Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: a History of Erasure and Representation

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: A History of Erasure and Representation While watching the 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a viewer who is unfamiliar with the play may or may not pick up on the homosexual undertones present in the relationship between Brick and Skipper. The close viewer / reader will, however, pick up on the fact that the film has been more or less scrubbed clean of any implication that the two characters may have been lovers, or at the very least, caught up in one-sided attraction. How much of this was influenced by the Motion Picture Production Code in place at the time? And by contrast, how was Tennessee Williams able to write as freely as he did on the subject in the original play? Was film truly that far behind theatre in terms of LGBTQ representation? What strictures and statutes were placed on Williams, if any, while presenting these overt gay themes to the all but completely closeted society of 1950’s America? What was the process by which Williams was able to present his vision, not just in this play, but in others that contained gay characters or relationships? Within the play itself, the ambiguous presentation of gay relationships may somewhat account for the play’s ability to be staged. It can only be argued that Brick is gay or bisexual, in reference to his possible feelings for Skipper and seeming lack of attraction to Maggie—it is never definitively stated. The characters who are more explicitly gay—Skipper and Big Daddy’s friends Jack Straw and Peter Ochello—are only referenced, and never seen on-stage (Williams, 62). This may have kept the audience at a comfortable arms-length from these subjects, while still addressing them. This same subtlety is implemented when the characters discuss sexuality— it is no more than ever implied through dialogue, such as “Was Maggie good in bed?” and never directly seen on-screen (Williams, 65). These extremely sensitive subjects, at the time, were all but never addressed in popular culture—whether in film, theatre, or literature. Books such as Cox 2 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence (which included extramarital sex scenes) and The Well of Loneliness (which included homosexual characters) by Radclyffe Hall were facing intense backlash and even legal battles over censorship and charges of obscenity. The climate of hostility for this kind of subject matter was clear (Taylor). To fully understand the significance of Williams’ work, and the difficulty of depicting it truthfully on screen, it is important to understand the film laws at the time. The Motion Picture Production Code, colloquially known as the Hays Code, was an obscenity law placed on film, which was in force from 1930 to roughly 1960. It remains as a relic of a deeply racist, sexist, homophobic, repressed period of American history, containing references to exercising care while depicting “the sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue.” It prevented the depiction of a number of subjects that had been hitherto depicted more or less freely: any use of profanity (including the irreverent use of “God,” “Jesus,” etc.), nudity, or “any inference of sex perversion.” It is relatively easy to read between the lines on that last demand: “sex perversion” could include any number of things—and under this code, even heterosexual couples weren’t allowed to be depicted lying in the same bed, or kissing “excessively.” But at the time, “sex perversion” was largely (and legally) understood to mean a word that, as Oscar Wilde put it, “dared not speak its name”: homosexuality (“Don’ts and Be Carefuls [1927]”). Of course, numerous filmmakers got around this code by means of subtext—and through this, gay members of the audience had to pick up the slack and become very good at reading said subtext. But even when they were decoded, the subtle messages being portrayed in films were seldom positive. In the 1941 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, an explicitly queer character from the book, Joel Cairo, was rewritten for the screen. His sexuality remains only in hints and common film shorthand that relied heavily on gay stereotypes, as mentioned in the documentary Cox 3 The Celluloid Closet. Cairo, played by Peter Lorre, speaks in a “high-pitched voice” and sports “lavender perfume,” though of course, not a word of his actual orientation is ever spoken. As if that subtext was not enough to cover the film’s tracks, Falcon makes sure to thoroughly punish its coded queer characters by the end, just as it punishes its sexualized female characters. This was one means by which filmmakers could at least explore themes of sexuality and gender ambiguity; the cost, however, was to reinforce existing hostility against queer people (Mooney). The censorship present in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) follows a different pattern, however. Instead of vilifying its queer characters, the film is content with thoroughly denying anything “dirty” in the relationship between Skipper and Brick. In a painfully drawn-out scene, the film’s versions of Brick and Maggie explain their shared backstory as a convoluted, but unambiguously heterosexual love triangle. Brick reminisces over the “deep, true friendship” and brotherhood he and Skipper shared. With all these heavy-handed story changes, there is only the smallest margin of room left to interpret Skipper as closeted, and his suicide as motivated by despair over Brick’s sexual rejection. Even this interpretation, of course, is hardly a positive or healthy picture of homosexuality; but punishing the pathetic, mentally diseased queer with death was a trope the Hays Code could find acceptable. To leave absolutely no doubt in the viewer’s mind about the lead character’s heterosexuality, and to smooth over the shocking rejection at the end of the original play, this adaptation’s Brick and Maggie come together as a couple in the end (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). The film world of 1958 was not a place where homosexuality could even be named. On the other hand, the theater provided, as it had for many years, a space to explore these themes and characters more openly. Since the days of Shakespeare, the theater has been a space in which an actor can step into the cunning illusion of an entirely different reality, by merely Cox 4 putting on a mask. What an actor is behind the curtain, outside in the real world, no longer matters. A man can powder his face, wear a dress, and call himself a queen, and no one will question it. The audience pays to see this spectacle, to believe in this reality for an hour, to forget about the “male bodies beneath the skirts” (Bulman). As playwright Tony Kushner states, there is something inherent in the “extended make- believe and donning of roles” that queer people find attractive, as it is in some ways a reflection of the day-to-day reality of living in the closet. The stage, being a smaller, more private artistic realm than film, lent itself well to be a safe space for expression, and exploration of more challenging themes. Film, it could be argued, was too new an invention to be fully trusted by the authorities, and its messages reached a mass audience. Tennessee Williams, himself a gay man, was one of the loudest voices in theater at the time bringing up discussions of sexuality. However, Williams did not seem hard-pressed to pen a “gay play,” as he believed such themes would not reach a mass audience. This was also a reflection of his personal belief as a writer that “never…does the sexual activity of a person provide the story with its true inner substance,” despite his frequent tendency to employ sexuality as a story element, as a means of portraying reality with the utmost frankness (Fisher). However, it wasn’t only personal inclination that kept Williams’ homosexual themes subdued. The 1940’s and ‘50’s were still a suffocating time for the queer community, and when the dreaded homosexual character showed himself onstage, he (and it was almost always he) was little but a mincing stereotype, or at best, a bundle of well-justified misery. It’s hardly a coincidence that Williams’ “sexually driven” characters, queer subtext included, often lead troubled lives, and left audiences scandalized. It would still be some time before the queer community had fully wrung out all the angst it had bottled up, and expressed itself in plays such Cox 5 as The Boys in the Band (1968), which concludes with its self-loathing lead character having a panic attack, torn in two over his conflict against his own sexuality. The representation of the queer community in theater, from the ‘60’s to the ‘80’s, could be compared to similar “issue” plays, where at best, the examination and defense of queerness itself was the main theme. At the height of the AIDS crisis, however, these appeals to the public to recognize the fellow humanity of queer people were not only necessary, but crucial for survival (Fisher). In any case, Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof does not seek to make much of a case for the normalizing of homosexuality. It’s quite possible that there aren’t even any queer characters in it (besides Big Daddy’s friends). The entire question is left ambiguous—and this is intentional on Williams’ part. For Williams, again, the “inner substance” of a character lay deeper than any kind of sexuality (Fisher). If Cat holds a place in the niche of queer fiction, it fits comfortably next to The Well of Loneliness and The Boys in the Band as a sobering exploration of homophobia, self-loathing, and sexual confusion as it relates to queer people.

Load more