Expand Your Mind

Expand your mind

Gays are stereotyped through films, these characters have the same roles, for example in a gay couple there is normally a very feminine person, and a very butch person. Film makers are taking gay people out of these predicted roles and portraying them as they are in real life. 

An example of this is a film by Ira Sach called “keep the light on” which follows a ten year long relationship between two men who meet on a New York phone sex line in 1998. It includes explicit sex and drug use, work Hassel and both gay and straight friends. In this film no one comes out or dies.

This is a good example because most media expectations of gay films is about someone falling in love with their straight friend, or coming out of the closet and trying to deal with how their friends act around them, or how their family feels about it. LGBT movies are mostly about the issues that gay people have and how hard their lives are and how they are not really accepted in the society.

A thing thats highlighted that gay relationships are the just the same as other relationships in film is by adding intimate scenes between two characters.

"If you're trying to do an honest depiction of a relationship, sex is part of that," says Haigh. "There have been a lot of queer films with sex in them and a lot of it has been for titillation or out of happiness that we can show gay sex on screen at all. For me, it's part of the story you're trying to tell rather than a case of trying to shoehorn sex scenes in for their own sake."

"There's so much communication, so much information exchanged between two people when they're having or attempting to have sex," he says. "It surprises me it's not played with more as a story or character device."

Gay characters were hard to find in film before the 80's.Film makers nowadays seek to describe the experience of being queer today through stories that resonate beyond that context. The perception of straight people and the troubles of non-straight people are over. 

Due to the exposure of the gay community by film more people are coming out with the hope of being accepted by the society and more people in the society are accepting of LGBT and are in support of that lifestyle and are willing to support and encourage them. People are more understanding and now in year 2012 “being gay” are seen as almost normal and are now represented by the media positively and in reality which makes the society more understanding and accepting.