GBLTQ+: Western cinema and culture (Anglo-Saxon view).
Western culture has always vehemently opposed the production of daring artwork themed around homosexuality: all sexually-related subjects were considered taboo since they were deemed as a threat to the socio-political status-quo based on patriarchal yet binary Christian values.
Some artists did though create huge scandals, from the explicit homoerotic paintings of Caravaggio to the novels of de Sade, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and Anaïs Nin, the poetry of lovers Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, and Garcia Lorca. Even when social attitudes became more and more "liberated" in the Post War era (let's think of the overt sexuality of Elvis Presley in the new rock'n'roll era), artists had to be careful about the extent of their creative freedom.
HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE UK
Up until recently we all looked upon the UK as a beacon of cultural and social freedom, forgetting that only as late as 1967 the government went on to decriminalise (male) homosexuality (according to the male legislators lesbianism did not even exist)... The cruel and shameful episode concerning Alan Turing, mathematical genius and philosopher, arrested, tortured and finally subjected to chemical castration in order to avoid imprisonment, then poisoned to death, happened between 1952 and 1954. Only in 2009 Gordon Brown's government did officially denounce as homophobic the treatment of Turing (to whom the UK was greatly indebted, since his scientific/technological contribution towards the defeat of Nazi Germany was crucial). In December 2013 Queen Elizabeth II conferred him a rather sour posthumous pardon, just in time for the release of the film The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch impersonating Turing.
So, you surely would agree, it has been a very slow progress in the liberal western world, even in a country (England) which enjoyed empowering episodes of sexual revolution between the Sixties and the late Seventies, expressed through popular culture: this is where Mary Quant invented the miniskirt, and where a bisexual star like Bowie/Ziggy Satrdust could see the light or hugely popular gay icons such as Elton John, Freddy Mercury, Boy George, Samantha Fox, George Michael, Morrissey, Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys) or Mel B (Spice Girls) could thrive.
British cinema was rather slow in portraying homosexual characters too. In 1967 we see a Dirk Bogarde (who was gay in real life), negotiating the difficult parts of being a closeted homosexual in a hostile society in Darling, directed by John Schlesinger who was part of the Free Cinema movement. During the Thatcher era the debate on anything involving race, class and sexuality was halted, but a British-Japanese production managed to put together David Bowie and Riūichi Sakamoto (with Takeshi Kitano as a debutant) in Furyo aka Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983) where the homoerotic tension between the two is not only explicit but off the charts.
Also a cult masterpiece such as My Beautiful Launderette (1985), with a young Daniel Day Lewis, did manage to slip through the net, portraying a country festered by a surge of right-wing nationalism (reactionary, hence homophobic).
Derek Jarman is still considered the most prominent British gay director to date, renown for Caravaggio (1986), where we can find traces of Pier Paolo Pasolini's own powerful art. At long last, beginning from the mid 2010s British gay cinema finally starts to shift he attention from the "drama" of being homosexual (gay AND lesbian) to the positive hope for a brand new inclusive world, as in Pride (2014).
UK TV series featuring openly gay plots found their home in the independent TV channel Channel 4, beginning with groundbreaking Beautiful Thing in 1997 and the iconic, thoroughly enjoyable Queer as Folk I and II in 1999/2000, set in the lively Manchester gay scene.
GAY CULTURE IN THE USA
Moving across the Atlantic, the new continent was perhaps the land of freedom, but at the same time, it had been a magnet for Christian fundamentalist sets and cults which were not seen to kindly in Europe. It goes without saying that the issue of homosexuality did not make much of an impact until quite late. The newly-born Hollywood industry sporadically hinted at homosexuality in a rather ingenuous and crass way. Gay characters were mainly cross-dressers who served to spark hilarity. That said, the first erotic male kiss featured in the silent film Manslaugher (1922) by Cecil B. DeMille, then another followed in acclaimed Wings with Buddy Rogers and Richard Arien (1927).
Marlene Dietrich kissed a woman in Morocco (1930) and so did Greta Garbo in Queen Christina (1933). In City Lights (1931) Chaplin can also be seen in several clearly ambiguous scenes, where he seems to try to seduce a rich man: he was indeed very attentive to social problematics, and impoverished men and women had always been selling sex to the rich in order to get some food for themselves and their families.
