Building a Gay & Lesbian Film Collection
Gay & Lesbian film play a role in the course., and so I sought funding to build a film collection availabe for use in the "Gay & Lesbian Philosophy" course and by others in the UMCP community. My proposal for an Imprevement of Undergraduate Instruction award was successful, and $3,000 became available. (Funding came from the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Undergraduate Instruction, Arts & Humanities, and the Philosophy Department with $1000 in matching funds from the Non-Print Media Center at Hornbake.) The collection will be housed in the Hornbake Non-Print Media Center as a campus-wide resource. More recently a Diversity Initiative grant allowed enhancement of the collection. Non-Print Media has continued to strengthen the collection using its resources. The Collection contains both feature films and documentaries. We believe it now is the most comprehensive such collection in any American university or college.
The collection is being built with the cooperation, advice, support, and expertise of Allan C. Rough, (ar21@umail.umd.edu), Director of Non-Print Media Services, Hornbake, and Carleton L. Jackson (cj2@umail.umd.edu), Acquisition Librarian, Non-Print Media Services, Hornbake. Matching funds generously provided by the Non-Print Media Center have been crucial to the project. Campus-wide input has been and continues to be solicited in the film selection process.
The collection is available for use by all persons in the UMCP community. Instructors may check out films for class use or can schedule screenings in the Non-Print Media Services facility on the 4th floor of Hornbake. In some cases licensing agreements allow for public screening of films by campus groups and organizations. For more information e-mail nonprint@umail.umd.edu.
Frederick Suppe
Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher
301-405-5696
suppe@carnap.umd.edu
What follows are excerpts for the Undergraduate Improvement of Instruction Award that was funded. Proposal Category: New CORE Human Cultural Diversity Courses
1. The Place of Gay & Lesbian courses in the CORE Diversity Curriculum.
UMCP's commitment to cultural diversity receives its most fundamental statement in the campus Human Relations Code. Sexual Orientation minorities are among the Code's designated cultural diversity groups. The Lesbian/Gay community is a fully developed sub-culture having important cultural influence on the larger society. Yet courses dealing with Gays and Lesbians are noticeably absent from the CORE cultural diversity requirement courses. In Fall 1994 the Philosophy Department committed itself to developing and offering PHIL 407 "Gay & Lesbian Philosophy" as a new CORE Diversity offering. Prof. Frederick Suppe was given principal responsibility for developing the course, which was put forward for approval in late 1994. The course has been approved by VPAC and approval as a Diversity course offering is pending [now approved].
2. PHIL 407: Gay & Lesbian Philosophy
Since there are no other CORE Diversity courses dealing with sexual orientation minorities, the course deliberately has been designed to combine the role of (a) presently being the only CORE course in the UMCP curriculum exposing students to Gay and Lesbian cultures and their histories with (b) a focus on significant philosophical issues appropriate to a rigorous upper-level Philosophy course.
To these ends the course is organized around several axes: (i) The history of gays in 20th Century America, focusing on the changing but often repressive social circumstances gays and lesbians have faced. (ii) Examination of the ontological thesis made prominent by Foucault that homosexuality is a social construct rather than an independent essence. Differing views on, and the epistemological implications of, this controversial thesis will be examined. But the thesis is an instance of a much more general thesis of social constructivism as a replacement for essentialist notions of objectivity and associated epistemologies. Thus the course constitutes a sustained philosophical case-study examination of these overarching social constructivist ontological and epistemological theses.
Within these two organizing axes, the course has three main overarching foci: (a) To expose students to the history, subculture, status, treatment, and accomplishments of gays and lesbians, including an appreciation of the distinctive contributions gays and lesbians have made to the larger heterosexual cultural milieu. (b) To examine philosophical issues surrounding gays and lesbians in our culture. These include the ontological status of homosexuality and of gay and lesbian identities; the epistemologies of stereotyping and of the closet; philosophies of sexual dissidence; social dimensions of knowledge including the role of subcultures; the objectivity of psychiatric classifications of sexual disorders; hermeneutical aspects of religious condemnation of homosexuality; issues of social justice raised by gay liberation and AIDS; and the extent to which the gay/lesbian subculture can serve as a role model for the moral and aesthetic improvement of the dominant heterosexual culture. (c) To explore implications of the social constructivist thesis such as whether acceptance of gays and lesbians threatens the continuation of distinctive gay and lesbian subcultures and identities and whether such "mainstreaming" is worth the resulting loss in diversity and associated costs to either gays and lesbians or the larger society.
