"Where The "Bury Your Gays" Trope Came From" Transcript

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As the film industry moved away from suburban perfection, the extensive efforts made by Hollywood to conceal homosexuality in film during the post-war Lavender Scare era began to deteriorate. And then Hollywood came to realize that they were ignoring a large audience. No, not gays.

At the time the lifeblood of Hollywood was relationship dramas, Disney and Fleischer, cartoons and biblical epics. However, they ultimately realized that a group of Americans with disposable income but little to spend it on was being excluded: teenagers. Who were incensed to fight back against their parents conservative confining outlook on life.

This rebellious nature spawned, arguably, the most famous adolescent dissident film ever made: Rebel Without a Cause. The film contained broad allusions to alternative sexual behavior and the alternatives offered by gang ritualism.

Plato (played by Sal Mineo) is the loneliest and most troubled of the three problematic adolescents in the film, the other two being James Dean and Natalie Wood. Although he is not accused of it, Plato was raised by a domineering housekeeper in the absence of his father, which at the time was considered fertile breeding ground for homosexuality.

Plato is a multi-faceted character who challenges traditional gender and sexuality norms. He's a sensitive and artistic young man who admires James Dean's Jim and aspires to be like him. Their relationship is not explicitly sexual, but homoerotic tension permeates it. Plato's attraction to Jim originates from his need for a masculine role model in his life who can offer him the emotional support that he lacks at home.

Jim is a troubled teenager who struggles to blend in with his peers and family. Nevertheless Jim's sensitivity and emotional vulnerability contradict his society's expectations of masculine behavior. He is also drawn to Plato despite being confined by the street gang culture of the 1950s.

The writer of the film Stuart Stem^{[sic: Stuart Stern]} said:

[Quote scrolling on screen]:

"The gang in Rebel Without a Cause isn't much different from the army; both their rituals are tribal. The affection and gang Behavior has to be hidden inside a different vocabulary, both spoken and unspoken, inside gestures and words which desensitized everything and made everything brutal. Also, they had to wear skins to keep the image intact—boots and leather. They had to put on a horse skin in order to feel defended against the discovery of their own sensitivity.

I don't know what other experiences in World War II were, but for us it was deliberate and conscious. We were told that the buddy system prevailed. The choice of a buddy was as or more critical than that of a bride. You'd be living in a kind of physical intimacy which was unlike any other.

Men were having the experience of never having been so close to other men, and there was something of that love operating within the structure of the teenage gang whose members had left home, where there wasn't much love, to fight each other in the streets."

Fighting may have been a pretext for being close in Rebel Without a Cause when Jim and Buzz, another gang associated teen, decided to enter a chicken race to the edge of a cliff, a race in which Buzz will die. The two regard each other for a moment and question their participation in such an event. Their encounter becomes the motivation for all that follows. Jim refuses to deny his feelings and in the screenplay Stem^{[sic: Stern]} uses the character's guilt and grief over the death of Buzz as a weapon against conformity.

"One of the things I wanted to show in Rebel is that underneath all the macho defense, there was that pure drive for affection, and didn't matter who the recipient might be. There was a longer time in those days for young men to be in that warrior phase, where a lot of romantic attachments were formed before heterosexual encounters happened.

My favorite moment in the film is not between Jim and Plato but between Jim and Buzz, who dies in the "chicken" race. It was tender and loving, and the killing of that boy, whom Jim had known for all of twelve minutes, motivated the entire last half of the film."

Additionally, Rebel Without a Cause challenges the conventional gender roles of women in society as well. Natalie Wood portrays Judy, Jim's girlfriend, who struggles to find her position in a man's world. Judy's relationship with Jim is complicated because they struggle to express their emotions to one another. However Judy's character is also noteworthy because she challenges conventional notions of femininity. She opposes the role of the passive submissive woman in favor of asserting her autonomy and agency.

The release of pent-up emotions due to this type of emotional repression is what ultimately kills Buzz and Plato, while Jim is secure in Judy's arms. Clearly adult responsibilities include settling down in a heterosexual relationship, contrary to the illusions of your teenage years. Homosexuality is deemed... ignorable until the end of adolescence. After that it's considered a sort of... sign of arrested development.