Unfortunately in the early Thirties the Catholic Church and the Protestant Fundamentalists began to exert strong pressure on the USA government, accusing the film industry to be an evil influence on society. Soon censorship came into being in the shape of the Motion Picture Production Code (1934-68), and homosexuality fell under the banner of sexual perversion or deviation. The far and few-in-between gay characters appearing in films, showed them committing violent crimes because of their sexual inclinations.
This is the period when Henry Miller writes The Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. The great author, who regarded himself as the heir of Arthur Rimbaud, was banned because of "obscene content". As well as describing sex in a very explicit and crude manner, he often openly mused on his own homoerotic desires.
Cross-dressing was tolerated in American cinema, because it was portrayed as something laughable: think of Cary Grant in I Was a Male War Bride (1949) and above all Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot (1959). Jerry Lewis was often criticised for appearing distastefully gay in his exaggeratedly effeminate comic mannerism.
During the World War and the Cold War, homosexuality became openly associated to crime and mental illness; characters often belonged to the world of the arts and seemed to spouse alien ideals, mirroring the fierce anti-communist fobia that plagued the USA during the first 50 years of the XX century (McCarthysm). Its end marks the huge success in Hollywood of actor and heartthrob Rock Hudson, who was forced to hide his homosexuality throughout his career, until his death by HIV in 1985.
The Sixties brought forth many changes due to the explosion of the Beat Generation and the Hippy Movement. The iconic Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) with Audrey Hepburnwas an adaptation from the homonymous novel by Truman Capote, who was openly gay. In 1968 the censorship of the Production Code was eliminated and, slowly, it was possible for independent films to be screened widely too. Film plots began to portray "positive" lead characters who are heavily implied to be gay. The biographical opus Lawrence of Arabia (1962), where the two protagonists portrayed by Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif are in a relationship (the real Sir T. E. Lawrence was indeed gay), had a huge box office success, yet unfortunately did not succeed in breaking any taboos.
During the late Sixties and Seventies American pop-culture and gay icons Andy Warhol and Lou Reed became famous all over the world. And then of course there was the hugely influential, global success of Madonna, who openly championed gay and bisexual sexuality. The '80s saw pop music spearhead the gay movement, with the huge international success of mainly British acts such as Culture Club/Boy George, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Dead or Alive, George Michael and Erasure. Funnily enough, in non-english speaking countries, at the time almost no-one realised these artists were gay!! In Catholic countries there was almost no awareness of non-binary sexuality, yet videos like "You Spin me Round" by Dead or Alive did mesmerise both girls and boys regardless.
Gay cinema though remained for a restricted audience, and when the HIV pandemic spread worldwide, we had to wait for that masterpiece called Philadelphia (1993) for a gay character to be shown as a human being rather than a contagious pervert. The effect of the pandemic was devastating to the gay communities, which became even more stigmatised and marginalised.
While the Nineties saw the popularity of openly gay musicians such as Placebo, and the general public becoming more informed on HIV, gay rights started to be discussed across the Western world, and a new LGBT conscience started to rise. Films like the delightful Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and - above all- the poetic, iconic Lang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005), become cult gems for all cinema lovers as a whole.
Western films about homosexual love become more and more explicit, yet unfortunately remained largely unknown to the wider public, despite the participation of well-known actors, like Total Eclipse (1995) starring Leonardo di Caprio as Arthur Rimbaud and David Thewlis as Paul Verlaine, or Milk (2008) with Sean Penn and Mark Martinez about the life of Harvey Milk, American politician and gay activist assassinated in 1978. The latter even won two Oscars as Best Lead Actor (Sean Penn) and Best Scriptwright, and yet who remembers it?...
That said, Western popular culture has been transforming very quickly in the past two decades, with many pop stars happily coming out, or openly supporting LGBTQ+ issues such as same sex marriage. The list of gay, bi or pansexual artists is very long: Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, Adam Lambert, Christina Aguilera, Mika, The Scissor Sisters, The Gossip, Tiziano Ferro, Sam smith, Miley Cyrus, Sia, Years and Years and so on.
The 2000s also saw the birth of the Nu-queer cinema. For Italian readers who might be interested in watching some Nu-queer films, a list can be found here. A comprehensive list of more cult LGBTQ+ titles can be found here (in English).
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