The Time travelers guide to homosexuality in early hollywood to the 90's, is The Celluloid Closet. Having only seen about a dozen or so films from the 20's to the 30's, (none of which I can remember portraying homosexuality) I guess I assumed they didn't exist. How silly of me!
Perhaps I missed some of the oh so subtle hints. Hollywood did have to maneuver around The Production Code Administration The Celluloid Closet provided multiple portrayals of homosexuality in film during that early time period. Often Gay characters were demonized, a scene that stood out to me was in Dracula's Daughter,
a lesbian vampire who's identified as a cold blooded killer. The lesbian implications were of great concern to the PCA.
Time travel back to 2010, The Celluloid Closet comes out; in this era the LGBT community is more accepted in our society. You have movies like Latter Days, Brokeback Mountain, and Milk, combine that with today's social media outlets, resulting in a much greater distribution. You Tube was actually the means in which I viewed The Celluloid Closet. The digital/virtual universe that we now live in can effectively bridge the gap between you and I using social networks such as Facebook. Had it came out today the accessibility would be significantly easier, and more than likely having a much greater impact.
Evan - are you saying you watched the entire movie as a series of You Tube clips?? Did you make it through the entire film that way or was it available in full length?
ReplyDeleteI think not only does You Tube broaden the accessibility of the film, but social media also provides the opportunity for the core audience of the film to add their stories, make response videos, comments, etc.
Yes the entire movie was available on you tube, it was broken up into 13 clips in order.
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