Is Billy Ellt gay. - Universy Media Studi - Marked by

Contents:

• IS BILLY ELLT GAY.
• CANN 2014 REVIEW: PRI - BILLY ELLT NTUED WH ROG GAY RIGHTS ROMANCE SET DURG MERS' STRIKE
• WHEN MERS AND GAY ACTIVISTS UNED: THE REAL STORY OF THE FILM PRI

IS BILLY ELLT GAY.

He's such a charmer as he teach his gay bt iend, Michael, to dance after he out to him. Prevly Gay Bt Friend.

But, alas, Howard los his battle agast the beat and danc, at which pot the stctor asslts him wh a barrage of homophobic sults.

CANN 2014 REVIEW: PRI - BILLY ELLT NTUED WH ROG GAY RIGHTS ROMANCE SET DURG MERS' STRIKE

Homosexualy do not only make heterosexualy possible as an oppose to . Heterosexualy happens homosexual, non-straight, and queer spac.

This may seem surprisg sce the dance that Billy engag wh is ballet, and mal ballet still nont stereotyp that they are homosexuals (Buckroyd, and Burt). While this scene is suggtive of the homosocialy of dance, Top Hat narratively plac Astaire’s dancg body and (by ialistic intifitn) Billy’s dancg body to a space that masculiz, heterosexualiz, and utopianiz dance (Dyer).

[27] Lt this subtle scriptn of dance as mascule and heterosexual be overlooked, Billy Ellt provis s viewers wh two characters they eher know or spect are homosexual, who serve as pots of ntrast to Billy himself. The most obv of the is Billy’s bt iend Michael (Stuart Wells), first troduced chidg Billy about the futily of boxg, later revealed to and to Billy to be a cross-drser, and eventually nfirmed to Billy and to a viewg dience primed to nflate male cross-drsg wh homosexualy to be a ‘poof’ (Garber).

WHEN MERS AND GAY ACTIVISTS UNED: THE REAL STORY OF THE FILM PRI

Michael’s strong prence throughout the film ensur that viewers ‘know’ how a homosexual behav and what a homosexual looks like, makg a male dancer like Billy appear to be straight parison. Yet jt prr to this scene, Billy has refed Michael’s pass — a pass that leads to Michael’s nfsn that he is ed a homosexual — to which Billy rponds by explag to Michael and to the dience, ‘Jt s I like ballet, don’t mean I’m a poof, you know’. [35] In their exchange, Billy rists ‘knowg’ the ‘facts’ his father sists Billy already knows — that male ballet dancers are homosexuals.

Even when Billy allows the unsayable to be said — prottg to his father about ballet that ‘It’s not jt for poofs’, this ncsn to Dad’s ‘knowledge’ of Billy’s ‘knowledge’ is immediately whdrawn when Billy offers Wayne Sleep as his example of an athletic dancer, for is monly known 1980s Bra that Wayne Sleep is a homosexual. Young Billy is not a ‘poof’ (as he repeatedly tells , a disavowal which might as easily mark Billy as gay as unmark him as such).

In Bourne’s parodic versn of Swan Lake, this dualism is not only of good and evil but of homosexualy and heterosexualy bed one male dancg body, wh the heterosexual loted the place the ballet rerv for evil. To be clear here, I am not makg an argument about whether Billy is or is not a homosexual.