Screened Out

D. Stephen Heersink recently highlighted the following via his excellent blogsite, The Gay Species. It might interest those visitors to The Wild Reed who, like me, appreciate and enjoy film.

“Mondays and Wednesdays in the month of June: Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will air Being Screened Out, the ‘treatment’ (or more accurately, the ‘non-treatment’) of gays and lesbians in cinema. The series promises a more extensive examination of Hollywood’s film industry vis-a-vis gays and lesbians than the documentary The Celuloid Closet.

“As one Hollywood insider observes, ‘it’s not so much what was shown, but what was not shown.’ We were ‘screened-out.’ Even the ‘sissified fellow’ was a comic character, not a ‘gay’ character. Of course, whenever we were ‘screened-in,’ it was as psychopaths, murderers, sociopaths, druggies, hustlers, and derelicts.”

AfterEllen.com writer, Malindalo, provides a bit more info – and a critique.

The series will air every Monday and Wednesday night in June at 8 p.m. ET, notes Malindalo. It will be hosted by Richard Barrios, author of the book Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall. The series will also feature guest commentary from “several prominent figures [who] will provide their thoughts and remarks, including Michael Musto, Tab Hunter, Ron Nyswaner, Charles Busch and Alan Cumming. . . . Some of the films the series will air include The Broadway Melody (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Picture of Dorian Grey (1945) and Designing Woman (1957).”

All of which leaves Malindalo to muse: “These are undoubtedly classics, but where are the ladies?”

Malindalo then proceeds to suggest a number of films for TMC to include in its series so as to “properly represent” the gay and lesbian experience. Some of these films include Morocco (1930), Queen Christina (1933), and Christopher Strong (1933).

For more discussion on this series, click here.


Image: AfterEllen.com

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The New Superman: Not Necessarily Gay, but Definitely Queer
What the Vatican Can Learn from the X-Men
Christian Draz’s Critique of Brokeback Mountain
Alexander’s Great Love
Reflections on the Overlooked Children of Men
Reflections on Babel and the “Borders Within”
Revisiting a Groovy Jesus (and a Dysfunctional Theology)
Reflections on The Da Vinci Code Controversy
Thoughts on The Da Vinci Code
Casanova-inspired Reflections on Papal Power - at 30,000 Ft.