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Gods and Monsters
Directed by Bill Condon, based on the book by Christopher Bram; with Brendan Fraser, Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave.
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Directed by Brian Gilbert; starring Stephen Fry, Jude Law
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Directed by John McNaughton; starring Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon
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Directed by Don Roos; starring Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan
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Directed by Thom Fitzgerald; starring Chris Leavins
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Starring Ally Sheedy
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Directed by Alan Rudolph; starring Nick Nolte, Julie Christie
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Directed by Mark Christopher; starring Mike Myers, Ryan Phillippe
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It used to be easier spotting trends in gay and lesbian films. There were a handful of independent films-- either serious documentaries about lesbian communes or badly-made experimental shorts about the joys of masturbation, as well as a smattering of mainstream films that had ill-tempered or psychotic gay characters. But these days "we are"-- as the old saying goes-- "everywhere."

Last year Kevin Klein did big box-office business in In and Out and the year before Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly proved, in Bound that the butch/femme cover girl was as sexy and malevolent as any in heterosexual noir. As every film year progresses, we see more representations of gay men, lesbians, dykes, queers, queens, bisexuals, crossdressers, pederasts, and transgendered folk than ever before.

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While 1998 was brimming with queer images-- many of them complicated, troubling, and challenging-- the major trend in the year's films was an ongoing investigation of what it means to be gay or lesbian in a society that does not always persecute queers, but hardly supports them. And imbedded in this discussion is the more complicated issue: what part does the imagination play in the politics of everyday gay life?

This public conversation about queer artists-- usually occurring in films made or written by open homos-- can take place now precisely because there are so many other manifestations of queerness on the silver screen, often presented in curiously unquestioned or non-empathic ways. What are we to make of the minor gay characters in Afterglow and Blade, the crossdressers in Elizabeth, or the gay activity in Butcher Boy, Happiness, or Celebration? They are more than background or sexual local-color, but they don't really define the films in which they appear.

The same is true about the open (and more important) gay and lesbian characters in other films-- Kathy Bates's morally astute political organizer in Primary Colors, Paul Rudd's young-queen-in-search-of-himself in The Object of My Affection, the antics (both playful and spiteful) of two-thirds of the eponymous characters in Two Girls and a Guy, the scheming dykes in Wild Things, or the tortured World War I poets in Regeneration. More and more, same-gender sexual attraction and activity is appearing in films without a great deal of fuss or bother. Even the usual methods of gay-coding are getting more obvious. Gary Oldman's Dr. Smith in the sci-fi flop Lost in Space was overtly homophobic, and Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt's not-so-odd couple in Imposters was, again, so obviously gay as not to be coded at all. The lesbian subtext of Practical Magic seemed on the surface, given what would have been done with it five years ago. Even the transvestism of Mulan-- Disney goes transgender-- felt a little old-hat and expected. It's a sign of the times that drag jokes in family entertainment are acceptable-- even presented as morally edifying.

All this makes gay independent films-- both fiction films like The Delta and Leather Jacket Love Story or documentaries like Dear Jesse or Lavender Screen-- look a little less adventuresome. Roland Tec's All the Rage was an intelligent, thoughtfully mapped out look at gay men's lives, The Opposite of Sex and I Think I Do were smart and charming (as well as the far less entertaining and successful Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss and 54.). These films three years ago would have stood out as vibrant and unique, but in the rush of so many films they become part of a larger picture of how homosexuals are treated in film.

It is in this overcrowded context that the year's main trends-- artists and the imagination-- emerge. High Art, Gods and Monsters, Love is the Devil, Wilde, Velvet Goldmine, and even John Water's Pecker all contain a common theme: the relationship of the queer artist to her/his audience or protégé. And often enough-- a problem for those viewers looking for "positive images"-- this relationship is unhealthy, destructive, or at least highly problematic.

In High Art, Ally Sheedy plays a famous lesbian photographer (based vaguely on Nan Goldin) who is addicted to heroin and a bad relationship. She seeks salvation by falling in love with the ambitious straight woman who is editing a magazine feature about her, and everything ends rather badly. What was shocking about Lisa Chardanko's film was not that Sheedy's character was a junkie, but that her moral and artistic intemperance was so seductive. If Kathy Bates's highly ethical political organizer was the moral center of Primary Colors, then Sheedy is the immoral center of High Art. Yet the film is so nuanced and well-written that it becomes an investigation not of "lesbian evil"-- which it might have been in less capable (or heterosexual) hands-- but an examination of how art and talent can go so wrong.

