This season, for example, we have several films that are vying for the Best Picture trophy like Foxcatcher and The Imitation Game that really want to have their "gay-inclusive" nature, but don't actually want to show anything abjectly gay in their movies. While I admittedly haven't seen The Imitation Game (and therefore should be holding off on this article but by the time it finally opens in my part of the country no one will care about my two cents on this subject), I broke my rule about movies I haven't seen and actually researched the picture and what is included about the life of openly gay Alan Turing. The film shies away from a gay love scene, a gay love partner, and hardly anything other than the main character stating "I'm gay." This is the same with something like John Du Pont's character in Foxcatcher. While his sexuality may not have been a huge part of Mark Schultz's biography about this period of his life, it is a MAJOR aspect of the film, and yet we don't actually see much beyond Du Pont leering at a half-naked Channing Tatum and consistently trying to find ways to physically contact him.
This isn't exclusive to this year. Look at something like Dane DeHaan as Lucian Carr in Kill the Darlings, always hinted at being gay but only finding time for women when he's onscreen. There's one kiss between J. Edgar Hoover and his longtime companion Clyde Tolson, despite them being "companions" for almost their entire lives. Truman Capote is limp-wristed and has a heavy lisp, but there's nothing remotely sexual about Philip Seymour Hoffman's interpretation of him in Capote. John Nash was bisexual, and quite possibly gay, and yet in the entirety of A Beautiful Mind Russell Crowe only glances at a man once. And these are men who are known to be gay or bi-we aren't including those who are suspected of it like Abraham Lincoln.
I could go on and on, but you get my point. Real life gay men frequently find themselves without a sexual identity onscreen, and it's incredibly insulting. It's particularly insulting for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one is that you would never get this sort of attitude about a straight man. Look at how the romances are marketed heavily between Connolly and Crowe in A Beautiful Mind or Knightley and Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game (again, haven't seen the film, but I have seen the advertisements, and you'd be forgiven if you thought it was a romantic epic between the two). You don't see Stephen Hawking's love story taken out of The Theory of Everything or Jordan Belfort's many dalliances missing from The Wolf of Wall Street. This is insulting in so many different ways.
And the worst part about it, quite frankly, is the way that straight filmmakers and actors address these concerns in interviews. They say things like "he's gay, but that's not all he was" and other such cliched tripe that wouldn't remotely fly if you did something like that with a straight person. Yes, gay people are more than just who they sleep with, but you can't call yourself progressive when you congratulate someone for being gay and that get grossed out when they do actual gay things (believe me, I had this happen to me when I first came out-it's a different kind of homophobia, and it's one of the weirdest aspects of coming out of the closet).
I'm not saying that this is specifically the attitudes of actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Benedict Cumberbatch when they give this answer, but it is something that a decent actor would want explored. You can't experience a character if you don't know what is constantly inside their heads, and sexuality is something we think about on the daily. Bringing that character to life without addressing their sexuality is not a step forward for gay people.
And while we're at it, can we do the same thing for television? I'm tired of, say, Phil and Claire getting a romantic night in a hotel on Valentine's Day while Cam and Mitch have to babysit Manny or spend the evening trying to get a straight couple engaged. I cannot even watch episodes of Will and Grace anymore it seems so blatantly homophobic (they're forgiven because they aren't on the air anymore, but Karen kisses more women than Will does men on that show). And I'm sick to death of the "Raj is gay" jokes on The Big Bang Theory because they still get the cover of him being attracted to women, while constantly getting to make him as stereotypically gay as he wants to be, and made fun of for it (if you really think about it, The Big Bang Theory is one of the most homophobic shows currently on the air, and it stars an openly gay lead!). Thank god for Shonda Rhimes is what I'm saying here people, because at least her Connor actually has both relationships with men and is able to have a sex life onscreen, while still not "just being gay." Overall, though, even people like Loras on Game of Thrones are forced to simply eye flirt while others indulge in a mountain of hedonism by comparison.
This may seem a bit trivial, and admittedly there are larger problems in the gay movement than this (we can still be legally fired in 29 states for being gay-something I'm guessing most people still don't know and should look up here to see if they want to write their state legislators or governors stating how morally wrong this is), but it's important to point out discrimination in all of its forms, and that's what this is-discrimination and homophobia. It is not right that gay people become gay-in-name-only when it comes to their stories being told on the big screen.
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