Celluloid Closet

After watching most of The Celluloid Closet, it was both interesting and heartbreaking to consider than we (heterosexuals) are so normalized of our portrayals in film that it's hard to believe that homosexuals will accept even negative coverage of their subculture. I thought that actor and I think producer Harvey Fierstein (he was my fave in Independece Day) who put this most eloquently when he says that they [homosexuals] have become to desensitized to not being adequately portrared to the point where they will take "visibility at any cost" because "negative coverage is better than nothing." Another commentator points out that "all minority audiences watch movies with hope" and that while we experience a movie as particular to us, the individual, in our oun social and cultural context, "everybody sees a different movie."

More LGBT contributers to the film commented that they are "pathetically starved for images of ourselves" and like everybody, have a "hunger to not be alone." We, as the heterosexual majority, are so normalized of seeing our own actions and behaviors regarding gender and sexuality that anything that deviates from that has always been under scrutiny. With 100 years of film under it's belt, filmmakers and largely, Hollywood, still do not give the LBGT community the voice and image in film as they deserve. We see, though, in this film that it has not always been their fault, that since the first images of gays in film were very...tip-toed around and given strong regulations and rules of censorship against the embodiment of their lifestyle.

What's even more interesting to see is the interpretation of homosexual behavior in the larger cultural lens. Dating back to the 1910's and 20's, the film shows clips that show homosexuality largely as an entity to be "feared, pitied and laughed at." We soon see the prototype of "The Sissy," an image that still pervades modern film as an attempt to make men feel more manly and women feel more womanly.