This is also the case with John Muybridge's Love and the Devil-- a scathing and joltingly improper (fictional) look at the life of British painter Francis Bacon. Derek Jacobi's brilliant performance as the vicious, demanding artist who publicly humiliates and degrades his lover-- while submitting to him in SM rituals at home-- is unnerving and unpleasant, but incredibly moving. Muybridge does not give us a lot to work with-- he never supplies psychological background to "explain" this-- but he knows how to go for the jugular. As with High Art, we get a tremendous sense of how fame and talent can give an artist social and emotional power over others and how-- with gay artists-- this can play out in curious and complicated ways.

Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters-- based upon Christopher Bram's fine novel Father of Frankenstein-- is also about artists and protégés, but with a different twist. Based (very loosely) on the life director James Whale (he directed Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein as well as other films), Bram's book and the film look at what might have happened the weeks before the ailing director killed himself. In this story, the patrician, British-born Whale (a wonderful, insightful performance by Sir Ian McKlellan) befriends his working-class gardener, named Clay Boone (Brandon Fraser). At first it seems as though he just as the hots for him, but it soon becomes apparent that he wants Clay to kill him and put him out of his physical and mental misery. Just as "his monster" of the film turns on his maker, Whale wants to create his own murderer-- a beautiful boy at that-- and commit suicide through him. This, to a large degree, is the theme of High Art and Love is the Devil writ large-- the gay artist in pain and the power of the imagination.

These destructive relationships are also present-- in more complicated, but less interesting ways-- in Todd Haynes's glam-rock spectacular Velvet Goldmine and Julian Mitchell's Wilde. In both these films it is the egocentric artists who help engineer their own destruction by interacting with all the wrong people-- the crazy American rocker played by Ewen McGregor in the first film, and the world's worst boyfriend, Lord Alfred Douglas, in the second. The problem with both of these films is that we have in them little vivid or real sense of the artist's imagination. The David Bowie-esque rocker of Goldmine and Stephen Fry's Oscar Wilde have none of the (apparent) internal vision or imagination that Sheedy, Jacoby, or McKlellan deliver. What makes those films work is the driving sense that these artists' imaginations and insight make them special. Even as they become (or try to invent) monsters, they are understandable. The imagination is a spectacular force-- it is what allows us to create art, to enter into the world of a film, to imagine alternative lives and societies. Usually thought of only as an artistic capacity-- and suspect at that-- the imagination can be a political tool as well.

In Mrs. Dalloway-- based on Virginia Woolf's novel-- Vanessa Redgrave gives an exquisite performance of a woman whose imagination helps get her not just through a single trying day of giving a dinner party, but her entire life. Redgrave shows us the nuance of imagination in her performance-- its soothing calmness and its dangerous edges-- and we see how it has both trapped and freed her. Thom Fitzgerald's The Hanging Garden is also about the imagination as a powerful force for salvation. Here a young Canadian gay man revisits his highly dysfunctional family. Amid a series of visions, memories, hallucinations, and nightmares (where we the audience cannot tell the difference between reality and memory, fear and longing), he comes to a place of safety and strength.

There is a strong gay tradition of art in which the imagination is a refuge from and a salve for a homophobic world. Alaine Berliner's Ma Vie en Rose is a perfect example of this. Here a young boy who simply wants to be a girl is continually misunderstood and tortured by his neighbors and family until he attempts suicide. But his salvation in all of this is to imagine a world-- based upon a bizarrely beautiful Barbie-like doll and her accessories-- in which he can fly and be accepted for who he is. The film's explication of familial and social homo- and trans- phobia is startlingly real, but the image of freedom that it allows its main character is visceral and moving.

This, to some degree, is what gay art has always presented us: the fantasy of a safe place where we can be ourselves without fear of being harmed or threatened. That is why, once again, the best gay film of the year is The Wizard of Oz. Re-released in a new remastered print, The Wizard of Oz-- no matter how well we know it-- speaks to a sense of social and emotional ostracization as few films do. Like Ma Vie en Rose, it grants its central character-- and us-- a vision of freedom and wonderment that is lacking in the material world. It worked in 1939 and it works today. At the 1977 March on Washington, Holly Near sang what she called the "gay national anthem," and it was, not surprisingly, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

Simple multiplicity of representations is a good thing. It is also important to look for deeper truths. They may be-- as in High Art and Gods and Monsters-- sometimes difficult, scary, or contradictory. But if they are rooted in authentic emotional experience and tell us truths about ourselves, then they may make us think and change our lives.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com