There are shifts in the LGBTQ+ representation accompanied by a celebration: a marketing campaign, a controversy, a speech. Others appear virtually as a coincidence as an act, as a stare, as a shot which repeats and repeats in casting selection and plotting, as a scene reenacted with inappropriate attention and that resonates over casting choices and story lines decades later.
In popular movie and TV culture, the leading men have been frequently the so-called risk variable: the star whose attractiveness is handled delicately, whose persona is guarded by producers, whose sexual acts are reduced to insinuation. Even when that variable is altered even in the slightest, the language changes on the screen.
These are not entirely moments of a history. These are seven examples of how the trendsetters in the various times and genres provided impetus to the progress of representation without necessarily proclaiming it themselves.
1. Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain
Two bankable central men focusing a love story between men in an elite studio release redefined the concept of what might be in a mainstream romance. The legacy of the film is that it made tenderness both normalized and not a punchline or a tell of a villain, a refreshing break not only of the trends that had dominated much of American film during the Production Code and its repercussions, but also of the tendencies of preceding eras to shun the issue of tenderness. That larger scene is important: over the decades, Hollywood tended to marginalize queer men to either subtext or stereotype, or make them the victims of a narrative, which is the direction the history of homosexuality in American films takes. Even in that landscape, a tragic romance could continue to serve as a kind of doorway, which was subsequently expanded into comedies, adolescent romances and adult drama as queer characters were no longer an exception to the rule.
2. Cliff Robertson in The Best Man
In some cases, the change of representation is due to language change. The Best Man was the first American film to mention homo sexual, a seemingly minor detail, but one that ushered a greater change: queerness was now, as a mainstream political drama, not just indicated by vague hints at the use of coded mannerism. In a time when studios had long been practicing omission and euphemism, it was something to have the word onscreen. It made sexuality something that is nameable, and, therefore, argumentable, instead of merely bringing it into the periphery characters and covert glances.
3. Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia
There is little ambiguity in the interpretation of intimacy that can be found in epic films. However, director David Lean had Peter O’Toole portray T.E. Lawrence as very (or even completely) homosexual, and hinted at a sexual relationship between Lawrence and Sherif Ali. The outcome was a prototype of a sweeping classic early which allowed an engaging man to bear strange implication without degenerating into a caricature. That subtlety would be a constant device: where scripts might not name names, a practice, performance created another form of visibility – the one which would be learned later to be observed, criticized, expanded upon.
4. Robin Williams in The Birdcage
In the 1990s the mainstream movies tended to dilute the queer representation by putting it within the context of a comedy but The Birdcage continued to count due to its approach of making a gay family central, vibrant and emotionally true-to-life. Williams, one of the big stars, with a wide appeal to viewers, centralized the narrative with warmth instead of distance to bring to the table the notion that queer family dynamics might be the heart of a studio film. Although boundaries were placed around physical intimacy, which was prevalent then, it increased the cinema area in which gay men could be perceived as parents, partners and adults with complex loyalties- not just sidekicks or show.
5. Patrick Swayze (with Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo) in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
The drag acts were forced out of the mainstream over long periods and resurfaced in sporadic bursts. Gender play entered multiplex culture with weird visibility in a 1990s studio comedy which put three well-known male actors in drag throughout the run time.
When the drag representations returned to the movies of this decade, the shock value did not have the greatest impact because the most significant aspect was the length of time: the audience stayed with them long enough to perceive them as individuals rather than a one-liner.
6. Ewan McGregor in Halston
Prestige television saw the re-invention of a new forms of the leading man, whose sexuality existed as part of the social world of the role and not as a supplementary aspect. When Halston cast McGregor as one of her main characters, that provided a big actor with a vehicle to play a gay cultural role within a narrative of ambition, taste and the machineries of fame. It also denoted a behind-the-scenes fact: LGBTQ+ decision makers are making more and more of what is made and who is centered, a power map as described in the most influential LGBTQ players in Hollywood. Representation is not just what is on the screen, but who is in a position to retain it on the screen.
7. Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie in Heated Rivalry
A new turning point was not due to restraint, but to craft. The sex between rival hockey players is also explicit, enduring and a plot in Heated Rivalry; sex is a form of dialogue, not an isolated issue scene. The Guardian has profiled intimacy coordinator Chala Hunter as the absolute hero of this show, highlighting how choreography and consent practices can influence the viewers to perceive the truth of intimacy. A wider market reality was also reflected in its response by the audience.
One BBC culture analysis observed the phenomenal success of the show among women, and linked it to a longer history of female interest in male/male romance within the culture of fan communities and publishing, an interest that has subsequently come to dominate what gets on screen in the first place. Throughout history, there is neither one type of progress. It can be a new word that is being pronounced, it can be a new form of tenderness, it can be a new form of production that is going to make intimacy filmable without exploitation. The hopefulness of what a leading man can bear, not merely desire, but queerness, not secretly, but openly, and without any apology, is the thing which is most irreversibly altered.
