THEY’RE HERE, THEY’RE QUEER
Sean Penn, in the recently released “Milk,” is just the latest in a long line of exalted actors who stepped out of the closet.
MAY 23, 2009 – 1. Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958): The conservative climate of the time did not allow the screen to hint, as the stage did, at the “love that dare not speak its name,” the love that Newman’s character felt for his deceased buddy Skipper. But all you need, really, is to note that Newman is married to Elizabeth Taylor at her most ravishing, and yet, she isn’t the “one great good true thing in his life” – Skipper was.
2. Laurence Olivier in Spartacus (1960): Beyond a gauzy curtain, in his bathtub, the great thespian (playing Crassus) converses with his manservant about matters of appetite, about liking oysters or snails – but the conversation is really about, you know, preference. Ancient Rome, apparently, struck an early blow for gay rights when Crassus argued that whether one was drawn to oysters or snails, it was simply a question of taste, and as “taste is not the same as appetite, [it’s] not a question of morals.”
3. Shirley MacLaine in The Children’s Hour (1961): Karen (Audrey Hepburn) is soon to be married, so what does one make of the hushed rumours, sweeping like wildfire across the conservative New England community, that she’d rather be with Martha (MacLaine)? And how much worse when Martha discovers that these may not be just rumours, that she may really harbour feelings for Karen? If this morality play doesn’t seem as daring today, it’s still an emphatic plea against the public judgment of private lives.
4. Marlon Brando in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967): Long before Apocalypse Now, Brando ventured deep into the heart of darkness in this twisted drama about an army major lusting after a private who rides horses in the nude. Brando is married to the magnificently bosomy Elizabeth Taylor, who pulls off her bra and flings it at him in contempt, but his eyes would rather caress the candy-bar wrapper he retrieved from the street, one night, after the private tossed it away.
5. Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy (1969): Joe Buck is unmindful of gender while prostituting himself, but that’s only because he has to survive, somehow, in New York City. But did his “friendship” with Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman) ever transgress the Platonic ideal? Showbiz legend has it that, after furious discussions over whether or not to shoot a love scene between the two, it was decided to leave it up to the viewer to take a call. And four decades on, we still wonder: Were they, or weren’t they?
6. Gérard Depardieu in Going Places (1974) and Tenue de Soirée (1986): Two films with Depardieu as a bisexual thief, both directed by Bertrand Blier, and both featuring Miou-Miou – what are the odds? Compounding the many assaults on middle-class mores in Going Places, Depardieu cheerfully buggers his comrade-in-arms when there are no women to bed, and in Tenue de Soirée, he seduces both halves of a soigné couple and instigates a cosy ménage à trois. Some men, clearly, are from Mars as well as Venus.
7. Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Angels in America (2003): In the former, Pacino attempts to rob a bank to pay for his lover’s sex change operation, and in the latter, he’s a self-loathing closet case doomed to die of AIDS. To see these two extraordinary films is to see the evolution of Pacino from a truly great actor to a loud, tired caricature of his former self – but at least, he never stopped seeking out roles that were as demanding as they were discomfiting.
8. Daniel Day-Lewis in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985): A gay Pakistani in Thatcherite London begins a love affair with the extremist punk played by Day-Lewis. Those actors who fear playing homosexuals because of the perceived impact on their careers need only look at the mischievous scene where Day-Lewis is embraced by his boyfriend, in full view of the people on the street, and he licks his lover’s neck in return. An Oscar-encrusted career followed.
9. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai in Happy Together (1997): Wong Kar-wai’s mood piece about on-again-off-again boyfriends is one of the saddest love stories ever told, and proof that, gay or straight, relationships are never easy. Leung is exquisitely conflicted as a man torn between the push-pull impulses of needing someone to spend his life with, and yet not just anyone. It’s a gay spin on that oldest of clichés: Can’t live with him, can’t live without him.
10. Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal (2006): Barbara (Dench) is old and resigned to life with a cat, when she falls for a much younger schoolteacher who’s not quite… available. Elevating the entirely banal hell-hath-no-fury scenario, Dench grabs every available inch of text and subtext and goes to town with a barely repressed fury that you’d find scary, if only it weren’t also so sad. Barbara isn’t acting out against her sexuality so much as her solitude, “the drip-drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude.”
