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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2007)
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Iincludes soft drinks) MENU CHANGES DAILY Lewin's faithful 1945 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s queer fable The Picture of Dorian Gray, both MacLaine’s terminally desperate lesbian celibate in The Children’s Hour and Claire Bloom’s “beautiful and sophisticated” Greenwich Village lesbian in Robert Wise’s 1963 version of The Haunting. “I think it’s important, historically and culturally, to note the whole range of portrayals, be they critical or affectionate, condescending or empowering, and 1 think all those things can be seen in many of these 1946 s Gilda features the every-which-way romantic films,” Barrios explains. “There’s as much to triangle of Rita Hayworth, at her most electrifying, learn from the dogs as from the gems, some plus Glenn Ford and George Macready. times more!” There’s even a whole night devoted to films Barrios notes the ongoing tension between exploring in various ways that same-sex tension regressive and progressive attitudes toward queer can arise behind bars, includingCaged (1950), “the ness in the cinema, which has continued well past ultimate women’s prison melodrama," and The the immediately post-Stonewall moment where Strange One (1957), with a young Ben Gazzara as Screened Out leaves off, into the present. “You get the head of a military academy and the object of something like Brokeback Mountain, which most a male underling’s crush. (Among the few films people felt to be a major step forward...and then Barrios wanted for the series but was unable to you’re confronted with Wild Hogs, with stupid gay obtain are Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and The Sergeant, jokes and caricatures.” a 1968 film with Rod Steiger as a repressed and con When asked whether he sees, overall, a trend flicted gay commanding officer.) toward progress for queers in film, Barrios demurs: As a queer film historian, Barrios acknowledges “Seeing how this negativity [toward queers] contin the trailblazing of the late Vito Russo, whose book ues even tixlay is, I think, one of the most impor The Celluloid Closet (and the much later documen tant reasons to see these films [in Screened Out]. tary of the same title) was undoubtedly the first pop You see something like The Children’s Hour, made ular queer-centric study of film as it relates to sexual more than 45 years ago, and realize that we have minorities: “Of course, without The Celluloid Closet, not had a near-half-century of [uninterrupted] my work would not have been possible,” he says. social progress since then. So I think it’s necessary Nevertheless, Barrios’ approach, as demonstrat to see these films to not only chart how far we’ve ed by the inclusiveness of Screened Out, has a some come, but how far we—and 1 mean all of us—have yet to go.” © what different emphasis than Russo’s sometimes doctrinaire demand for positive, celebratory queer celluloid images. The series includes such Celluloid Turner Classic Movies presents SCREENED OUT: Closet targets as 1961 ’s The Children’s Hour, with G ay IMAGES IN F ilm every Monday and Wednesday Shirley MacLaine as a schtxil teacher tormented by in June. For a complete schedule visit www.tcm.com. her love for her colleague, Audrey Hepburn, and the Tennessee Williams-penned Suddenly, Last C hristopher M c Q uain is a Seattle freelance Summer, with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery writer. Clift. “It’s gixxl to take note of the time when [RussoJ was writing The Celluloid Closet— the early '80s, coming off a ridicu lously injurious era of gay representation in American films,” Barrios says. “That was the immediate perspective he had.... It’s always going to be the case that many of these films and characters are going to be divisive”—Barrios cites the over-the- top character played by Tyrell Davis in Our Betters as one at which “I’ve seen mixlern spectators flinch and cringe”— but “it’s probably just in my nature to feel in many instances that the sheer visibili ty is the most important thing." Barrios hastens to add that he doesn’t shy away from citing some of the films “for the negativity, or the stupidity, of their portrayals," but he has an ultimately pluralistic and open-minded take on the historicizing of cinema from a queer perspective. 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