Saboteur: The Dehumanization Of Homosexuality In Film

Homosexuality on screen has been a taboo subject since the creation of film in the late nineteenth century and has remained that way until the violent protests of the 1970’s sexual revolution. Consequently, the disregardment concerning the portrayal of gay community members could be linked to the overuse and dehumanization of queer stereotypes used as comedic relief throughout film history. The overall delayment in the representation of homosexuals paused the long march for equal rights even outside of the cinematic world. In result of conservative rejection toward such liberal topics, filmmakers had to conceal “queer cinema” as production codes enforced strict laws but as time progressed so did the involvement of the LGBTQ community in the

film industry.
The film industry began portraying homosexuals in small, insignificant glances beginning in the late 1800’s, and finally granted them character development, despite the depictions being inaccurate and misconstrued stereotypes, during the turn of the century. The first glimpse of same-sex relations questionably appears in the 1895 silent film, The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, or also known as “the gay brothers” (The First Notable Form of Homosexuality). The picture merely showed two men dancing to a violin, leaving the audience to infer their relationship or disregarding it as comedic playfulness. Correspondingly, homosexuality had to be inferred before the twentieth century, and queers only began to develop a personality as filmmakers needed a character for comedic relief. The roaring twenties changed the culture of American society, and as a result, a whole new stereotype of homosexuality emerged in movies. In 1927, there was a same sex kiss in the World War I blockbuster movie, Wings, directed by William A. Wellman and Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast. However, this kiss did not raise mass rejection because “as long as one maintained one’s proper gender role, same sex affection was allowed and even celebrated (Benshoff & Griffin 22). In the late 1920s and the brink of the Great Depression the concept of “homosexuals” was frequently confused with “transgenders,” which resulted in the archetypical “pansy or “sissy” homosexual male characters along with their “butch” lesbian counterparts. In the movie Our Betters (1933), actor Tyrell Davis plays an effeminate male character dressed in dark lipstick and a flamboyant attitude. Resulting in conservative protest against this film and other ones displaying the same stereotypical message, the Production Code of 1934 was formed. The United States government halted what little progressive actions taken and built a wall of regulations that governed what could and could not be shown on screen, ostracizing homosexuals from the limelight (Bynum). Directors in the 1930s decided to disregard the production code and shock the audience with violence, gender nonconformity, and scenes of passion in order to increase revenue. Notably, The Sign of the Cross, released in 1932, was a biblical epic that stunned the audience with the king’s implied relationship with a slave boy, erotic dancing between two women, and frequent nudity (Presley & Viera).
As a result of World War II, directors made homosexuals German effigies- beating them with sinister, perverse stereotypes, making it easier for the audience to hate gays and lesbians when associated with the inhumane acts of German Nazis (Benshoff & Griffin 35).

In Saboteur (1942) “sex perversion” is used to show the barbaric nature of Nazi’s as the solider sexualizes a young boy by saying “he has long hair like a girl”- emasculating the man (Benshoff & Griffin 35). Additionally, in the 1945 film, The House on 92nd Street, the Nazi agent spying for both the American and German side reveals herself as a “butch” woman in male drag (Benshoff & Griffin 35). While the depiction of homosexuals was degrading, actors still chose to pursue the roles in order to gain fame from these infamous characters. The actor Laird Cregar made his fortune by playing “psycho queers” in films during the early twentieth century, such as I Wake up Screaming (1941) and The Lodger (1944), where he plays both a homosexual and a Nazi (Benshoff & Griffin 36). The epitome of “psycho queers” are in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 masterpiece Rope- based on the real life events of the homosexual murderers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. The two gay men are certifiably insane as they passionately discuss the ecstasy of strangling a man with paradoxical sexual undertones of excitement toward each other (00:07:45-00:09:28). Embodying the perfect “dynamics of heterosexuality” due to the production codes, homosexuality

must be repressed and often searched for in the film (Benshoff & Griffin 37). The only actual “evidence” of the same-sex relations was the mention of their shared apartment and crude jokes about gay sexual topics.
While the production code was reversed in 1952, freeing directors from the chains of government regulation, homosexuals were still viewed as dangerous threats to society which no doubt psychologically morphed them to be threats to themselves. Suicidal, self-hating, and mentally unstable were only a few characterizations of members of the LGBT, as they were portrayed as barbaric monsters during the mid-twentieth century. An example of this can be found in the 1961 adaptation of The Children’s Hour which shows an estranged woman hanging herself for feeling “so damn sick and dirty” for being rightly accused of homosexuality (Wilder). Homosexuals in films begin to feel self-hatred towards themselves due to the continual abasement pressed on them by other characters which inevitably leaves the audience feeling the same way towards homosexuals as a whole outside of the movie screens. Because of cinematic portrayals, Hollywood eventually succeeded in making homosexuals hate themselves and heterosexuals fearful of them which led to an increase of violence and riots in the years to come.
The violent rioting proceeding the Stonewall raids of 1969 was a turning point in homosexual portrayal of cinematic history as filmmakers realized the increase of revenue if they filmed movies in favor of homosexuals.

