And, re: the above, let’s grant for the purposes of discussion that Vellekoop’s rather bizarre thesis is correct and gays adore perfection. I wonder what he thinks is so “perfect” about TWoO? I’m a gay man and in my experience, gay men rarely like movies or stories about women or girls very much; again it’s a rank stereotype of gay men to assume very many of us are effeminate or admire women or stories about women over men. The Judy Garland/Marilyn Monroe worshippers are considerably more rare than the media and popular culture suggests or even outright states.
Furthermore, like people of any sexuality or gender, I rank films in my estimation based on far more important factors than the hidden or overt sexuality/homosexuality in them. In any case, I don’t see anything to suggest TWoO is as or more “perfect” than, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Why should other gays find it so?
2001: A Space Odyssey: A misunderstood intelligence yearns to escape a boring middle-American upbringing and learns that one must face life with brains. Or: 2001: A Space Odyssey: an allegory of Nietzshe’s Also Sprach Zarathustra that describes the evolution of the ape to man to Superman, a misunderstood space child who yearns to escape a boring middle-American upbringing and learns that one must face life with brains, heart and courage.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: A misunderstood archeologist has escaped a boring middle-American upbringing to learn that one must face life with brains, heart and courage.
In other words, your source hardly answers the OP.
If it’s a stereotype, it isn’t a very tightly-fitting one. Maybe it’s found more in certain social, cultural, or geographical circles, but is not universal.
Salman Rushdie, for example, seems pretty non-gay to me. The last book by him that I read was Wizard of Oz (London: BFI, 1992), an appreciation of the movie. Rushdie went into great length about all the ways the movie has been an aesthetic inspiration his whole life, and gave as an example his nightmare version of Indira Gandhi in Midnight’s Children, he just copied her from Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch.
Yes it was. So what? I would be willing to wager that the vast majority of the American public had no association between gay and homosexual at the time TWOO was released, and possibly not for years or decades later.
Of course it did (for lack of a better term than “gay culture”). Again, so what?
I, for one, am not really trying to fight “tooth and nail”. I’m trying to understand if what you’re presenting is made up by you (which is really all right - you’re allowed to have your own ideas and opinions, but by SDMB conventions, they should be clearly labeled as such) or whether there’s outside support for your assertions. (Otherwise known in SDMBese as “cite?”)
And I can see that you’re going to completely ignore my questions about your assertations about the book, as well as any points you make that later become inconvenient to your ever-shifting theses. Frankly, I’m no longer sure what point you’re trying to make. But I am truly interested in what you’re trying to say, so I’m willing to play Plato to your Socrates, as long as I can ask questions for clarification.
I can agree it’s possible he was gay. I think, since I never met him, I’ll never know for sure.
The facts of this part seem undisputed, so yes, I’ll agree.
Check and check
Great! I can’t wait.
Absolutely, mostly due to the stage musical (although the book did quite well as well.)
Yep.
Please do.
(bolding mine)
If the public didn’t know (and gay people are, I’m assuming, part of “the public”) then how is this evidence for a gay culture or not?
Perhaps they were simply actors playing roles.
Is there a current Scientology culture? There are a hell of a lot of Scientologists in Hollywood - a far higher percentage than in the population at large. They’re writiers, directors, actors, producers - yet save the occassional Battlefield Earth, there are few directly Scientological movies made. Are there Scientological undercurrents and themes in our movies simply because Scientologists are involved in the filmmaking process? Are they subconsciously appealing to a closeted Scientologist audience? Or are they professionals, like everyone else, acting the roles they’re paid to act and writing the screenplays they’re paid to write?
Again, mincing and prancing on stage (while it seems rather appropriate in musicals, 'cause, you know, they’re musicals!) is funny. The fact that gay people have to put up with it as indicitive of their sexual choice is ridiculous, and something I’ve never understood.
