Thursday, November 12

Window Shopping...

...in the mythical land of lesbians, still sadly hidden from view in the 1950s.

8 comments:

Arbogast said...

Window shopping for respect. Isn't it sad to think that if these women had children and then their children had children and these grandkids were gay they still would be scratching for a measure of legitimacy?

Greg said...

Yes, it really is. It's a slow uphill battle. In the last couple of years I've begun to notice the racial and gay stereotypes in movies and tv well through the 1980s. Something at the time that seemed normal or at least aware now seems horribly insensitive. Anyway, it made me realize how far we've come since then which is good I guess.

Rick Olson said...

Mythical? Shit.

And everybody still makes fun of gays, they just do it ironically, self-referentially, as in "look, we know we're being bad, but ..."

Greg said...

Rick, yes the "mythical" in the series title comes from the fact that none of the women used in the pictures in the series are actually lesbians. Sorry.

Yes, the jokes do continue, I agree. I suppose off-color jokes always will I just mean that seeing things from the early nineties on back courtesy of cable tv watching by the kids really shows how much more blatant it was then and at the time I didn't think it was blatant at all.

Arbogast said...

I remember wincing at the age of 18 or so at Dudley Moore's use of the word "faggotry" in 10, as if being gay was instantly tantamount to participating in brutal S&M. And Skin Deep had, as I remember, some nasty anti-gay subtext to it. And sitting in between these, Victor/Victoria. Go figure.

Arbogast said...

I should have set up that reference to 10 a little better. In the film, Moore is contemplating his life/love choices and he makes some sharp remark about "resorting to faggotry" (I might be off on the verb, but that was the reading), as if homosexuality is a consolation prize for failed heterosexuality.

Arbogast said...

Let's not rule out the possibility that some of these girls really are lesbians, even if they weren't on duty at the time the photo was taken. Or maybe they were. Imagine a couple of 90-somethings coming to The Invisible Edge and seeing their picture.

"Heloise, we've been outed!"

Greg said...

I watched 10 again just around six months ago. A few things stuck out for me. One, I had forgotten just how supremely gifted Moore was with physical comedy. Really, incredible. Two, the gay relationship that Robert Webber has with his catamyte wallows in stereotype that I'm sure seemed progressive at the time but now just misses the mark by a mile. The poor gay guy doesn't find love after all as his lover promiscuously moves on to someone else. Webber is then forgotten and we go off to our happy ending with the hetero couple of the movie.

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