4th Annual WML Academic Symposium

My paper examines and sheds light on how homosexuals have been portrayed in American film from the 1950s to the present. In particular, they were initially depicted as weak, perverted, conniving individuals in the 1950s and 1960s, but over time, homosexuals were depicted in a more positive light by the late twentieth century. This paper seeks to understand how and why this change came about and finds it was the result of several factors: major political and social influences taking place in America, such as McCarthyism, the Sexual Revolution, and New Queer Cinema; changing film production codes; and the actions of homosexuals. For this paper, the films Suddenly, Last Summer; The Children’s Hour; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Cruising; The Incredible Adventure of Two Girls in Love; and Brokeback Mountain will be examined to illustrate these changes.