Notes on Gay History/Queer Theory/Queer Film
Dr. Harry M. Benshoff,
Assistant Professor
Department of Radio, TV, and Film
This brief overview of gay, lesbian and queer issues might begin with the "invention" of the "Homosexual" and the "Heterosexual" a little over 100 years ago by medical and early psychological researchers. This is not to say that all sorts of sexual behaviors (including homosexuality and heterosexuality) had not existed before that time, but rather that with that act of classification, Western medical science now proclaimed homosexuals and heterosexuals as definite (and potentially opposing) types of people. Once labeled, it is easier to identify and oppress any social group, and the 20'-century history of homosexuality has demonstrated a great deal of persecution at the hands of the legal and medical establishments, various religious groups, and all sorts of other social bodies and individuals. Conversely, it has also been possible for gay men and lesbians to fight for rights and recognition based upon those same identity labels.
Members of the medical establishment argued back and forth for decades about what "caused" homosexuality, and some still do. In so doing, researchers assumed that heterosexuality was the norm, and that homosexuality was a disease of the norm that could be cured. This assumption that heterosexuality is the only normal sexual orientation, and that it should be celebrated and privileged above all others, is called heterosexism. Heterosexism is pervasive and usually un-remarked upon in our culture, and is somewhat different from the more extreme practice or prejudice of homophobia (see below).
There are two main models of homosexual identity formation that have held sway throughout much of the 20th century. The first is that homosexuals are born that way. This model is also known as an essentialist or biological or congenital model of sexuality—that sexuality is hardwired from birth like left-handedness or having blue eyes. Magnus Hirschfeld, an early 20th century sexologist (who also founded one of the world's first homosexual rights group in Weimar Germany), believed that homosexuals were born as a "third sex" and that they should not be persecuted on the grounds that they were genetically hardwired towards homosexuality. Recent work on the "gay brain" by Simon Le Vay or attempts to find a "gay gene" are more contemporary versions of this essentialist, biological model of sexuality. While this model "legitimizes" homosexuality in its own way—literally "naturalizing" it as a regularly occurring phenomenon of human sexuality—some people fear it also might also legitimize a “disease and cure" model: if the “cause" of homosexuality can indeed be found, then some people may work to see it eradicated or medically “corrected."
The other major model of homosexual identity formation is known as a social constructionist model, which says homosexuals are not born that way but are rather made into homosexuals through various social conditions. Some psychiatrists have argued throughout the recent century that too much mother love, or not enough, or incomplete Oedipalization leads to homosexual behavior and identity formation. Despite their inability to identify and isolate the causative mechanisms of homosexuality, psychiatry and psychology obviously had a vested economic interest in this model—“curing homosexuality” can be big business in a culture that heaps such opprobrium upon gay and lesbian people. In World War Two, psychiatrists were used to weed out and potentially cure homosexuals within the Armed Services; for decades after that people were often institutionalized and subjected to highly questionable medical practices such as lobotomies, hormone treatments, and electroshock in misguided attempts to cure people of their sexual orientation. Homosexuality was eventually declassified as a pathology by the medical establishment in 1973, but it was not until the 1990s that the American Medical Association formally declared that “reparative therapies" designed to turn homosexual people into heterosexuals were the equivalent of consumer fraud. Some so-called "ex-gay ministries" and like-minded therapists can still guilt people (both heterosexual and homosexual) into not having sex, but science or religion has rarely been able to change sexual orientation itself.
These two models are not necessarily contradictory. Many researchers now argue that while some potential for sexuality is probably hardwired into the species, what an individual's sexuality will be and how it will express itself is also determined by the social factors and conditions that the individual experiences during his or her lifetime.
