Stereotypes In The Sign Of The Cross

ions 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
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 with 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