I am, by far, not the first person to comment on the subtext here. Twitter has been aflame with questions of the boys’ queerness – much to the annoyance of its director – and The New York Times even referred to another queer Italian romance in titling their own review “Calamari by Your Name”. In fact, since preview images first appeared online in January 2020, comparisons to Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 Oscar winner have been abound, and that was before anyone was even aware of the content. But why? 

Queer audiences looking for queerness where they are told there is none is nothing new. The ‘queer coding’ within classic cinema has been well documented, specifically in Vito Russo’s seminal book and the subsequent documentary The Celluloid Closet. Over the past few decades, audiences have become hip to how gayness is portrayed on film, often in the margins, feeding into broad stereotypes, and often used for comic effect. In some cases, queer directors and writers, like Gore Vidal or Howard Ashman, would intentionally fuse a queer subtext into their work so that those audiences who shared similar experiences would catch it. Meanwhile, other filmmakers, often straight, would use the tell-tale signs of queerness as harbingers of evil; the cross-dressing buffalo bill in Silence of the Lambs, the gangster obsessed with his phallic walking cane in The Maltase Falcon, or every Disney villain in every animated movie they’ve ever made. What makes Luca different is that a queer reading of the film is supposedly an alternate one, not intended (or even, it would seem, baited) but, seemingly, some kind of coincidence.

A week after watching what I thought to be young love bloom between those two boys, I watched another Disney release on a dreary Sunday afternoon; Raya and the Last Dragon. Early on, Raya meets Namaari, a princess from a rival tribe who is also obsessed with dragons. The two immediately hit it off, and, within seconds, I texted my friend, “The girls in this dragon movie are lesbians, right?”  Their connection seemed palpable, and a quick Google found the film’s star, Kelly Marie Tran, agreed with me. Tran told Vanity Fair earlier this year that she interpreted the relationship between the two women as more than platonic. However, she was quick to point out that this wasn’t Disney’s official position. 

While Tran may have liked the queer reading of her film, other actors seem less keen. During a recent appearance on Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie discussed how he had difficulty with the queer fan theories that came with the show. Instead of letting the heterosexual bromance live unfettered, Mackie thought queer audiences were “exploiting” something as “pure and beautiful” as homosexuality by running away with their crazy ideas that his and Sebastian Stan’s characters were anything more than good buds. While some defended Mackie – who has appeared in a fair amount of queer films and TV shows during his career – others took issue with his position. To what end can he, the actor playing the role, define how his character is read and received by audiences of any type? 

It seems essential, now, to consider Roland Barthes in this context. Barthes, a philosopher of the late 20^thCentury, thought the author to be “dead” when their work was published. He considered intention to be meaningless in the face of an audience’s interpretation; once the work is in the world, it no longer belongs to one person but to each person that accesses it in their own way. Barthes does away with any sense of authorial privilege and thus gives equal weight to any reading or interpretation of the text. So, to Barthes, to think that Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson are boning in-between episodes is as valid as Mackie’s assertion that they aren’t – maybe even more so. 

Some writers, of course, fly in the face of this. Vladimir Nabokov, who believed wholly that his vision of his work was the only one, is one example, while today, a particular children’s author might be another. Such an author – who, somewhat ironically, I will not name – has spent the years since publishing her wildly successful fantasy franchise holding it with a vicelike grip, repeatedly asserting her authorial privilege as though it were a God-given right. Suddenly, a character that had never been read as gay had, all the while, been a flaming homo right under our unsuspecting noses, and other characters, who could never be read as anything other than white, could have always been black if you, the reader, had not been so closed-minded. To this author, it is you that has been the problem by not seeing the non-existent signs. Instead, they ignore their own wildly poor attempts at diversity with their stereotypical and often offensive names for characters and their anti-Semitic undertones. Still, you, the reader, are the problem. But I digress. 

If the author, or the actor, or the producer, or the studio itself has no power to define how an audience interprets a text, then queer audiences, especially, are going to fill that gap. I suppose if the past decade has taught us anything it might be that queer audiences do and will find themselves in places they have not been specifically catered for, whether that is in fanfiction about Star Wars’ Poe and Finn, or in meticulously crafted fan art of Professor X and Magneto, or wild theories about the intimate relationships between boyband members. This type of instance, that “exploitation” of homosexuality, is more of an assertion, an attempt to say that I belong in this space. This Barthian attempt at claiming media that was not made for them, but to assert that their reading is valid and to search for clues to back it up, is an example of a broader cultural problem. Queerness has constantly, and is still constantly, asserting itself because it is – not just in the movies but in almost every facet of society – marginalised to specific accepted areas. The dominant culture has still yet to accept queerness into its lexicon due to the supposedly homophobic and mystical ‘middle-America’, or the concern not to risk the overseas box office, so queerness will nuzzle its way into the dominant culture and plant its flag. 

Towards the end of Luca, one of the boys reveals himself to be a sea monster. The other, so scared of the potential backlash from this, does not follow suit, and instead is the first to point and call a sea monster a “sea monster”. The look the two share is heart-breaking; their shared world no longer a haven for the pair; now, it is being used as a battering ram. It seems impossible for queer audiences not to find significance in this moment; the moment a secret is exposed, and you’re left out on a limb. The director may not have intended it, even going so far as to deny it, but the queerness is certainly there.

