How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [40]
The Bad Seed was on television often when I was a little girl, and it both terrified and titillated me. Here was a very rotten little girl, Rhoda, played by the blonde darling Patty McCormack, who seemed to have no remorse for the murders she had committed. I took The Bad Seed seriously as a child of ten, but I can see now why it’s a camp classic: Little Rhoda’s constant and ominous piano renditions of “Clair de Lune,” the janitor’s ominous yet hilarious threat that Rhoda will be electrocuted in a special little pink electric chair for girls, and Eileen Heckart’s over-the-top performance as the drunken bereaved mother of one of Rhoda’s victims (a little boy who had won a school medal Rhoda coveted) all merge to create a kitschy masterpiece of gay cinema.
While staying up late watching television on summer evenings, I was gradually inoculated with a gay film sensibility without even knowing it. A lot of the movies had strong, evil women who appealed to me (and, I now understand, to little gay boys, too). I loved I Want to Live!, the 1958 movie featuring Susan Hayward as a slutty party gal, Barbara Graham, unjustly accused of murder. She’s tough from the beginning, in an early interrogation scene:
Police lieutenant: You know she’s been murdered, don’t you?
Barbara Graham: Yeah. So was Julius Caesar. I didn’t know him, either.
Late-night mid-sixties television was a treasure trove of movies made in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. And even after school, kids would be fed films from long ago. In the New York area, where I lived until I was eight years old, Channel 9 ran a daily Million Dollar Movie. Every afternoon, the theme song from Gone with the Wind would come on, and then the show. But here’s the kicker: It would be the same picture every day for a whole week. That’s how I got to memorize lines from the 1933 King Kong and identify with Fay Wray. Years later, in college, at the late-night shows, I immediately understood Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s musings during a number in The Rocky Horror Picture Show: “Whatever happened to Fay Wray?” And when I read queer interpretations of the “encoded” gay content of that movie, and of the allegory of the monster who was sensitive enough to fall in love, and yet was exploited for being grotesque and different, I could see the point exactly.
All movies are gay, but some are gayer than others. Not surprisingly, the gay movie canon has had an enormous impact on straight culture.
What Makes a Film Queer?
The homosexual sensibility in film is fairly rampant, and it’s a large part of what makes movies both intimate and surreal at the same time.
Trying to put one’s finger on the gayness that emanates from certain movies could make a person go crazy. There are two aspects to the gay vibes some films give off.
1. Encoding, or subtext.
Working on the assumption that queerness is in the eye of the beholder, almost any film can be subject to a queer interpretation. “Top Gun is the gayest movie ever made,” said one anonymous commentator on a gay website. He cited the homoerotic flyboy situation, the camaraderie of the men, the prettiness of the guys, and, in particular, one shower scene. “If you look at the subtext of X-Men and X2,” E! Online columnist Anderson Jones told the New York Daily News, “they’re two of the gayest movies ever made. They’re [constructed] with an awareness of what people on the outside go through. They take their differences and blow them up into superpowers, and that’s one of the main reasons they work.”
2. Homosexual writers, actors, directors, and producers.
Gay movie people either create or are attracted to a certain type of material,