Since psychological research has moved away from trying to figure out what “causes" homosexuality, it has begun to explore why some people exhibit such fear and hatred and passionate bigotry towards homosexuals. This fear and hatred is often termed homophobia. Sigmund Freud and some of his early followers theorized that homophobia is a defense mechanism against one's own homosexual tendencies. This theory is dependent upon the assumption that every one is potentially bisexual before social forces shape us into either heterosexuals or homosexuals, and that latent homosexual feelings in heterosexual people may become disconcerting; this is called ego-dystonic homosexuality. Thus the compulsive expression of hatred towards homosexuals that these individuals display is an attempt to displace and deny their own internal homosexual feelings—they try to eradicate homosexuality from society as a way of attempting to quell it within themselves, all the while proving to everyone around them how "not gay" they really are. Recent behaviorist researchers have claimed to have proven this theory by putting it to the test. They divided male test subjects into highly homophobic or non-homophobic groups based upon interviews and questionnaires. They then exposed each group to homosexual erotica and measured the sexual response. The highly homophobic group showed more sexual response to the homosexual erotica than did the non-homophobic group, leading the researchers to conclude that Freud was right—homophobic people are themselves homoerotically inclined, but their conscious minds are often unable to admit that fact.
Our society is still so heterosexist and homophobic that it should not be surprising that it is often very difficult for individuals to come forward and self-identity as homosexual (this is called coming out of the closet.) Homophobia and heterosexism are also tied to the patriarchal culture in which we live, and sometimes homophobia functions as a way to control traditional gender roles. If a boy exhibits sensitivity he is often called a faggot, and a girl who doesn't want to wear makeup might be called a dyke by her peers. In this way, the ideology of homophobia works to enforce the binary of traditional gender roles (i.e. Men are From Mars and Women are From Venus) and keep patriarchal power structures firmly in place.
Although the understanding of homosexuality has been overshadowed throughout most of the 20th century by medicine and psychiatry, all that was changed when gay and lesbian people started claiming their own identifies and fighting for their civil rights. There were many such attempts in post-World War II America to start gay and lesbian civil rights groups. The Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis were two of the most famous and long-lasting, while magazines such as Vice Versa, One, The Mattachine Review, and The Ladder helped the fledgling gay and lesbian civil rights network speak to its members. Sporadic protests and civil actions occurred throughout the 1960s, but it was the Stonewall Riots of June 1969 that are usually understood to have sparked the modern gay liberation movement. The Stonewall Inn was a Mafia-controlled gay bar in Greenwich Village, NYC, and when the police decided to raid it, the patrons (most of whom were Latino and African American drag queens and butch lesbians) fought back, and three days of rioting in the streets ensued. Perhaps most importantly, these riots were covered in national news magazines and newspapers and a new liberation movement (similar to those being created by women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics) suddenly came into mainstream America's view.
In the few years after the Stonewall Riots, all sorts of gay and lesbian groups—both political and social—began forming and declaring the existence of all sorts of lesbians and gay men. Political action groups such as the Gay Activists Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front were formed, as were church groups, sports groups, campus groups, professional groups, and all kinds of lesbian groups within and without the larger feminist movement of the 1970s. By the 1990s, it was a truism that out and proud gay and lesbian people were everywhere, in every segment of society, within every racial and ethnic group, class, profession, religion, and political party.
Yet, even as gay and lesbian people were becoming more visible in American culture, and the medical and legal establishments (for the most part) gave up their claim to homosexuality as a disease or a crime, some religious groups began to frame the growing gay rights movement as a moral issue. By the late 1970s, many right-wing conservative Christian groups began attacking the idea of gay and lesbian visibility and basic civil rights protection. This opposition became even more intense with the election to the American Presidency in 1980 of Ronald Reagan, a man who had aligned himself with conservative religious groups such as the Moral Majority. When the AIDS crisis began to effect gay men in the early 1980s, many right wing politicos used this tragic epidemic as "proof” of God's vengeance against gays. (The fact that lesbians rarely got the disease seems to have escaped their notice, but did lead some people to quip that lesbians must then be God's chosen people!)