However, for a director to include illusions to queerness intentionally – well, that’s a different story. 

Also Read: How Film Changed Me: On Friendship

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The post How Film Changed Me: On Things That Seem Gay (But Aren’t) appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

This, something I’ve seen many queer people my age do, leads to a lot of denial and judgement. I still remember claiming I wasn’t interested in feminine boys because “I’m gay so I like men,” when really, it was about separating myself from visible queerness, propping up a structure that idealises masculinity, and internalising homophobia in the process. However, now, in my late twenties, I strive to be visibly queer and not to frame my desire or existence through a hetero lens. This came from an understanding of queer history and a grip on what it all meant politically.

In my early twenties, I began to uncover the history of AIDS within the queer community. The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer’s seminal play, was adapted into a film in 2014 (my second year at university) which created an entryway through which Angels in America, Parting Glances, Buddies, Longtime Companion, and 120 Beats Per Minute walked. The latter introduced me to the global political group ACT UP, something I’d heard referenced on the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Rent (yes, I’m that kind of gay) but had never delved into. Documentaries followed this; How to Survive a Plague, We Were Here, and United in Anger, to name a few.

Which brings us to It’s A Sin, Russell T. Davies’ latest drama currently airing on Channel 4 and available to stream, in full, on All4. The show follows a group of friends, mostly gay men, in 1980s London as they shed the skins of their small towns and dive head-first into the hedonism of queer life as it was at the time. Of course, slowly, a disease starts to emerge – referred to as a “gay cancer” – caught through having sex. Some of the characters reject this, seeing it as too perfect an illness when sex is what most homophobes linger on, but nonetheless, the reality becomes ever more apparent.

Overall, my Twitter feed has been divided on the show. A lot have heaped praise onto it, calling it a “masterpiece”, “important”, and “vital”. People spoke of watching it with their husbands, or they reassured teens (watching, in the dark, with the volume down) that it would “get better” (though, whether this was necessary is up for debate). I saw friends talk about how educational the show was, how it filled the cavernous gaps school left, and they were beginning to understand how bad it had been. Others, admittedly a smaller group, voiced valid criticisms; where are the queer womxn? Trans people? Sex workers? Those who were crucial in the political fight against government ignorance and were also infected by the virus? For four years, as Sarah Schulman notes in her book The Gentrification of the Mind, AIDS was not considered a disease that affected womxn. As such, they couldn’t gain access to treatment, which at the time took the shape of experimental trials, because they were considered “unreliable” by pharmaceutical executives. People have also asked what about intravenous drug users, gay and straight, who were significantly affected by sharing needles? Are these stories not worthy of dramatization too?

It made me wonder about how queer history is told on screen, or, indeed, history at all. If I wanted to learn about other historical events, like the World Wars or 9/11, there is a lot that can be found. But the AIDS epidemic is so rarely dramatized that there are significantly fewer places to look. Of course, each time any new show or film comes out, there are inevitably those who like it and those who don’t. But LGBTQ+ content, which still feels few and far between, falls under a specific microscope. Whether that’s due to conversations about queerbaiting, sanitisation of experience, or too much consideration being given to a straight viewer, they have felt lacking and, almost always, overwhelmingly white, cis-gendered, and male-oriented. Yet because queer life and, more specifically, the widespread impact of the AIDS epidemic on various cultures and communities, is so varied, there is still so much left to look at. 

In recent years, TV and film have made attempts to spotlight those areas left uncovered. For example, Pose examines the effect on the New York Ballroom scene, primarily frequented by black and brown, queer and trans folk, as well as sex-workers. While there has been growth, there has been significant backlash against the homogenisation of queerness too. The Prom faced backlash for James Corden’s performance, The Boys in The Band for being potentially outdated and too white, Happiest Season for being too middle-class and also too white. The question that so often arose was: who it was for? The answer: white gays and straights.

The idea that only dramas centred around cisgender (often, but not always, white) gay men and women are considered the history of queerness on film and TV leaves a lot to be desired. It simplifies the actual history. The boys of It’s a Sin, for example, are all likeable, young, attractive men, but history is more complicated than that. It feels like positioning experiences outside the white cultural experience (either gay or straight) as central is not an option. To air at primetime on a Friday night on terrestrial television you need straight people, and so it will always be watered down. 

I’m not advocating for queer folk to court the mainstream – in fact, I’d rather they didn’t. But it corrupts the narrative of queer history when a particular type of queer story is the only type of queer story that most people see. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy It’s A Sin. I did. I liked its performances, its emotion, and its representation of how people coped in the face of a crisis. It’s more that it is an example of what I’m trying to articulate. Just because it is a certain type of queer story, doesn’t mean it isn’t good or doesn’t have its merits. It just can’t be the only type of queer story. 

It’s A Sin is available now.

Also Read: Is Queer Autobiographical Cinema Subtly Political?

Your contribution to Big Picture Film Club will allow us to continue to produce content. No matter the amount your contributions are greatly appreciated.

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