Extra Credit: A paper analyzing a book on gays/lesbians/bisexuals or by a gay or lesbian or bisexual person.The book report should give a summary of the book that gives an idea what the content, main theses, etc. of the book are. Your analysis should discuss the relevance of the book to course issues and themes. Think of it as follows: You have read the book and have been asked to evaluate its relevance to and possible use in the "Gay & Lesbian Philosophy" course OR its value as a book for recommending as "Suggested Readings" to (a) queer students in the course, (b) non-queer students seeking to understand gay/lesbian culture, institution, ideas, issues, etc. You should give reasons for your evaluation. As to length: in most cases 3-4 pages should be sufficient.
Study Guide for Watching the Film, "Before Stonewall";
Before Stonewall (1985)
[Notes taken from the Internet Data Base.]
Directed by
Robert Rosenberg
John Scagliotti
Genre: Documentary
User Rating: [*][*][*][*][*][*][*][*] 8.1/10 (13 votes)
User Comments: Not just for a gay audience. (more)
Cast (in alphabetical order)
Rita Mae Brown .... Narrator
Directed by
Robert Rosenberg (co-director)
John Scagliotti
Greta Schiller
Cinematography by
Jan Kraepelin
Sandi Sissel
Cathy Zheutlin
Film Editing by
Bill Daughton
Sound Department
Anne Marie Forte .... additional sound
Peter Friedman (II).... additional sound
Beni Matias .... additional sound
Roy Ramsing .... sound
Dean Sarjeant .... additional sound
Lori Seligman .... sound
J.T. Tagaki .... sound
Other crew
Anne Alexander .... assistant to producer
Nan Allendorfer .... additional researcher
John Bauman (II) .... opticals
Damian Begley .... additional assistant editor
Zane Blaney .... additional researcher
Becky Butler (I) .... assistant camera
Amy Chen .... production co-ordinator
Michelle Cliff .... historical consultant
Mindy Cohen .... assistant to producer
Blance Cook .... historical consultant
John D'Emilio .... historical consultant
Hillary Dann .... archival research consultant
Deborah Edel .... historical consultant
Neil Elliot (I) .... additional researcher
Bruce Eves .... historical consultant
Jeff Farber .... additional camera
Peter Friedman (II) .... assistant camera
Jeff Goodman (II) .... additional researcher
Chaudia Gorbman .... additional researcher
Erica Gottfried .... archival research consultant
Katherine Grant-Bourne .... unit manager
Janie Groff .... additional researcher
John Hammond (III) .... historical consultant
Larry Harne .... additional researcher
Jauren Helf .... opticals
Amy Kato .... unit manager
Jim Kepner .... historical consultant
Jeff Lunger .... assistant to producer
Toby Maretta .... historical consultant
Pat Mei .... unit manager
Nancy Miller (I) .... personal collections co-ordinator
Jean Nestle .... historical consultant
Carroll Oliver .... additional researcher
Judith Oney .... additional researcher
Julia Penelope .... historical consultant
Noëlle Penraat .... negative matches
Rosetta Reitz .... archival research consultant
Vito Russo .... archival research consultant
Deborah Sarjeant .... assistant camera
Greta Schiller .... additional camera
Tina Schiller .... unit manager
Judith Schwartz .... historical consultant
Paul Sergio .... additional researcher
Susan Sholji .... additional researcher
Elizabeth Stevens .... additional researcher
Jan Stott .... additional assistant editor
Christina Sunley .... assistant to producer
Jeff Tennyson .... head title design
Tom Waugh .... archival research consultant
Andrea Weiss .... archival research director
Sande Zeig .... additional researcher
Distributors
* Frameline
Also Known As:
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian
Community (1985)
Runtime: USA:87
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Sound Mix: Mono
Certification: UK:15
---------------------------------------------------
Viewer Comment
Summary: Not just for a gay audience.
This informative and enlightening documentary examines how gay people lived and supported and recognized each other in the days before the landmark disturbance at the Stonewall bar in New York in 1969, an event that gave new impetus to the gay rights movement in the U.S.
It features many brave individuals who risked life and limb back in
the "dark ages" by even broaching the subject of homosexuality in the open.
Many viewers will find revelations here that are fascinating, for example
how World War II, of all things, served to end the isolation felt by many
gays who fought and served back then. It deserves a wide audience.