Copyright ©2009 The New Indian Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Baradwaj Rangan 
brangan
May 22, 2009
No “Part of the Picture” this week. Was asked to do something on gay-themed movies instead, to coincide with the release of “Milk” on these shores. Came up with this.
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anon
May 22, 2009
How about a similar list for Indian movies
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Shankar
May 22, 2009
I would also add and highlight “Kiss of a Spiderwoman” (1985)…if I remember correctly, it got William Hurt a Best Actor Oscar that year.
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Niranjan
May 22, 2009
Hi brangan,
If you are also including non-English movies, then you probably could have included `Farewell, my Concubine’ too. The theme is nuanced very nicely.
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brangan
May 22, 2009
anon: There wouldn’t be much of a similar list for Indian movies, right?
Shankar: Yeah, but Hurt (despite his brief 80s stardom with Body Heat, Broadcast News and Accidental Tourist) isn’t a big thesping name like these others. I tried to make a list of heavyweight actors (like Sean Penn) who played gay roles.
Niranjan: And for that very reason, “Farewell, my Concubine” wouldn’t apply — unless we’re talking heavyweight *directors* who made gay-themed movies.
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roswitha
May 23, 2009
Oh, god, I just saw Happy Together a couple of days ago, and it broke me. Tony Leung is magnificent in it – equal to the magic of the Wong Kar-wai mode of characterisation, in throwaway shots and set pieces. To me the little cut-away afterthought of Tony Leung asleep slumped over a parapet in the stadium as the match rages all around him was the quietest, most shattering expression of grief I’ve seen.
Leslie Cheung was pretty amazing, too. It takes chops to share those frames.
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Rahul
May 23, 2009
Hi Brangan,
I copied this from an imdb thread.I’m sure you would like this.
“by andrewklem (Tue Mar 1 2005 00:03:51)
Ignore this User | Report Abuse Reply
Who are you appealing to when you say “It’s pretty well known that this is the case”? Well known to whom? To homosexual critics? To religious critics? To casual readers? To Tennessee Williams? To readers in the fifties? In the nineties?
This reminds me of the debates that go on about David and Jonathan. No one was there! Thousands of people can prove it either way… and they exert an enormous amount of effort doing so. Something hangs on this for them.
Williams interrupts Brick at one point–in the middle of his huge defense at the end of Act II–with the following (I will not reproduce the whole thing, but just parts of it, and not in order to obscure, but to get at what I think is his real point. Get a copy, please!):
“The thing they’re discussing . . . is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to ‘keep face’ in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the ‘mendacity’ that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important.”
It does not sound to me as if Williams himself knows whether or not Brick is a homosexual. At the very least, he does not seem to know how central an issue this is for Brick. Williams continues:
“The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man’s psychological problem. . . Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him away from ‘pat’ conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience.”
I’m suggesting, I guess, that to label Brick as either a homosexual or not is to give his character a “facile definition” and to turn “CoaHTR” into merely a play. A play about very serious issues, but not a snare for the truth of human experience.
I one had two female friends who hung out constantly and were almost immediately labeled as lesbians. As a joke, they continued to fake this in public, but in private I hardly saw them touch one another. I knew them for three years, and I still have no idea if they were actually lesbians or not! No doubt someone is reading this and thinking “I would have known if I had been around them.” There is no debating with these sorts of people, who inevitably think that everyone is less perceptive than they are.
I had two male friends in college who did not hang out very often, but who were both gay and were in a closeted relationship. AND NO ONE KNEW! (Of course, of course, YOU would have known if you had been around them). I once heard a fairly intelligent girl tell one of them that he needed to stop talking about girls all of the time. “If I had one wish for you,” she announced to our entire dinner table, “it would be that you would think about girls less!” Chuckle, chuckle.
Some people are exceptional at hiding things (they can fool even you!), and others are very good at finding themselves in socially unacceptable situations, intentionally or otherwise.
The answer to whether or not Brick–or even Skipper!–was a homosexual is, I think, impossible to answer given the information that we have been given, especially considering Williams’ own advice to us to avoid “pat” answers. Maybe Brick was neither gay nor straight, but somewhere in between! Who knows??
