Homosexuality in Film

The instalment depicts George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) as he learns that his old Army buddy Eddie is now a transgender woman named Edie (Veronica Redd).” (Pinknews, 2017). You start to have a regular gay character on a tv show as well in the 70’s. As Bea Mitchell wrote, “1977 sitcom Soap is sometimes thought to have featured the first recurring gay character, Jodie Dallas, played by Billy Crystal – but he had a predecessor, who we’ll get to shortly.” (Pinknews, 2017). In the 70’s is when societal views of homosexuals become somewhat more

Another huge social and cultural change during this time was the gay liberation movement. During the 1960’s, many groups decided to fight for their rights and equality. One of these groups was the gay and lesbian members of society. Many of these individuals were discriminated against and had no rights, but they decided enough was enough. In the 1960’s, gays decided to begin the fight for their own rights. One example of this was made after New York officers decided to raid the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York’s very own Greenwich Village on June 27, 1969. This type of raid was not unusual, being that many police officers made it a habit of raiding gay and lesbian bars. This became known as the “Stonewall Riot”, which many view as the starting point of the gay liberation movement. The gay liberation movement was the fight by gays and lesbians for equal rights, one of these rights being the right to not be discriminated against, and most importantly, to be able to openly “come out” to their family and friends. The gay liberation movement helped to impact our current times greatly. Today, a gay person has rights just like anyone else. A gay

According to Sullivan (2008), same-sex attraction has not always been considered a deviation. However, post-war societal reaction to prohibition, gay bathhouses and other establishments were adverse and a new war on immorality arose, which was supported by American individuals, religious and governmental institutions. This outlook prevailed throughout the 1950's and led to blatant anti-gay attitudes. The persecution of the gay life style brought on renewed shame and guilt for the homosexual community as gay men were forced to cope with the stigmatization by "passing" as heterosexuals and thus become invisible. This resulted in the development of their own discriminatory social construct, with a hierarchy where males who were able to prove their masculinity through assimilation were held in the highest regards, while those that did not were looked down upon by their own gay communities

Over the next two decades, half the states decriminalized homosexual behavior, and police harassment grew less frequent and obvious to the public. Also in 1975, it became legal for gays to hold federal jobs. However all this headway also made room for more opposition. In 1977, Anita Bryant was so successful at obtaining a repeal of a recent gay ordinance in her home state of Florida that by 1980, a league of anti gay clubs had come together to make a force, led in part by Jesse Helms. The AIDS scare that began in the eighties did not help the gay image either, but more citizens joined their ranks in order to combat the oppression and fund a search for the cure, so in the end it actually made the movement stronger. According to the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (2000), by 1999, the anti-sodomy laws of 32 states had been repealed, and in 1996 Vermont granted its gay citizens the right to same sex marriages. Gay rights has come a long way as a social movement, and though it still has a long way to go, it makes a good topic to analyze the process of the social movement.

Popular culture or Pop culture in short has never been a multidimensional representation of gender or race but in away it has been able to provide a platform of introduction for that unknown representation that has not been introduced to the masses. Queer culture nowadays seems to be a standard representation in film and television. As a kid growing up, queer representation was almost unheard of in media or so I thought. As I look back at one of the most influential cartoon character, Looney Tune’s Bugs Bunny, I can’t help but help think about all of the sexual uncertainty that this character displayed over the years. With his constant sexual seduction of Elmer Fudd through cross dressing schemes and trickery. This acts lead me to believe that this character, like many others, created a platform for the creators to introduce sexual ambiguity in order to desensitize young viewers from heterocentrist ways.

“Sex was something mysterious which happened to married couples and Homosexuality was never mentioned; my mother told me my father did not believe it existed at all ‘until he joined the army’. As a child, I was warned about talking to ‘strange men’, without any real idea what this meant. I was left to find out for myself what it was all about.” Mike Newman, who was a child during the 1950s America recalls how homosexuality was perceived during the post-World War II era (F). This sexual oppression was not only in Newman’s household, but in almost everyone’s. While the civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s and ended late 1960s, the LGBT community started to come out of the closet slowly. The gay rights movement stemmed from the civil rights movement

Obviously, the gay community will not stop to remember the major events leading to gay liberation in the U.S. Those who witnessed the June 28, 1969 violent demonstrations by a group of gays at the Stonewall Inn, located in the Greenwich Village near Manhattan, New York City, will forever remember the impact of that early morning hours riots against police raid in the history of gay liberation movement.