The Boys in the Band (1970) is considered “the movie that changed LGBT history” which focuses on sexual fluidity and normalization of gay men (Cohen). While this movie made queerness visible on the big screen, filmmakers did not necessarily show them positively in the limelight and eventually intertwined the “self-hating” and “miserable” queer character in the film with the famous line “show me a happy homosexual and I will show you a gay corpse” (Cohen). Continually, in the 1970’s the homosexuals were misconstrued as “transgenders.” This poorly helped the advocating for equal rights in the gay liberation movement of the decade. In 1970 the Indie film Trash consisted of a heroin addict and his lover, a transvestite, searching the streets for food and sex. While the representation of the LGBT community was being shown, they were only being portrayed as homeless, drug addicts, and miserable human beings rejected from society (Benshoff & Griffin

160).
Proceeding the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, filmmakers were finally writing openly gay characters into their scripts up until the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s that shook the LGBTQ community. The two responses that resulted from the AIDS epidemic were the creation of AIDS activist videos and the resurfacing of the “queer villain” stereotype due to the hatred of homosexuals in the religious community. In a positive way, activist videos tried to fight against this sexually transmitted disease by educating the public on how to treat and prevent AIDS. These videos tended to be more confrontational, not afraid to break the usual conventions of film during this era. Although these videos were not especially political, the films pleaded to the government to stop the concealment of homosexuality in America (Benshoff & Griffin 213). Voices from up from: America 1988-1991 compiles various short films in which shine light on the protest by groups of homosexuals held at the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in desperate attempt to fight against the suppression of homosexuality and the lack of sexual disease education in the United States (Benshoff & Griffin 215). In the early 90s the movie Philadelphia realistically showed the horror of living with AIDS during this time. Joe Miller, a homosexual character in the movie, has a powerful line about the overall prejudice against homosexuals as he looks at a textbook and says “This is the essence of discrimination: formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics” (Movieclips). This means that people are hating the LGBTQ community not on factual characteristics, but distorted stereotypes which led to the recurrence of the “gay villain” archetype. Swoon, directed by Tom Kalin, on the other hand tries to separate homicidal from homosexual in the queer murder trial of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who were also the inspiration for the movie Rope in 1948. Kalin retells this event because he “wanted to show a homosexual couple who had pathological behaviors [but] not pathologize homosexuality (Benshoff & Griffin 226).
B. Ruby Rich, famous movie critic and author, coined the term “New Queer Cinema” that labeled the movies being created in the 1990s that introduced the “emergence of filmmakers using provocative subject matter- transgression, gender-bending, and rude activism- to create visions of sexual identity” (Benshoff & Griffin 220). Homosexuals were angry and fed up with the lack of representation in films and society in general, so they fought back by creating suggestive movies portraying homosexuals as homocidal maniacs. In this new cinema, homophobia was labeled as the reason for the lack of representation in film because it suppressed such liberal topics from the limelight. A new lifestyle emerged from this movement which introduced sexuality as fluid and ever changing. An example of this type of lifestyle can be found in the movie My Own Private Idaho whereas “self discovery” and “nonconventional living” were the main themes. Gus Van Sant, director of My Own Private Idaho, is one of the most famous directors in the new “queer cinema. ” Along with My Own Private Idaho, Van Sant directed Mala Noche, Drugstore Cowboy, and Milk which are all know for their “magic realism” involving serious subjects such as drug abuse, finding one’s sexuality, and the hard life of teenage hustlers (Gus Van Sant)
Since the turn of the century, filmmakers have been open to create movies with openly gay characters, but critics have had their hand at negative comments regarding these movies. In 2005 Brokeback Mountain, directed by
The delayment in the representation of homosexuality can be the cause of repression of queerness in the American society and overall struggle to liberate gay men and women from the judgement of the world. While the overarching representation of homosexuality has changed since the first appearance of it in 1895, it still has had less significant strides in normalization than other groups of people in film such as women and minorities.