When I was a teenager, films about gay men came in two varieties: BFI gay films and Canal+ gay films. BFI gay films were worthy classics from the Seventies and Eighties. Jarman. Fassbinder. Pasolini, if you felt up to it. Canal+ gay films were more fun. If BFI gay films stretched artistic boundaries, then Canal+ gay films reliably delivered the same old story. Two twinks — French usually, but occasionally Dutch or German — would bond over their shared love of swimming or judo. It was always summer, and there was always a bicycle ride followed by a beautifully lit sex scene with a hint of Euro-penis. These films had one of two endings. Ending A: a melancholy parting at summer’s end. Ending B: a twink would drown.
Things are different now. Every TV show has a gay character of one kind or another. The days of scouring the Hollyoaks omnibus for the John Paul storyline are long gone. The world is brimming with “LGBTQ+ content”. So it is odd that the range of film and TV about gay men doesn’t feel much broader than it was when I was young. Higher volume does not seem to have led to greater variety. Instead, we find a careful curation of how gay men are presented on screen, even when such presentation flies in the face of reality. An example of this curation occurred last year. Netflix’s Dahmer caused a minor online fracas when it premiered. The issue was not only that yet another 10-part series about yet another brutal serial killer is a tasteless way for a streaming service to win eyeballs. No, the problem was that Netflix had categorised its gory new show as “LGBTQ”.
Dahmer is a long way from Will & Grace, but you can see why some hapless Netflix worker slapped the LGBTQ tag on the show. Jeffrey Dahmer haunted gay clubs and preyed on gay men. His particular sickness was bound up with young male bodies. And it can’t be denied that Dahmer highlights the risks inherent in the anonymous hook-up culture that many gay men will dabble in at some point. Such risks are perhaps even greater in today’s world of lengthening digital shadows, as illustrated by murders of gay men in Sligo and London, where the killers found their victims not in bars, but on Grindr. Dahmer makes for grim viewing, but it is of gay interest — if only as a reminder that evil doesn’t wear a sandwich board.
I don’t have a strong view on whether or not Netflix was right to classify Dahmer as “LGBTQ”. If anything, the fact that the debate happened at all struck me as faintly comic. The effort to police the content of one sub-category on one streaming service feels misplaced — if the image of gay men is so easily tarnished, then there are bigger problems to deal with. Today, Dahmer is categorised under “US TV Programmes”. Jeffrey Dahmer might not have been the right kind of gay man, but you can’t deny that he was American.
So what is the right kind of gay man? What sort of show does qualify for inclusion in the LGBTQ category? One popular offering on Netflix is Heartstopper, a series that focuses on a burgeoning romance between two teenage boys. If John Lewis made a LGBTQ television show, the result would look a lot like Heartstopper. Fluffy jumpers. Snow angels. Awkward smiles. It’s all very sweet. Characters endure some implausibly vanilla bullying, but spend most of their time exchanging emojis and shy little kisses.
I am not the first to observe that Heartstopper is an oddly chaste affair given that the central protagonists are teenage boys, hardly a demographic famed for sexual restraint. But Heartstopper isn’t made for teenage boys. It’s not even for gay teenage boys, although I’m sure that many of them watch and enjoy it. This show unfolds in the rigidly ordered territory of the tweenage girl, a dreamscape in which young men are desirable precisely because they are unattainable, meaning that there is no risk of being desired in return. Nothing wrong with that, but it does mean you have to look elsewhere for contemporary TV or film that is interested in gay men for their own sake.
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SubscribeRight, this is going to be a bit of a disconnected tripartite rant, but sod it. I came out in the early 90s and have always found ‘gay cinema’ tiresome for the simple reason that it never focuses on the fact that two people are having a relationship (and they’re ALWAYS about relationships) but that these are gay relationships. Trust me, I ‘know us’ and gay men are no more or less interesting than anyone else. Why is ‘gay cinema’ of this ‘look at us! Two blokes can shag and even fall in love! Shocked ya, didn’t we breeders???’ even necessary any more? I suspect most straight people shrug wearily after decades of this solipsistic bilge and say so what. Who can blame them? Many gays react the same way.
I’m going to Mexico over Christmas but will not be staying in a gay resort or knowingly visiting a gay beach. I looked at one ‘gay men only’ hotel in Puerto Vallarta and the sight of all those tub tarts marinating in a pool that doubtless contains more Calvin Klein Obsession and poppers than it does H2O was a little too gay even for me. I’ll be staying at a hotel largely patronised, according to Tripadvisor, by middle aged to elderly heterosexual Canadians, who’ll be reliably polite and lacking in drama if nothing else. I used to sell ‘gay travel’ in its first boom in the 90s and know of what I speak … shudder.
Side note: the author almost lost me with his repeated use of LGBTQ+ as a descriptor. I only just, grudgingly, accepted that bisexuality might be a real thing and not just a halfway house to the real L or G thing. Everything after the letter B in that infernal confabulation signifies nothing but the cosplaying and imagineering of the deluded and the clinically deranged and actually includes a term of abuse for gay people. Please stop it.
There’s quite enough homosexuality in film-films to where you don’t even need gay-film as a category.
It’s not like the acting profession doesn’t attract a homosexual or two.
Completely off-topic, but your post reminded me of a holiday to Playa del Ingles in Gran Canaria my wife and I had in the late 90s.