But I’ll grant that there were homosexual characters in movies before the Baby Boomers invented sex ( ). I’m not willing to grant that The Cowardly Lion was gay, however. I still maintain that Occam’s Razor defends “child’s story” and “comedic actor” as the more likely explanations.
And the blueprint, as has been pointed out, for countless coming-of-age stories, from Hercules and the Twelve Labors to The Once and Future King to Star Wars to The Lion King to The Matrix and beyond. Are they ALL gay movies?
It certainly establishes that there were gay people working in Hollywood in the early days, but I don’t think that one can say that’s the same thing as a gay culture at work.
If a gay culture was at work, then why were the references so (pardon the pun) sly? Culture is not people. Culture is what they make, create, say and do. The gay people in Hollywood were so stiffled by The Powers That Be that they couldn’t say much of anything unless they deeply hid their gayness.
Yes and perhaps. If it’ll help for the sake of your argument, I’ll even pretend for a minute that we know Cukor was gay, although I don’t think all the posters are willing to do that.
Yes, and the question of this thread was sort of asking why this is. I mean, I think we all take it for granted that her appearance in Oz has something to do with her being a gay icon, but we don’t know why exactly.
Yes.
Hold on buddy! You’re playing loose with your own quotes again. Your own quote says:
“The subcultural usage started to become mainstream in the 1960s, when gay became the term predominantly preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves.” Oz was made long before the 1960’s
This sentence: “By the mid-century “gay” was well-established as an antonym for “straight” (respectable sexual behaviour), and to refer to the lifestyles of unmarried and or unattached people. Other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress (“gay attire”) led to association with camp and effeminacy.” makes it clear that “straight” and “gay” were not about heterosexual and homosexual orientation, but about acceptable sexual expression (i.e. married sex) and unacceptable sexual expression (i.e. prostitutes, bachelorhood, etc.)
And this sentence: “This range of connotation probably affected the gradual movement of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures.” besides containing “probably” and no citation, indicates that the current meaning of “gay” was well confined to gay people themselves before 1960.
Since your assertion that the characters are “gay” in the modern sense comes from the fact that the word is used in the book, now you’ll have to show evidence that Frank L. Baum was homosexual before 1960, since that’s the only way he’d use that meaning (by your own quote’s logic, anyway).
Nope, not granted. That there were gay people working, highly closeted and afraid to tell anyone they were gay, I’ll grant. That it had any overt influence on their work, I’m not yet willing to conceed, unless you have a different argument or some cites that aren’t speculative (or are less biased.) What it has to do with The Wizard of Oz in particular, you have yet to articulate, although you keep saying your Manifesto is forthcoming.
It comes fourth hand (William Haines to George Cukor to unnamed friends of Cukor to author Emmanuel Levy).
It first saw light of day more than sixty years after the alleged events.
The author did not name his source(s).
The author did not provide any direct quotation from his sources.
In none of the interviews that Cukor gave on the subject of GWTW did he ever make such a claim. (Note that in the article you linked to above, no source is given for this alleged last interview with Cukor, and the only person not quoted in the article is Cukor!)
On the other hand, we have primary accounts (the memos of David Selznick) and secondary accounts (Cukor’s private talk with Susan Myrick) of why Cukor was fired that date from 1938-1939, plus numerous interviews Cukor gave over the years on the topic of GWTW and his firing.
Can you see why trusting an anonymous, fourth-hand story more than six decades after the event might not be preferable to trusting primary and secondary evidence that dates to the time of the events? This is just plain journalistic common sense.
And finally, jimbeam yes, of course Cukor was homosexual. No one says he wasn’t. But what does that have to do with The Wizard of Oz becoming a gay icon? Cukor’s minor involvement* was unknown until long after the movie attained that status. You haven’t explained how, given that fact, Cukor is relevant to your argument. As I said, there aren’t big gay followings of David Copperfield, The Philadelphia Story, or Pat and Mike, films he actually directed.
