LGBTQ+ Cinema: Where We’ve Been and Where We Need to Go

Do you like movies? Do you like romance, science fiction, action? Which one is your favorite? What is your favorite horror movie, or kids movie? What was the last movie you saw in theaters? Lots of titles have probably popped into your head, so try and think of a few of them. Here’s one more question: how many characters in that film are LGBTQ+? The answer: probably not a lot. It’s possible that some of the movies may have one or two people of different sexual orientations, but the fact is that most modern movies do not feature LGBTQ+ characters. Those that do rarely develop storylines for those characters that are three-dimensional and realistic, and most LGBTQ+ characters are often portrayed as stereotypes. In fact, there were only 28 total LGBTQ+ characters which makes up only 17.5% of films in 2014 (“Overview of Findings”). Overwhelmingly, gay, white males are the most common storylines broadcasted; shockingly, there were 0 transgender characters in any of the 114 major motion pictures released. Granted, these statistics are from 2014, and modern cinema has certainly caught up in recent years, but this still remains an incredibly low number even for its time. We need more movies that develop storylines of LGBTQ+ people from all walks of life, identities, and races in order to provide people with positive role models and representation.

Despite the lack of representation across the board, there is still a wide and diverse canon of LGBTQ+ films. Even though it is a niche collection of often indie or short films, many of the movies are incredibly moving and most have earned high praise from critics. One of the first modern films to feature an LGBTQ+ protagonist was The Boys in the Band, directed by William Friedkin and released on March 17, 1970 (The Boys in the Band). It was a scandalous film for its time and was really the one of the first widely released films to tell the story of what it was like to be a gay man living in a world where he was hated. The storyline follows a group of gay men who gather together to celebrate the protagonist’s birthday and are forced to conceal their identities when a straight friend of the host shows up unexpectedly. It broke ground and paved the way for other queer films. It was the first to really portray LGBTQ+ people as human beings with real emotions and not as deviants.

The film was released around the same time as the start of the gay rights movement with the Stonewall riots occurring just a year before. It was only thirteen years later that the AIDS crisis began. This was a tragic time for LGBTQ+ people who were dying left and right of a mysterious plague that doctors and scientists knew nothing about. The worst part, however, was that there was little to no media coverage or political acknowledgement of the crisis as it primarily affected gay men and transgender people who were, again,s considered deviants. In the eyes of the public, they more or less deserved what they got. Even though the news media did not cover it, and even the president refused to even acknowledge its existence, many filmmakers took these incredible stories of grit and grief and transported them onto the screen. Most notably, Philadelphia which stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington is one of the most famous films about the AIDS crisis that tells the story of a young and brilliant lawyer who is fired because his employers discover that he has HIV (Philadelphia). This movie was released in 1993 which was several years after the peak of the AIDS crisis, but it was an incredibly huge leap for LGBTQ+ cinema and LGBTQ+ rights because it featured two of the most famous actors of the time playing in roles that supported gay characters. This film was incredibly important because it helped normalize and humanize gay people, especially gay people with AIDS who were especially ostracized by society. It changed the perspective of the time, and inspired people to continue fighting for equality and for a cure.

Since then, more and more LGBT films have been produced, many of them from small, independent studios. However, despite the increase in production and the near forty year gap since the first major queer film was released, there are not nearly as many movies that tell queer storylines as one would expect. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is often seen as the gold standard for cinema and the highest award each year is given to one film for Best Picture. Since 2005, there have only been eight films nominated for Best Picture by the Academy out of 101 total movies that feature LGBTQ+ protagonists. Notable nominees include Brokeback Mountain which broke the mold by being the first movie featuring two gay protagonists to be nominated in 2005. Moonlight was the first film nominated whose main character was LGBT and a person of color in 2016. The Danish Girl was one of the first movies to explore what it is like being transgender and highlights the life of the first person to undergo surgical gender reassignment, but that film was only nominated in the Best Actor category for Eddie Redmayne’s performance in 2015 (“The Academy Awards Database”). Within the collection of films that are known for portraying unique storylines, it is surprising that so few have been produced which tell queer storylines.

