Queer representation in film and television: How were gay characters heavily censored during the Production Code era?
In a hundred years of movie, homosexuality has been depicted rarely on the screen. However, when it did appear, it was something to laugh at, or to pity, or even fear of. Hence, queer representation in movies has been a controversial topic among film critics as well as audience. This paper will examine the history of homosexual portrayal on cinematic platforms and how gay content was banned on screen as a result of the Production Code (1930–1968) through several prominent examples.
To begin with, according to Amber Raley’s and Jennifer Lucas’ study, Stereotype or Success? Prime-Time Television’s Portrayals of Gay Male, Lesbian, and Bisexual Characters, The Hollywood Production Code, known colloquially as the Hays Code, indirectly prohibited depictions of homosexuality. Early depictions of homosexuals were mostly child molesters, victims of violence, or drag queens. The code with thirty six rules for filmmakers aimed to limit the portrayal and subsequent normalization of characters and behaviors considered unsavory or morally corrupt by religious groups.
Perhaps the most controversial category banned by the Hays Code had the longest lasting impacts that can still be seen even in society today: depiction of sexual perversion. This term was used to refer to any behavior deviating from the perceived natural order of romance, sex, and gender. This ban applied to all characters attracted to the same gender or characters who differed in their gender presentation or identity. While nudity and violence were quickly reintegrated into the film canon following the abandonment of the Production Code, LGBT characters remained taboo. For decades after LGBT characters were allowed to appear in films, their sexuality and gender was shrouded in thinly-veiled innuendos and visual cues. If a character was to be openly same-gender attracted or transgender, they would be gruesomely killed or presented as morally corrupted. Even today, some forty years after the end of the Hays Code, LGBT characters are rarely allowed to exist freely and enjoy a happy ending. Will Hays’ Production Code doomed LGBT characters to be demonized and exploited from 1930 to present day.
Chon A. Noriega, a professor in the UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, looked into the responses of movie reviewers on films adapted from literary sources that dealt with homosexuality in his film criticism “Something’s Missing Here!”: Homosexuality and Film Reviews during the Production Code Era, 1934–1962. He found that:
“There was very little comment on male homosexuality in the reviews of The Lost Weekend and Crossfire. That the films are based on novels in which homosexuality is the main motivation is mentioned only twice in ten reviews: The New York Times noted that in The Lost Weekend a writer’s alcoholism is blamed on writer’s block rather than, as in the novel, “an unconscious indecision in his own masculine libido”; and Time briefly noted that in Crossfire, the motive for murder is actually changed from the victim’s being homosexual to his being a Jew.”
The consensus among film reviewers and society at large that homosexuality was an “unsavory theme” explains the general silence of the period, which was later called “a conspiracy of silence.”
Also, censors were afraid of the implications of reading queerness in films. Olga Martin writes:
“These “smart alecks” try to hold that nothing artistic has come out of Hollywood since the enforcement of the Production Code; that the Producers’ Association and Mr. Breen are a lot of fussy old maids, and the whole business of censoring pictures for grown-ups is an insulting and puerile undertaking. Yet it was only because of the PCA that the play, The Children’s Hour, with its implications of sex perversion, was recast into a natural love story. Many other examples could be mentioned.”
Despite the existence of the Production Code, there were some exceptions that overtly broadcast queer content. In How One Movie Changed LGBT History, Sasha Cohen says:
“The 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, enforced until 1968, prohibited the portrayal of “sex perversion.” Although a handful of characters from classic films — Plato in Rebel Without a Cause, the “sissy” cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz and the murderous aesthetes in Hitchcock’s Rope — managed to slip past the censors, those who would interpret such figures as gay are stuck reading subtext. In The Boys in the Band, on the other hand, gay desire and identity are explicit; each character announces his presence as a “fairy” or a “queen.” The film helped make the gay community culturally visible during a moment in which openly discussing homosexuality was still taboo, and many Americans had yet to encounter an “out” gay man in person.”
In the comprehensive documentary of the history of gays and lesbians in cinema, The Celluloid Closet, Vidal reveals in an interview that it was meant to be implied that the hero Ben-Hur and the villain Messala were not only friends in the past, but lovers as well. He also clarified that in the scene where they reunite for the first time in years, Messala wanted to restart their sexual relationship. Vidal says that at first the director was against this wildly liberal idea, but then Vidal explained to him “I’ll never use the word. There will be nothing overt but it will be perfectly clear that Messala is in love with Ben-Hur” (The Celluloid Closet). The movie and its actors succeeded in covertly showing this romantic and sexual bond between the two characters in a way that would not be fully understood by mainstream audiences or the Production Code Administration, therefore making it possible for an award-winning biblically themed film in the 1950s to feature characters that have been in a homosexual relationship with each other.
To summarize, The Production Code had a long-lasting impact on the lack of representation of homosexuality in both film reviewers’ criticism and films themselves by banning any type of sexual perversion. Nevertheless, within this dark era, there were still some highlights for queer portrayal on screen, even though they had to covertly show the homosexual relationships in order to slip past the censors and get them broadcast.
It is unfortunate that people back then did not realize that being gay was not something that needed to be hidden behind the curtain. Luckily, Hollywood nowadays has been somewhat comfortable with LGBT characters in film. More and more films are now able to depict homosexuality in an accurate and positive light. The success of movies like Brokeback Mountain, The Imitation Game, Pride or Moonlight proves that queers have a place in film instead of being a comedic side character or a ruthless villain. With this progress, LGBT films are anticipated to not paint gays as a victim of their own “sins,” but as a diverse group of individuals whose differences and triumphs should be celebrated and not shunned or ignored.
