Media Coverage of Gay Life Before and After the Stonewall Riots Bachelor ’S Diploma Thesis
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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Alexandra Stachurová Media Coverage of Gay Life Before and After the Stonewall Riots Bachelor ’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. 2009 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Alexandra Stachurová 2 Acknowledgement I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A., for useful advice, patience, and kindness. I would also like to thank my mother and sister for everlasting support. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………………..... 3 Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………... 4 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………5 1 The 1940s…………………………………………………………………………….7 2 The 1950s…………………………………………………………………................15 3 The 1960s……………………………………………………………………………25 4 The 1970s……………………………………………………………………………37 5 The 1980s……………………………………………………………………………44 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………......50 List of Works Cited……………………………………………………………………53 Introduction 4 As the title suggests, this B.A. thesis deals with the notions of gay people and their lives as presented by the media. The media create the way by which we perceive the world. We have our own opinions, but these are made of the information we get from the media. We may think differently of the things that are presented to us, but the basic notion of what is good and what is bad is often adopted from an official source. This thesis deals with gay people as depicted in the press, literature, radio broadcasts, television, film industry, and theatre. Each of these media has its own special means to catch the attention of an individual and deal with a certain problem. The press has been the most serious type of media. At the time of absence of television, the press was the only kind of media that supplied complete and independent information and shaped the opinions of its readers. Even in later years, the press remained the most serious medium and the medium used for political and medical acknowledgements. Literature may not be a factual medium, but it can offer the readers a subjective and intimate look on completely unfamiliar spheres of life. Because it does not have to be objective and unemotional, it can gain the sympathy of the readers in a more personal way. Television is the massest of the mass media. Daily watched by millions of people, it has the greatest influence on perception of every single event. What is not shown on television does not have to reach the audience at all. Television is the most important tool in manipulation and interaction with the general public. Films and theatre present a reality adjusted to the official standpoints as well as the demands of their viewers. Their depiction of good and bad actions and characters exhorts the viewers to accept what is shown, and thus they shape the viewers’s perception of the surrounding world. 5 This thesis explores the depiction of gay people in the media during five decades of the twentieth century as well as the changes in such descriptions, and it deals with the differences in the ways of the coverage of various media. It also attempts to create a general view of the presence of gay people in the media in fifty years. 6 1. The 1940s The 1930s and 1940s represented a great change for gay world. The 1920s and years of the Prohibition helped flourish gay cluture and its visibility to the non-gay world. Many large cities like New York, London, or Berlin had an expanding gay community. 1 It did not take a long time and actions were taken to isolate gay people from public life. Hostility towards gay people became a part of official campaigns. First, drag balls were suppressed in the 1930. After that, Hollywood production had to adapt itself to the demands of censorship and avoid any indication of homosexuality in films. Bars, pubs, restaurants and clubs were forbidden not only to employ gay workers, but serve gay customers as well. Police raided known meeting and cruising places like bars, clubs, pubs, parks, and public lavatories and arrested hundreds of gay men. 2 The media (mainly the press) reacted to the change as well and quit describing gowns of drag ball queens and lavish parties held by famous open gays. They switched and began to report only on crimes committed by homosexuals (breaking the sodomy law). This added a new dimension to tabloids who started printing the most scandalous stories of indecent behaviour, often supported with “clever-naughty headlines” 3 like “Fag Balls Exposed.” Even the respectable newspapers like the New York Times mentioned only law suits and medical conclusions without attempting to start a serious discussion of the subject (by the way, the New York Times used the word homosexual on its front page for the first time as early as in 1926). This hunt for sensation resulted in creating a profile of a typical gay man which lasted till the Stonewall riots. The media created an image of a sexual predator, often seducing young boys, an effeminate man 1 Chauncey (1994: 1-12) 2 Chauncey (1994: 1-12) 3 Archer (1999: 111) 7 with a limp wrist and a mincing walk, rouged lips and a powedered face. General public adopted this notion unconditionally. 