Five gay films om an era when queer them were visible Hollywood - Chigo Rear

Contents:

• #BORNTHISDAY: “Y, VIRGIA, THERE IS A GAY SANTA CLSE”, EDMUND GWENN
• WAS SANTA CLS GAY?
• FIVE GAY FILMS OM AN ERA WHEN QUEER THEM WERE VISIBLE HOLLYWOOD
• WHAT SUGGTS EDMUND MIGHT BE GAY?

#BORNTHISDAY: “Y, VIRGIA, THERE IS A GAY SANTA CLSE”, EDMUND GWENN

You are here: Home / Life / Born This Day / #BornThisDay: “Y, Virgia, There is a Gay Santa Clse”, Edmund Gwenn. I have received cricism that I “make everyone gay”, but I n tell you wh certaty, Santa Clse is queer.

Sometim d referenc clued people ; sometim gay viewers would terpret a film differently than was tend to fd pots of intifitn (“readg across the gra, ” as theorists would say).

Facets Cémathèque‘s screeng of Basil Dearn’s 1961 Brish film Victim (wh an acpanyg lecture by Northwtern film profsor Nick Davis) provis an opportuny to highlight five pre-Stonewall Hollywood films (one per , 1920s-’60s) that have bee inic (if not always queer-posive) works gay cema history. John Hton directed this 1967 adaptatn (by Chapman Mortimer and Gladys Hill) of Carson McCullers’s tortured novel about an army major at a peacetime mp Geia who’s a reprsed homosexual (Marlon Brando), his adultero wife (Elizabeth Taylor), and var other unhappy characters and gothic trmas.

WAS SANTA CLS GAY?

In Hollywood, Rock Hudson is a closeted gay actor who, after he mak his movie but Meg, begs to be more fortable wh his sexualy and his relatnship wh the real Rock Hudson did also make his but a 1948 movie, was actually war movie Fighter Squadron rather than the fictnal movie Meg. As for his sexualy, the actor was not outed until 1985, when Tal of the Cy thor Armistead Mp nfirmed to prs his iend was gay.

The actor died of AIDS-related plitns 1985, only months after his homosexualy beme publicly May Wong. The real Gee Cor was known for the parti that he held that, like the show, were attend by a who's-who of gay Hollywood. As someone who rather lik the totally non-nonil ia of gay Edmund, there is really no textual evince to support this ia and you are right to pot out that is extremely unlikely that Lewis tend the character to be gay.

FIVE GAY FILMS OM AN ERA WHEN QUEER THEM WERE VISIBLE HOLLYWOOD

There's not even much of what most people would nsir obv gay subtext. We don't really see other characters scribe him ways that are d gay.

All that beg said, the person the lked article isn't the first to e up wh the ia of gay Edmund. So why do many fans see Edmund, particular, as gay but not, say, Peter or Lucy?

WHAT SUGGTS EDMUND MIGHT BE GAY?

A lot of LGBT people read Elsa as gay, not bee she p after women, explicly or otherwise, but bee her character arc shar much mon wh the type of stggl that LGBT people face. This parallels the issu that many young gay people face wh lack of fay acceptance, feelgs of alienatn and isolatn, feelg somehow dangero to others, supprsn of a major part of themselv, and choosg to be apart om the muny that they were born to bee they don't feel they n be themselv there. But someone uld, of urse, rrectly pot out that there is nothg the movie self that suggts Elsa is gay and her sexualy go entirely unaddrsed the movie.

I'm not sayg that all gay people intify wh the experienc or that no straight people n intify wh them, but I thk there is a certa overlap between Edmund's experienc and the experienc of many LGBT people that isn't really te of the other Pevensie siblgs. And to answer this qutn: Conversely, is there a way to terpret the text that suggts he's not gay? This certaly don't mean that he's gay -- but is one ls obstacle to people viewg him that way.

However, nowhere, the followg, do I read or hear that Edmund Gwenn was homosexual.