As we entered the latter half of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s, this appeared to be Hollywood's perspective on homosexuality as well. Theoretically gay characters could exist in Hollywood films but only with one of two conclusions: either they straighten themselves out, or they die. And Hollywood was not hesitant to make films expressing this to the audience. Burying your gays in media has existed for much longer than Twitter and Tumblr may think.

But before we dive into Hollywood's exploration a forced queer trauma and film, which is... I'll admit... not exactly healthy, let's hear a word from our sponsor, which actually is healthy.

[Sponsor read]

Tea and Sympathy is a classic example of repression through coercion. The play and film have become so emblematic of the "traditional remedy" for homosexuality, securing the love of a decent woman in the nick of time, that people have forgotten that it's actually a tale about a timid heterosexual. Robert Anderson, who adapted his own play for the big screen in 1956, employs the classic outsider archetype of the man who marches to the beat of a different drummer, and must endure the ridicule of his peers. In neither the film nor the play as it ever suggested that the sensitive student, Tom Lee, might prefer men over women.

The issue at hand is the allegation of homosexuality. Lee's classmates call him "sister boy", because like Jim from Rebel Without a Cause, he refuses to run with the pack. Tom prefers Bach to baseball. And the companionship of his housemaster's wife Laura to touch football. His male tormentors disregard the fact that he is obviously in love with the elder woman because he does not fit the stereotypical male role.

In the Vincente Minnelli film, the majority of the accusatory remarks about homosexuality were toned down. Tom is found swimming nude with a teacher who is also suspected of being gay in the play. In the film he's labeled queer because he's discovered stitching a button onto his shirt while lounging on the seashore with a group of faculty spouses. The suppressed homosexuality of Tom's primary tormentor, the masculine housemaster played by Leif Erickson, who married Laura to establish his masculinity, is also subdued in the film adaptation. Ericsson disregards Laura in favor of the young male macho pupils that he instructs.

In Tea and Sympathy, a heterosexual youth is falsely accused of homosexuality by adults whose sporting activities provide the most homoerotic action on screen. Tom blends in well as a scapegoat femme in the well-established friendships between his classmates. Therefore the film advocates tolerance, not for sexual deviation but for disadvantaged heterosexuals who are less masculine. Never is homosexuality considered a viable option for a genuine man. The message is that one cannot presume a young man is homosexual solely on the basis of his football performance.

When Laura ultimately sleeps with Tom, she is not sparing him from a life of sissiness, but rather from his own fear that his classmates may be correct about his sexuality — a fear that has already led him to attempt suicide.

Writer Robert Anderson said:

[Quote scrolling on screen]:

"To me, it was never a play about homosexuality.

When Leif Erickson hounds Tom Lee...

He's really persecuting what he fears in himself."

Tea and Sympathy, which again was not about homosexuality, nevertheless served as a lesson for a generation of gay men who perceived Tom Lee's tormentors' pointed accusations not as timid heterosexuals but as horrified homosexuals. The film was able to convey a portion of what actual homosexuals felt and experienced in the 1950s, while staying faithful to the cultural imperative of invisibility. Cultural necessity was, of course, in the hands of The Production Code, and there was never any thought given to making the homosexuality in Tea And Sympathy more overt.

In the film, even the prospect that someone could be gay in reality was eliminated. Prior to the commencement to filming, Deborah Kerr wrote to Vincente Minnelli:

"The Breen Office is very difficult about the homosexual angle, which is, I understand, their objection.

Adultery is okay.

Impotence is okay.

But perversion is their bete noire."

In fact, adultery was not okay, and so it came under attack from the Catholic Legion of Decency anyway. The already altered ending of Tea And Sympathy had to be made to reflect the necessary retribution for Laura's affair with Tom. Thus the finished movie taught that instruction and initiation by an older woman was a positive thing... but that at the same time such behavior could not be condoned. At least not for the woman.

Laura gives herself to Tom, undoes the top button of her blouse, and says:

This is how the stage version concludes. The fall of the curtain left the conclusion of the encounter to the audience's imagination. This, however, was not good enough for Hollywood. It filmed the seduction scene with a subdued reverence reminiscent of a church service.

