Topic: Stereotypes of Sexuality in Film

Stereotypical Sexuality

            I know that I touched on this subject in my last blog but it’s something that I really find interesting. Why do we have to play into the clichés of sexuality (either homo or hetero) in movies? In most American film, gay characters are portrayed as flamboyant and sometimes even obnoxious. Now, I’m not saying that this stereotype doesn’t come from truth (because when it boils down to it, all stereotypes do), but why does that have to be the only representation of this group of people on screen? We seen filmmakers begin to lean away from this sterotype in recent years, but it’s still very much present in our everyday entertainment. Here are a few examples, The Birdcage, Party Monster, Headiwg and The Angry Inch, and TV shows like Will & Grace. We as a society need to move beyond this dated perception of a specific group of people. Can you imagine if we still had black people speaking in southern accents and only appearing as housekeepers? The way we portray gay people in film today isn’t much different.

            Over the past few years, we have moved into a better era of how sexuality is represented in entertainment with films like, Brokeback Mountain, The Talented Mr. Ripley, My Own Private Idaho and A Single Man. As I stated in my previous blog, The Academy is to thank for recognizing these types of films and promoting non-stereotypically gay performances. That isn’t to say they haven’t honored performances that were stereotypically flamboyant such as Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote and Sean Penn for Milk. Although, these performances are representations of specific real people, not fictional made up characters. I think it’s fantastic that more and more filmmakers and actors are choosing to portray characters as real people and not cartoons.

            One of my favorite films of all time, which I listed above, is The Talented Mr. Ripley. In this film, Matt Damon portrays a young man sent out to bring back a rich steel mill owners son (Jude Law) from Italy. Damon ends up falling in love with him and then murdering him because of his infatuation. Now, I understand this doesn’t make the gay male look great to an audience, but it’s Damon’s performance that I mean to mention. He decided to play the character as if he were any man, gay or straight. He’s charming, well-spoken, and even bashful. There is nothing discernibly gay about him, other than his love for Jude Law’s character, “Dickie.” Two other similar performances come from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. They play two average men who happen to fall in love. This movie is a great love story whether it is about two men, or a man and a woman. 

            I don’t mean to say that the above mentioned performances are any better or worse than other actors who choose to play a character very gay, such as in The Adventures of Pricilla Queen of the Desert because I don’t believe they are. But the ladder plays into a very strong stereotype about gay people; that gay men act like women and gay women act like men. In another one of my favorite films, My Own Private Idaho, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves play young male prostitutes on the streets of the northwest. They both have sex with female and male clients and in the story only one of them is gay.

            As Freud taught us, sexuality is not as black and white as we all paint it to be and I think we have found neither are people’s mannerisms because of their sexual preference. If a script or a specific retelling of a person’s story call for a character to behave a certain manner than the character should be portrayed in that way, but if it’s left up to the actor and director, I would hope they more often than not everyone would make the decision to play a character in a non-stereotypical way. There can be hints of mannerisms and the like without reverting to a backward dated outlook on specific members of our society.