The history of AIDS in the early 1980s has been amply documented by Randy Shilts and others. Until 1985, when the highly publicized death of Rock Hudson from AIDS made mainstream America confront the epidemic, the government and much of American society had remained unconcerned about the disease as it was only “social undesirables” such as homosexuals and IV drug users who were contracting the syndrome. Much panic and hysteria overwhelmed the nation until it was discovered that AIDS could only be transmitted through sexual intercourse or the sharing of needles. Even then Congress repeatedly blocked attempts to fund educational campaigns about AIDS prevention and even refused funding that could have supported research surveys desperately needed by the Center for Disease Control in its fight against AIDS.
As a result of government apathy and inaction in the face of the AIDS crisis, many gay and lesbian people became more actively involved in politics, and started to demand that government respond not only to the AIDS crisis but also to issues of discrimination against gay and lesbian people. Groups such as Act Up (The AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) and Queer Nation were formed, and they demonstrated in the streets for gay and lesbian issues. Most of these activists held a strong anti-assimilationist stance and rejected the bourgeois labels of "gay," "lesbian," and "bisexual" and equally bourgeois (as they saw it) pleas for tolerance and acceptance. Use of the word queer was meant to be confrontational and reappropriative, to fling back at America an ugly word that the country had used to oppress non-straight people for decades. Queer activists were angry and demanded to be recognized as part of American culture and have their concerns addressed. As one famous activist protest chant proclaimed, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"
While queer activists were demonstrating in the streets, something called Queer Theory began to be discussed in universities across the nation and in Canada and Europe. Queer Theory grows out of feminist thought, poststructuralist and postmodern theory, and the fledgling disciplines of gay and lesbian studies. Unlike the more essentialist queer activists, queer theorists focus on how sexuality was and is a product of culture, not some sort of biological given. Through the work of Michel Foucault they define sexuality as being socially constructed through various discourses of medicine, law, media, etc.. From the work of feminist philosopher Judith Butler they understand gender and sexuality as performative acts, not essential identities. And the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explores how the hetero-homo binary opposition (and the closet) shapes so many different aspects of Western culture. Sedgwick's work also opens onto male homosocial groups (such as fraternities, sports teams, social clubs) and how they foster, inculcate, and naturalize both sexism and homophobia.
Queer Theory seeks to create an "oxymoronic community of difference," inclusive not only of the variety of gay and lesbian and bisexual identities (thus acknowledging that there are many ways to be a gay man or a lesbian), but of other sexually defined minorities as well: cross dressers, transgendered people, interracial couples whether homo-or heterosexual, disabled sexualities, sadomasochistic sexualities (whether homo- or heterosexual), etc. Even heterosexuals can be queer (the so-called "straight queer"), because Queer theoretically encompasses all human sexual practices while rejecting the binary hierarchies of gender, race, sexuality, class, etc. that currently govern our culture and society. Queer theory seeks to overturn those binaries and the labels which go with them to acknowledge a fuzzy interstitial area where most of us really belong. Following the work of Alfred Kinsey and Sigmund Freud, queer theorists argue that human sexuality—or indeed, race, gender, class, etc.—are not either/or propositions, but are rather fluid and dynamic socially-defined positions. To suggest that there is one norm (straight white man on top sex for procreation and nothing else) is grossly misleading and only serves to foster rule by the same and persecution of everything else.
These moves towards, queer activism and queer theory are not without their opponents. Some gay men and lesbians hate the term "queer" because of the pain and anger associated with the word as an epithet. Others don't like the idea that there can be straight queers—according to this critique, straight queers dilute or reappropriate the struggle for "true" queers. Queer also plays into the fears of the religious right, in that it does seek to present a challenge to how we think about gender and sexuality. And despite its focus on diversity, the actual practices of human beings born into racist and sexist cultures still often fall back into those same social hierarchies. Yet, despite the fact that white males often still tend to be the most seen and heard of queer spokespeople, there is among most queer theorists and activists the desire for diversity and the continual foregrounding of it as an issue.
