GLR May-June 2024

Pride Issue: ‘The Celluloid Fishbowl’ FROM THE EDITOR

T HIS ISSUE’S THEME is of course a reference to Vito Russo’s 1981 book, The Celluloid Closet , which docu mented the many films in pre-Stonewall America that hinted at an LGBT message or possibility, whether through subtle gestures or ambiguous language. Everything changed after the 1960s. Suddenly there were out gay people whose lives could be portrayed or documented on film, and often the aim was to proclaim the existence of LGBT people, and their struggle, to anyone who would listen. One way to track this transformation could be by tallying the mainstream awards received by movies with explicitly gay characters or themes. In this issue, Andrew White analyzes the history of Oscar nominations since William Hurt became the first person to win Best Actor for playing a gay role, in 1986, in Kiss of the Spider Woman . White argues that this was the first in a string of Oscar nominees that depicted an LGBT char acter who died or otherwise came to a bad end. Even films with an ostensibly “pro-gay” message, from Philadelphia (1993) to Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), ended up killing off their main gay character (from AIDS in both of these cases). The “fishbowl” metaphor seems apt to describe the early films of John Waters, which were expressly exhibitionistic in their desire to bring a campy sensibility to a mainstream, albeit a midnight, audience. While Pink Flamingos and Female Trou ble earned Waters the sobriquet the “Pope of Trash” in the

1970s, Peter Muise tracks the full trajectory of his career and shows how he slowly moved toward mainstream respectabil ity, even as the American public grew ever harder to shock— thanks, in part, to Waters’ own influence. The 1980s marked the arrival of films with openly gay characters, who were typically engaged in a death dance with AIDS. However, there had yet to be made a film told from a gay person’s point of view, a lacuna that was recognized by a group of gay theater people led by playwright Craig Lucas. As documented here by Frank Rizzo, who was a journalist covering the story, Longtime Companion (1989) was a labor of love that began with Lucas’ screenplay and called upon the talents of countless investors, actors, technicians, editors, and the horde of people needed to make a major movie on a minor budget. Decades passed; a bona fide LGBT film industry arose for the home market, while movies with gay themes pitched to a mainstream audience continued to dribble out at a few per decade. In 2023, a British film was released that brings us back to this issue’s theme. All of Us Strangers is about two gay men who live in an otherwise empty glass-and-steel high-rise; often we observe them through the windows of their flats. Andrew Holleran finds in this film a portrait of gay loneliness untethered to the social order or to reality itself. Was it all just a dream? R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R .

new from the university of new mexico press

“This book will become an indispensable touchstone for anyone studying Julio Galán.” — raphael rubinstein ,

In this stunning debut story collec tion, everyone’s got the blues but nobody is willing to sing it.

author of Polychrome Profusion: Selected Art Criticism 1990–2002

The first English-language mono graph on the artist’s life and work, featuring full-color reproductions of Galán’s artwork and photographic material.

“Like Alice Munro and Andrea Barrett, Meischen conveys the significance of the present moment by laying bare what has come before.” — bret anthony , author of Remember Me Like This: A Novel

unmpress.com

TheG & LR

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