By Eric Patterson
The 81st Academy Awards on February 22, 2009, were satisfying to a lot of gay people, and not just because the event was hosted by a hunky actor who's been the subject of persistent gay rumors, looks great in a tailored tuxedo, and has a name some jokingly say sounds like it ought to be x-rated, Hugh Jackman. The awards were acclaimed by many who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer and by their straight allies for the amount of progress they indicated Hollywood has made regarding the representation of sexual and gender minorities. Sean Penn received the award for Best Actor for his title role in Gus Van Sant's Milk and the film's screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black, received the award for Best Screenplay; in their acceptance speeches, both men spoke passionately about the significance of the film, which recounts the life of the pioneering gay activist and politician, Harvey Milk, and his assassination in 1978, less than a year after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The film and the speeches of the two award recipients expressed unequivocal support for the aspirations of sexual/gender minorities. In his comments, Penn directly challenged current manifestations of the same kind of homophobic bigotry that Milk fought and that ultimately killed him, ridiculing anti-gay prejudice toward Hollywood and condemning the anti-gay protestors outside the awards ceremony: "You Commie, homo-loving sons-of-guns!…For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support. We've got to have equal rights for everyone." Black's message focused less on confronting the continuing hostility to sexual/gender minorities, and more on the promise of what glbtq activism can attain: "When I was thirteen years old…I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could even fall in love and one day get married…" The experiences of the two men complemented each other, Penn demonstrating that straight people can become aggressive, outspoken, unapologetic allies of sexual/gender minorities, and Black showing the optimism that the "life-saving story" of Harvey Milk gives to many glbtq people about the possibility of full legal and social equality.
Another award given at last month's ceremony indicated the seriousness of the obstacles Hollywood can pose for those seeking to present sexual/gender minority people in film: for his portrayal of "the Joker" in The Dark Knight, the late Heath Ledger received Best Supporting Actor. Many critics and viewers agreed that Ledger should have received the Best Actor award three years earlier for his brilliant performance in Brokeback Mountain as the repressed, tormented ranch hand, Ennis del Mar, and that the Motion Picture Academy now was belatedly trying to atone for its failure to have recognized his remarkable work. Certainly it wouldn't have been the first time that regret for earlier misjudgments had been part of the Academy's decision-making process. Ledger's untimely death due to an accidental overdose of prescription drugs on January 22, 2008, may well have been a factor in the decision to posthumously award his performance in The Dark Knight, and the complaints elicited by the Academy's failure to recognize his performance in Brokeback also may have caused it to take Milk more seriously.
Of course, the success of Milk is primarily the result of the film's fine script, acting, directing, and photography, but extraneous factors often seem to play a role in the awarding of the Oscars. In 2006, the Academy not only failed to reward Ledger's fine performance as Ennis, but denied Brokeback the Best Picture award, though many critics and viewers, gay and straight, felt it deserved it. During the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2006, as critical and audience praise grew and grew for Brokeback Mountain, many were sure that the film would be the first centered on passionate love between men to win Best Picture. Brokeback eventually was nominated for a total of eight awards, but when the ceremony came on March 5, 2006, Academy members denied any awards to the film's actors, and made a surprising decision for Best Picture that many saw as a cautious and conventional choice that was the result of discomfort with Brokeback's explicit depiction of male-male sex and of homophobic prejudice and violence. As critics and viewers observed, it was difficult to understand how Brokeback's director, Ang Lee, its screenwriters, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and its composer, Gustavo Santoallala, could earn Academy Awards while the film itself, the result of their award-winning collaboration, was passed over. As has been pointed out by those who know how Hollywood operates, a large number of the approximately six thousand members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are older white men who identity themselves as heterosexual, one of the groups often least supportive of glbtq people. The sense that the Academy's response to Brokeback might have been affected by homophobic prejudice was reinforced by ugly admissions about the film from two prominent Academy members, the elderly actors Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine, who both said they had refused to watch what Curtis dismissed as a movie about "gay cowboys." That some Academy members had voted but had refused to see the main contender for Best Picture raised serious questions about whether the Academy had fairly judged the film, and whether its decisions and awards really carried any validity. Borgnine's bizarre comment in reference to Brokeback, that if "John Wayne were alive he'd be rolling over in his grave," indicates what is perhaps the chief source of hostility to the movie: its presentation of homosexuality in the context of the Western is unbearable to many men for whom that genre is the most central narrative of American masculinity and nationalism. Given some of Curtis's roles, especially as "Josephine" in Some Like It Hot (1959), his indignation was especially hypocritical and laughable. This year, then, many who followed the Oscars expressed the view that perhaps the Hollywood establishment was responding not only to criticism of its failure to recognize the abilities of Heath Ledger but, when it judged Milk, also to criticism of its earlier resistance to the significance of Brokeback Mountain.
