Hollywood homophobes
Myles Herod
Issue date: 11/24/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment
MONTREAL (CUP) - What's the deal with Hollywood? It's a town built on the reputation of such liberal ideals, yet it's so afraid of the lending voice to the gay and lesbian community. Sadly, the term "homosexual" still holds negative connotations within the world of cinema.
The 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, which garnered eight Oscar nominations for its portrayal of two gay cowboys, was met with as many discriminators as admirers. A frontrunner for best picture, its legacy as the first crossover film to achieve such prestige was not to be. When Jack Nicholson announced the winner on Oscar night in 2006, a dismayed murmur rang out in the Kodak Theatre, as the racially charged Crash beat out the film so many felt was the true stand-out of the nominees. Even Nicholson was shocked, stating to reporters afterwards that he, a long-serving academy member, voted for the gay-themed romance.
Why is this a taboo subject? Well, in the case of Brokeback, its defeat came with many of the older - and I mean older - academy members' disdain for what they saw as America's purest genre, the Western, tarnished by two men falling in love and, gasp, having sex. The decrepit Ernest Borgnine, all of 89 years young at the time, had the most disheartening comments of all.
"I didn't see it and I don't care to see it . . . If John Wayne were alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave," he said. While the actor's slur came across as being appallingly arrogant, it also reinforced a hidden fear - a fear that some in tinsel town still cannot concede to homosexuality, nor comfortably market it to the masses or themselves.
With rare exceptions like Ellen DeGeneres and Neil Patrick Harris, the choice in coming out has long been acknowledged, more or less, as career suicide within the North American market. A notable example is that of Rock Hudson, a dashing leading man recognized for romantic comedies of the 1960s. One of the first major stars to succumb to the AIDS pandemic, Hudson's death was thought to be the result of a tainted blood transfusion. When word got out of his homosexuality, many colleagues and friends were taken by surprise, with no idea of his secret life.
The 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, which garnered eight Oscar nominations for its portrayal of two gay cowboys, was met with as many discriminators as admirers. A frontrunner for best picture, its legacy as the first crossover film to achieve such prestige was not to be. When Jack Nicholson announced the winner on Oscar night in 2006, a dismayed murmur rang out in the Kodak Theatre, as the racially charged Crash beat out the film so many felt was the true stand-out of the nominees. Even Nicholson was shocked, stating to reporters afterwards that he, a long-serving academy member, voted for the gay-themed romance.
Why is this a taboo subject? Well, in the case of Brokeback, its defeat came with many of the older - and I mean older - academy members' disdain for what they saw as America's purest genre, the Western, tarnished by two men falling in love and, gasp, having sex. The decrepit Ernest Borgnine, all of 89 years young at the time, had the most disheartening comments of all.
"I didn't see it and I don't care to see it . . . If John Wayne were alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave," he said. While the actor's slur came across as being appallingly arrogant, it also reinforced a hidden fear - a fear that some in tinsel town still cannot concede to homosexuality, nor comfortably market it to the masses or themselves.
With rare exceptions like Ellen DeGeneres and Neil Patrick Harris, the choice in coming out has long been acknowledged, more or less, as career suicide within the North American market. A notable example is that of Rock Hudson, a dashing leading man recognized for romantic comedies of the 1960s. One of the first major stars to succumb to the AIDS pandemic, Hudson's death was thought to be the result of a tainted blood transfusion. When word got out of his homosexuality, many colleagues and friends were taken by surprise, with no idea of his secret life.
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