimination were evident on the media. Thus, the new stories of Stonewall describing the events were full of phrases such as “the Alice in Wonderland clientele,” “It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies,” and the famous description of “Then, without warning, Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb. Queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could get their polished, manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants.” (NY Daily)

These kind of stories cannot be taken as a truthful description of the history. They can work as a reference, but the opinionate composition of the writer is on the purpose of describing the worse and even insulting the people who were involved in Stonewall. These statements are exaggerated and unclear. On the other hand, there is not description of a person of color nor minorities on the stories, and a minimal appearance of them in the photographers of the newspapers, which could mean that the majority of the people in the riot were white, which is one of the different approaches about who threw the first brick on Stonewall.

The “Stonewall” movie uses this approach with a lead white gay-male character named Danny, who is portrayed as the person responsible of the first brick.

Besides the reason of being “whitewashing” Hollywood movies about historical events as the LGTBQ community describes, the story justify the throwing of the first brick to a rebel Danny upset with his relationship partner for cheating on him, putting the riots and the people involved on them in the background. However, many movie directors and screen writers take “artistic licenses” in movies about historical events. In this case, the director Roland Emmerich said that Danny is way for the audience to see what happened. Therefore, the movie cannot be used as an historical source because Danny is 100% fictional and it could be an example of misinformation for artistic

considerations.

At the end, the facts that sustain the approach of a white gay male throwing the first brick are as the most acceptable and sustained answer are hold by that the Greenwich Village was a white neighborhood, the newspapers headlines lack of racial descriptions, and a few photos with mostly white people. As Stephen Murray describes on his book American Gay "men familiar with the milieu then insist that the Stonewall clientele was middle-class white men and that very few drag queens or dykes or nonwhites were ever allowed admittance." ()

The other suspect that have divided the LGTBQ community about who threw the first brick in Stonewall is Marsha P. Johnson, a color drag queen, who is been confirmed that was there the night of the events but not that she was who initiated the manifestation. There was never a statement coming from Johnson that she did it. However, Johnson still played an important part of the history with her co-funding of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) giving food and clothes to homeless young kids on the Christopher Street and many participations in gay liberation marches until the day she die ().
Furthermore, Sylvia Riviera has been the suspect that had created more commotion. She was a transgender activist and drag queen who co-founded STAR with Johnson and founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance (). The conflictive part about her participation on the riots are that there haven’t been proof the she was or not at the Stonewall that night and she even contradict herself.

First, she told the historian Eric Marcus, from the book Making Gay History, that the night of the riots was her first time there and that just a certain number of drag queens were allowed to get into Stonewall (). Then she told Martin Duberman for his book Stonewall that “she does remember ‘throwing bricks and rocks and things’ after the mêlée began.” () And then, David Carter, Historian of The Stonewall Riots, commented in an interview that two sources told him that Marsha P. Johnson said that Riviera was not in the Stonewall Inn that night because she took Heroine and fell asleep at the Bryant Park. Johnson said that she woke her up and told her about the events and also that every claim Riviera did was inconsistent as in one claim she said that that night was her first time in Stonewall, in other that she had gone many times, in other that she was there in drag, in others that she was not in drag, and then she told Martin Duberman that she went there to celebrate Johnson's birthday, but Marsha was born in August, not June ().

In base of the evidence about Riviera and her addiction to drugs, there is an uncertainty that she was the responsible of throwing the first brick because there is not even real proof or a clear statement that she was even in the moment of the riots.

Lastly, there is another rumor that a cross-dressing lesbian, Stormé DeLarverie, who was the responsible of the beginning of the manifestation. However, she denied that she was who initiated it “The cop hit me and I hit him back.” () This is the most used claim by the transgender community, who even though there was not a specification of the difference between transgender and drag queen and even lesbians in that time, wants to make distinction that they participated in some way at the Stonewall riots and even take credit for the throwing of the first brick as a pamphlet of 1993 from the Pride Guide written by Christine Tayleur, a transgender herself, claims, “It was started and fought by Puerto Rican and black transgender people (transsexuals, travesties, drag queens, etc.) defending a female-to-male transgendered man who was being arrested by the police for not wearing enough female clothing…Stonewall was about fighting for diversity and individuality. Transgendered people represents that diversity.” ()

All in all, the facts are that on June 28, 1969 the police went to a private club without liquor license, arrested the owners and other people that didn’t have IDs or were dressing in an illegal way, and there for first time the community of LGTBQ and even heterosexual people manifested physically with the purpose of the human rights and fought back for what was important.

That’s what makes Stonewall important as what Rosa Parks did when she didn’t give her sit in the bus, at the end it was not the first manifestation and it was not important if she was male or female, the importance is that it was a real manifestation against what was wrong from the point of human rights and for people with black heritage. Therefore, the ideal of the people who fought at Stonewall was to unify the group and be considered for the society. Thus, it is not really important who threw the first brick or if there even was a first brick because it was a group, a big manifestation, with at least one representative for every race, age and distinctions on the LGBTQ

community.