Douglas Messerli | Sad and Silly Sissies [Introduction]

sad and silly animated sissies

by Douglas Messerli

 

While I have argued elsewhere in these pages that the “Pansy” or “Panze Craze” of the early 1930s at least provided us, through the brief appearances of the sissies, with evidence that LGBTQ figures

still existed and, on occasion, provided a brief glimpse into gay or lesbian life, I want to make it absolutely clear that in turning most of the LGBTQ figures into pansies or sissies movie writers, directors, and producers were in no way attempting anything close to a beneficial representation of homosexuality. If crossdressing was mostly a comic bow to those who preferred to be of a sex different from the one by which “they” had been born or used gender confusion as a way to satirize and mock male and female heteronormative attitudes, the representation of gays as pansies and lesbians besuited and monocled as male imitations was an even more demeaning expression of the still undefined LGBTQ community.

      Despite my argument for the importance of the sissy in film—the last expression of homosexuality permitted by the Hays Code before even that small token gesture was cut off—it was never truly a kindly or even slightly sincere attempt to represent gay sexuality. What Vito Russo wrote in his very first chapter of The Celluloid Closet is basically correct, even if today I think we might more fully question what he means when we say “real men” or in categorizing effeminate men as not being completely worthy of our attention:

 

“Nobody likes a sissy. That includes dykes, faggots, and feminists of both sexes. Even in a time of sexual revolution, when traditional roles are being examined and challenged every day, there is something about a man who acts like a woman that people find fundamentally distasteful. A 1979 The New York Times feature on how some noted feminists were raising their male children revealed that most wanted their sons to grow up to be feminists—but real men, not sissies.

     ...Homosexuality in the movies, whether overtly sexual or not, has always been seen in terms of what is or is not masculine. The defensive phrase, “Who’s a sissy?” has been as much a part of the American lexicon as “So’s your old lady.” After all, it is supposed to be an insult to call a man effeminate, for it means he is like a woman and therefore not as valuable as a “real” man. The popular definition of gayness is rooted in sexism. Weakness in men rather than strength in women has consistently been seen as the connection between sex role behavior and deviant sexuality.”

 

     In the hundreds of “coming out films” since the Stonewall revolution, being seen as a sissy is what gets high school boys beaten up.

     And what little credence we might desire to give those rather wonderful actors who performed the numerous manservants, interior decorators, clothes designers, chorus boys, lady wrestlers, and all those other persnickety sissies and female toughs, they were never intended to represent anything other than comic stereotypes. No one who could count to ten might imagine that any of these figures were meant to be seen as real gay men and lesbians. Even Samuel Goldwyn, who has not exactly known for his intellectual or linguistic prowess could recognize, as he did in 1938, that “Most of our pictures have little, if any, real substance. Our fear of what the censors will do keeps us from portraying life the way it really is. We wind up with a lot of empty fairy tales that do not have relation to anyone.”

      As if we needed to prove that the so-called “pansy craze” was not really about homosexual representation, we only need look at the numerous animated cartoons produced during this same period which demonstrated that even animals and unidentifiable cartoon squiggles could demonstrate the essence of a sissy. In short, effeminate males were not truly differentiated by cartoon representations of their bizarre traits.

      Below I discuss several cartoon versions sissies during the same period, 1930-1934, who didn’t even make it into human form. These images of queer behavior reveal, indeed, an even darker look at the homosexual male than the films that contained exaggerated human beings. And even if once in a while we might crack a smile at this satirizing of gay sexual behavior, far more often they make one angry and even sick at the thought that homosexuals could be portrayed in this manner, just like the racist and sexist attitudes often expressed in these very same cartoons.

 

Los Angeles, April 10, 2022

Reprinted in My Queer Cinema blog (April 2022).