Anti gay movies 1940w
French poster for 1931’s Madchen in Uniform (btw this is one of my favourite images of all time, just in general)
I find that a lot of people are interested in classic film in theory, or in memory - there might be a remembered fondness for films seen in childhood, or some curiosity about certain names and titles - but that they often struggle to come across an accessible, relatable starting point for appreciating and understanding the pre-1970s clip landscape. This was me about three years ago - and my magic starting point ended up being 1931’s Madchen in Uniform, a work which made me reconsider everything I thought I knew about the past, lgbtq+ representation, women, and also gay representation and women in the past. It led me headfirst into the American Pre-Code period, introduced me to the next 40 years of German cinema, and assured me that there was a place for people like me in a field I had initially assumed to be irretrievably male.
Hopefully if you’re also a lesbian or a bisexual woman interested in learning more about cinema, this series of articles might help you locate your own route that speaks to you. Movie history is a very beautiful shining castle that constant
The Historians' Case Against Lgbtq+ Discrimination
Amici, as historians, do not propose to offer the Court legal doctrine to justify a holding that the Texas Homosexual Actions Law violates the U.S. Constitution. Rather, amici trust they can best work the Court by elaborating on two historical propositions important to the legal analysis: (1) no consistent historical practice singles out same-sex behavior as “sodomy” subject to proscription, and (2) the governmental policy of classifying and discriminating against certain citizens on the basis of their homosexual status is an unprecedented project of the twentieth century, which is already being dismantled. The Texas law at issue is an example of such irrational discrimination.
In colonial America, regulation of non-procreative sexual practices – law that carried harsh penalties but was rarely enforced – stemmed from Christian religious teachings and reflected the need for procreative sex to increase the population. Colonial
Forbidden love: The WW2 letters between two men
But was this a love story with a cheerful ending?
Probably not. At one point, Mr Bradley was sent to Scotland on a mission to defend the Forth Bridge. He met and fell in love with two other men. Rather surprisingly, he wrote and told Mr Bowsher all about his romances north of the border. Perhaps even more surprisingly, Mr Bowsher took it all in his stride, writing that he "understood why they fell in treasure with you. After all, so did I".
Although the couple wrote throughout the war, the letters stopped in 1945.
However, both went on to appreciate interesting lives.
Mr Bowsher moved to California and became a well-known horse trainer. In a strange twist, he employed Sirhan Sirhan, who would go on to be convicted of assassinating Robert Kennedy.
Mr Bradley was briefly entangled with the MP Sir Paul Latham, who was imprisoned in 1941 following a court martial for "improper conduct" with three gunners and a civilian. Sir Paul was exposed after some "indiscreet letters" were discovered.
Mr Bradley moved to Brighton and died in 2008. A house clearance organization found the letters and sold them to a dealer specia
Erotic and Esoteric: The Uninvited as Homosexual Cult Film
Guest publish by Caleb Allison.
Paramount’s erotic and atmospheric ghost story The Uninvited (Lewis Allen, 1944) sets up a salacious mystery before one sees even a free frame of the film. Who, exactly, is being uninvited and from what? Turning the film’s simple yet provocative title into an interrogative proposition leads us down a tortuous historical route linked to gender non-conforming representation, the National Legion of Decency, and staunchly religious censorship codes. Posed as a interrogate of representation, The Uninvited(?) reveals a subterranean cinematic system of coded gestures, suggestive framing, and vague phrases that hint, sometimes not so subtly, at a queer presence. However concealed and coded these devices may have been, they offered sustenance to an underground queer audience adept at searching the margins of the frame, reading between the lines, and digging under the text.
The Uninvited is a powerful example of a critically praised ghost story that became an underground lesbian cult film. Drawing explicitly from the popularity of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), The Uninvited turned Hitchcock’s ghostly a
I’ve been meaning to inscribe a blog post on this topic ever since The FitzOsbornes in Exile was first published in North America (that is, two years ago, which says something about my blogging habits). I don’t want to give away any plot spoilers to those who haven’t study the book, but let’s just say that it’s set in the delayed 1930s, in England, and that at least one male character is homosexual. A surprising number of readers seemed to presume that any well-brought-up childish lady of this day and place would own been shocked, horrified and outraged at the very idea of homosexuality, and that all gay men were shunned by Population and were in steady danger of being carted off to prison, à la Oscar Wilde. So, there were a number of comments from readers about how ‘implausible’ it was that Sophie and Veronica, the two fresh ladies at the centre of the story, would be so accepting of their gay male relative.
Now, it’s true that any kind of sexual exercise between men was illegal in England between 1885 and 1967, but it’s also true that these laws were applied very selectively. In general, affluent, aristocratic men were free to do whatever th