The Sheila Variations

thank you

OMG, you're so right about the David Wayne character. Self-loathing queer, top shelf, played with so much venom you want to crush him into the mahogany. His witty repartee during the playing of Adam and Amanda's home movies is unfunny, loud, bitter, acidic bullets of hate. Is this about David Wayne accurately portraying a nauseating stereotype, or about David Wayne's self-loathing at having to play a sissy?

I used to like this movie, and it's still amusing, but now all the arguing gets me down, and Kate's tears, and at the bottom of the pit is this queer viper. Now my favorite part of the movie is the titles.

Stevie -

I have a million thoughts about that performance. Mitchell and I have discussed it before. What is completely left out of that character is any sense of humanity, or warmth. Now I don't think that gay people should only play admirable people - but ... something more vicious is going on in that David Wayne portrayal than in other gay moments in early cinema. I see it as a repository for a community's hatred and fear.

He is a nauseating stereotype - but he's also kind of malevolent. You're right - you want to do violence to him. And we are meant to feel that way - we are ALL meant to feel violently towards him.

I don't know. I'm friends with lots of gay men, who are queeny, campy, outrageous - but you know what they ALL have? WARMTH. Those divas are some of the warmest funnest lovingest people I know.

Again - not that gay people don't come in all varieties, like the rest of us ... but the David Wayne character makes me uncomfortable. The camera itself is mocking him, refuses to take him seriously. It's like the way blacks used to be portrayed as well - the camera itself was racist.

ah whatever, I'm going on too long.

I remember loving that movie - but I guess when I had first seen it, in high school, I didn't pick up on this hostile vicious undercurrent. When I saw it again recently, I found it difficult to tolerate - because of that "queer viper". It's hatred - bald-faced hatred, and I just can't stand it.

Indeed. Well said, Sheila. Thank you.

It is a relic, though, that performance belongs in some scary queer history museum. Sooo interesting what you say about hatred, Sheila, with self-hatred being one of the most poisonous. And to the extent that haters breed self-hatred . . . to paraphrase FDR, "We have nothing to hate except hate itself."

I'm sure you've seen The Celluloid Closet, Stevie? Yes, indeed - you're right. It is a relic.

Was David Wayne himself gay? Do we know? Or was he telegraphing to the audience, with his mean mean performance, "I'm not like this!!"

I can't help but think that there was some decision on an upper level to have him play it that way. This is a hyperbolic analogy, but it reminds me of those old propaganda films the Nazis made about why the Jews were to be feared and mistrusted. It feels like sponsored propaganda to me.

I might be being paranoid. Racist portrayals of black people didn't come down through a memo: "Okay, remember to make all black people into stereotypes!" It was knee-jerk, it was the unspeakable, it was the elephant in the corner of the room. So maybe it was unconscious - but still, I think David Wayne's performance stands out as particularly hateful - like something else was going on there.

And let's not forget that George Cukor himself was gay - and openly so, I believe - at a time when that was rare. So maybe he was letting out some of his self-hatred?

Yes, from what I understand about Cukor, he certainly was his generation's stereotypical self-hating queer, albiet a supremely talented and successful one. Scorned by jeering macho shithead straight directors with a tenth of his talent, Cukor was very well aware of his marginalization and was quick with the criticism (and the self-deprecating gay-fat-jew triple punch). His Sunday afternoon salons by the pool in Hollywood were regularly attended by Cecil Beaton, Hepburn, Clifton Webb (and his mother), and a host of others, literally a galaxy of talented queers. And STILL, the horrible self-hating, not-really-a-person viper gets written, performed and directed to be that way. Awesome, as in Grand Canyonesque, to imagine the atmosphere around that, and at the same time, Cukor's directing Tracy & Hepburn in a story written by Garson Kanin & Ruth Gordon.

Honestly, I look at this list of names and I think, "They're all creative types from the theater - some of them gay - surely they didn't share the contempt for queers that society in general had, or was the prejudice so accepted that everyone just went along with it?" I feel bewildered that Hepburn didn't speak out, say, "George, now, c'mon, there's no need for all this about that!" or that Tracy would have said, "Yeah, George, you don't have to hate yourself anymore -- stop taking it out on that character."

Stevie - this is probably a really silly question, but have you seen Gods and Monsters? That movie really portrays that world so well, I think. And I think Cukor is in it, isn't he? Is it his party that Wale and the pool-boy go to?

I know - it's hard to imagine that no one would take offense and speak up, but I suppose that that's just me projecting my modern sensibility backwards onto them, which isn't quite fair.

Cukor's a genius. He directed some of my favorite films ever.

Gods and Monsters was great. (Brendan Fraser, WOOF!) Yes, I think you're right - it was Cukor's party. Thank God we're getting to a place where queers don't have to hate themselves, regardless of whether they're hated or beloved or accepted by others.

Institutionalized hatred, all-pervasive, toward queers, minorities, immigrants and jews was a sad fact of the Hollywood studio system during the 30's, 40's and 50's. I don't believe any studio escaped it. Most of the studios at the time were headed by Jewish immigrants, sitting in thrall to (and looking down upon, or even hating) the talented queers and minorities who could generate the product that would make them money. And the queers and minorities, already marinating in society's disdain and marginalization, stew in their bitter self-contempt, then lash out around them.

Honestly, I'm not overstating it. It's the classic vicious cycle, a tornado of hate.

it makes me sad.

i really enjoyed reading your interchange...bravo and brava!