3. Social Contructivism
These issues come together in question whether there is a special "queer" sensibility possessed by gays and lesbians that have enabled them to be unusually gifted in various artistic and literary venues. Objectively a disproportionate number of significant playwrights and screenwriters, actors and actresses, motion picture and theater producers and directors, composers, and entertainers belong to sexual-orientation minorities. (This is not to minimize the outstanding contributions of gays and lesbians to diverse other fields including mathematical logic, philosophy, and diverse sciences.) An entire literature, spawned by Susan Sontag's influential essay, "Notes on Camp," has grappled with the existence of such a "queer" sensibility and-if it exists-to articulate just what it is. Any examination of the thesis of a "queer sensibility" has come to focus on issues of "camp."
From the perspective of social constructivist issues, one immediately faces the question whether this supposed "queer sensibility" is socially constructed. And if so, by whom. Is it an artifact of the history of marginalization of gays and lesbians in American culture? Is it the case that exceptionally talented gays and lesbians have gravitated to fields where there is greater tolerance for them? Or is it the case that the dominant heterosexual society has projected artistic stereotypes onto gays and mannish ones onto lesbians that have led gays and lesbians to define themselves in terms of these stereotypes and conform accordingly-as is predicted by the sociological Labeling Theory of Goffman and others which claims that persons labeled as deviant will conform to the expectations of the label and that the dominant society will judge and interpret their behavior through the lens of that labeling?
There is a close connection between labeling and stereotyping. This century film and television have been among the most effective vehicles for labeling and stereotyping-and also for revising or changing stereotypical expectations. The establishment of the Hayes Motion Picture Standards Office in the 1930s had profound effects on the stereotyping and social construction of homosexuality. For over 25 years the Hayes office forbade the overt portrayal of anybody on the screen as homosexual. Large numbers of plays whose dramatic force derived from one or more character being gay, lesbian, or bisexual were transformed into dramatically incoherent heterosexualized scripts. (Thus many of Tennessee Williams plays, Lawrence of Arabia, Harold & Maud, The Children's Hour, and the like have the psychodynamics of their dramatic cores obscured by the refusal to acknowledge the driving sexual-orientation dynamics.) In their stead emerged stylized asexual effeminate homosexual-surrogate stereotypes such as portrayed by Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore; heterosexualized yet mannish portrayals such as Garbo, Bankhead, Barbara Stanwick, and Maggie Smith; and transvestite roles.
After the elimination of the Hayes Office, Hollywood became more cautiously adventurous in the portrayal of gays and Lesbians. But twenty-five years of censorship resulting in near total-total elimination of believable gay and lesbian characters had created an easily shocked sensibility in American audiences, and so Hollywood was especially cautious in its gradual acknowledgment that gays and lesbians existed-preferring to portray gays and lesbians as psychopaths, killers, unhappy unfulfilled self-hating persons, or serial killers. Gradually more healthy and representative portraits of gays and lesbians are found in film. But the leadership is not with Hollywood. Rather it was independent film makers, foreign film makers, and to a considerable degree Canadian, British-and even American TV-that exerted leadership. Increasingly we find such film makers and TV productions becoming a force for the social reconstruction of homosexuality and homosexuals. Especially important here is a rich genre of dramatic works dealing with AIDS.
4. The Role of Films in PHIL 407- "Gay and Lesbian Philosophy"
Philosophy 407 examines social constructivist issues surrounding gays and lesbians in historical context. One source of historical background and evidence is the written historical record-in books and articles. But given the central role of visual media in the 20th C social construction of homosexuality, examination of these sources is crucial. In particular films make stages and episodes in this social constructivist history come alive in a manner no written account can. Thus the use of videos become central to the course addressing Diversity concerns. For judiciously chosen films (such as The Naked Civil Servant for the 30s and 40s) effectively bring to life the realities of the gay and lesbian history students read about.
Other films (such as the important but homophobic Partners) bring alive the extreme oppression gays and lesbians have been subjected to, and still others (such as Parting Glances) engage one in what it is to be a member of a minority ravaged by the AIDS plague. In another vein there is no better aid to understanding "camp" and gay sensibility and bringing to life what underlies scholarly discussions than watching Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here or viewing a Zefferelli staging of grand opera.
Gays and Lesbians belonging to racial or ethnic minority groups have especially difficult problems in America since they are double minorities-estranged both from the dominant culture by their racial/ethnicity and alienated by their homosecuality from their own racial/ethnic subcultures. Included among the films (e.g., Ernesto) arising out of the gay/lesbian subculture are impressive works exploring gay/lesbian themes from Black, Hispanic, and Asian perspectives.
