Changing Times: Images of gays and lesbians in film

By Steve Chivers

What do an overbearing Jewish mother and an acid-tongued queen have in common? They're two of Hollywood's most venerable stereotypes. Always good for a laugh, these sometimes affectionate, often disparaging portrayals allow filmmakers a form of comic shorthand. We recognize the type immediately; little character development is required.

Interestingly, while there is a rich tradition of Jewish writers and comics poking fun at their own cultural stereotypes, only in recent years have openly gay men and lesbians begun to create images of themselves. While some have attempted to right past wrongs by creating gay and lesbian characters who are "just like everyone else," others have kept the old stereotypes and simply balanced them out with more well-rounded characters.

From 1930 to 1968, the film studios agreed to be bound by the Motion Picture Production Code. The code spelled out what could be shown on film. Regarding gays and lesbians, it prohibited any "sympathetic, non-humorous" depictions. Indeed, gay and lesbian characters tended to be tortured, isolated, and miserable.

But times have changed. We are increasingly seeing films about the trials and tribulations of people who happen to be lesbian or gay. And both sympathetic and humorous depictions abound in the new films, Better than Chocolate, and trick .

* Editor's note: Please see review of Better Than Chocolate and trick.

Better Than Chocolate follows the adventures of Maggie (Karyn Dwyer), a young lesbian woman struggling with first love and fear of commitment. To make matters worse, her mother and straight teen-age brother move in with her just hours after she's met Ms. Right.

trick gives us 24 hours in the life of Gabriel, (a shy young man who aspires to write musicals) as he meets, loses, and ultimately wins the heart of the man of his dreams.

Both of these films follow the classic romantic comedy storyline, where the only diffference is that it's "boy meets boy" and "girl meets girl" rather than "boy meets girl."

While this is probably a step forward, we may be losing something as well. Some 20 years ago, lesbian and gay cinema was, by its very existence, outsider art. Filmmakers such as Rainier Werner Fassbinder and Derek Jarman created highly personal artistic works that explored what could then be properly call a gay subculture.

Today, that subculture has become a much more visible part of our broader culture, and we have numerous gay characters on both television and in mainstream films. But some of them are so "normal" that they're downright boring. And on TV, they're often borderline asexual.

For example, Will, on NBC's Will and Grace is handsome, successful, considerate and well-dressed. In short, he's the kind of "positive gay character" activists have been lobbying to see for years. But is he interesting? Not especially. Funny? Sort of. Non-threatening? Definitely.

What really makes Will and Grace work are the supporting characters of Jack and Karen. And what's Jack? An acid-tongued queen. And Karen is just a few sequins short of being a drag queen trapped in a straight woman's body. Meanwhile, the character of Will is so positive and good that he balances out the obviously sterotyped Jack.

trick also gives us familiar stereotypes such an evil drag queen (a bravura performance by Cinton Leupp) and a plump, effeminate gay man who frequents piano bars (Stephen Hayes). But the real trick trick performs is taking a stereotype and turning it on its head. There is perhaps no bigger stereotype than a gay man obsessed with musical theatre, yet trick's Gabriel feels alienated from the gay community. He's uncomfortable in gay clubs and painfully shy when he meets the sultry go-go boy Mark (John Paul Pitoc). By taking what could be a stereotypical gay man and making him an outsider in his own community, writer Jason Schafer and director Jim Fall challenge the images held by straight and gay people alike.

So where do we go from here? There's no longer anything groundbreaking about simply putting a gay character in a film. Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc., observes that, "While earlier films like The Birdcage turned on the fact that the characters were gay, more recent films are about characters who just happen to be gay.

"More realistic depictions serve the movie and the audience better. You have to represent some kind of character that people can relate to," adds Dergarabedian, whose company tracks both box office figures and trends.

In a strange way, though, these silly little love stories are the only radical thing left to do. Hollywood has churned out thousands of romantic comedies. It's just that 99 percent of them have been about a man and a woman. These films about a man and a man and a woman and a woman need to claim their place in the mainstream.

We're in a transitional stage. Writers and directors may try to make up for the past by creating gay and lesbian characters who are fine, upstanding citizens, but let's hope that they give us some who are wonderfully flawed as well. Flaws are what make a character human. And it's a character's humanity -- warts and all -- that's going to endear him or her to an audience. In both Better than Chocolate and trick, it's the main characters' fear of commitment that make them interesting and that make us root for them to find love.

The gay community is notoriously hard to please. There are those who want to make the point that gays and lesbians are "just like straight people," and there are others who take great offense at this notion. But ultimately, we don't go to the movies to see a story about a lesbian or a Jew or a black man. We go to see a good story about an interesting human being. If that interesting human being happens to share our sexuality or religion or race, we might feel a deeper connection, but it is the human connection that runs the deepest. Better Than Chocolate and trick end on exactly that note: people connecting. And that's something everyone should be able to relate to.

Steve Chivers is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter and journalist. He's written sitcoms for Warner Bros., Disney and Fox., and he's a frequent contributor to the Writers Guild of America website, www.wga.org.