Homosexual Doom in the Movies

[bobover3 (imported)]

Buzz speaks truth.

[moi621 (imported)]

Growing up in the 50s, it never even occurred to me or any of my friends that there was anything odd about the relationship between Bruce Wayne and his "ward." It was a naive age. Homosexuality was so far off the cultural table that it was truly "the crime that dare not speak its name." No one thought about, talked about, or wrote about homosexuality. It wasn't even denounced, because it was thought obvious and indisputable that homosexuals were depraved and lived in a shameful underworld. There was no "gay lib," and no organizations speaking for gay rights.

So when we read about Batman and Robin, they just seemed like a perfect father and son - the father admirable, the son worthy of him. This was the sort of relationship all boys wished they had with their fathers, unlike the abusive weak fathers and vulnerable shamed sons so common in real life. Seeing the gay potential in Batman and Robin is a sophisticated modern remake of the original. I don't object; I just don't believe it was there in the original, even covertly.

Agreed!

The fifties were the best time.

Those Cowboys with their partners and the commitment between them was another, "so Gay" expression we viewed asexually at the time.

Over the last 4 decades I have had two very close same sex friends.

One that Kaiser killed and another.

We are close and totally asexual with one another.

Makes me wonder, what ever happened to, "Good Friends"?

Moi

Has anyone seen Partners yet ?

[bobover3 (imported)]

In the 1950s, the US was a confident nation with unambiguous values asserted aggressively at home and abroad. For those on the wrong side of those values, it was rough going. The tolerance for diversity that's become part of enlightened society was not in evidence. So I wouldn't call the 1950s the best time. It's easy to be sentimental about one's youth, and I had a good childhood, but little Bobover3's personal well-being does not equate to a happy land.

Part of 50s America was an acceptance of a certain level of mutual dislike and separation between the sexes. It was a sexist age in which men were assumed to prefer one another's company, and in which there were clear boundaries between the male and female spheres. That's why cowboy adventures, etc., were for men. That was man-stuff. It was assumed that only men would be engaged in man-stuff, which is why there was no suspicion of sex. Our contemporary sensibility, in which men and women are no longer relegated to separate spheres, was still decades away.

I think asexual friendships are still the norm. But if you truly love someone, it seems natural to express that love through physical intimacy of some sort. Women who are friends hug and kiss, etc., with no one thinking ill of them for it. I wonder at male friendships that show no physical affection. This seems to me to be an unnatural imposition, a taboo.