The Celluloid Closet

Tommy, hit it up. Let's have it.

May I cut in?

Why, certainly.

Boys will be boys. Whoo!

Not all girls are raving

bloody lesbians, you know.

That is a misfortune that

I am perfectly well aware of.

She says that I think more

of you than I do of her.

Well, you do, don't you?

Well, we won't go into that.

Ohh!

Go right ahead, boys.

Don't mind me.

But you're not a girl.

You're a guy.

And why would a guy want to marry a guy?

Security.

I think that the right woman could reform you.

You know.

I think the right woman could reform you too.

These aren't my clothes.

Well, why are you wearing these clothes?

Because I just went gay all of a sudden!

In a hundred years of movies...

Homosexuality has only rarely

been depicted on the screen.

When it did appear, it was there

as something to laugh at...

Or something to pity...

Or even something to fear.

These were fleeting images

but they were unforgettable...

And they left a lasting legacy.

Hollywood, that great maker of myths...

Taught straight people

what to think about gay people...

And gay people

what to think about themselves.

No one escaped it's influence.

Movies are part of my life

part of everybody's life.

That's where we

learn about life.

Watching Cary Grant taught me

how to behave with a woman...

How to get dressed at night

how to go to a restaurant and order dinner.

They're our storytelling.

They're the fabric of our lives.

They, they show us

what is glorious...

And tragic and wonderful and funny...

About the day-to-day

experiences that we all share.

And, when you're gay...

And don't see that reflected

in any way ever in the movies

you began to feel that

something truly is wrong.

You feel invisible.

You feel like a ghost...

And a ghost that nobody believes in.

There's this sense of isolation.

Join the club, man.

There's a whole group

you know, that is not represented.

We are pathetically starved

for images of ourselves...

So much so that

you know, a friend

will call you and say

"oh, there's this movie"

"you must see."

And, this happened to me.

"This movie you've got to see.

There's this incredible

lesbian relationship in it.

And, there's this great love scene, and

all right, they're vampires.

But you got to see it. It's great.

There are lots of needs for art.

The greatest one is the mirror...

Of our own lives

and our own

existence.

That hunger that I felt

as a kid looking for gay images...

Was to not be alone.

My mother took me to the silent movies...

In a spirit of ostentatious condescension.

She told me that they

were nothing like real life...

And I must not believe them.

And she was wrong, because

everyone who comes from England

to America and goes back...

Says one thing first.

"It's more like the movies"

"than you'd ever dream."

And it is.

From the very beginning

movies could rely on homosexuality...

As a surefire source of humor.

Your ideas about who you are

don't just come from inside you.

They come from the culture.

And in this culture

they come from movies.

So, we learn

from the movies

what it means to be a man or a woman...

What it means to have sexuality.

The movies did provide us

with some kind of history...

Of how society thought homosexuals were.

A very good is a chaplin film

behind the screen 1916

there's a extaordinary moment where chaplin

kisses someone who looks like a man.

He knows that it's a woman.

And someone else comes along

and sees it.

And immediately starts swishing around

in the most kind of overt effeminate way.

It's fascinating that those stereotypes

were so completely in place...

That a... you know mainstream popular film

could assume that the audience

would know what this...

This swishy mime was all about.

Mr. Ernest!

Ernest.

Our betters

Dear Ernest!

Dear lady grayston.

Ernest, I'm so happy you were able to come.

You must excuse my coming

in my town clothes.

But your chauffeur said

there wasn't a moment to lose

so I came just as I am.

Enter the sissy...

Hollywood's first gay stock character.

The sissy made everyone feel more

manly or more womanly...

By occupying the space in between.

He didn't seem to have a sexuality...

So Hollywood allowed him to thrive.

They were sissies.

They were never addressed as homosexual.

It was a convention that was totally accepted.

They were perceived as homosexuals

uh, just subliminally.

This is a subject

that was not

discussed privately.

Uh... certainly not publicly.

It wasn't discussed, but you knew.

They were all very prissy you know

these little skinny white men with

little mustaches who would go like this.

Stop. Stop. Girls, girls, girls!

Be careful of my hats.

We gotta get down on the stage.

The Broadway Melody 1929

I don't care.

I won't allow you to ruin them.

I told ya they were too high and too wide.

Well, big woman.

I designed the costumes for the show

not the doors for the theater.

I know that.

If you had, they'd have been done in lavender.

This is ripped.

Who were you with last night?

Strangler Lewis.

Oh.

Catch as catch can, hmm?

I'm telling you.

If we could get the runs with this show

these dames get in their stockings...

I'd be able to make the

second payment on my kimono.

Here, Clarence.

Put that in the trunk.

And don't wear it.

Selfish.

They were a cliché.

And I don't care whether they were

a gay cliché or what...

I thought they

were disgusting...

Unfunny. Had no business being in it.

And I never understood why people laughed.

It's the same thing when they had

the steppin' fetchits for the blacks.

I liked the sissy.

Is it used in negative ways?