Gay liberation throughout the United States had a purpose for lesbians and gay men to have gay lifestyles be normal. Gay liberation affected politics because gay men and lesbians wanted to inform their peers and family, which changed how citizens would view their sexual orientation. The gay liberation took place during the 1960’s through the 1980’s in which changed many cultures. The culture in the United States changed dramatically because during the 1960s through 1980s , there was an AIDS outbreak. AIDS was a sickness after HIV that would cause an individual’s body to weaken, therefore United States citizens would link AIDS to people who were gay or lesbian. For instance, David Rayside compares the United States to Britain, “After World War II, however, Britain once again stood out in the extent to public anxieties about sexuality were fanned and legal regulation of homosexual activity policed”(40) and “British authorities were especially preoccupied with the condemnation and strict containment of homsexuality.”(40). Homosexuality affected politics because authorities would prioritize the gays and lesbians before anything else. There were clear observations that governments from Britain and United States were not in favor for homosexuality, therefore attempting to change people's views on homosexuality so gays and lesbians would not be accepted into the society. Being accepted into a society requires majority of citizens to approve of other’s decisions. For example, citizens viewing gays or lesbians in public without attempting to discriminate their sexuality. The women’s movement was similar to the gay liberation because it affected politics greatly by hierarchies being

Fifty years ago, in the early sixties, being gay was illegal in every providence in Canada, and in every single state in the United States. In the 1950’s, many gay individuals saw the men who had devoted their lives to being out and they knew what a horrible life that made for those men. This caused many gay men to “pass,” or live their entire lives in the closet. They would marry women for the soul purpose of protecting their secret. Before the stonewall riots, many Americans did not even believe gay people existed. Due to the lack of education and bigotry amongst Americans, being gay was very dangerous. Sexual acts in the gay community were commonly done in unsafe places and in public because they simply had nowhere else to go. Homosexuality was not just criminalized it was medicalized (Bawer). If you were gay, you could be subject to go into hospitals and were viewed by society as having a disability and a disease. In April of 1965, the very first gay protest took place in Washington DC. This protest was revolutionary and it began to pave the way for the future of gay men and women and reshape gay culture. In 1969, not long after the first gay protests of 1965, Canada decriminalized homosexual sexual acts in the privacy of one’s own home (Guerre). This was groundbreaking and gave the gay community hope that change was coming. Also, taking place in 1969 were the historic stonewall

Minorities have always been underrepresented by every media outlet, whether that be film, literature, pop culture, etc., and that furthers stereotypes. Something that has always and will continue to be a device of discord in human nature is that of wanting to be heard, no matter how disastrous that might become. This has been shown by multiple events throughout the entire Gay Rights movement, most notably the birth of the movement which are, the Stonewall Riots, “These riots were highly influential to establishing a foothold, however it was a peaceful protest, despite the name. Stonewall Riots was the forerunner for LGBT movements and begin gay rights groups June 28, 1969, In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a group of gay customers at a

In this time society was going through much social change. Protests and movements were very present. In the 1960s women’s rights movements, black power movements, and civil rights protest were going on. This influenced the gay community and sparked energy for them to stand up for their own rights. In 1969 Stonewall riots were occurring in result to the police raiding a gay bar by the name of Stonewall Inn. The legal system in the 1950’s and 1960’s was anti-gay. These groups were being formed to show and prove that society could function. Very few businesses welcomed publicly gay people in the 1950s and 1960s.After the series of riots and the push for social reform gays still faced many obstacles to being openly accepted and integrated into society.

The idea of being gay had been under wraps since the beginning of time. In fifteen thirty, Henry VII created the Buggery Act, defining homosexuality as a crime punishable by death. Later, in eighteen eighty-five, Parliament passed an amendment brought forth by Henry Du Pre Labouchere making it legal to prosecute gay men. This law did not apply to lesbian women, because the idea of two women being in any type of romantic relationship was unthinkable at the time. The Gay Rights Movement ignited after the Stonewall riots in June 1969. The movement started right towards the end of the civil rights movement, so the nation was growing weary of constant protests, peaceful or not. Martin Luther King Jr. died just over one year before Stonewall, leaving America little time to recover from the end of one major movement to another. The propaganda quickly spread across the country and gained national attention that has stayed relevant since then. Stonewall was the first major event that shook the United States and made the the importance of lesbian, gay, bisexal, and transgender (LGBT) rights known. In the 1980s and 90s, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) epidemic once again brought major national attention to the LGBT community- but this time in a negative way.

When HIV/AIDS was first known in the United States, people who were affected were dying at a rapid rate as the disease was new to the medical community. There was no treatment and because of that the disease became highly publicized. At the time there were hatred for those who were considered gay. Those who came out and spoke openly about their HIV and AIDS were often being victimized. With the fear and homophobia from society, gay men and women took to the street to demand a government response to AIDS and were influenced to create a national movement.

An article in the New York Times claims that all those feminist messages were lost to the audience that was just too consumed with the actress beauty to get the message. None the less Liz Taylor’s film kept pushing the envelope of socially acceptable topics and in movie Suddenly, Last Summer, the major taboo was ripped wide open on homosexuality and possibly delinquent/criminal behavior because most likely the male escorts were minor poor young boys. This movie portraits how far will the established social norm will go to keep containment , the clear message that a men was better off dead than be homosexual was not lost in this very turbulent movie.

Media and its representation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual (LGBT) themes has been prevalent throughout time. According to the collections of studies and stories by Meem, Mitchell and Jonathan (2010) concerning LGBT individuals, it is important to represent such themes because it is able to enlighten people on how our society as a whole, has become dynamic. The Media can be seen as a “central source” where negative perceptions can be created. As a result, stereotypes can be either created or perpetuated about this group, negative or otherwise. Media as a medium, therefore, is an extremely powerful tool in our society, and can be used to change or create people 's perceptions about this particular segment of our world (LGBT).