I guess the name should have been a tip off, but all the beach bars and restaurants were like a dreadful caricature of what the English like abroad; all fish ‘n’ chips, mushy peas and bingo.
So we ended up hanging out in the gay bit (Yumbo shopping centre IIRC), and it was a riot. I’ve never seen anything like it; proper gay guys with handle bar moustaches, leather caps, riding Harleys. Nobody seemed to mind that we were straight, and the music was way better too. Although I’m glad I took the barman’s advice to only use the toilets in the shopping centre and not the bars 😉
Exactly and if being don’t like what’s offered don’t indulge.
I love the fact that the gay scene, despite the fact it is generally unfriendly and comical, and gay films exist, some of which are amazing.
I went on holiday with a gay friend to Playa del Ingles around 25 years ago. It was a hoot. He got off with someone early in the trip and was busy bumping uglies elsewhere so I was adopted by two Mancunian lesbians in the apartment next door and went to the drag shows at the Yumbo together. Me and my pal did go to the gay beach there which was oddly situated next to a straight nude beach much favoured by older, naked Germans playing volleyball, which dampened the erotic appeal. As a general I’ve never quite got the appeal of shagging in the dunes – sand and lube are a hazardous combination.
I was there last twenty years ago and it was exactly as you described.
Tub tarts!
That last paragraph on LGBTQ+ was spot on and priceless! However, I wonder why the article’s author left out the A and 2-spirited?
It is difficult to describe what makes Jordan so irritating.
It’s not that difficult; you’ve already done it yourself: “professional Instagram influencer”.
Influencers all have ‘that voice’.
One order of Drowned Twink, please.
Reading this made me feel very grateful for my extremely conventional life.
How strange and sad to live in a world without women.
Although the best gay directors, like Almodovar, have wonderful female characters, and it’s always a joy to see Penelope Cruz.
It’s not only gay characters who are presented one-dimensionally in film. When was the last time you saw a black character who wasn’t heroic, noble and virtuous?
A slightly odd comment. Many gay men have close female friends, and many straight ones do not.
Overlong, but interesting article.
I’ve back-watched a load of LGBTQWERTY content over the last couple of years and I can concur that the increase in quantity has been accompanied by a decrease in quality.
Stereotyped plots, eye-candy shots and the same clichés turn up over and over again. Oh no, not another shower scene or moment when the protagonist drops into a pool of water to a meaningful soundtrack.
I watch these on DVD and they often have shorts by the same director. These are invariably unimpressive too. So I’ve come to the conclusion that lots of alphabet types are studying Film at college and that due to box-ticking, they’re finding it easier to access dosh for even the most ill-conceived and sketchy projects.
Mind you, 99% of Hollywood output has been consigned to the dustbin of history so why should we expect minorities to punch above their weight ?
I’m convinced ‘gay cinema’ is mainly watched by hetero middle class liberal women and they get mightily turned on by it
Enjoyed this window into a bunch of things, and the idea that Heartstopper is another iteration of an age-old tween girl thing rings very true (as a father of recent teen daughters). Of course, things have got a lot more twisted: tween girls these days are often moved by TikTok and tween media well beyond liking boys for being unattainable, to thinking they might be secretly one themselves. This old world of genuinely gay male movies, and the one he describes in the dark comedies he discusses, seems very distant from current ‘woke’ mainstream media tropes and all the better and more honest for it. I’m not sure I’m going to play either of them in a hurry (though I am going to be on a Mexican beach soon so I’ll watch out for influencers!)
I have little interest in conventional screen ‘affection’. If I was there are incognito sites to visit online. It all seems more of this virtue signalling sucking up to minorities. The vast majority of UK is still white hetero with little interest in minority angst. Just more of the prevalent narcissism we have thrust at us as if it were normal. Most of the gay people I know are sick of it as are many of colour.
There is loads of content for white heteros. The “prevalent narcissism” which is “thrust” at you (interesting choice of word) just comes from the media and online debate – and generating this buzz is primarily why media creators are making these kind of minority angst films. By talking about it and reacting to it in this way you are playing (or thrusting) into their hands. Youngsters and bienpensant liberals like me get a frisson and sense of validation every time some conservative moans in the way you have. Some are even willing to pay for it.
Just accept that it is not for you and ignore it. There will be another John Wick film or whatever soon enough.
Good job that you are here to speak on behalf of “the gay people” and people of colour!
I’m sure those groups are incredibly grateful to you for communicating the world just how much they are bored of seeing people like them represented in the media and wish that we could get back to the good old days when gay people and people of colour were either ignored or treated as figures of comedy..
Amyl nitr-I-te.
Get it right.
Amyl nitr-A-te is a reagent or fuel additive with explosive properties, I believe.
Of all the films listed I have only watched “call me by your name”, which I thought was pretentious in the extreme.
“Gay” cinema, at least when it proceeds from the place of “gay” identity, has always been mostly garbage. Possibly the best dramatic movie to approach love between men – “Brokeback Mountain” – was directed by a “straight” director and adapted from a short story written by a “straight” woman. It works because the characters are complex humans rather than identity puppets.
v
Another reason to leave the EU. Had such things been publicised before 2016, the majority would have been even more tumescent.
Is this why ‘Le Otto Montagne’ is such a refreshing film? People I know have assumed it must be about 2 men who fall in love but no! It’s a film about a profound friendship between 2 men and all the more interesting that it doesn’t fit the stereotypes or push agendas