With two gay kisses cut from Hollywood blockbusters in the last month, Dylan Jones questions the continuing inequalities in the movie industry.
We’re allowed in music videos. We’re allowed in TV soaps. We’re SOMETIMES allowed in adverts. We’re allowed to be Jennifer Lopez’s basic best friend in shit romcoms. But gay men are still not allowed in action movies. Or, come to think of it, horror movies. Imagine if gays were in horror movies! That’d be amazing. It’d be worth it for the screams alone.
But it’s insane isn’t it, that in 2016, this is still an alien concept. Now, I’m really quite young, younger than you probably *tosses hair* but even I grew up in a world where gay men in the media were rarely anything other than spangly-suited chat show hosts. Which is fine, Graham Norton’s great! But it’d be nice to have a bit more variety.
Sadly, we can’t all grow up to sit on a sofa with a glass of wine, chatting with Thandie Newton about mindfulness and Miu Miu (although that is probably where my career trajectory is going). What if we want to be secret agents? What if we want to be assassins? What if we want to shoot aliens?
I didn’t have gay men to look up to in action movies when I was younger, so naturally I idolized the women instead. Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider! Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean! I once kicked a bully at school, then followed it up with the line “You like pain? Try wearing a corset!” Oh and perhaps most notably, Julianne Moore in The Lost World. That scene where she’s trapped on the pane of glass over a cliff, hyperventilating as spidery cracks creep from her fingers! Iconic.
Just as I was entering adolescence, television at least, started waking up to the importance of giving gay men less stereotypical roles. Skins was brilliant. The beautiful Mitch Hewer as Maxxie was that rare thing – a gay character who was painted as stable, pleasant and fun; he also managed to get through the whole series without overdosing, getting raped or dying of AIDs, all of which are often the fate of gay characters in mainstream TV shows. It also helped that he was fucking hot. He made being gay cool, and made it much easier for me to come out at school. I probably have Maxxie to thank for a few drunken kisses with straight boys at post GCSE house parties.
John Barrowman in Torchwood is another good example of an assertive, stable gay character. TV has woken up to it, and continues to deliver with shows like Looking, Cucumber and the brilliant Sense8. But back then, and still now, there’s a notable absence of representation in Hollywood.
There have been whispers of it in the last couple of years. We all clutched our metaphorical pearls at that brief but sexy gay allusion in Skyfall didn’t we! Javier Bardem’s hand sliding up Daniel Craig’s leg. But AGAIN, it says something that we were so excited at a mere blink-and-you-miss-it hint. That shouldn’t be the case, it should be the norm!
You’d think things would have improved with time, but two gay kisses have been cut from two major blockbusters just in the last month – one from Disney’s Tarzan reboot, and one from JJ Abrams’ Star Trek: Beyond. In Tarzan, antagonist Christoph Waltz kisses Alexander Skarsgård’s Tarzan while he’s unconscious, but the scene was cut at the last minute before release.
Director David Yates said “We loved it at the time, but we pared it back because it was almost too much.” Oh? Too much? Well I’m so sorry David. Sorry that us kissing someone is too much. Sometimes I think endlessly being exposed to Jessica Alba’s bulging bosom is a bit fucking much, but that doesn’t get cut from movies does it. I wonder why. He went on to say “early test audiences were perplexed by it.”
JJ Abrams hasn’t provided any explanation as to why the gay kiss in Star Trek was cut. The actor who plays gay character Zulu has given some very diplomatic but ultimately useless statements on it, saying “There was a kiss that I think is not there anymore…It wasn’t like a make-out session.” Right. Erm…why was it cut though?
With both, it’s actually not difficult to work out why. It’s that most volatile and controlling of combinations – fear and money. The vast majority of people who work in Hollywood are not homophobic. They’re artistic, creative people, who have probably been around gay men all their lives, or ARE gay men themselves.
That’s the other thing – statistically, one in ten men are gay. And it’s probably fair to say that that proportion is MUCH higher among actors and creatives. Probably at least 50%. So 50% of Hollywood actors are gay. It’s fairly common knowledge that Will Smith and Kevin Spacey (ALLEDGEDLY) are. So why isn’t more being done?
The answer is, that whilst Hollywood itself probably isn’t homophobic, the majority of the population still is. Or perhaps not homophobic. Perhaps just unimaginative. A gay kiss in an action movie would unsettle them, not because they’re necessarily all homophobic, but just because it’s different and unexpected. They hate anything different. It’s why we voted Brexit, why nobody buys Peaches’ music and why the CEO of Primark is a billionaire. Anything imaginative or unexpected is DANGEROUS and CHALLENGING.
All they want is Jason Statham somersaulting over a flaming lorry to a Nickelback soundtrack. Chuck in a couple of explosions, a pout from Megan Fox, and a supersize tub of popcorn. Done. If Jason Statham suddenly threw down his gun and started getting off with Jamie Foxx (hot!), they’d have to start thinking. The cogs in their brains would have to start moving. And they don’t want that! They want to blindly pay their money and then switch off for two hours. Which, in today’s mess of a world, is fair enough really.
But maybe if the general population WERE challenged, WERE forced to think, we wouldn’t be in the awful state we’re in now. Movies are art, and the very function of art is to challenge societal constructs and provoke thought. And I’m sorry, but Fast & Furious 8 just doesn’t fit that bill. We need to change things. And there’s no reason we can’t. Let’s get the ball rolling. Right. Has anyone got Kevin Spacey’s number?