4 The media both offered reports on the sexual “perverts” and refused any sign of homosexuality outside the courtrooms and institutions. Anything that contained allusions to “abnormal” male behaviour was criticised hardly. This approach concerned mainly artistic spheres, as literature, theatre and film. When By Jupiter (authors Rodgers, Hart) opened in 1942, the reception was largely positive. In spite of the success the Herald Tribune criticised the humour sprung from allusions to homosexuality and considered it to be indecent and needless. Typically, it also compared the jokes of homosexuality to the humour of pre-Nazi Germany. These trends would continue for the next thirty years. 5 As charles Kaiser in his book The Gay Metropolis observes, “…any obvious gay reference on stage was quickly criticised by reviewers.” 6 However, if the signs of homosexuality were cleverly disguised, it was possible to make a film “replete with homosexual overtones.” 7 Alfred Hitchcocks’s 1948 thriller Rope about two psychopaths who murder a friend of theirs just for fun had no problem getting to the cinemas because the censors did not find out it was about gay people. 8 The suppression of homosexuality in cultural level did not apply to performances organized for soldiers during the World War II. A very popular entertainment of the soldiers in their free time was the drag shows. Owing to the lack of women in the army, the female roles were played by men. Army tolerated the apparent campness (Dwight David Eisenhower, then the supreme commander of Allied Forces in Europe, supported the shows officially) and the press was thus allowed to write about 4 Archer (1999: 111), Chauncey (1994: 1-12), Kaiser (1997: 19) 5 Kaiser (1997: 16-25) 6 Kaiser (1997: 16) 7 Kaiser (1997: 59) 8 Kaiser (1997: 59) 8 them in a positive way. The Herald Tribune (the same sheet that criticised gay jokes in Broadway’s musical By Jupiter – see above) found nothing wrong with men playing women and did not even miss women’s absence. Life produced an article called “Men in Khaki Take Over the Women” and praised the performance of the soldiers. 9 The first serious discussion about homosexuality in American newspapers arised from a case of murder that took place in Beekman Hill, Manhattan, in 1943. Canadian soldier Wayne Thomas Lonergan murdered his estranged wife Patricia Lonergan in her house. Tabloids vied with one another in describing the juiciest details of “one of Manhattan’s most celebrated homicides” 10 – Newsweek , the New York Post , the Journal-American and even the New York Times reported about Mr. Lonergan’s good looks, his imtimate relationship with Patricia’s deceased father and circumstances preceding the murder. Nevertheless, the description of the murder itself did not get in the reportages of the New York Times – the “unprintable details” 11 were omitted, although the readers avid for scandals could look them up in tabloids. 12 Lonergan’s sexual orientation soon became a front-page topic. As Kaiser aptly remarks, “a fiercely competitive press could no longer resist the temptation to discuss what had hitherto been unmentionable.” 13 The New York Times mentioned that Lonergan himself labelled himself as either a homosexual or a bisexual. The Journal- American printed an anonymous, but detailed article “Psychiatrists Give Views on Lonergan. Refer to History in Discussion of Character” which made a connection with typical opinions (only repeating all the known prejudices – describing homosexuals with such words as “vice, damage, social cancer, monster, unnatural, moral leper, 9 Kaiser (1997: 37-38) 10 Kaiser (1997: 19) 11 Kaiser (1997: 21) 12 Kaiser (1997: 19-21) 13 Kaiser (1997: 22) 9 pervert, degenerate, evil, unscrupulous, contemptuous of decent people, and sinister” 14 ). It depicted homosexuals as perverts (the ones who choose this) and sick people (the ones who cannot affect their desires). Time covered this topic shortly afterwards, giving the same arguments as the American-Journal .15 The Lonergan’s case and its coverage in the media certainly changed the image of homosexuals. After years when gay men were assumed to be effeminate artists or bohemians, clearly differentiated from “normal” men, Lonergan proved (and the media reported on it in detail) that even a masculine and handsome man, a soldier, who had sex with women as well, could be a homosexual. 16 Not only the general public, but also gay people who felt isolated were disoriented by the new pieces of information and interested in deeper understanding of the subject.