"The way the scene was filmed in the woods with the birds chirping and the special lighting made it appear more like the second coming of Christ than the first coming of Tom Lee."

[- Robert Anderson, Writer]

A glaring epilogue provides the morally correct conclusion that makes the preceding material acceptable to the Legion of Decency. At his class reunion, 10 years later, Tom wears the largest gold wedding band ever observed up close on film.

Tennessee Williams stepped up to the plate to provide what became yet another comment on the "foreign gay". Twice previously, Williams's plays were adapted for the big screen with significant homosexual references removed. In each instance, the adapters asserted that the homosexual aspects of the play were not needed, from a dramatic point of view.

In 1951, the [air quotes] "problem" that Blanche Dubois encountered with her husband was omitted from the film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1958, the homosexual "implications" in the relationship between Brick and the deceased Skipper were removed from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In both instances, the producers emphasized that homosexuality was not "the point". And was readily discarded in favor of more... acceptable explanations.

Then in 1959, two years before The Production Code was actually revised to permit homosexual subject matter on screen, Suddenly, Last Summer dealt with the subject as a psychosexual circus act, as the 1950s almost demanded.

The homosexuality of Sebastian Venable, Williams's condemned poet, could be inferred but not shown if the Breen Office granted special permission. As a consequence of the combination of insanity and cannibalism, the film had an unpleasant sickly ambiance that made everyone involved approach it with caution. Catherine Hepburn, who portrayed Violet Venable, Sebastian's deranged mother, publicly conveyed her disdain for the topic.

Ken Geist, the biographer of director Joseph Vanquis, claims that Mankowitz and Spencer Tracy spent the greater part of an evening in Boston explaining homosexuality to Catherine Hepburn. But she flatly refused to believe that such people existed.

She need not have made such a commotion over Suddenly, Last Summer though. In a meeting with producer Sam Spiegel and screenwriter Gore Vidal, the Breen Office eliminated all references to homosexual relationships. Gore Vidal said:

"My script was perfectly explicit...

and then the Catholic Church struck."

The Legion of Decency, after seeing that the necessary cuts were made, gave the film a special classification.

"Since the film illustrates the horrors of such a lifestyle...

It can be considered moral in theme...

Even though it deals with sexual perversion."

It was resolved that Sebastian Venable would not appear in person in the film. According to Vidal he was destined to be a glimmer, an occasion for memory. With this decision, Hollywood had accomplished the unthinkable: it has portrayed an invisible gay man on screen.

In the film, Elizabeth Taylor's character Catherine recounts how she and Sebastian spent their days in a Spanish Hamlet on the seashore and discloses that Sebastian used her to seduce young men. Sebastian's efforts were effective due to the boy's desperation for cash. However, when he began to make preparations for his departure to Northern Europe, Sebastian and Catherine were accosted by a group of youths, pleading for money on a scorching day. When Sebastian rebuffed their advances, they pursued him through the city streets. Sebastian attempted to flee but the boys followed him wherever he went. In the meantime, Catherine had been feverishly attempting to catch up to Sebastian. But when she finally did she found him surrounded by men. Catherine claims that they tore Sebastian apart limb by limb... and ate him.

Henry Hart, a film critic, discussed the origins of Suddenly, Last Summer in the January 1960 issue of Films in Review.

"It is said that Tennessee Williams wrote Suddenly Last Summer when a psychiatrist advised him that for his own sake,

not to mention society's,

he had better stop denigrating normality and begin to expose the evils of homosexuality and its allied forms of vice."

This Williams did, regardless of whether the advice actually came from a therapist. Williams's tormented depiction of a flailing homosexual artist and the individuals he victimizes with his aberrant impulses is a classic horror tale. The creature is finally destroyed by an angry mob of street urchins in a climax similar to that of James Wales' Frankenstein, in which the peasants pursue the monster to the top of a hill, where he is consumed by flames.

What emerged from Suddenly, Last Summer was a simple horror film with a budget. A film with a high moral tone that was ultimately unable to investigate its own subject. But even the overt mention of homosexuality in a film starring Catherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor shook the foundations on which The Production Code's aversion to homosexuality stood. The erosion of the power of The Production Code to maintain specific taboos had begun at the outset of the 1950s. And was only eroding evermore as time went on.