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The following information is taken from the Internet Data Base (http://us.imdb.com/) where most names of persons and films are active links:
The Celluloid Closet (1995)
USA 1995 Black and White / Color 8.6/10 (45 votes)
Produced by: Brillstein-Grey Entertainment / Channel Four (UK) / Home Box Office (HBO) / ARTE / Sony Pictures Classics / Telling Pictures / Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF)
Sound Mix: Dolby
Genre/keyword: Documentary / gay / movies
Language: English
Certification: USA:R
Runtime: Germany:102 / UK:102 / USA:100
Directed by Robert Epstein Jeffrey Friedman
Cast (in credits order) verified as complete
Lily Tomlin .... Narrator
rest of cast listed alphabetically
Jay Presson Allen .... Interviewee
Joseph Breen .... Interviewee
Susie Bright .... Interviewee
Quentin Crisp .... Interviewee
Mart Crowley .... Interviewee
Tony Curtis .... Interviewee
Richard Dyer .... Interviewee
Antonio Fargas .... Interviewee
Harvey Fierstein .... Interviewee
Whoopi Goldberg .... Interviewee
Farley Granger .... Interviewee
Harry Hamlin .... Interviewee
Tom Hanks .... Interviewee
Arthur Laurents .... Interviewee
Shirley MacLaine .... Interviewee
Armistead Maupin .... Interviewee
Daniel Melnick .... Interviewee J
an Oxenberg .... Interviewee
Paul Rudnick .... Interviewee
Barry Sandler .... Interviewee
Susan Sarandon .... Interviewee
John Schlesinger .... Interviewee
Stewart Stern .... Interviewee
Gore Vidal .... Interviewee
Written by Robert Epstein Jeffrey Friedman Armistead Maupin Vito Russo (book) Sharon Wood
Cinematography by Nancy Schreiber
Music by Carter Burwell
Production Design by Scott Chambliss
Film Editing by Jeffrey Friedman Arnold Glassman
Produced by Wendy Braitman (associate) Bernie Brillstein (executive) Michael Ehrenzweig (associate) Robert Epstein Jeffrey Friedman Brad Grey (executive) Michael Lumpkin (co-producer) Caryn Mendez (associate) Howard Rosenman (executive)
Other crew Chris Laurence (make-up) Pegi Levin (make-up) Lauretta Molitor (sound) Peggy Names (sound) Natasha (make-up) Jan Oxenberg (creative consultant) Wendy Jill York (make-up)
Links with other movies
features Wings (1927)
Broadway Melody, The (1929)
Manslaughter (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Call Her Savage (1932)
Soilers, The (1932)
Their First Mistake (1932)
Dancing Lady (1933)
Ladies They Talk About (1933)
Our Betters (1933)
Queen Christina (1933)
Gay Divorcee, The (1934)
Myrt and Marge (1934)
Tarzan and His Mate (1934)
Wonder Bar (1934)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Top Hat (1935)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Rebecca (1940)
Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
Lost Weekend, The (1945)
Gilda (1946)
Crossfire (1947)
Red River (1948)
Rope (1948)
Caged (1950)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Young Man with a Horn (1950)
Calamity Jane (1953)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Tea and Sympathy (1956)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Ben-Hur (1959)
Pillow Talk (1959)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
Spartacus (1960)
Children's Hour, The (1961)
Lover Come Back (1961)
Victim (1961)
Advise and Consent (1962)
Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
Detective, The (1968)
Fox, The (1968)
Killing of Sister George, The (1968)
Sergeant, The (1968)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Boys in the Band, The (1970)
Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971)
Vanishing Point (1971)
Cabaret (1972)
Freebie and the Bean (1974)
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
Car Wash (1976)
Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976)
Cage aux folles, La (1978)
Midnight Express (1978)
North Dallas Forty (1979)
Cruising (1980)
Fame (1980)
My Bodyguard (1980)
Windows (1980)
Continental Divide (1981)
Fan, The (1981)
48 HRS. (1982)
Making Love (1982)
Night Shift (1982)
Officer and a Gentleman, An (1982)
Partners (1982)
Personal Best (1982)
Victor/Victoria (1982)
Hunger, The (1983)
Lianna (1983)
Silkwood (1983)
Another Country (1984)
Repo Man (1984)
Color Purple, The (1985)
Desert Hearts (1985)
Heaven Help Us (1985)
Teen Wolf (1985)
My Beautiful Laundrette (1986)
Parting Glances (1986)
Chocolate War, The (1988)
Hairspray (1988)
Torch Song Trilogy (1988)
Dream a Little Dream (1989)
Heathers (1989)
Longtime Companion (1990)
Wild at Heart (1990)
Edward II (1991)
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1991)
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Poison (1991)
Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Basic Instinct (1992)
Crying Game, The (1992)
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Hours and Times, The (1992)
Living End, The (1992)
Mo' Money (1992)
Swoon (1992)
Hsi Yen (1993)
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
Philadelphia (1993)
Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The (1994)
Go Fish (1994)
Boys on the Side (1995)
The following additional sites contain reviews or other information on The Celluloid Closet:
