Today we embark on a new journey in the world of Cinema, one that is not talked about as much as it should. Queer Cinema.
These last two weeks I have learned much about the formulation of how queer cultures is transcribed in cinematic qualities. It all started with this film: The Celluloid Closet. This was a documentary that expanded my thinking on how Hollywood was representing these people. In other words, they were not. Not the way they should at least. It was the first time I saw how
Hollywood manipulated the public on something that most people would simply brush off their shoulders. We then got into the subject of queer culture itself. There is no way to understand queer culture in cinema If we do not understand culture to begin with. This where I learned more than I ever could. It was amazing how complex a society can be, especially when before reading you would think you already understood it. I was wrong about how I thought queer people were. It is an interesting concept to conceptualize, mainly because in a way these people want two different things. The first want to be considered an equal part of society. They want to fit in and be one with the community. The other angle is that they want to be represented as who they are. They are queer, they want to be seen as queer. For some reason our society cannot seem to allow both of those. It reminds me of the debate that I have heard about over the years with race. There are many people, including me at one time, who thought saying “I don’t see color” is a sign of equality and respect. I learned very quickly that even though that statement means well, it falls short of actually being respectful. People do not want to be mistreated because of their race, but at the same time they do not want their race to go unnoticed. They want to be proud of who they are, and they want to properly be represented. That is how I have felt people of the LGBTQ+ community have been feeling.
I think another thing that I have learned is from the film, Loose Cannons, where we see that these people are more than their sexual preferences and identification, and they want people to understand that. It seems people right now in society do not see that, and in the movie, Tommaso’s dad does not see that with his brother. Tommaso, the main character, is gay, but he also wants to escape his family’s company and become a writer. It is so interesting to me that him being gay almost stopped him from becoming who he wanted to be in a career setting. The most interesting thing about this however is that in just two weeks and two films, the shift in Hollywood’s perspective on queer culture has been drastic. The first film we watched exploited the characteristics of queer people as a sort of negative, almost comical aspect of their films. However now a days, they treat it as something people overcome on a serious note. I do not mean overcoming being queer, but overcoming the stigma that still lingers around it and actually being proud of their identity.