The recent awards to Penn, Black, and Ledger certainly seem to show an increased willingness on the part of the Academy to recognize work that represents those aspects of the lives of men who love men that seem to have repelled its members in the past. Though no scene in Milk is as explicit as the scene in Brokeback depicting Ennis and Jack having anal intercourse, several episodes show men having sex, and the filmmakers seem to have sought to present a candid account of the exuberantly liberated world of the Castro in the seventies. The film emphasizes Harvey Milk's extended relationships, but also shows the cruising, casual sex, and affectionate demonstrativeness that was part of daily life for many gay men in that place and time. Also, as with Brokeback, most of the characters don't fit the established stereotypes of effeminacy that Hollywood (and the larger society) seem to want. As commentators and participants have noted, during the seventies many gay men deliberately repudiated constructions of gender that linked male-male desire with femininity, constructing a new, more masculine, often hyper-masculine style. Tracing Harvey Milk's life from the time he moved from New York to San Francisco in 1970, the film shows him and his friends gradually abandoning the more androgynous hippie styles of gender expression, with their ponytails and flowered shirts, and inventing the macho look of the "Castro Street clone," with jeans, flannel shirts, hiking boots, short haircuts, and facial hair. Indeed, because of his entry into mainstream politics, Harvey Milk penetrated even farther into the gender territory of straight men, adopting conservative three piece suits like those worn by Mayor Moscone and Dan White, becoming indistinguishable in dress from the men who sought to dominate the society, though his words and actions loudly asserted gay and lesbian equality. Milk had a sharp wit and frequently made funny, campy cracks, but his gay sense of irony was the opposite of being an expression of some sort of "feminized" despair or futility-- like many gay men, he used it as a weapon, stirring up his supporters and intimidating his rivals. And as his assassination proved, for a fag to begin to become a power broker-- a political boss like Tweed or Daley, as Moscone jokes to Milk just before White shoots them both-- is intolerable for some "real" men. Like Brokeback, Milk refuses to present men who love men at a "safe" distance from heterosexual men, but depicts them right in the middle of the straight male world. Milk demonstrates that gay men can challenge straight men for power and win in the intensely competitive realm of politics, and Brokeback shows that there are man-loving men even in the most archetypically masculine context of all, the American West. Both reject the pattern Hollywood usually has used, when it has depicted gay men at all, of constructing them as feminized figures belonging to the areas of society associated with women. The men in both films are very far from the desperate queens, flamboyant fairies, stylish dandies, silly clowns, and ineffectual eunuchs Hollywood often has favored, which partly accounts for the hostility to Brokeback three years ago and which makes the present success of Milk so impressive.
