b y D ennis Peterson
SYNOPSIS
"In 1911 12 copies of a mysterious vol
um e without author's or publisher's name
and bearing the title C.R.D.N., appeared in
France . . . The second edition in 1920. con
sisting of twenty-one copies, was again not
for sale. It appeared under the title C orydon.
but was still without name of autho r.. . . the
first published edition was that of the N ouvelle
R evue F rançaise in 1924, under the title
C oryd on and with the name of the author."
[ Publisher's Note]. The author was Andre
Gide, fam ous French existentialist author,
playwright, and essayist. It is one of the first
m odem defenses of homosexuality and is as
interesting for its faults as for its virtues.
"The final form at of the book consists of
four dialogues between the narrator and
Corydon. a man with whom the narrator had
been friends ten years before. Corydon's
reputation caused him to break off the rela
tionship. A sensational trial brought him back
"realizing that the right to condem n or con
done lay with reason and not with sentiment."
Starting with Walt W hitman as natural
man, Corydon says he wishes to deal with
norm al homosexuals, not those ashamed,
pitiful, or sick. He finds it grotesgue when the
papers express righteous astonishment at
the virile appearance of the accused at some
o f the trials for homosexuality. “ There is only
one thing in the world that I adm it is not
natural: a work of a rt Everything else,
whether one likes it or not. belongs to the
natural order, and since we are no longer
regarding it from a moralist's point of view, it
is best to consider it from a naturalist's___I
m aintain that the act of procreation in Nature,
so far from being the only natural’ factor, is,
to a disconcerting degree, usually nothing
but a fluke."
In the second dialogue, Corydon guotes
from Pascal and Montaigne, who say that
what passes for nature may be nothing more
b y Eve S ic u la r
THE CELLULOID CLOSET: Homosexuality
in the Movies, by Vito Russo. Harper & Row.
Publishers. 1981 (currently in print).
T h ere have never been lesbians or gay
men in Hollywood films. Only homosexuals."
With this as his premise. Vito Russo explores
how gav themes and characters have been
portrayed since the invention of cinema. The
C e llu lo id Closet is a vibrant film history, ex
haustively researched and devastatingly well
written.
W hile the author drew on all sources avail
able to him by 1981. his analysis focuses
prim arily on the images created and recycled
by com m ercial film studios, since "the storv
of the ways in which gayness has been de
fined in American film is the story of the wavs
in which we have been defined in America.
That is. for men. as sissies: for women, as
than custom , and furthermore, "Nothing can
be made natural. Nothing natural can be
made to lose its nature___But sometimes
Nature overcomes (custom ], and confines
man to his instinct" (Pascal] Gide does not
"believe that wisdom consists of abandoning
oneself to one's natural instincts and giving
them free rein: b u t . . . that before attempting
to subdue and tame them, it is essential to
understand them fully.. . . " Heterosexuality is
not the only natural inclination.
The narrator objects that homosexuality is
not "a spontaneous taste, except in people
who are inverted, degenerate or sick." Cory
don responds, “Here you have this taste, this
propensity, which everything tries to conceal
and thwart, which is not permitted to appear
in art, in books or in life: which if it does not
appear, falls immediately under the axe of the
Law and is exposed in the pillory of public
disgrace, a butt for cheap jokes, insults and
alm ost universal contempt. It must be pro
foundly n a tu ra l to withstand so much abuse
and utterly refuse to disappear."
In hum an beings, attraction of the male to
the female is not dependent on seasons and
not governed by ovulation. Perhaps it is
purely aesthetic reasons that account for the
alm ost constant preference of Greek art for
the figures of boys and young men, and for
the obstinate shrouding of the wom an’s
bo dy. . . . And when the day comes to write a
history of homosexuality in relation to the
plastic arts, it will be seen to flourish not
during the periods of decadence, but, on the
contrary, during those glorious, healthy
periods, when art is most spontaneous and
least artificial." Perhaps this is why woman's
beauty is enhanced by makeup and a man’s
detracted.
In the “ Fourth Dialogue,” discourse starts
from a tract on M arriage by Leon Blum. He
proposes a return to sanctioned multiple re
lationships to meet the male's far more ex
pendable sexual energy than is actually re
quired to meet the demands of the reproduc
tive function of the opposie sex and to ensure
really wanting men or losing out to them: and
alm ost always for women and men alike, as
monstrous, pathetic, self-loathing, or tragic.
What other cultural history would include a
necrology as well as a filmography?
The book's very existence is a gav-positive
statement even while many of the things it
docum ents are hom ophobic attitudes. Sim i
lar approaches have been made in Molly
Haskell's From Reverence to Rape, about
wom en in film, and in Jonathan Katz' C ay
\m e ria n H istory, and like these, it is a
welcome and necessarv foray into an often
depressing subject. Covering a field as wide
as he does, it is particularly to Russo s credit
that he remains entertaining as he continues
to analyze the many, many examples with
sufficient depth and insight. As in any worthy
film history, the printed matter is frequently
illustrated with photos including rare and
never-before-published stills from scenes cut
before film s were publiclv released. Russn
the reproduction of the species. Corydon of
fers instead a return to the Greek institution of
reserving heterosexual unions for children
and homosexual unions for dissipation of
excess sexual energy.