Queer Theory has had an impact on many disciplines within academe, most notably within the humanities. In film and literature studies, people began to examine the queerness of texts. A text (book or film) might be considered queer if it was made by queers. This has led to research into contemporary and historically queer figures. A text might also be queer if it is read by queers or read from a queer reading position. This proposition has opened up new areas of thought in reception studies. Queer texts could be texts that feature queer characters or queer content. Following that idea, it has been suggested that some literary and cinematic forms themselves are queer—genres like the horror film and the musical, for example, construct unreal hyperspaces in which “anything goes." Certainly the horror film is in its very narrative pattern and social effect about the simultaneous attraction and repulsion so-called "normal" people have towards monstrous sexualities.
Historically, most gay and lesbian filmmakers were forced to work in avant-garde or independent circles, but there were also several important gay and lesbian filmmakers who worked within the classical Hollywood cinema: James Whale, George Cukor, and Dorothy Arzner, to name just a few. Today, many queer people in Hollywood (especially actors) remain in the closet although that is slowly changing. The first important book about how homosexuality has been represented in the movies was Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet (which was also turned into a film in the 1990s). In the book, Russo examined the depiction of gay and lesbian characters on screen in Hollywood and independent film, compiling list of stereotypical stock characters, many of whom are still with us today. In the late 1970s and 1980s, gay and lesbian independent feature filmmaking came into practice. These first feature films focused on positive images, positive role models, coming out stories, and narratives of self and community acceptance. They were often love stories and were produced in the realist or classical style of most Hollywood filmmaking.
In the early 1990s, a new film movement, quickly dubbed New Queer Cinema, arose within gay and lesbian independent filmmaking. These films used queer theory as structuring principles, and were more overtly political than what had come before. Some of the first important films of this movement were POISON, SWOON, PARIS IS BURNING, THE LIVING END, THE HOURS AND THE TIMES, GO FISH, ZERO PATIENCE, MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, and THE WATERMELON WOMAN. These films were made by filmmakers like Rose Troche, Christine Vachon, Gus Van Sant, Gregg Araki, Tom Kalin, Todd Haynes, Jennie Livingston, Maria Maggenti, Cheryl Dunye, and Marlon Riggs.
New Queer Cinema has also been called "Homo Pomo" because the films embody postmodern styles and ideas (as does queer theory itself). One of the important traits of New Queer Cinema is having stories that question models of essentialist identity formation. In other words, characters are not merely nice gay and lesbian stereotypes, but rather complex queer characters who may challenge the simple binary "straight versus gay." Queer Film also tends to challenge master narratives such as “objective history.” Films like SWOON and EDWARD II examine historical issues of queerness to show how history itself has been constructed by those in power. Queer Film also tends to focus on race, gender, and class issues, again representing these as socially constructed categories, not essential identities. There is a focus on permeable boundaries, the crossing of styles and genres, and issues such as trans-nationalism. The films dabble in minimalism and excess, appropriation and pastiche, the mixing of Hollywood and avant-garde styles, and even the mix of fiction and documentary tropes. Finally, queer film tends to be more or less activist and in your face: it is energetic, provocative, unruly, demanding, and sometimes shocking.
There are potential drawbacks to this cinema however. To begin with, it might be seen as elitist, since it is frequently engaged with theory and with deconstructing the biases of Hollywood film form. Queer Film is sometimes less audience pleasing because it can be challenging and difficult. Many queer spectators, like straight spectators, want "feel good" narrative movies, and until the public as a whole develops more sophisticated film viewing habits, difficult film movements will have a hard time making money. As one queer filmmaker put it, "I think [deconstruction] is very useful as an analytic tool, but I don't think it works as a tool for making an interesting film. The film medium is about empathy, it is about catharsis, it is about being drawn in, and identifying with the characters and with the story." (Joy Chamberlain, quoted in Queer Looks, p.43.)
Queer film also seeks to challenge the idea of simplistic "positive" and "negative" representations, and thus the characters in queer film are not all saintly well-behaved assimilationist homosexuals. Some, in fact, might be killers. Some people wonder whether or not queer filmmakers should be depicting what they understand to be "negative" images.
