Douglas Messerli | "Reading Sexually Coded Films: A Defense" [essay]

reading sexually coded films: a defense

by Douglas Messerli

 

After “outing” such classical heterosexual comedies and dramas such as Too Many Husbands, The Letter, Meet John Doe, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and just before I “desecrate” one of the greatest straight romances of all time Casablanca, perhaps it is time to offer up some defense for the “gay” readings—far too many suggests even my companion Howard—of several of the films I have written about throughout these My Gay Cinema volumes. Certainly there have been a number of them, but I do not think of myself as a “queer theorist,” peeking under the rocks of any on-screen relationship to “out” the fictional figures. Indeed, I think these kinds of readings represent only a small part of the more sexually normative—although I always find “normative” a slightly strange concept—romances and love stories which I have described.

     Film, as most of us recognize, is a fantasy, and fantasy always allows people to go outside the lines of what we might try to control or even hide in real life. Accordingly, in a world where many of the “real life” actors, writers, and directors were forced to cover over their true sexual encounters, made even more complicated by the strict restrictions and delimitations of the Hays Code and other such bastions of “decency” around the world, these fantasies, if carefully enough spun, could nevertheless allow all to explore “sexuality” in general.

      If I seem to suggest that these coded explorations were often quite subtle, sublimated, and, at times, even purposefully titillating, I would argue that they had to be. The filmmakers were trying to appeal to the largest audience they might reach. And although we like to think of sexuality as determined by clear boundaries, as Kinsey has shown us, it seldom is. I would argue that sexuality is never one thing or another, but always allows for “this” or “that.” One need only think of the close relationships of male and female “bonding” to perceive that sometimes even simple friendships can spill over to deeper relationships than marital or sexual ones. Although we might think we outgrow the sloppy same-sex loves and relationships of childhood, I’m not convinced we do, believing that potentially we all have the ability of loving—both with our minds and our bodies—our fellow beings of both sexes. Surely there are those who try throughout their lives (and occasionally even succeed) at completely segregating these emotional responses. My father was so determined to do so that during his life, he, poor man, had no close male friendships; I think he was simply afraid of the possibilities which he might have witnessed as a young soldier in World War II, but most of us cannot nor should not, I would argue, attempt to categorize and isolate—particularly in our fantasies. Understandably, my father did not like movies, particularly romantic ones—our sexual inclinations.

      It is just such categorizations which lead, ultimately, to those absolutely ridiculous and often destructive homophobic and misanthropic ideologies which lead some to attack gay males and transgendered people, reject gay marriage, and abuse women. Pleasure, perhaps the most notable component of sex, is also the central component of all art, and, in particular, cinema. That can be intellectual or sensual or both. In the films in which I have spoken of containing a covert language and message, both the intellectual and sexual have, I would argue, truly joined forces to create profound significance. For me, writing about these works has not been out of sense of provocative insinuation or gossip, but out of a desire for explorative revelation of what I truly think the writers, directors, and actors had hoped to convey in their creations. As my playwright friend Mac Wellman once told me, “I want my actors to be sexually attractive, to bring out the sexual responses of my audience,” which, coming from a writer of some of the most experimentally intellectual plays of his generation, is a fascinating admission, just at the moment we were witnessing the bronzed body of Reed Birney, now an older and established actor who recently appeared in the Roundabout Theatre’s production of Picnic, as the handsome young soldier son in his Murder of Crows.

      For those who might still insist I am simply “reading in” to an otherwise perfectly lucid text, fine. I have never had a problem in seeing something “other,” the ghosts, erasures and detritus of meaning. Fortunately, any work of art means in numerous ways, and, as the work of art becomes more complex, so too does that work’s meaning become richer and more controversial. As I wrote in my first volume, “If disagreement with me means seeing the film again or for the first time, then I have succeeded in my efforts.”

Finally, and slightly more defensively, I would point out to the increasing cacophony, including from many close friends, who suggest that when they cannot comprehend the films I describe as being gay to have any such content I am a somewhat miffed, particularly when as a young, middle-aged, and older man, I have watched literally thousands of straight films, of which I never argued about having any gay content, and I reviewed several hundreds of these without mentioning a word about queer content. Mightn't they suppose that I might have a slightly different experience that them, accordingly, that gives me access to the few films I have claim have coded content or even explicit content going on among all the straight activity of what is primarily a straight film? Certainly, I have never argued against their straight interpretations, nor even claimed that these films are essentially gay. When, as I generally do, I even back up these perceptions with quotations of other film critics who also perceive these queer activities, why deny do they both my and their validity? Does having some small gay experience in these films rob them from their straight enjoyment? In fact, it begins to seem to me that there is an unintentional, perhaps unperceived, homophobic reaction when they simply deny that possibility, as if somehow I were simply reading into the text. I have read many a queer theorist text about films in which even I couldn't really see the any gay matter in some works. That also doesn't mean such interpretations are wrong; I too have my blindness's. But when I argue for gay content, I have read the film thoroughly from my informed perspective and I do presume I might have some authority, and certainly am confused when they completely dismiss my point of view. It makes me also question how they see me. Do they actually recognize me as queer man or do they claim friendship with me only because I appear to be fairly normative in my everyday life? Mightn't they simply grant that perhaps they are missing something in the text that from my outsider perspective I see differently or am more sensitive to?
Frankly, to quote the former gay male hustler and later homophobe Clark Gable, "I don't give a damn." I write these essays in all honesty and with all the perception I can muster. So if they don't want to give an inch, then they simply shouldn't bother to read my essays. I am not out to convince blind viewers. But I might also want to question just how much of a friend they truly are. For those who don't know me, I hope you will read with interest instead of disdain.

Los Angeles, May 29, 2013
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2013).

 

Los Angeles, May 29, 2013

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2013).