"the essence of camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And camp is esoteric - something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques." (Sontag, "Notes on Camp" in AGAINST INTERPRETATION, p. 275.) It's hallmark is "the spirit of exaggeration" "an outrageous aestheticism" "art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is `too much"."(pp. 293, 283, 284). Sontag tells us there are three great creative sensibilities: "The first sensibility, that of high culture, is basically moralistic. The second sensibility, that of extremes of feeling, represented in much contemporary `avant garde' art, gains power by a tension between moral and aesthetic passion. The third, Camp, is wholly aesthetic." (p. 287) "Style is everything. .... What counts, finally, is the style in which ideas are held. ... The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to `the serious.' One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious." (p. 288; Think here of "The Forgotten man" number in Gold Diggers of 1937)Yet not everybody who produces "Camp" is queer. For example, Busby Berkeley's sexuality is complex, weird, misogynist, and problematic; but the bulk of evidence suggests he probably was not homosexual.PARADIGM EXAMPLES OF CAMP: Classical ballet, opera, movies are saturated with Camp.. Exaggerated sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms of Jayne mansfield, Gina Lollobridgda, Jane Russell, Steve Reeves, Victor Mature, Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Mae West, Edward Evert Horton, Eric Blore Art Nouveau, Busby Berkeley Musical Numbers, the plays of Noel Coward, THE MALTESE FALCON.
"Camp is an invasion and subversion of other sensibilities, and works via parody, pastiche, and exaggeration." (Dollimore, p. 311). Camp thus is a transgressive aesthetic. And it has been alleged (by Sontag and others) to be essence of homosexual sensibility deployed transgressively. (cf., e.g., Dollimore, p. 310).
Susan Sontag writes that
"The pure examples of camp are unintentional; they are dead serious. .... Genuine Camp - for instance, the numbers devised for the Warner Brothers musicals of the early thirties (42nd Street; the Golddiggers of 1933; ... of 1935; /... of 1937; etc.) by Busby Berkeley - does not mean to be funny. ... It seems unlikely that much of the traditional opera repertoire could be such satisfying Camp if the melodramatic absurdities of most opera plots had not been taken seriously by their composers. One Doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all." ("Notes on Camp", p. 282 in her Against Interpretation.A Review in Images in the Dark writes
Musical comedies won't come any campier than this outrageously entertaining peek into the mindset of 1940s Americana. Alice Faye stars as a nightclub singer who is pursued by G. I. James Ellison. Their repartee - while amusing - is really imitation Astaire-Rogers. The real star of the film is the gloriously overblown dance numbers choreographed by director Busby Berkeley and performed by the legendary Carmin Miranda. The film's biggest production number, "The Girl in the Tutti Fruit Hat," makes "Springtime for Hitler" [from Mel Brooks The Producers look like a highlight from singing in the Rain. In it Miranda is adorned with baskets of fruit upon her head, and in a surreal sequence giant bananas come from all directions engulfing chorus girls and Miranda alike. ... This is an absolute don't-miss entry in the chapter of American camp." (p. 471)Question 1: In what ways does the film embody or exemplify the "Camp" Aesthetic. Why is it such an exceptional example of "Camp"?
B. Gay elements
This film was made under the Motion Picture Production Code (administered by the autocratic and arbitrary Hayes Office). Berkeley adhered to the letter of the Code and rarely fought them, but he transgressed the intent of the code every way he could. (This is the director who before the Production Code had a musical number of Nude women slaves in bondage with only artfully placed hair barely obscuring nipples and genitals and once did a production number of elaborate harps formed out of lightly draped women's bodies.) The Code prohibited portrayal of homosexuals, homosexual culture, homosexual practices, and homosexual stereotypes. Yet, Hollywood developed its surrogates for queers - fussy or fluttering or lisping (not yet a Gay stereotype) ridiculous character actors. Three of the most important were Franklin Pangborne, Eric Blore, and Edward Evert Horton - all of whom played the queer surrogate role in nearly every film they did. Thus Berkeley has cast one of the central figures of the Film, Peyton Potter, as a queer surrogate. So, too, Drag Queens couldn't be portrayed, but Hollywood found excuses for Heterosexual Men to go into drag with frequency. But often the Drag Queen role was replaced by women who were parodies of femininity and womanhood. Carmin Miranda is such a superb imitation of a Drag Queen (no matter what her film) that she has become a perennial favorite for Drag Queens to imitate. (Indeed, Mickey Rooney does a drag imitation of her in an earlier film of Busby Berkeley's.) Charlotte Greenwood normally plays the homely sidkick of, say, Betty Grable in musicals. But in The Gang's All Here she plays a rather different role - one that is almost a parody of femininity, of a successful glamorous woman with a disreputable past.