Finally, queer film also still tends to carry a white male bias, in that white male queers often get funding for projects more easily than do women and people of color. This again reflects the biases of our dominant ideology (white patriarchal capitalism), but hopefully more and more women and people of color are gaining access to the corridors of filmic power. As they do so, and as filmmaking both in the independent sphere and in Hollywood becomes more diverse, film in America will truly begin to reflect our culture in all its diversity. It will tell new stories in new ways, and old stories from new and different perspectives, enriching not only the practice of cinema, but the lives of those with whom it interacts.
Highly Selective Notes on Some Important Queer Filmmakers and Films
Gregg Araki
Asian American queer filmmaker, films rarely deal solely with Asian concerns but rather a queer multicultural milieu - young people. About queer slackers, if you will. Terminally HIP! Very guerilla style. Style very over the top- Hyperreal. Closer to the surrealists? Brecht, Godard, and Fassbinder were major influences. Undergraduate in film at UCSB, MFA at USC. Highly individual and artisanal films. Some of the original "no budget movies" - First two cost about $5K each, non-synch features.
THREE BEWILDERED PEOPLE IN THE NIGHT (1987)
THE LONG WEEKEND O' DESPAIR (1989)
THE LIVING END (1992) - Breakthrough film. Reappropriation of the buddy road
movie. Financial and stock help from Jon Jost. 20 K grant from AFI.
TOTALLY FUCKED UP (1994) queer youth, angst, Godardian style
THE DOOM GENERATION (1995) - also a road movie of sorts with a queer threesome
instead of buddies, very violent.
NOWHERE (1996) - outer space monster wandering around queer LA.
SPLENDOR (1999) - romantic triangle in classical style
Gus Van Sant
Born in Kentucky but moved around a lot as a child - father was a traveling salesman. Settled in Oregon. Studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, gets a BFA in film. Starts making shorts - 20 or so, including ads and commercials for Madison Avenue. Returns to Portland and does rock videos - proto-grunge scene? THE DISCIPLINE OF D.E., FIVE WAYS TO KILL YOURSELF, FIVE NAKED BOYS AND A GUN; hero is queer heroin user William S. Burroughs - neo-punk scene. Details the underworld but without David Lynch's horror and queer-phobia.
1985 - MALA NOCHE, B&W 16MM feature. About a guy who falls in love with a Hispanic teenage hustler. Deals with race as well as sexuality, life on the street.
1989 - DRUGSTORE COWBOY. Matt Dillon - heroin visuals, William S. Burroughs.
1991 - MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO - Street hustlers River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves crossed with Shakespeare's Henry IV. 3.6 million. Cut-up ala Burroughs, putting together different elements in a postmodern mélange. Also--EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, TO DIE FOR, GOOD WILL HUNTING, PSYCHO.
Christine Vachon
"The Godmother of New Queer Cinema." Produced many important first films of the movement including SWOON, GO FISH, and POISON. Most recently produced BOYS DON'T CRY (1999).