If you have made up your mind and are sure that Brick was a homosexual, then PLEASE consider what it would mean if he weren’t. Assume that he is NOT gay, and read the play as though this is true. I assure you that this interpretation is possible and can stand, although it may not be the most obvious or likely way to read the play, especially in modern times (and given what has been written about Williams himself).
If you have made up your mind and are sure that Brick was a heterosexual, then consider what it would mean if he weren’t. Assume that he IS gay, and read the play as though this is true. This is obviously the way that many (most?) people have read it, and the play has an enormous amount to offer if you re-read it in this light.
But I think that the best way to read this play is to treat Brick as though he is a human being, and not just a character created by Williams. Encounter him as you would an actual person, recognizing that most people spend their entire lives trying to find themselves, and that it is nearly or absolutely impossible to know another human being wholly. When human beings are given “facile definitions,” they so often become caricatures (either to themselves or to others who define them), with their most obvious and distinctive features being stretched beyond proportion.
Brick is an easier (and simpler) character if he is a closeted homosexual in either deliberate or subconscious denial, but he is just as easy if he is not. Let him stand as long as he can in tension. (Need I shamelessly bring up the question of WHO is the cat on the hot tin roof?)
-Without hostility or any actual knowledge regarding Williams’ intentions,
-Andrew
(and meekly… thanks for taking the time to read this bunch of rut)”
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brangan
May 23, 2009
Rahul: Thanks for that. The fact that Williams was gay could be reason enough to “read” Brick as gay, but then again, this *is* a play about mendacity, so you could really go crazy interpreting it.
I completely agree with what the poster says about: “It does not sound to me as if Williams himself knows whether or not Brick is a homosexual.” This, to me, is one of the key points of criticism or appraising any work (film, music, play, whatever). That is, assuming that the author of the work doesn’t know *everything* about his creation, and insinuating *yourself* into the work and coming away with interpretations.
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brangan
May 23, 2009
Rahul: Do you know which film/play the “David and Jonathan” referred to here are? This discussion also brought to mind “Brideshead Revisited,” where Waugh never specified if Sebastian and Charles were gay, but there seems to be this undefinable undercurrent. But even otherwise, what beautiful writing. Novelists of that generation were really something else, weren’t they? 🙂
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Tejas
May 23, 2009
Is it something about Liz Taylor that drives the (on-screen) men in her life to homosexuality? 😀 What a ‘breaking news’ item it would make if that was the case behind her off-screen marriages!!
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Rahul
May 23, 2009
Brangan,
I have no idea if he is talking about a play;but I know them to be Biblical characters.
I once wrote a short story.I had a hard time explaining to one of the readers that many a times,the characters and the events are not entirely under the writer’s control.There is an internal music of words,events and characterizations.The piece of literature becomes a sovereign organism and it drives its momentum on its own.The writer becomes merely an observer,a chronicler. In the end,he just has a take on the story which is potentially as good as anyone else’s interpretation.
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brangan
May 23, 2009
Rahul: Oh, *that* David. He was gay? This is news to me, though I confess I’ve not read of Jonathan. Must look it up.
Yeah, I totally understand what you’re saying about the impossibility of an author having full control over his creation. (This story of mine had people asking questions that I wasn’t entirely equipped to answer.) That’s the way I approach my reviews too, with the belief that the author/director has provided an approximate “map,” so to speak, but it is up to the reader/viewer to fully “find the way” to the destination that gives the most closure (even if not always in the way the author intended). This, of course, blows out of the water any measure of “objectivity” in a review — but try explaining that to some people 🙂
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Sudha
May 24, 2009
what, no brokeback mountain? or did you want only movies that hint at gaydom?
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Tejas
May 24, 2009
No Lawrence of Arabia?
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Amrita
May 24, 2009
Ha, you left out the one that always cracks me up – Charlton Heston in Benhur. Gore Vidal simply “forgot” to tell him that little detail while remembering to tell his lover all about it. 😀 If you get the chance, get a copy of The Celluloid Closet – I’d never really paid attention to gay subtext in movies before I saw it.
