My intention is to offer a mainstream audience an authentic insight into a gay world, but the story involves aspects of gay behaviour which might alienate such an audience. I have written a contemporary, gay, screen version of Madame Butterfly which I would like to put into production. But these are, arguably, equally inauthentic.
MAINSTREAM GAY MOVIES TV
I also look at two recent British TV dramas, Cucumber and London Spy that have taken a different approach, offering an “exotic otherness” in the world they present, making gay men seem somehow exciting in their difference. In the case of these two films, they are also seen to have reassured those audiences because, although sympathetically told, both stories end with the death of one of the lovers, subtly reinforcing a homophobic message. In this paper I look at how, in the past, films on gay themes that have appealed to the mainstream, for example Philadelphia and Brokeback Mountain, have tended not to feel entirely authentic in their representation, seeming “watered-down” or “heterosexualised” to make them acceptable to mass audiences. But all too often gay-themed films attract only gay audiences, and so tend to “preach to the converted” rather than supporting that emancipation by attracting mainstream, heterosexual audiences. As 21st century LGBTI emancipation continues apace, screen representations are following suit.