Contents:
CHAPTER 1: QUEERS AND DYK THE DARK: CLASSIC, NOIR & HORROR CEMA’S COD GAY CHARACTERS:
Growg up as a gay woman, though genr and sexualy are fluid, there was not a well sprg of characters film or televisn that I uld grab onto as a buoy for my burgeong self-awarens – I was ‘different than the others. And while films uld not overtly reprent ‘queerns’ directly, they uld pos mixed msag and a whole generatn of uld unrstand the subtext, unsheltered om an array of homophobic language. There were no ‘obv’ gay role mols.
I am not assertg that the actors themselv were gay their personal liv, but that what was d was merely the particular characters they played the film.
Not all d gay characters are portrayed by gay actors, and not all d edy, jok, or suatns not that the character themselv are gay, jt that the humor is nnily ma to be queer at the moment. Andrea Weiss wr: “[In the 1930s] for a people who were strivg toward self-knowledge, Hollywood stars beme important mols the foundatn of gay inty. I echo Sie Bright, her feelgs that we (the queer muny) would hang on to anythg close to a ht of gayns, and would change the whole world of the motn picture, jt to see that famoly analyzed moment when Marlene Dietrich plants that sensuo kiss on a woman’s lips Josef von Sternberg’s Moroc 1930.