Topic: New Queer Cinema

A New Dawn for Gay Cinema?

            In recent years we have seen more and more gay cinema, which is fantastic. It seems like we have finally entered a period (or are about to enter a period) of even more acceptance and less prejudice. There have been so many great ‘gay oriented’ movies in past years such as, “Brokeback Mountain”, “Milk” “Boy’s Don’t Cry”, “Capote”, “A Single Man”, and one of my favorites, “My Summer of Love.” “My Summer of Love” is one of my favorite movies of the new queer cinema movement of today. A friend of mine, Natalie Press, stars as a lonely lost girl in England being pushed by her brother to become Christian. She meets the alluring and sexy Emily Blunt by chance one day and Emily Blunt’s character leads her into a love affair that lasts over the course of one summer. What I love about this movie is that there is only one brief sex scene between the two characters. The love between these two people is shown through time spent together, doing such things as riding bikes through the country, sharing their most intimate secrets, and taking mushrooms and going to a disco class for old people. I love that the director, Pawel Pawlikowski, made the choice not to play into the sex appeal of lesbians for the benefit of certain members of the audience. He simply told a real love story that could have been about any two people. This is something that I really love about “Brokeback Mountain” as well; neither character was played as a flamboyant gay person. They were played as real people who happened to fall in love.

            The Academy should be praised for all they have done for the gay community. All the movies listed above were either nominated or critically acclaimed. When the academy nominates a movie the whole world notices it, and when it’s a movie like, “Milk” or “Brokeback Mountain” the world becomes more educated and perhaps open minded. Even if it just makes them more ‘ok’ with watching a gay oriented movie, something is being accomplished and I believe the gay community owes The Academy a very big thank you.

The expansion of the openly gay community into the entertainment world has brought new outlets to the public such as, “Logo.” Logo is a channel geared toward gay, bisexual, and transgender people. They have shows such as, “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, which is a contest show in which drag queens compete to be the best drag queen they can be. I think it’s great that a show like this can exist on television (even if it is on an obscure cable channel). I believe we may be on the verge of a new era, where you are less and less defined by your sexuality. It’s very sad to see how the studio system used to treat actors once they were openly gay, dropping people from contracts simply because of their sexuality. Although, I have heard that Warner Brothers covered up James Dean’s homosexuality by setting him up with dates and girlfriends. It seems like as long as you were not open about your sexuality in the past the studio would overlook it, but this doesn’t make it right. Even today, actors who are gay are not usually open about it, there are very few.

            As a side note I find it very interesting that we as a country are more paranoid and prejudice toward gay people than countries like France and Italy. Yet, we have been making great strides in our cinema world to expand the way we think and to get rid of our previous stereotypical visions of gay people. And as it stated the out text book, perhaps the reason for this prejudice is due to the fact that we started out as a very conservative and religious country, but I think many people (especially in major cities) have evolved beyond that now, thanks to films like the ones listed above and to The Academy for making the world notice them.