Do you refuse to recognize any direct con
nection between the flower and the plant that
bears it: between the essential quality of its
sap and its behavior and formation? Will you
try and persuade me that a people which was
capable of offering the world such a picture
of wisdom, strength, grace and happiness
did not know how to conduct its own affairs
— did not know, first of all, how to apply this
wisdom and harmony to its own life and to
the ordering of its morals?"
ANALYSIS
I hope that at this point you do not see
quotation marks dancing in your head. This
book is so beautiful stylistically and relies so
heavily on quotes from authorities, that I felt a
com plete paraphrase would not capture its
nature. I do hope that some of you will see fit
to read the book yourselves, particularly the
Fourth Dialogue, which conveys a view of
ancient Greek culture with its sexuality intact.
First Dialogue
A good deal of the banter between Cory
don and the narrator is cynical and ironic. It is
reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s banter during
his court trials. Drinking in this ambience
helps remind us of how oppression becomes
internalized and colors the mood of the op
pressed, but I can’t help feel it is excessive
when the narrator repeatedly interjects com
ments like, "O f course it needed nothing less
than a homosexual to discover a magnificent
truth like that.” It wins us over to the “ other”
side by empathy rather than reasoning.
Second Dialogue
The discussion of whether homosexuality
is "unnatural" can be dismissed quite well in
the manner Gide employs, but since “ we can
never learn an ought' from an ‘is’ (Hume],
that is since science can show us the way
things are but not the way things should be, it
would be more to the point to show how
homosexuality could fit into a new morality to
begin with, rather than deferring to the
Fourth Dialogue. Even there it is shown how
it fit into an old moral code, which is instruc
tive, but you can’t go home again. New wine
requires new sacks.
Frank Bench, a Yale Professor of Psychol
ogy in 1949, com m ents on the Second Dia
logue, which serves as one of the appendices
to the 1950 Farrar, Straus and Company edi
tion. He agrees that people who say that
homosexual activities are biologically abnor
mal and unnatural are wrong. Bench states
that although males do outnum ber females
in a few species, for the vast majority of ani
mals, the sex ratio is very nearly one to one.
Abortive sexual contacts between males are
not more com m on in one class than the
other and are sometimes due to the inability
to recognize the sex of another individual.
Gide suggests that even in cases where males
and females are present in equal numbers,
homosexuality is still natural because there is
an inequality of need. The am ount of seminal
fluid in the masculine generative tract has
nothing to do with sexual response or capac
ity. Furthermore, both males and females are
sexually inactive during m ost of the year.
Under some circumstances, male animals
deliberately make sexual advances to other
males. Males that are treated as females usu
ally are unwilling participants. Occasionally
an animal will respond in a manner charac
teristic of the female. This intensifies the
masculine response. If a receptive female is
introduced, both males will mate with her.
They are therefore bisexual. Male monkeys
that have form ed an emotional attachment to
each other sometimes engage in homosex
ual matings although feminine partners are
available. Such alliances do not interfere with
subsequent heterosexual activities. Nor are
they as frequent or complete as male-female
pairings.
One of the greatest shortcomings of Gide’s
zoological excursion is that he all but ignores
the fact that homosexuality is not confined to
males. His motivation in this is probably his
reliance on the thesis that male homosexual
ity is natural because it is a means of channel
ing the m ale’s excess sexual energy and the
supposed male-female imbalance. How then
can lesbianism be explained? Beach states
that the display of masculine behavior by
female animals is m uch more com m on than
the execution of feminine responses by males.
Third Dialogue
The zoological weaknesses of the Second
D ia lo g u e im pinge on the Third A new topic
o f Greek society is introduced, to be devel
oped fully in the F ourth D ialogue. This is the
m ost substantive dialogue, and the m ost lov
ingly written. To form a new m orality that
w ould include or largely deal with homosexu
ality, it would do well to read this along with
other works that treat the moral codes of
ancient Greece. A new, integrated approach
m ust be cham pioned that would treat the
hum an rights of all minorities to an un im
peded and accessible hand in a new moral
order.
does include more items on the gay male in
the movies, or the hints of his presence, than
he does on lesbians, but far from slighting
lesbians, he cogently shows how. like patri
archal culture of which they are part, most
film s have ignored the existence of women
— identified women. Further he draws con
nections between misogyny and homophobia
in manv stereotypical plots, as of "buddy"
film s from the 30s onward, where real men
stuck together.
There is plenty of material here on both
lesbian and gay male appearances as screen
characters. Early cam p of the silent era in
cluded Chaplin. Stan Laurel, and Fatty Ar-
buckle. while Louise Brooks as fem m e fatale
captivated both sexes. The sissy who became
the stock "yardstick" (by whom others'
m asculinity was assured) is chronicled from
film s earliest days. Hepburn's cross dressing
iin two memorable but rarely screened films is
described and shown as finally unthreatening
Just Out, January, 1985