In recent years there has emerged a substantial and distinguished literature of gay and lesbian film criticism devoted to the sorts of themes discussed above. Of these, Richard Dyer's (Now You See It: Studies of Lesbian and Gay Film, Only Entertainment, and The Matter of Images) are perhaps the most profound and have been integrated into PHIL 407. Also there are thoughtful guides to gay and lesbian cinema such as Patrick McGavin's Facets Gay & Lesbian Video Guide, Boze Hadleigh's The Lavender Screen, and especially Raymond Murry's Images in the Dark.
Thus the Cultural Diversity CORE goals are especially well-served by heavy integration of films into the PHIL 407 curriculum. This is done by (a) The assignment of selected films that illustrate the historical periods studied, bring to life issues surrounding gay/lesbian sensibilities, facilitate understanding of social constructivist issues, expose problems racial/ethnic minority gays/lesbians face in America, or expose one dramatically to divergent views surrounding the AIDS crisis. Present candidates include: The Naked Civil Servant, The Gang's All Here, The Killing of Sister George, The Boys in the Band, Cruising, Parting Glances, Ernesto, Desert Hearts, and Zero Patience.
(b) A required paper evaluating social constructivist theses about homosexuality using several films from diverse periods such as before the Motion Picture Code, during the period of the Hayes Office Censorship which forbade depiction of gays and lesbians on films, and subsequent portrayals by Hollywood and independent (including gay and lesbian) film makers, taking into account changes associated with the emerging AIDS crisis. The viability of these curricular innovations depends essentially on adequately rich film archival holdings at UMCP.
5. Gay & Lesbian Film Resources at UMCP
The primary repository for films for course use at UMCP is the Non-Print Media Center in Hornbake Library. A search on Victor by Allen C. Rough, Director of Nonprint Media Services, came up with about twenty films dealing with homosexuality. Such resources seriously underrepresent the contributions of gays and lesbians to film and are woefully inadequate for the CORE Diversity teaching needs of PHIL 407 and other diversity offerings.
The present proposal is for funds to build within the Hornbake Nonprint Media collections a modest but carefully selected collection of films portraying gays and lesbians, illustrating the changing social construction of homosexuality at the hands of motion pictures, and supporting the curricular needs of Diversity courses such as PHIL 407. The selection is being made on the basis of evaluations found in such authoritative sources as Richard Dyer, Now You See it: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film (1990), Only Entertainment (1992), and The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation (1993); Boze Hadaleigh, The Lavender Screen (1993); Patrick McGavin, Facets Gay & Lesbian Video Guide (1993); Raymond Murray, Images in The Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video (1994); Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet (1987;) and Andrea Weiss, Vampires and Violets (1992) together with film sources identified as specially relevant to the purposes of PHIL 407 and its CORE Cultural Diversity foci.
6. Specific "Improvement of Undergraduate Instruction" Proposal & Implementation Plan.
A list of around 80 films available on video have been identified that exemplify the themes pertaining to gay and lesbian Diversity concerns described above. This list has been distilled from nearly 400 finalist films selected for importance from several thousand catalogued. films and videos. The selections have been made with an eye to obtaining historically important illustration of positive, negative, stereotyping, and proactively revisionist portrayals of gays and lesbians in various periods in American history. The selection aggressively includes films that focus on Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American male and female homosexuals. Although such double-minority films are limited in number, a number of exceptional pieces have been identified. To maximize availability to the UMCP community these films all will become part of the Hornbake Nonprint Media collections. Their availability will be aggressively advertised over the various UMCP gay and lesbian Listservs. The implementation plan consists of the above plans for acquiring the films, making them available in Hornbake, making their existence known to the larger community, and integrating their use into PHIL 407 beginning in Fall 1995.
The estimated cost of the identified films is $3,000. Allen Rough, Director of Nonprint Media Services at Hornbake Library has agreed to match the first $1000 of acquisition costs. Thus the request from "Improvement of Instruction in Undergraduate Education" funds is $2,000.
7. Infrastructure Implications.
The initial motivation for assembling this collection has been part of the PHIL 407 "Gay & Lesbian Philosophy" CORE Diversity curricular innovation. However, the proposed film collection provides UMCP with a valuable Diversity resource that can be used by a variety of courses, thereby enhancing campus Diversity initiatives. The specific selections are being made with an eye to (i) providing an unusually strong collection for use by present or future CORE Diversity courses that may touch on gay and lesbian themes or issues and (ii) providing rich resources for gay, lesbian, and heterosexual students wishing to better understand gays/lesbians and their treatment in twentieth-century America. By placing these resources in the Hornbake Nonprint Media collections, rather than locating them as departmental teaching resources, their potential benefit to the campus Diversity efforts will be maximized. Dr. Suppe is happy to cooperate in Center for Teaching Excellence activities including forums and workshops.