Cukor did it as a favor for producer Mervyn LeRoy. Cukor said, “I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing it. I was brought up on grander things.” He thought The Wizard of Oz was “a minor book full of fourth-rate imagery.”
Absolutely. I’ll take his recorded word for it. It’d be nice if **jimbeam **could link to such a quote (unless I missed it, which is possible), just out of a sense of decency. But if you’re willing to vouch for that fact, I’ll take it.
What I won’t take is, as **Walloon **puts it, “an anonymous, fourth-hand story” about a specific relationship.
Again, I don’t want to come across as pounding the crap out of jimbeam. For all I know, he’s hit the nail right on the head. I just want to know *why *he thinks what he thinks.
Not that I don’t agree with you entirely but for the sake of accuracy:
The story is included in either Hollywood Babylon or HB2 9looked it up yesterday for this thread and can’t remember which) which were published in 1959 and 1981 respectively. So the story was known a little earlier than 60+ years after the fact.
Interesting choices among Cukor’s filmography…in fairness it must be mentioned that a number of his films do (or did) have strong gay followings, including among others Sylvia Scarlett, Dinner at Eight, Travels With My Aunt and of course The Women.
The Lion is the classic stereotypical sissy. Which in the absence of an actual on-screen “gay” identity is as close as Hollywood in the 30s is going to get. Certainly seen through the eyes of 21st Century sophistates such as ourselves Lion is going to read as gay, and would also have read to those who knew how to read it back in the day, IOW, the gay subculture.
Wikipedia says 1981 but who knows if that’s right, but either way I’ll manfully concede the point.
It’s gonna be hard to make a connection if we can’t agree on a few simple points which are clearly true.
I don’t have time right now but I’ll get back to this later this evening.
Cukor not gay? please
The definition of gay in the 20’s not sexual? read the cite
No gay culture in the 20’s? Whether the public knew this is irrelevent, the OP asks “why gays associate w/ Oz.” It doesn’t matter what the public knew or didn’t know about it.
If you’re gonna just outright dismiss the obvious there’s not much point in trying to explain myself.
Like I said, I’ll be back later.
The OP actually asks why there is the gay identification with the 1939 Wizard of Oz. So while the discussion of the books and the earlier silent versions and what-not is entertaining and all, it really isn’t responsive to the OP.
…include a citation of exactly when it can be said to have achieved iconic status with gays, and base your justifications on what was known by the public at that time — not retroactively apply to 1939 what was only known later.
Wikipedia’s cite, for what it’s worth, doesn’t explicitly mention a gay subculture, but claims the movie didn’t reach iconic status until after it had been on television repeats for years. It’s been difficult to find corroboration for the exact timeline of when the film entered the public consciousness in that fashion.
I know YOU didn’t say it. I heard it somewhere though, along with the dismissal of some rather obvious points.
Anyway, I had a few days off when we started this but I’m gonna have to hit and miss another day or two.
Try this on.
[ibolding mine*
Sorry, I haven’t been able to get back to this. I really want to so be patient.
While I’m here I thought I’d drop a link.
The word gay AND queer were both used in reference to sexual “deviance” and/or homosexual behavior. NOW I’m not saying that Baum was either. I am only saying that the words were used in his books. Used probably in their conventional sense only but used nonetheless.
However when Oz hit the stage and screen they were subject to interpretation by the individuals who brought the books to life on stage and screen.
Considering this, the nature of the characters and everything else. It only makes sense that the existing gay culture would find Oz appealing.
Remember Oz was huge then. It was more successful than the 1939 version initially was.
I don’t have time to continue but…food for thought.
Why did Baum’s film adaptations fail so miserably? But afterwards, Baum sold his studio and Oz was recast and refilmed, it became a success again?
). I’m not willing to grant that The Cowardly Lion was gay, however. I still maintain that Occam’s Razor defends “child’s story” and “comedic actor” as the more likely explanations.
funny