You may have noticed that the films I've been featuring this week all have a gay theme. It's gay pride week here in New York, so I thought I'd focus on gay themed movies. This was one of the first films to deal with the gay. Danny Devlin and Elliot Crane are trying to avoid the draft. They decide the best way to do that is to pretend to be gay, but as the recruiter begins to follow them around, things snowball out of control. They move to a gay neighborhood and swear off girls in hopes of convincing the army they're telling the truth, but their personal lives begin to take the hit.
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Never heard of this one, but isn't it interesting that early gay theme movies are so obsessed with people passing for gay, having to pose as gay, or being misread as gay?
ReplyDeleteFor instance "Tea and Sympathy." It is the weirdest thing when you think of it: the gayest movie, yet it's almost a gay renouncement movie too, advocating "reprogramming."
As you know, I like to draw parallels. Movies like The Gay Deceivers, Partners, Cruising, and many others are gay the way Imitation of Life (1937), Showboat, and especially the fascinating Pinky are black. Pinky is incredible, a progressive movie with a racist sensitivity, much more twisted than Al Jolson in blackface or Luise Rainer as O-Lan, I'd say.
The "tragic mulatto" stereotype (Ava Gardner in Showboat), is so similar to the "tragic queens" in The Detective, a Frank Sinatra 1968 police procedural movie. (Yes, there are black people and homosexuals, but their lives are rotten, especially if they don't know their place. What a message in a mainstream media crowd pleaser...)
To me, "dawn" is In the Heat of the Night, and Brokeback Mountain. After those two, movies couldn't be so insulting any more.
I really hate The Detective. The combination of negative gay stereotype and Frank Sinatra, whose ego, if launched could have been another planet in our solar system really put me off.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how you characterize "dawn" through mainstream film. There have been lots of positive gay films but so many of them were indies with limited distribution - Big Eden, my post from several days ago, is a good example. Were there films that correlated in the black community in the 50's and 60's, maybe A Raisin in the Sun?
I remember seeing this in a theater. It was considered very racy at the time, at least in Cincinnati. It very much indulges in stereotypes. Every possible stereotype. Gay stereotypes, youth stereotypes, authority stereotypes etc. It's a bit of an equal opportunity offender in that sense. However, it's not at all hateful and the cheezy giggles make it a fun watch.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, it isn't hateful, which is a nice change of pace for a gay themed storyline from that period.
ReplyDeleteI just Netflixed this, as I was interested in seeing Michael Greer's performance (MESSIAH OF EVIL, in which he plays straight, is one of my favorite films). Greer's omelet-making dance in DECEIVERS is a hoot. Also, I want to live in that apartment!
ReplyDeleteThe apartment is great, isn't it? Very Hollywood Regency...
ReplyDeleteI will never be able to look at Michael Greer and see anyone other then Malcolm DeJohn. He really ate the scenery in this film.
ReplyDeleteIndeed he did!
ReplyDeleteThe reason I think of Heat of the night and Brokeback Mountain as Day-1, as opposed to earlier movies and indies, is that it takes a loud message to reset the crowd's minds. (There were many negro-theme movies before Heat, but those movies treated race as a terrible burden [Raisin in the Sun is a good example], or as a spice [anything with Dandridge or Belafonte]). Such movies - good or bad - can have their heart in the right place, but they can also reinforce stereotypes: I don't consider Staircase a watershed event, and neither was Island in the Sun.
ReplyDeleteNow, we haven't had one great mass movie about another minority, seniors, since the questionable Golden Pond. Indies yes (the fabulous The Savages is the very best, and several from Argentina, oddly). But Hollywood dishes out horrors such as About Schmidt, as insulting as anything, when you pause and think...
Well, doesn't Brokeback Mountain treat homosexuality as a terrible burden?
ReplyDeleteOh, you're tough. The burden in BBM is the mismatched couples and family pressures, just like Mr. Tibbs' burden was Rod Steiger's Southern sheriff. The two dudes in BBM and Mr. Tibbs are treated with respect by their creators, and earn the respect of the viewers through their ordeal. Whereas the wretched nellies in the Detective or doomed Ava in Showboat and Sarah Jane in Imitation of Life (1960), are treated cruelly by their creators for the pleasure of a self-superior audience.
ReplyDeleteAll this makes me sound awfully sententious, for which I apologize.
No, you've made the point. I agree with you. I see what you're saying now.
ReplyDeleteOn a sad note...one of the "straight" leads (Keven Coughlin)died young (30), from a freak hit-and-run in LA. I guess I'm one of the few that simply cannot stand Greer's "omelet dance". But I have seen the film several times...
ReplyDeleteYes, he did die young in a very sad way. Greer is a bit over the top, but it's nice to see a gay character that isn't punished for who he is.
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