The Celluloid Closet: She Grabbed Me By The Wig

The Celluloid Closet is quite wonderful in its candor and honesty.  It’s fascinating to finally see others telling the truth of how queer culture has existed in media throughout its history.  Are there things missing from this movie? Of course. But I think, for 1996, this film is incredibly in-depth, honest, and raw.  The commentary from queer creators makes for a very vulnerable take on the films and roles that are discussed. In a perfect world, I would have liked more trans and nonbinary representation.  However, for the time it was made, it does provide a lot of useful information and commentary that I feel is very valid, and also gives us insight into how queer creators felt at the time that this film was made.  It’s interesting because the movie itself is also a peek into the past of film and queer people, though when it was made it didn’t seem directed to be that way.  

I liked hearing the discourse between the man who abhorred sissy characters and the one who liked them.  I feel from both of their perspectives. In some ways it bothers me deeply because I know it’s meant to be insulting and debasing, but on another level I deeply love “sissy” identity and admire many queer people today who behave very similarly.  Jonathan Van Ness, known from Queer Eye, would’ve been categorized as sissy in the time of these films, but is now one of the strongest examples of AIDS-postive queer people kicking ass in life that I know.  I feel like looking at “sissy” now, from a queer-positive lens, it humanizes us. Some of us are going to be serious and clean-cut and down to business, and some of us are going to be silly and funny and twirly, and some of us will be both, and some of us will be none of that and something else.  We are people.  So I stand conflicted in the cesspool of opinions.  I personally love REAL “sissys” who are more than their outward expression, but the trope was so horrifically harmful that it can be hard to enjoy in film.  

I loved learning about new films.  My knowledge of film is very, very minimal.  Seeing so many examples and clips was so helpful for me, and gave me so much more insight than if the movies had only been talked about verbally.  For example, Marlene Dietrich in Morocco. I was shocked to see an example of a woman being so sexually free and open without her femininity being insulted or shown as lesser.  However, it says so much about our stilted views on gender as a binary, and as a man-over-woman binary.

  There’s a reason why it was acceptable for this close-up shot of this man being turned on by Marlene to exist, but not for anyone to be aroused or excited by the male table-hopping “sissy” characters.  

I remember watching Some Like It Hot as a kid growing up, and being so entranced by how the gender was so melded and mixed together.  It was fascinating and delicious to me, even though it was held up under the guise of comedy. I loved hearing Tony Curtis talk about his inspiration for his character.  Sometimes it can be easy to forget that there were performers at the time who really did understand what they were doing, even if it wasn’t the same level of understanding we’d expect from them today.  This part of the film gave me nostalgia, which I enjoyed.   

I was shocked by the scene from ROPE by Alfred Hitchcock.  It was stunning to see the blatant sex and arousal between them.  

 The look they give to each other, and how close they are to each other- it’s incredibly sexually exciting.  To me, it reads as foreplay. The way he talks about the murder is so clearly arousing his partner, which is why the “And then” is so shockingly loud and out of control.  He’s even gasping, open-mouthed towards the end of the clip. It’s too hard to ignore now, even though it’s under the context of a murder. Just really goes to show how ignorant and blind the code-keepers were at that time.  How blind most people were at the time.  

They spent some time talking about how queer characters are too often condemned to death, suicide, or despair.  I appreciated this immensely, for multiple reasons. For one, it was good to see that, even in 1996, there was an awareness of just how discriminating openly queer content still was.  Secondly, it resonated with me. This is still happening. Look at Blue is the Warmest Color.  It came out in 2013, and yet the entire thing is still set in tragedy, pain and despair.  Call Me By Your Name came out in 2017- I bawled my eyes out the entire credits of that movie, and even after it was over.  Not to mention that it depicts a much older man and an underage boy. It’s not that the story isn’t valid or true- I actually watched the film with a gay friend who had been in a situation very similar to the one being told on screen when he was younger.  It’s just that this seems to be the only way we can exist as queer individuals on the screen. We’re still either spectacle, villainy, or tragedy. Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe is canonically nonbinary and queer in the comics, and is queer-coded and villainized all throughout the films he’s in.  He’s never shown being openly queer, despite this being true of his base, comic character, but they’ll code him to the death in the subtext. It is a viciously frustrating issue, and it was validating and also tragic to see my same feelings being reflected back at me from 1996. We’ve made progress in saying the characters are queer, but have we made much progress in queer representation recently?  Maybe I’m being too selfish, but I have to say not nearly, nearly enough.

Epstein, Rob and Jeffrey Friedman, directors. The Celluloid Closet. 1996.

Hitchcock, Alfred, director. Rope. Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., 1948.

Sternberg, Josef von, director. Morocco. Paramount Publix Corp., 1930.