Only You Can Prevent the Death of Gay Cinema

Yesterday I read Sally Kohn’s article about Frozen with great relish.  As someone who frequently harangues anyone willing to listen about diversity in film, I definitely saw her point about “why can’t we have a gay Disney princess.”  After all, we’ve come a lot closer in the past few years (both Brave and Frozen arguably have same-sex oriented lead characters, and “Let It Go” only backs up that claim), but like so many gay-hinted characters through the year, we didn’t get any tangible proof.

This is something that has been going on for years in films.  Movies like Brave or Frozen can wink at the idea of having a gay character, but they never actually say it out loud.  Arguably the most successful children’s series in the past fifty years or so, Harry Potter, has a major gay character in Albus Dumbledore.  We all know he’s gay-J.K. Rowling told us so.  And yet, if you look through the pages of her seven-book series or the eight films that followed, you won’t find one word about Albus Dumbledore leaning toward fellas instead of the ladies.

I frequently get into arguments regarding this subject (most often with articles for mainstream internet publications…less so actual people) when their response is “the character is gay, but that’s not the focus.”  In the past year, after all, we saw two films that had obviously gay characters (COG and The Bling Ring) that barely or never fully acknowledged their gay characters.  And the reality is, as a gay man, there are days I don’t think about being gay.  You don’t constantly think about relationships, and work, art, education, and paying the bills don’t have a sexual orientation.

However, to completely ignore it is to defeat the purpose.  You would never see a film with an adult that doesn’t in some way acknowledge their relationship status, even if it’s not the central part of their lives or the film’s plot.  People revolve their lives around their romantic relationships, or lack thereof.  You put me in a room with anyone, ANYONE, over the age of 21 and I will be able to figure out what their relationship status is in under ten minutes, and not because I asked.  People’s lives gravitate around having someone else in them-it’s part of the reason it’s so frustrating when you have friends who are single and friends who are married in the same circle.  So when I hear an actor say, “well, he’s gay, but that’s not the point” (and both gay and straight actors make this argument), I cringe a bit, because you would never say that about being straight.

But I’m digressing a bit off-topic right now because what Ms. Kohn’s article got me to thinking about is the complete lack of gay-themed films in recent years.  It’s kind of stunning, but as acceptance for gay people continues to climb, the number of people attending gay cinema continues to dwindle.  In looking at Box Office Mojo (don’t you love that site?), only two of the 100 highest-grossing GLBT films of all time were released in the past year: Dallas Buyers Club and Blue is the Warmest Color.  This doesn’t sound too bad, right?  After all, it’s an “all-time” list-shouldn’t it be hard to crack?

No, it’s not traditionally hard to crack.  For comparison’s sake, if you look at the overall domestic top 100 list, ten of those films were released in the past year.  Eight more are from 2012, when only one new GLBT-themed film was added to its Top 100.

The highest-grossing GLBT film of all time?  It’s the 1996 comedy The Birdcage starring Nathan Lane and Robin Williams, which made a very strong $124.1 million domestically.  However, the film was released nearly eighteen years ago.  Of the 216 genres that Box Office Mojo tracks, only 15 genres have older “top-grossing” film; 93% of the genres have more recent higher-grossing films than GLBT-themed pictures.  Delving further into the Top 10 highest-grossing GLBT films, only two were released in the past ten years (Brokeback Mountain and Bruno) and you only add four more if you expand into the Top 20.

So what’s the deal here, people?  I know that in general we’re making less films that we used to (or at least Hollywood is releasing less of them), but shouldn’t greater tolerance mean greater exposure?  Is it that as more people tolerate, there’s less story to discuss here (anyone who makes that argument seriously and not just in an attempt to try and get inside a studio executive’s head is a moron, as there’s tons of story still to play with there)?  Or is it that, despite recent Best Picture nominations for Brokeback, Milk, Kids Are All Right, and now Dallas Buyers Club, the studios just don’t see financial gain in investing in the GLBT community.

It says something that television greatly outperforms in this department, though even there it’s not as easy to find gay characters as it once was.  I texted my brother, who watches more television than anyone I know, for a comprehensive list of gay characters on television, and he came up with a number of shows including Orange is the New Black, Modern Family, Glee, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and the soon-to-be-cancelled Sean Saves the World, but I have to tell you, most shows seem to put gay characters on the backburner.  Lots of the characters he listed are side characters, and very few shows seem to put gay characters out in front in the same way that say, Will and Grace did.  Though Will and Grace did occasionally trade in stereotypes and suffered a bit late in its run, it was still a quality, traditional sitcom that I cannot fathom getting made today, even though it’s been off the air for seven years.

I guess what I have to say is this is disappointing, but I’m not 100% sure whom to blame, because I don’t think that we gay people should get a pass.  We have enough strength-in-numbers at this point to make a show a hit if we so want (look at Bravo and the success of the Real Housewives, not to mention something like RuPaul’s Drag Race for evidence).  If we as a collective group wanted more Kids Are All Rights or Milks, studios would invest in them.  Just look at the success of Tyler Perry and his films-he’s become a film industry titan making movies that are viewed almost exclusively by African-American audiences and make mountains of money.  Put Tyler Perry’s name on a film, and it gets greenlit.  This would have been unthinkable even ten years ago, but studios react to money and audience demand, and if the gay audiences demanded more representation on film, they would get it.

This won’t happen overnight, though, so don’t expect Andrew Garfield to be trading Emma Stone in for Michael B. Jordan in the next Spider-Man film.  However, supporting quality programming that is also geared toward gay audiences is always a good thing as a community (and straight people, quality programming is rare and should come in all sizes, so we’d love your support as well).  So I’ll close with this plea (not sure that I earned this plea with the point of this article, but I’ve been wanting to say it for a week now): gay audiences, for the love of god, watch HBO’s Looking.  This is probably one of the better examples of gay-themed television that we’ve had in a while, and is far more realistic and excellent than almost any other depiction of gay life on television (actually, after two episodes, it's the best new show I've seen in a couple years).  Yes, the characters on it bare a striking resemblance to Lena Dunham’s Girls, but is that really a horrible starting off point?  Two episodes in, and I’m utterly smitten and am feeling that my heart is about to be smashed to smithereens due to low ratings.  So save the show, don’t let this become the next Enlightened, and continue to seek out quality gay-themed film, so that it doesn’t disappear entirely or become a novelty.