Question 2: Pay attention to how much gay innuendo, queer suggestiveness, etc. are built into the film. What parts of the film can be construed as portraying queer sensibilities or queer themes/ideas?
To do this look for such things as:
Question 3: Consider the extent to which one can interpret characters as queer and still make sense of the plot (such as it is).
For example: Can you construe Peyton Potter And A. J. mason (Sr.) as lovers living next door. Can you consider Dorita (Carmin Miranda) and Blossom (Charlotte Greenwood) as two drag queens (vying for Peyton Potter?)? Can you consider the blackmailable past of Phil Baker and Blossom as perhaps being some queer past in Paris (e.g, an act at a queer bistro with a drag Blossom)?
In considering this question, consider what portions of the film make more sense, what make less sense if under such "queer" interpretations. Don't expect to work everything into the interpretation - the film isn't that coherent under any interpretation. E.g., it is unclear why the finale number begins with dwarfs dancing, moves to polkadots which become neon hula hoops that turn into polka dot disks that chorus girls roll around, that then turn into Alice Faye who turns into a Kaleidoscope, and then become stars with the cast's singing heads protruding. No conventional logic makes sense of Berkely's production numbers, and to a considerable extent the plots are simply vehicles to tie production numbers together.
Point of the exercise: We are looking at how gay sensibility can be
transmitted in the face of sever restrictions portraying homosexuals and
homosexuality. This exercise in queer interpretation should help you see
how it is possible to disguise queer sensibility so that it comes through
to those in the know. [The question here is an exercise in interpretation,
and NOT determining whether in fact Berkeley self-consciously or deliberately
was disguising a queer story or what his intentions were.]
The following information about the specific performance you will be seeing was downloaded from Downloaded from: http://www.webcom.com/~mrichter/videoper.pdf
Peter Grimes Britten
Conductor: Davis
Company: Royal Opera
Grimes: Vickers
Ellen: Harper
Auntie: Bainbridge
Hobson: Tomlinson
Swallow: Robinson
Balstrode: Bailey
LaserDisc English Director: Vernon
Date: 30 June 1981
Evaluation: Outstanding PRODUCTION Murky but vivid live performance. Sets and costumes are unrelieved from dark grays and browns. Stage movement is absolutely natural, but very limited in accord with the demands of the score. Perspective places the viewer in an ideal seat in the house, peering into or participating in an almost intimate occurence. PERFORMANCES It is appropriate to compare this video reading with the composerÕs own audio recording. Neither is clearly preferable to the other. Davis is more precise, if somewhat less grand, than Britten. The audio-only orchestra lacks the precision but more fully realizes the intensity of the score. The choruses are both impeccable. VickersÕ Grimes is restrained at all times, bursting forth even at the climaxes with what is obviously only a fraction of his power; in contrast, Pears is always impassioned and near his limits. Harper is ideal as Ellen, where Watson offers marginally more power, but substantially less commitment. All other rôles are cast at least as well on the video as on the audio version. TECHNICAL COMMENTS Video is limited by the technology, but is consistent throughout with the atmosphere of the book and music. Audio might be more brilliant, but is again an ideal evocation of the scoreÕs warmth and richness, without sacrificing detail. Enunciation is sufficient so that one does not miss subtitles. © Michael Richter 1996
Recall that additional program notes can be obtained from links given
on the Audio Visual
Assignments page.
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Four Saints In Three Acts
No Formal study guide is provided. Read the information about the opera,
production, etc. in the Libretto for whichever version you listen to. Also
look at the lyrics as you listen (or before or afterwards). Finally, before
listening read pp. 194-197 of Koestenbaum's The Queens Throat. See
also the description in the Audio
Visual Assignments page.
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