Rose Troche
GO FISH: Chicago-based film starts out as MAX AND ELY in 1992, a B&W lesbian romantic comedy with more avant-garde touches and political musings. Stars G. Turner who would go on to write the screenplay for AMERICAN PSYCHO. Sold to Goldwyn while still at Sundance. Art house hit. Troche's newest: BEDROOMS AND HALLWAYS (1999)
Todd Haynes
Raised in Encino, CA, and a BA in semiotics from Brown Univ. ACT UP and queer theory both on the street and in the academy. Interest in subverting form. ASSASSINS, A FILM CONCERNING RIMBAUD (1985), SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY (1987), DOTTIE GETS SPANKED
POISON (1991) 16MM feature - 3 separate stories interwoven: "Hero," "Horror," and "Homo." Some NEA money and it gets slammed for being too gay. Draws on Genet and the idea of homosexual as criminal, as monster, and as freak. Different styles for each story makes you question not just the stories but the genres to which they belong. Deviance vs. normality. Abjection vs. apotheosis. What is the POISON? Also: SAFE (1995), VELVET GOLDMINE (1998), FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002)
Miscellaneous:
Canadians: John Greyson, Patricia Rozsema, Bruce La Bruce
UK: Sally Potter, Derek Jarman, Pratibha Parmar, Isaac Julien
Germany: Monika Treut, Ulrike Ottinger
Documentary and Autobiography:
Lizzie Borden: BORN IN FLAMES (1983), WORKING GIRLS (1986)
Sheila McLaughlin: SHE MUST BE SEEING THINGS (1987)
Su Friedrich: GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM (1981), DAMNED IF YOU DON'T
(1984), THE TIES THAT BIND (about her mother), SINK OR SWIM (about her father), THE LESBIAN AVENGERS EAT FIRE TOO (1993)
Mark Rappaport: ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES, FROM THE JOURNALS OF
JEAN SEBERG
A few other great documentaries for educating yourself on the issues:
DEAR JESSE, IT'S ELEMENTARY, TONGUES UNTIED, BEFORE STONEWALL,
AFTER STONEWALL, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, BALLOT MEASURE 9,
LICENSED TO KILL, THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK.
HIGHLY SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Queer Theory/Gay and Lesbian Studies/History
Abelove, Barale, and Halperin, eds. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader.
Berube, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in WW2.
Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
Case, Sue Ellen. "Tracking the Vampire," differences 3.2 (Summer 1991).
Chauncey, George. Gay New York.
D'Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities.
Duberman, Martin et al., eds. Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian
Past.
Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th
Century America.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality
Harris, Daniel. The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture
Katz, Jonathan Ned. Gay American History
Marcus, Eric. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights.
Marotta, Toby. The Politics of Homosexuality.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire.
____________. Epistemology of the Closet..
Signorile, Michelangelo. Queer in America.
Smith, Patricia Juliana, ed. The Queer Sixties.
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sexuality and its Discontents.
Gay/Lesbian/Queer Film and Media
Babuscio, Jack. "Camp and the Gay Sensibility," in Gays and Film, Ed. Richard Dyer.
Bad Object Choices. How do I Look? Queer Film and Video.
Benshoff, Harry. Monsters in the Closets: Homosexuality and the Horror Film.
Berenstein, Rhona. Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema
Burton and Richardson, eds. A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men and Popular Culture
Creekmur, Corey, ed. Out in Culture.
Doty, Alex. Making Things Perfectly Queer
Dyer, Richard. Now You See It. Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film.
______________. A Matter of Images: Essays on Representation.
Fuss, Diana, ed. Inside Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories,
Gamson, Joshua. Freaks Talk Back.
Gever, Greyson, and Parmar, eds., Queer Looks.
Griffin, Sean. Tinkerbelles and Evil Queens: The Wait Disney Co. from the Inside Out.
Meyer, Moe. The Politics and Poetics of Camp
Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet
Tyler, Parker. Screening the Sexes
Watney, Simon. Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS and the Media
Weiss, Andrea. Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film.
Wood, Robin. Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan.
A FEW FUN FACTS AND INTERESTING TIDBITS:
"Sweating is good for a boy and will help him avoid homosexual tendencies." -- 1982
Baptist Pamphlet entitled Jesus Had Short Hair.
According to a 1995 Newsweek poll, "21% of all Americans and 43% of
evangelical Christians believe that the gay rights movement is an
"Incarnation of Satan."
In the infamous 1986 Bowers vs. Hardwick Supreme Court decision, one Justice referred to consensual homosexuality as a crime with a "deeper malignity than rape."
In the late 1980s, some US medical schools were still teaching a disease (and cure) model of homosexuality, despite the 1973 APA decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM.
Last year, clinical psychologists found statistically significant "proof' of Freud's contention that the most homophobic people are themselves homoerotically inclined.
" It is better to be hated for what one is than to be loved for what one is not." – Andre Gide
"If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influences from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would be pretty much left with Let's Make a Deal." -Fran Lebowitz