The Academy Awards to Milk also may have been affected by recent political events that have profoundly disturbing significance for glbtq people in California and throughout the nation. As the film recounts, in 1978 Harvey Milk was one of the leaders in the effort to stop the homophobic Briggs Initiative in California, which would have fired all glbtq teachers who were out about their sexual/gender identification; on November 4, 2008, another homophobic California state initiative, Proposition Eight, was passed, rescinding the right of same-sex couples to have equal access to the status and benefits of legal marriage. Despite efforts to mobilize voters to support the recent California State Supreme Court decision that legal marriage should be available to all adult couples, vast funding from the Catholic and Mormon Churches and other homophobic religious organizations helped to carry the anti-marriage initiative. Perhaps the most important political legacy of Harvey Milk's career is the recognition that the more glbtq people who come out, the more difficult it will be for those who fear and hate them to maintain legal, economic, and social discrimination against them. Indeed, the more difficult it will be for members of the majority to hate and fear them at all, since glbtq people are the majority's relatives, neighbors, and co-workers, though the majority often is unaware of it. The outcry by sexual/gender minorities over the successful effort to re-institute discrimination against them, which attacks the central relationship in the lives of hundreds of thousands of them, moved many straight people, showing them how deeply their glbtq family members and friends are hurt by homophobia. Though many members of the Academy undoubtedly have strong homophobic prejudices, especially against the masculinity and sexuality of gay men, they also undoubtedly know and have worked with many glbtq people, and may have been troubled by their relegation to a class explicitly denied certain basic human rights, and so perhaps may have become more receptive to a film passionately defending them.
The anger of sexual/gender minorities over Proposition Eight isn't the only protest that may have helped to change attitudes in the Academy. Brokeback Mountain elicited an extraordinary response from fans that still continues, and many were outspoken in their disappointment that the film did not receive the Best Picture award in 2006. In addition to the movie's official site, which includes personal testimony from many men who saw striking parallels between the experiences of Ennis and Jack and their own, Brokeback inspired the organizing of several independent fan sites, including the Ultimate Brokeback Forum; Bettermost, Wyoming, and Brokeback Mountain Forum; and Ennisjack.com, which between them have several thousand members. These also include testimony from large numbers of people, men and women, gay and straight, about the impact of the film and the story; members of the Ultimate Brokeback Forum have published a book collecting some of the most eloquent and moving statements, Beyond Brokeback: The Impact of a Film (2007). The failure of the Academy to award the film Best Picture led to thoughtful and constructive forms of protest by fans: the Ultimate Brokeback Forum collected contributions to purchase a full-page advertisement in Daily Variety thanking the creators of Brokeback Mountain, which was widely reported and discussed in the press; they also raised money to buy dvd's of the film and contribute them to rural public libraries around the nation, a highly insightful and compassionate way to try to reach out to and support the kinds of people Brokeback depicts, who struggle in isolation with their sexual/gender difference. And, when Heath Ledger died, they publicly honored him with a moving tribute, again in an advertisement in Daily Variety.
When one explores these fan sites, it's clear just how profoundly the Brokeback narrative affected not only those who recognized themselves in the characters, but members of the majority who have learned from it about the experience of sexual/gender minorities and who aspire to understand more and to be their allies. Interestingly, a large number of fans actively participating in the sites are heterosexual women. It's hard to know why Brokeback has such appeal for straight women, but it's certainly intriguing. Perhaps in part there's a parallel with the interest many straight men have in passionate relationships between women. Certainly it's well-known that, while many straight men feel threatened by sex between men (and employ references to it as a threat, in their ubiquitous use of the "F-bomb" and the middle finger as insults to other men), they often desire pornography that depicts lesbian relationships in ways intended to excite male viewers. As some popular culture scholars have pointed out, there already are well-established patterns in which heterosexual female fans fantasize about passionate relationships between men, as in the extensive community of straight women who write and read sexual fantasy material about the Star Trek characters Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Indeed, women started creating Kirk/Spock sexual fantasy material nearly forty years ago, and it now is widely available through the Internet. The Brokeback sites include much fan fiction, often written by women, that is inspired by Proulx's story and particularly by Lee's film, but that reimagines the narrative, extends it, elaborates the sexual and emotional relationship between Jack and Ennis, and sometimes provides alternate, happy endings. Such fan fiction may not only be analogous to male voyeurism regarding lesbianism, but also may be motivated by a desire on the part of straight women to wishfully imagine an alternative form of masculinity more sensitive and vulnerable than what they experience in actual relationships with men. In a widely publicized interview last fall, Annie Proulx expressed her impatience with fans who send her such materials, dismissing their unsolicited writings as "ghastly" and "pornish," and observing that a considerable amount of what she had received was from men who seemed to desire more extended descriptions of male-male sex than her story included. Of course, such communications must be an annoying distraction from her writing, particularly if they foolishly seek to "correct" her superb story, but they do indicate just how profoundly and powerfully the story and the film based on it have affected people, and they need to be recognized, however clumsy some may be, as a proof of the significance of her work and its impact in awakening readers and viewers to the experience and perspective of sexual/gender minorities and especially of men who love men. Annie Proulx clearly is an ally of gay men, but she seems to have been surprised to learn just how raw a nerve her creation has touched.
