Queer Western Movies
Leida
At Cannes audiences finally got to see his take on the gay cowboy movie: a 31-minute movie about a sheriff named Jake (Ethan Hawke) and a cowboy named Silva (Pedro Pascal) who, 25 years after a love affair, reunite in the desert under mysterious circumstances. Director Almodvar takes the language of this exceptionally virile genre and uses it to compose an absolutely rapturous queer drama along the lines of what Nicholas Ray did in Johnny Guitar (1954).
Despite not being considered a classic western, it takes place in the scorching Nevada desert in 1959. This adaptation of the novel by Jane Rule centers on a blossoming lesbian romance between a professor at Columbia University (Helen Shaver), that arrives in Reno intending to establish temporary residency in the state so that she can obtain a quickie divorce, and a defiant drifter (Patricia Charbonneau) whose only crime is being a lesbian in the 1950s. A new frontier for the representation of lesbian love onscreen.
Like Brokeback Mountain, Jane Campions stirring western uses myth-like cowboy bravado to comment on toxic masculinity. Phil Burbank (steely played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is actually a closeted homosexual. He masks his unorthodox sexual orientation with a rough and tough appearance to throw off anyone who might suspect otherwise.
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The Wild West, according to Hollywood, is a sun-scorched place of isolation and passion. Cowboys wander on horseback, some faster than others when sending bullets out from their guns. Strange Way of Life, a new short by director Pedro Almodvar, brings Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal together as cowboys and ex-lovers who confront their past and their present. The premise can make audiences think back to Brokeback Mountain, which forces two men apart, allowing them to escape and embrace in limited retreats. However, not even this movie introduced queerness with cowboys. Westerns indulge in homosocial environments where women are hardly allowed into the close bonds the men have with each other. While the Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal epic romance made subtext finally text, there is a history of queerness in the movies about the Wild West, from black-and-white oldies to erotic tales of free love, and everything in between.
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One of the classic examples of homoeroticism in western film comes in Red River (1948), where two cowboy characters, Cherry Valance (John Ireland) and Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift) engage in a little firearm measuring contest, if you will.
Senior editor Mel Woods is an English-speaking Vancouver-based writer and audio producer and a former associate editor with HuffPost Canada. A proud prairie queer and ranch dressing expert, their work has also appeared in Vice, Slate, the Tyee, the CBC, the Globe and Mail and the Walrus.
Growing up in India, homosexuality was treated like a mysterious foreign disease. Even in the mid 90s, it was not something to be discussed among polite company. When it was, it was whispered about as a shameful, isolating thing.
Like many closeted teenage boys, I sought out anything I could to better understand the life that was possible for a gay person like me. Before widespread internet access, that meant searching for subtext in the limited selection of movies available at our local library in Madras (now Chennai). Suffice to say, the pickings were slim. Or grim.
For the most part, the gay men I saw in the Western films available to me were white and either American or British. Generally, they were very good-looking, and served as eye-candy. Some were exaggeratedly promiscuous, others nearly virginal. Some found love; more often, they lost it.
As a South Asian, I never felt included in the conversation. We didn't have out gay celebrities or gay characters in Indian media, so I kept searching these foreign films for some sense of representation, of belonging. It seemed impossible to find a character or plot line to which I could really relate.
That all changed the day I stumbled upon a VHS tape of My Beautiful Laundrette in the library's drama section. I remember how the cover set my gaydar on fire: a simple shot of two men in front of a laundromat, one white, the other brown. They stared out at me, and I knew that this movie would be different. I smuggled it home in my backpack.
Set in Thatcher-era England, the 1985 film follows Omar, a young man of Pakistani descent, navigating the expected duties of his family and their launderette business while dealing with constant harassment from a gang of racist white thugs.
In a scene in an alley, after putting aside their differences, they discuss the possibility of teaming up to make the launderette more successful. Then, suddenly, Johnny pulls Omar toward him and delivers a deep kiss. Omar returns the kiss with both passion and familiarity. They fade back into the darkness, wrapped in each other.
The film itself was no box-office smash. Despite near-universal critical praise and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, to this day, many of my friends have never heard of it. But even a supposedly dismissible piece of cinema can have a huge impact on the world beyond the audiences it was made for.
Think of Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet, in which a gay Chinese man struggles to choose between the male partner he loves and the family he must honor. Or Yossi and Jagger, where an unexpected romance blooms between two male soldiers amid the bloodshed on the Israel-Lebanon border.
India ultimately joined the fray with the 1996 Indo-Canadian English-language film Fire, in which two women in unhappy marriages find solace in a forbidden love. It was lauded internationally and banned locally; I still remember watching news clips of riots outside movie theaters that dared to screen such a blasphemous film. There's no doubt that for all the controversy it caused, the film must have stirred within a generation of young, queer Indian women the same things I felt when I first saw Omar and Johnny embrace.
On television, diverse queer storylines abound. Orange Is the New Black and Transparent feature positive portrayals of transgender and queer women of color. How To Get Away With Murder features a gay Asian man in a loving relationship who gets diagnosed with HIV. A slew of LGBTQ characters of color feature on a number of popular shows today, from silly (Broad City, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) to serious (American Odyssey, The Good Wife, Empire).
For every Tangerine or Viva that dominates the indie and foreign film circuit comes another whitewashed rehash of queer history, like Stonewall, or pandering attempt at inclusiveness with a mostly straight, white cast, like Jenny's Wedding.
The thumbnails in Netflix's LGBT section primarily show pretty white boys and girls in various states of undress and embrace. It reminds me of when I went to my first Virgin Records in Times Square, not far into the new millennium, and gleefully beelined to the Gay and Lesbian DVD shelf.
That day, I actually ended up buying a copy of My Beautiful Laundrette. I still have it. And even now, years after coming out and after having fallen in love several times over, when that scene in the alley comes up, I hold my breath and feel once again like I'm part of the story.
Leave a comment about your favorite queer historical figure and be entered to win an advance copy of THE BEST BAD THINGS! Three readers will be randomly selected to receive copies of the book. Comment by Monday, September 10, to be entered to win.
Katrina is queer, Latinx, and embracing her futch-ness in 2018. She lives in Seattle with her two dogs. Some of her favorite things are jellybeans, the beach, weightlifting, eyeliner, dad jokes, and impromptu dance parties. Her debut novel THE BEST BAD THINGS will be released this Fall. The book follows Alma Rosales, a queer woman and ex-Pinkerton detective, as she switches between female and male disguises to investigate an opium-smuggling ring. Come say hi and talk about books, sports, or your favorite jellybean flavor at Katrina's website or on Twitter!
100% percent here for this book. A couple of years ago I went to see a movie highly billed as a feminist western (The Homesman) and was so pissed to discover that it was anything but (as is the norm with Westerns), so I welcome and look forward to an entry into this genre by a member of the community. Let us know where we can find it when the time comes!
Actual Real Life Queer Outlaw of the American West: One-Eyed Charley Parkhurst. Ran away from an orphanage aged 12, and went on to develop a reputation as one of the finest stage coach drivers on the West Coast (a very dangerous job involving fending off coyotes and bandits and driving incredibly narrow and difficult paths). He lost the use of an eye after being kicked by a horse.
Wow this sounds like a great read! My fav queer historical figure is definitely Zhang Bao, the bisexual adopted son and lover of legendary pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao (aka Cheng Shih) who terrorized the Qing Dynasty and defeated both the Portuguese and British navies.
National Anthem, a new western film by director Luke Gilford, will explore the niche but exciting world of queer rodeo in an attempt to reclaim patriotism for those at the margins of American culture.
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