The California State Supreme Court ruled in early 1959, after analyzing a case involving a screening of Kenneth Anger's Fireworks, that:

Homosexuality is older than Sodom and Gomorrah,

And is a legitimate subject for screen treatment if handled properly."

The ruling overturned the conviction of an exhibitor who had been fined $250 and sentenced to three Years probation for displaying the film Fireworks in 1957. Variety referred to Fireworks as "an attempt to convey through impressionism the homosexual outlook on life in general" and noted that the court opinion stated that homosexuality is not to be endorsed, but society must understand its causes and effects.

After homosexuality as a subject reached commercial film houses seven years later, Kenneth Enger's Scorpio Rising was eventually released in theaters (albeit specialized art house theaters, such as New York's Bleaker Street Cinema) and caused a similar stir. Once more, the film was interpreted to symbolize homosexual life and attitudes in general.

Andrew Saras drew a homophobic conclusion after viewing Scorpio Rising in the Village Voice and observing that Anger compares a depraved homosexual orgy to footage from an ancient film about the Life of Christ.

"Why the parallel with Christ?

What else is there for attractive homosexuals over the age of 30 besides crucifixion?"

The treatment of Fireworks and Scorpio Rising by the courts, distributors, and critics, indicated how The Code would ultimately evolve. Even in enlightened circles, homophobia was far too pervasive and unchallenged for homosexual themed films to be evaluated objectively, based solely on their cinematic merit. There would be no recognition of the legitimacy of gay subject matter, only a condescension to a... an intermediate adult audience Hollywood was determined to reach without alienating the old fogies.

Spartacus was one of the last commercial films to have homosexuality expunged from its script before The Code was amended. In a scene between Crassius and his adolescent subordinate Antoninus (who did not look like an adolescent), the elder man discreetly establishes his preference for both men and women.

This exchange was excised from the finished film, immediately followed by Antoninus's departure to join Spartacus and the other slaves in revolt. What is therefore lost is any indication of Antoninus's dread of having a homosexual relationship with Crassius, the fear that causes Antoninus to flee at that time. So it just kind of comes out of nowhere.

Such omissions prompted producers and writers in the film industry to lament that The Code restricted their artistic freedom and prevented Hollywood films from competing in the mature marketplace with foreign films that dealt with such subject matters openly. At the beginning of the 1960s, the prohibition against "sex perversion" was the only specific restriction on subject matter still in place for movie censorship.

The Mirisch Company, co-producers of William Wyler's The Children's Hour, launched a meticulously orchestrated campaign in the summer of 1961 to prepare the public for the inevitable. They disclosed that Wyler's second adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play would restore lesbian implications to the story, which had been adapted in 1936 with all such references glaringly absent.

In the film, former college classmates Martha Doby and Karen Wright establish a private residential school for girls in the early 1960s. Karen agrees on a wedding date with her boyfriend, a doctor Joe Carden, after two years of engagement. Joe is related to the powerful Emilia Tilford, whose granddaughter Mary attends the school. Mary is a pampered manipulative adolescent who abuses her peers.

While Mary is being disciplined for a lie she told, one of her companions overhears Martha and her aunt Lily arguing. Lily accuses Martha of having an unnatural relationship with Karen. Mary shares this information with her grandmother. Mary fails to convince others that she personally witnessed Martha and Karen interacting, but compels Rosalie, another girl, to confirm her story by using her knowledge that Rosalie has stolen jewelry and other personal items from a number of people around the school. Tiny little blackmailer.

Mrs. Tilford is sued for libel and slander by the two women. But a few months later, Martha and Karen have lost the suit and are sequestered at the school, having lost all of their pupils and suffering irreparable damage to their reputations as a result of the loss. Karen breaks off her engagement with Joe after he inquires as to whether the rumors are true or not. And Martha explains that other female couples have persevered despite being discovered due to the intensity of their love, and then confesses that she actually is in love with Karen and has been in love with her for years.

Karen asserts that Martha's sentiments are merely confused but Martha insists that it's love while breaking down into tears. Mary's deception regarding Martha and Karen is exposed when Rosalie's mother discovers the stolen items her daughter has retained. Mrs. Tilford tells the judge, who then reverses the outcome of the litigation, and decides to publish results in the newspaper and pay the teachers a full Financial settlement. But everything has come too late, and Karen discovers that Martha has hanged herself in her room.