1. Summary: Film and the cinematic treatment or nontreatment of gays and lesbians is an important resource for understanding the emergence of Gays and Lesbians as a minority subculture and for documenting the changing reactions of the dominant heterosexual society towards sexual orientation minorities. Feature films provide rich documentation of the vacillating climates of societal repression, begrudging tolerance, and fragile yet growing acceptance of sexual orientation minorities. Under a 1995 "Improvement of Undergraduate Instruction" award for CORE Diversity Course PHIL 407, "Gay & Lesbian Philosophy," from the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Undergraduate Instruction with additional support from Arts and Humanities, the Philosophy Department, and a matching funds grant from the Non-Print Media Center at Hornbake Library" a comprehensive Gay & Lesbian Feature Film Collection has been built at the Hornbake Non-Print Media Center as a Campus teaching and research collection. The present proposal, with special matching funds from the Hornbake Non-Print Media Center, proposes to expand that collection to include an equally-comprehensive documentary film collection dealing with the history and culture of sexual orientation minorities. With this expansion, the Gay & Lesbian Film Collection at UMCP will reach sufficient critical mass to be designated, advertised and promoted as a special comprehensive Non-Print Media Resource Collection. A permanent web site already is maintained on the Internet for the collection and will be expanded as the collection is expanded. The Diversity Initiative Logo would be prominently displayed on this Web Site.
2. Background: PHIL 407, "Gay & Lesbian Philosophy," is the first course dealing with sexual orientation minorities to be approved on the UMCP campus as a full catalog course with regular approval as a CORE Cultural Diversity course. The course was designed specifically to serve the goals and purposes of the CORE Diversity requirement, and thus focuses on the history, social institutions and cultural contributions of the Gay and Lesbian subcultures, their relations to the larger and often hostile larger society, the roles of stereotyping and stigmatization in the marginalization of minorities, the transgressive reinscription and appropriation of stigmatizing vehicles by minorities as vehicles of liberation, the special problems faced by persons who are doubly marginalized in virtue of belonging to both racial/ethnic and sexual minorities. A central focus of the course is conveying to members of the larger heterosexual population the lived experiences of sexual orientation minority persons in past and present American society.
Feature films are an especially rich and effective means for documenting the changing social status and treatment of sexual orientation minorities this century. This century film and television have been among the most effective vehicles for labeling, stereotyping, and marginalizing Gays and Lesbians--and also for revising or changing stereotypical expectations. The establishment of the Hayes Motion Picture Standards Office in the 1930s had profound effects on the stereotyping and social construction of homosexuality. For over 25 years the Hayes office forbade the overt portrayal of anybody on the screen as homosexual. Large numbers of plays whose dramatic force derived from one or more character being gay, lesbian, or bisexual were transformed into dramatically incoherent heterosexualized scripts. (Thus many of Tennessee Williams plays, Lawrence of Arabia, Harold & Maud, The Children's Hour, and the like have the psychodynamics of their dramatic cores obscured by the refusal to acknowledge the driving sexual-orientation dynamics.) In their stead emerged stylized asexual effeminate homosexual-surrogate stereotypes such as portrayed by Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore; heterosexualized yet mannish portrayals such as Garbo, Bankhead, Barbara Stanwick, and Maggie Smith; and transvestite roles.
After the elimination of the Hayes Office, Hollywood became more cautiously adventurous in the portrayal of gays and Lesbians. But twenty-five years of censorship resulting in near total-total elimination of believable gay and lesbian characters had created an easily shocked sensibility in American audiences, and so Hollywood was especially cautious in its gradual acknowledgment that gays and lesbians existed--preferring to portray gays and lesbians as psychopaths, killers, unhappy unfulfilled self-hating persons, or serial killers. Gradually more healthy and representative portraits of gays and lesbians are found in film. But the leadership is not with Hollywood. Rather it was independent film makers, foreign film makers, and to a considerable degree Canadian, British-and even American TV-that exerted leadership. Increasingly we find such film makers and TV productions becoming a force for the social reconstruction of homosexuality and homosexuals. Especially important here is a rich genre of dramatic works dealing with AIDS.