Though the recent forms of protest described here may well have caused the Motion Picture Academy to be more respectful of Milk than of Brokeback, it should be emphasized that Milk's success also is due in part to the continuing impact of a much larger effort, the remarkable series of achievements over the past several decades by independent filmmakers concerned to present the lives of sexual/gender minority people. Until relatively recently, the larger Hollywood organizations usually either have avoided glbtq-themed films or have constructed sexual/gender minority characters and issues as they are perceived by the majority, but independent directors, writers, and actors, some out gay men and lesbians, some straight allies, all struggling with a wide range of obstacles, especially lack of funding or adequate distribution, have explored the experience of sexual/gender minorities. From the mid to late eighties on, the New Queer Cinema, as it's been called, has challenged the boundaries of both content and form, going far beyond Hollywood's usual approaches to sexual and gender difference. Though the movement necessarily has produced small-budget, limited release films, these have helped to create the space that has made possible larger-scale films dealing directly with same-sex passion and political issues such as Brokeback Mountain and Milk.
The history of the representation of glbtq people in mainstream movies has become familiar to many through the research of film scholars, particularly the pioneering gay film historian Vito Russo and other more recent writers, such as Harry Benshoff, Sean Griffin, and Richard Barrios. Early movies, both in the United States and abroad, were notable for frequent-- if usually highly stereotypical-- depictions of sexual/gender minorities, but from the early thirties to about 1960 Hollywood's Film Production Code severely limited representation of glbtq characters, though filmmakers still found ways to hint at sexual and gender difference. With the collapse of the Code in the sixties, large-scale films began to depict sexual/gender minorities, but through the sixties, seventies, and eighties tended to trivialize and demonize them, constructing them according to established stereotypes and associating them with depravity, psychosis, crime, and violence. Notable examples are the treatment of sexual/gender minority characters in films such as Advise and Consent (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), The Detective (1968), The Sergeant (1968), The Fox (1968), Freebie and the Bean (1974), The Eiger Sanction (1975), Cruising (1980), Deathtrap (1982), Beverley Hills Cop (1984), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Basic Instinct (1992), and Braveheart (1995); of course, there are many more. Though in this period the Motion Picture Academy sometimes honored films that include significant glbtq content, those it chose tended to reflect prejudices against explicit sex, especially between men, and against aggressive political content, and stayed within the confines of established gender stereotypes. Midnight Cowboy (1969) won Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, but the film carefully heterosexualized John Voight's hustler character and constructed his relationship with Dustin Hoffman as a bond between straight buddies. Dog Day Afternoon (1975) won Best Screenplay, going to the other extreme, presenting the two main characters, Al Pacino as a manic bank robber and Chris Sarandon as his transexual partner, as bizarrely entertaining freaks. For his role in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) William Hurt won Best Actor, but again the character, an overwrought, highly effeminate windowdresser, was a stereotype far removed from the experience of most straight-- or gay-- people. The massive suffering of the AIDS Pandemic produced Philadelphia (1993), for which Tom Hanks won Best Actor in a role as a successful lawyer struggling with the disease, but as many gay viewers noted, the empathy of those who made the movie didn't extend to a willingness to depict the sexual relationship between the gay male characters.