This brings us to now. This year brought about the first film produced by one of the five major studios in Hollywood to feature a story about a gay teenager coming out, Love, Simon. Another groundbreaking movie released to highlight LGBTQ+ love was Call Me by Your Name which was nominated for Best Picture and won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars. It is a unique film because, unlike all of the other films listed and unlike almost all of the other LGBTQ+ films in the canon, it tells a story simply of love been two people who happen to be gay. Coming out, familial rejection, AIDS, religion, or acceptance are not mentioned in the story at all; the only conflicts the pair encounter is time. It is incredibly refreshing to see a story that depicts only love and acceptance even amidst heartbreak. Additionally, A Fantastic Woman took home the award for Best Foreign Language Film and it featured the storyline of a transgender woman in Chile. This year has certainly been a better year for LGBTQ+ cinema.

But of those movies discussed so far, how many of them embraced the entirety of the LGBTQ+ spectrum? Of the eight films discussed in detail, only two of them feature transgender storylines. Six of the eight films have white protagonists and all of the movies that were not about transgender people were about gay men. There are no characters who are lesbian, bisexual, or any other sexuality or gender identity featured in many modern movies. There are a few examples of movies with lesbian protagonists like The Kids Are Alright and Carol, but in comparison to gay men, they are very limited.

The most common inclusion of diversity in movies not centered around LGBTQ+ people is a gay, white, feminine, impossibly attractive male who is friends with a female character and only there for comic relief. Look at Mean Girls, Riverdale, Teen Wolf, and the list goes on. What we need are more films and TV shows that embrace characters who are not white, gay, feminine males. The mold is starting to break; Love, Simon and Call Me by Your Name were a step in the right direction, but we need more films produced by major studios like Love, Simon was that can reach a broader audience than smaller, indie movies typically do. They need to tell lesbian storylines, transgender storylines, bisexual storylines, and storylines for people of all the other sexualities and gender identities.

If you are still unconvinced that there is a great need for more LGBTQ+ representation, than imagine this. Imagine growing up in a world where all you saw were gay couples. Imagine in every movie, every TV show, every commercial, every family member, it is strictly two men and two women. You are bombarded with homosexual images and gender roles that you may not conform with every single day. All of the superheroes are LGBTQ+, every person in history, every police officer, every firefighter, every doctor; the default is gay. Then imagine you see a movie, a really good movie that portrays heterosexual love, something you’ve never seen before on screen. Picture how you would feel. Suddenly, that love seems attainable. It normalizes it for you, and for others, too. Those characters can serve as role models, and what you are feeling is no longer strange and something to be ashamed of, but actually something to be celebrated. That is exactly how young LGBTQ+ people feel growing up in this reality. We need more movies that broadcast people of all different spots on the spectrum so that kids can grow up having positive role models. Movies are some of the best ways to document life; each film is a few hours of recordation that preserves our history for posterity and future generations. LGBTQ+ people are a huge part of our society, and their storylines need to be saved just like everyone else’s. In a few years, this article should be outdated and hopefully we will not need to discuss a lack of LGBTQ+ representation in cinema because it will already be the norm.

Works Cited

“The Academy Awards Database.” Academy Awards Search, awardsdatabase.oscars.org/search/results.

“The Boys in the Band (1970).” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt0065488/?ref_=fn_

al_tt_1.

“Call Me by Your Name (2017).” IMDb, IMDb.com, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5726616/?ref_=nv_sr_1

“Philadelphia (1993).” IMDb, IMDb.com, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107818/?ref_=nv_sr_2

“Overview of Findings.” GLAAD, 15 Apr. 2015, www.glaad.org/sri/2015/overview.

“Major Studio Releases.” Overview of Findings, GLAAD, 2014, https://www.glaad.org/sri/2015/overview