A previous "Improvement of Undergraduate Instruction Award" has enabled us to build a comprehensive Feature Film Collection for use in PHIL 407, other courses dealing with Gays & Lesbians, campus sexual orientation support groups, and the larger campus community. More than 150 films now exist in that collection. A permanent Web Site (http://carnap.umd.edu:90/queer/ GL_Film_Collection_UMCP.html) is maintained for the Collection.
3. Diversity Initiative Proposal, Budget, and Timetable: While Feature Films provide a revealing perspective on the stereotyping and portrayal of Gays and Lesbians to the dominant culture, the biases inherent in Hollywood perspectives are obvious and need to be balanced by other equally graphic portrayals. In recent years there has emerged a rich and growing collection of documentary materials dealing with Gay and Lesbian history and culture. Many of these feature rare archival materials.
Special Philosophy Department funds have purchased new video equipment allowing regular use of documentary film clips in the teaching of PHIL 407. No amount of textbook readings can match the power and impact of watching gays and lesbians be subjected to electroshock treatment, castration, and hysterectomies to "cure" their homosexuality; hearing Gays and Lesbians describe random acts of gratuitous violence and assaults on their persons merely for existing; or hearing a young Ronald Reagan give a sincere patriotic speech during the McCarthy era proclaiming that gays and lesbians are a threat to the security of America and that tolerance for diversity and tolerance are UnAmerican and disloyal. Social institutions such as the Gay and Lesbian bar come alive when students watch a documentary (Last Call at Maud's) on the closing of one of America's oldest Lesbian bars and hear many women describe how it provided a welcoming home and safe haven from a bigoted and intolerant society.
In teaching PHIL 407 I find that such use of film clips greatly enhances the quality of class discussions and is most effective in promoting the sort of cultural awareness that is a main goal of CORE Diversity courses. In its regular purchase of documentary films, Hornbake has acquired some 50 documentary films over the years. Yet a recent review of documentary films I wanted to preview for possible film clip use in class indicated that UMCP possesses less than 25% of them. In many cases I personally have purchased videotapes for use in class because of major gaps in documentary coverage.
The present proposal is for a Diversity Initiative award of $1000 to be matched by $1000 in special Hornbake Non-Print Media Center funds to expand the documentary portion of the UMCP Gay & Lesbian film collection by the acquisition of 60-80 additional important documentary films. As with the Feature Film collection special attention will be paid to films dealing with racial minority Gays and Lesbians. This will bring the UMCP Gay & Lesbian Film Collection to a critical mass sufficient to be designated as a comprehensive, special library collection that can be touted, advertised, and promoted both on campus but also as a part of UMCP's commitment to Diversity as one of its major commitments and strengths as a University. The existing Web Site for the UMCP Gay & Lesbian Film Collection will be expanded to reflect the growing importance of the collection. The Diversity Initiative Logo will be prominently displayed. As with the Feature Film component, campus-wide input in the selection process will be solicited through the Collection web site, various sexual orientation group Listservs, and other means. A preliminary acquisition list has been prepared and after a reasonable period for campus input into the selection process, active acquisition of films will begin the first half of the spring 1997 term.
4. Involved Personnel: The project will be coordinated by Dr. Frederick Suppe, Professor of Philosophy and instructor for PHIL 407; 1102B Skinner, 5-5696; fax 5-5690; and Carleton L. Jackson, Acquisitions Librarian, Non-Print Media Services, Hornbake; who have been the principle persons involved in building the Feature Film portion of the collection.
(List courtesy of Carleton Jackson; the following lists includes catalogued films, films in the process of being catalogued, and films on order. Updated October 9, 1996)
QUEER :Gay, lesbian, bi-, trans-, erotic, phobic, documentary, fiction, experimental, materials in (or coming to) Nonprint Media Services. Lists materials of the broadest scope including various positive/negative images in "mainstream" media, suppressed and hidden themes, etc.
Materials listed below currently are available in Nonprint Media Services, Hornbake Library except:
Documentary/non-fiction materials
$Stop the church
Feature/experimental/fiction materials
In addition to these films, the collection contains a number of films exemplifying the "Camp" aesthetic such as 1930s and 1940s musicals. A list of these and other films used in PHIL 407 not listed above will be added soon.
Individuals interested in contribituting films or funds in support of the collection should contact either Allan Rough (ar21@umail.umd.edu) in Non-Print Media or Dr. Frederick Suppe (suppe@carnap.umd.edu).
To make suggestions of film titles for acquisition or provide feedback regarding the collection, please contacteither Allan Rough (ar21@umail.umd.edu) in Non-Print Media or Dr. Frederick Suppe (suppe@carnap.umd.edu).