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brangan
May 24, 2009
Tejas: No, because no one knows what *really* happened in that Turkish prison (yes, despite the leering twitch of Mel Ferrer’s lip upon seeing O’Toole spreadeagled and flayed) 😉
Amrita: For one thing, Heston ain’t no great thesper 🙂 And incidentally, from what I recall of that documentary, it was Wyler’s decision not to tell Heston. (The director knew Heston would never play homosexual undertones.) But yes, they told Stephen Boyd (who played Messala) about this subtext. So in that reunion scene, Messala is giving Ben-Hur all these looks which mean I’m-glad-you’re-back-lover, but Heston’s reaction shots are all so-good-to-see-you-great-friend. The whole thing’s effing hilarious.
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Jabberwock
May 24, 2009
one of the key points of criticism or appraising any work (film, music, play, whatever). That is, assuming that the author of the work doesn’t know *everything* about his creation, and insinuating *yourself* into the work and coming away with interpretations.
Baradwaj, Rahul: Robin Wood has some very interesting things to say along these lines in his discussions of the apparently homosexual characters in Hitchcock’s films (Bruno in Strangers on a Train, Brandon and Phillip in Rope). Do read Hitchcock’s Films Revisited in case you haven’t already.
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brangan
May 24, 2009
Jabberwock: After Dwight MacDonald and Truffaut and Donald Spoto, I’m not sure I’m up for *another* book on Hitchcock. So why don’t you spare us the suspense and give us a precis of what Wood said? Please? 🙂
(Note to self) Going by the amount of participation here, ask ed. if “Part of the Picture” can be stopped in favour of random list-making exercises 🙂
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Jabberwock
May 25, 2009
Baradwaj: this isn’t “another” book on Hitchcock, it’s the only book on Hitchcock!
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Bala
May 25, 2009
are we allowed to vote on your notes ? 😀 if so , I vote aye 😀
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A Fan Apart
May 25, 2009
Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia apparently had specific instructions telling him to ‘camp up’ while playing Lawrence – possibly because it was the only way the makers could think of conveying he was gay without making it explicitly clear. It is evident, amongst other scenes, in the one where he flounces on top of the train in front of the troops.
Something else that struck me as inetresting. In Happy Together, not once during the whole movie is the word ‘gay’ uttered. I think that must be the only movie about an openly gay couple where that has happened.
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Som
May 25, 2009
How about “Longtime Companion”, Rangan?
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Rahul
May 26, 2009
BRangan,thanks for the story.I enjoyed reading it.
Jabbberwock,thanks for the recommendation.
Bardwaj, you can read about what Robin Wood said in this google book extract
http://tinyurl.com/qdo5am
It appears to be that he was speaking from his apprehension that viewers would more easily mark characters with negative shades as gays and thereby strengthening and perpetuating that particular stereotype.
This is a bit different from our discussion earlier where we kind of agreed that the characters and the author should be afforded a gray zone.
I would further add that looking for a thread of consistency in the character may be convenient for pegging the story or the viewers understanding of it but that thread of consistency may not actually exist in an absolute sense.
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Turrtle
May 28, 2009
Review of the film ’99’ … please ?
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Jabberwock
May 29, 2009
Rahul: I can’t open that link for some reason, but I really do recommend the Wood book – not just for the Hitchcock buff but also for Wood’s very open-ended attitude towards the reviewing process as being essentially a personal thing, dependent on the reviewer’s life experiences and perspectives. In this context, there’s a nuanced and moving chapter about his own experience watching Rope as a young man (who hadn’t yet come to terms with the fact that he was gay) in a still-conservative Britain: his morbid identification with the John Dall character in the film and his subsequent realisation that a condition like homosexuality did in fact exist and that it was possible for a movie to subtly hint at it. It makes for very engrossing reading.
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moi
June 9, 2009
normally a lurker, but this post speaks to a project that friends at the alternative law forum have been involved with, and also possibly raises answers on the q re the possibility of similar readings of bollywood’s “celluloid closet”
http://media.opencultures.net/queer/
also by Namita Malhotra, the short films ‘Brokeback Bharat’ and a cheeky queer ‘remix’ of Kal ho na ho ‘Kaun Mile Dekho Kisko’
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Shalini
November 19, 2015
I thought you had written a longer piece on “Reflections in a Golden Eye” but must have been my imagination. Anyway, caught it on the classic movies channel last night and my, what a strange, hypnotic movie! Wouldn’t exactly say I liked it, but it’s still vibrating in my head so I guess that’s something…
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