Though pigeonholed as wards, out gay men may have been battle-tted ways others n't image.
Contents:
- HOLDG OUT FOR A GAY HERO
- OP-ED: HOLDG OUT FOR A (GAY) HERO
- BOSTON GAY MEN'S CHOS PERFORMS "HOLDG OUT FOR A HERO"
HOLDG OUT FOR A GAY HERO
* holding out for a hero gay *
The film featur Benedict Cumberbatch as a real-life gay hero: Alan Turg, the brilliant mathematician who famoly broke the Enigma and, the procs, helped brg about the end of World War II. In fact, Turg (who was socially awkward to an extreme) was prosecuted for homosexualy, suffered chemil stratn as a punishment, and was found ad 1954 an apparent suici. ) But still: He was gay!
OP-ED: HOLDG OUT FOR A (GAY) HERO
The rult is an absorbg drama that gays need to might not sound startlg, except for the fact that cema's track rerd handlg gay issu has been splotchier than a twk on a high-gluten diet. English-language movi generally al wh sympathetic gays, as long as they're eher rtoony (Priscilla) or doomed (Philalphia) or both (Kiss of the Spir Woman). Many tim, the likable screen gays have no love liv, sce they're on hand to em snappy one-lers, then fl away (like all those effemate sikicks 1930s Fred and Gger mils).
Or gays have been portrayed as victims, psychos, and human punch l, prent to add eher horrifyg anguish or cheap lghs.
Even today, the ia of a gay hero movie seems like a 1950s and '60s were a particularly toxic time for gay-themed films, thanks to a batch of adapted plays that didn't exactly elevate the disurse. In Tea and Sympathy (1956), a boy who's lled a sissy gets the gay fucked out of him by the ncerned wife of his ach. Stairse (1969) has two old gays bickerg, and The Killg of Sister Gee (1968) shows that dyk n be sadistic too.
BOSTON GAY MEN'S CHOS PERFORMS "HOLDG OUT FOR A HERO"
Meanwhile, The Boys the Band (based on the 1968 play) revels the fun mararie of a group of gay NYC iends, though after a few drks (and the entrance of a self-loathg character), wildly stctive recrimatns ensue and you want to kill some ways, the films are merely reflectg the stigma of beg gay durg their eras, as well as the angst and pfalls of beg closeted.
But general, gays were beg more tegrated to the palette of available characters, and they didn't always have to be pathetic to ga a place at the big-screen, the more we moved ahead, the more baby steps we took back.
In the 1990s, gay guys were often bchy bt iends to pretty women, but Greg Knear's gay artist the 1997 seredy As Good As It Gets had the potential to exhib more soul than that.