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WP3BudgetsandOrgModels1.pdf (application/pdf Object)
By Sabrina Pape and Barbara Jones for Vassar/CLIR symposium
Chon Noriega’s piece chronicles the depiction and reception of homosexuality in Hollywood using film reviews from major periodicals as source material. As the Production Code demanded that "Sex perversion or any inference of it is forbidden," the period of the 1930s and 1940s was characterized by films that had few if any allusions to the existence of homosexuality. Instead, as films were adapted from materials that featured homosexuality as a part of the narrative, the issue was substituted for other social problems. Noriega looks at the three such films in which homosexuality is recast, as the evils of gossip, alcoholism, and anti-semitism, respectively. Reviews at the time rarely mentioned the exchange, or if they did, praised the substitution as making the film better. From this “conspiracy of silence” came acknowledgment of homosexual themes and characters in the 1950s. As long as homosexual characters faced a character arc that was sufficiently tragic, and thus didactic, films were acceptable and homosexuality was no longer explicitly criticized in the reviews. Beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing to the 1960s the dominant perception of homosexuality was no longer that it was criminal, but that it was a psychiatric disease that individuals could be pitied for being afflicted with, but could be cured of.
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is often cited as one of the first films to depict a homosexual teenager, Plato, played by Sal Mineo. However, the film initially had more daring content. Upon submission to Joseph Breen’s office, the film was found to have latent homosexual themes that had to be re-edited. The article illuminates the attitudes towards homosexuality at the time of Rebel’s release and the perceived necessity of the changes.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PL801.K8 A2 2006b
2. Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Rashomon and Other Stories. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1952. P17-31 ’In a Grove’ In a Grove is a short story which is about a chapter length by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who also wrote ‘Rashomon’ which first appeared in the January 1922 edition of the Japanese literature monthly Shincho. The story consists of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder; eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity’s ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth. Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for the film, ‘Rashomon’ despite of its name from Akutagawa’s another short story. This provided the symbolic background atmosphere and went into the depths of the human heart as if with a surgeon’s scalpel, laying bare its dark complexities and bizarre twists. These strange impulses of the human heart were expressed through the use of an elaborately fashioned play of light and shadow. The setting was moved to a large forest in the film showing people wandering in to a wider wilderness. Also the script from this story ‘In a Grove portrays human beings who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It shows how human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves.
Apu's father in the movie is faced with a similar situation, whereby he is living an impoverished life. A man, who is greatly respected by fellow villagers due to the fact that he is educated and wishes to be a poet, is given no respect when he travels to the city in search of a job to earn a living to feed his family. In the movie Harihar Ray wishes to be a writer because he is born into a family of writers, because he belongs to the Brahmin caste. But, given the lack of jobs in the village itself, he wonders to a nearby city where he is ill-treated, firstly because he is looked upon as a villager, and secondly is unable to get jobs that ‘villagers' would get because they are all reserved for ‘villagers' from a lower caste. Given that this movie was made in 1958, it goes to show that people all over India suffered from such problems post independence as well. And although the movie is set in Bengal and not in Tamil Nadu, Brahmin's around the country seemed to live lives similar to the ones articulated by Satyajit Ray in this film, as well as ones written about by Bellman in the newspaper article.
GUIDE: Reference Folder #282, available from the Center for Research Libraries through Interlibrary Loan.
DESCRIPTION: The Center has received microfilm for the following parts: part 1: Arundel-Cotton Nero; part 2: Cotton Otho-Cotton Roll; part 3: Egerton-Lansdowne; part 4: Royal-Add. Roll.
Available from the Center for Research Libraries through Interlibrary Loan.