Stereotypes In The Celluloid Closet

There is no rule book or set of guidelines that can teach a person how to be gay or to show others what a queer life is like. Most of what people know about the LGBTQ+ community comes from what is portrayed in media. The Celluloid Closet took viewers behind the scenes to shine a light on gay and lesbian stereotypes and misrepresentation of gay culture in the film industry. The documentary gives insight on how Hollywood has taught straight people to view gays and how gay people should view themselves. While major progressive strides have been made for LGBTQ+ visibility in films, there are still some false stereotypes that are hard to shake making it difficult for accurate representation of queer living, even today.
Gay characters have always
had a place in cinema. They were given three distinct roles: the comedic role, the victim role, and the villain role. They went from being laughed at to treated unfairly to being heartless monsters. With each role, the homosexual character got different responses, all of which led them to be ostracized from the social norm. Directors and producers could present homosexuality in films only through a “hush-hush” manner. A lot of the time it was inferred through tongue-in-cheek statements and never explicitly stated that a character was homosexual. Harvey Fierstein argues, “… my view has always been visibility at any cost. I’d rather have negative than nothing.” I agree completely with Fierstein’s visibility statement. While majority of the depictions of homosexuality in the media are inaccurate, it is better to have some representation than none.
Growing up during a time when homosexuality was still considered a mental illness, it must have been extremely hard to have any role models to look up to or any knowledge of what being gay was like.
Gay people were “pathetically starved for images of ourselves,” Jan Oxenberg states at the beginning of the film. Visibility of homosexuality in films gave opportunity for conversations to be had about such a taboo topic. It also acknowledges that gay people are real people and not a figment of someone’s imagination. The downside to this visibility was how the mass population negatively perceived gays based solely on how they were presented in the media. The stereotypes given to homosexual characters left people with the idea that being classified as gay made one an inferior human who should be hated or
feared. Stereotyping is inevitable.
It is how we, as people, group other individuals in order have a sense of understanding of that specific group. A few stereotypes mentioned in the documentary were homosexuality equating to a life of misery and ultimately death, lesbianism being merely a phase to be broken by “the right man”, and the most notable stereotype: being a gay male makes you less of a man; you are a “sissy”. In earlier films, there was a reoccurring theme with gay characters: they all died. The character could not accept being homosexual leading them to commit suicide or live a depressing life. This was an extremely common thing in films. It reinforced the notion that being gay was a horrible thing. The documentary also shows men being affectionate and emotional on screen as a rare occurrence thus challenging their masculinity. Susan Sarandon humorously summed this up by saying “boys pull out their guns, not their dicks” in regards to how males are supposed to be tough to be considered real men. The complete opposite goes for women who are attracted to other women on screen. Those relationships are considered exotic, erotic, and done for men’s enjoyment only if both women were very soft and feminine. Women taking on the masculine role was not attractive and made them less of a woman. These stereotypes have many negative connotations leading people to believe that all individuals from this specific group are alike, stripping them of their individual
identities.
The documentary did a good job giving background on LGBTQ+ representation throughout history. I feel that homosexuals are represented in the media today more than they were 20 years ago, but still not accurately. Gay men are used as punchline when they aren’t being used as a punching bag and lesbians are hypersexualized and not taken seriously in relationships. It would be refreshing if there were more positive, accurate portrayals of queer life that included individuals from all spectrums of the LGBTQ+ community. At the same time, any representation, in my opinion, is better than no representation.