The history of independent filmmaking on glbtq themes goes back to the mid-Twentieth Century in the experimental films of Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Maya Deren, and others. Between the mid eighties and mid nineties the development of film education and the gay and lesbian liberation movements led to a wave of work by independent filmmakers such as Lizzie Borden (Born in Flames, 1983), Bill Sherwood (Parting Glances 1986, ), Gregg Araki (The Living End, 1992), Todd Haynes (Poison, 1991), Tom Kalin (Swoon, 1992), Rose Troche (Go Fish, 1995), Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman, 1996), and others that challenged Hollywood's approach to glbtq experience, both in terms of cinematic technique and subject matter. Independent British and European filmmakers (such as James Ivory, Ismail Merchant, Stephen Frears, Derek Jarman, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder) also showed new possibilities, and the outpouring of glbtq-related foreign and domestic films, and their success at independent film festivals and at awards ceremonies, demonstrated that there was a market for such films. Eventually this led to larger independent projects and to the development of special art film divisions at major studios which undertook production and distribution of more glbtq-themed films. These changes led to even more movies addressing sexual/gender minority subjects, such as Boys Don't Cry (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Hours (2002), Far From Heaven (2002), Monster (2003), A Home at the End of the World (2004), and Brokeback Mountain (2005). Of course, Gus Van Sant, the director of Milk, was an important figure in the New Queer Cinema, with movies like Mala Noche (1985) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), and has successfully become involved in bigger projects while continuing to make more experimental films (such as Elephant (2003)). Milk itself owes a substantial debt to Rob Epstein's excellent documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), which won an academy award at a time when the industry was not receptive to a feature film on the topic. While the ongoing progress in the movie business toward more perceptive and innovative representations of glbtq people is clear, it has to be noted that Hollywood continues to maintain some of the traditional stereotypes. Though demonic gay killers like those of the past probably would meet with protests dwarfing those elicited by Cruising or Basic Instinct and so may be gone at last, effeminate stereotypes and tired fag jokes stressing straight male insecurity about gay men have been perpetuated by movies such as The Birdcage (1996), To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), In and Out (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007). Indeed, films such as My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) have established a new pattern for de-sexualizing gay men and rendering them non-threatening to straight audiences, the gay man-heterosexual woman comedy (paralleled by other films and by TV's Will and Grace).
During the buildup to the Oscars in 2005-2006, when Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger discussed their roles as Jack and Ennis, both unfortunately indicated some discomfort and defensiveness about playing male lovers, and others, such as Gyllenhaal's friend Lance Armstrong, openly ridiculed and insulted their roles. Much to his credit, Sean Penn has done what the two Brokeback stars did not, explicitly and unequivocally affirming his commitment to playing a gay man, and articulately asserting the right of glbtq people to the same legal rights, benefits, and status as everyone else. He's a real ally, a straight man who's secure in his own identity, doesn't fear glbtq people and their sexuality, but respects them and wants them to have the same rights he has. I hope that this marks a shift toward a climate in which more and more members of the heterosexual majority will speak up as allies of sexual/gender minorities. The recent change in national politics seems finally to indicate that a majority in the nation want to affirm diversity and basic human rights, and will reject the many prejudices, including the overt exploitation of homophobia, that have been such a central part of political and social discourse in America. Many still resist seeing the parallels between the irrationality and inhumanity of racism and of homophobia, but perhaps the eloquence of allies like Penn, of gay artists like Black, and of films like Milk will help to change this. Although the administration of George W. Bush finally-- finally!-- is over, his supporters, especially the many "religious" homophobes, undoubtedly will continue and probably intensify their efforts to attack the rights of glbtq people, but as more sexual/gender minority people and real allies stand up to them, it may be possible to stop them. More and more young people today, straight and glbtq, seem to agree with Penn and Black, and to be fed up with those latter-day successors to Anita Bryant and John Briggs who want to impose their "religious" rules on the personal and sexual lives of others. The success of Milk may herald a substantial change in attitudes that finally will end discriminatory policies such as "Don't Ask-Don't Tell" and the "Defense of Marriage Act." As Dustin Lance Black said in his speech at the Academy Awards ceremony, "if Harvey had not been taken from us thirty years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are 'less than' by their churches, by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures who have value. And no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours. Thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk."
Eric Patterson is associate professor of American studies and American literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the author of On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations about Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film.