A year later, the political drama film Advise & Consent, based on Alan drury's Pulitzer prize-winning novel of the same name, was released. The film examines the intricate and frequently treacherous world of politics in Washington DC, where a nomination for Secretary of State becomes the battleground for personal and political agendas. While the film predominantly focuses on political intrigue and corruption, the character of Senator Anderson, portrayed by Don Murray, discreetly investigates homosexual themes.

Young Utah Senator Anderson is designated chairperson of the committee responsible for assessing the Secretary of State nominee proposed by the president. As the confirmation hearings continue, Anderson begins to suspect that the nominee may harbor... [dramatic] communist sympathies... which could compromise National Security.

However, Anderson's personal life is scrutinized when he is coerced by a former male admirer, who threatens to reveal their past relationship... if Anderson does not withdraw his opposition to the nomination. The film's portrayal of homosexuality is nuanced, but it emphasizes the personal and professional dangers gay people confronted in a society that was still primarily antagonistic toward them at the time. Senator Anderson is portrayed as a sympathetic figure who struggles with the contradictions between his private and public lives. He is conflicted between his responsibility as a senator to safeguard the nation, and his desire to live an authentic existence as a gay man. The film illustrates how his sexual orientation could be used against him, not only by political adversaries, but also by those who sought to exploit his vulnerability for personal gain.

In the end, Anderson's wife receives anonymous phone messages from a man warning that if the subcommittee does not report favorably on the nominee, information about what occurred between Anderson and Rey in Hawaii will be made public. An anxious Anderson travels to New York to meet a fellow army veteran named Ray Shaff. Shaff confesses to selling evidence of a previous gay relationship between the two, leading... to Anderson's suicide.

The film Victim was released the same year. Melville Farr, played by Dirk Bogarde, appears to be a successful London attorney in a loving marriage, but he conceals his sexual orientation from everyone. When his ex-lover Barrett contacts him for assistance in paying off some blackmailers, he disregards his requests. Barrett has stolen money from his employers and has been apprehended by law enforcement. Knowing that his sexual orientation would soon be revealed... he commits suicide in his jail cell.

Farr, now plagued with remorse, resolves to take on the blackmailing organization, but each of the victims he approaches refuses to assist, preferring to pay the money to keep their private lives hidden.

Knowing that Dirk Bogarde himself lived his life as a closeted gay man makes Victim all the more poignant from a retrospective standpoint. Those who were familiar with the industry at the time claimed that his refusal to enter into a marriage of convenience hindered his prospects at a successful career in Hollywood.

Hollywood continued to produce similar works throughout the 1960s and beyond. Despite widespread criticism of these and other films that perpetuated the Bury Your Gays trope, numerous LGBTQ+ activists and advocates viewed the trend as evidence of a hostile broader cultural and political climate towards the community as a whole. They argue that the trope contributed to a culture of dread and shame surrounding queer identities and reinforced detrimental stereotypes of queer individuals as ill, immoral, and dangerous. The practice however persisted well into the New Millennium.

But there was a faint glimmer of hope on the horizon.

As the 60s came to a close with the Stonewall uprisings, ultimately bringing the lives of gay people to the attention of the general public, and then the gay inclusive x-rated Midnight Cowboy won the Oscar for Best Picture, the norms surrounding the depiction of gay characters in film began to disintegrate. Gay people could now exist in Hollywood. But for how long?

[James talks in a small box on black.]

As we close out this episode I want to thank all my patrons. It's only because of you that videos like this are possible. YouTube isn't all too friendly when it comes to pushing queer content, let alone historical queer content. In fact, in most cases they try their best to keep it hidden. So our amazing patrons are the reason this channel keeps going. Thank you all... so much. Your support and getting to talk to you on the patreon Discord, it really means the world to me. And if you'd like to become a part of this seriously amazing community, you can do so for as little as a dollar a month at the link in the pinned comment. All right, now I'll let the credits roll and I'll see you next month for Unrequited Episode Five: A Crack In The Closet.