Hollywood: A Normal Man

The problem isn’t just about the lack of gay characters and gay movies, it’s about the portrayal. Hollywood sees gays as the kind of camp caricatures you’d find in Modern Family and Adam Sandler movies – not “normal”. One of the best gay movies ever made, A Single Man, by fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford (himself a gay man) plays homosexuality as inconsequential. It is almost entirely irrelevant to the characters and how they lead their lives...

Sam Moore, New Statesman. 

Hard to know where to start with this one.

Err, yeah, if only the gay characters in Hollywood movies weren't quite so... gay.

Camp queens? I say BOO!!!

How in the name of buggery is homosexuality 'inconsequential' in A Single Man?

Did you not notice that it's the story of a gay man whose long-term boyfriend's died, who starts obsessing over a hot younger man?

In what possible way is their sexuality 'almost entirely irrelevant to the characters and how they lead their lives'?

Oh, and being queer is not 'normal', love - that's kinda the point.

Next week: Why oh why did they have to keep going on about that black fellow's race in 12 Years A Slave?

Film: Bodycount

Since Philadelphia there have been, by my count, 257 Academy Award-nominated portrayals of heterosexual characters, and 23 of gay, bisexual or transsexual characters. Of the heterosexual characters, 16.5% (59) die. Of the LGBT characters, 56.5% (13) die. Of the 10 LGBT characters who live, only four get happy endings. That's four characters in 19 years. Behind the Candelabra won't be eligible for any Academy Awards due to its cable TV distribution, but it's keeping Oscar's kill-the-gays mentality alive and kicking. Or rather, dying and haemorrhaging.
Whether it's suicide, Aids (a particularly maudlin Ed Harris performance in The Hours employs both), being beaten to death, state execution, getting shot, or getting raped and then shot, LGBT characters are just not allowed the happy endings that their straight counterparts enjoy. My personal favourite comes from A Single Man, in which Colin Firth simply drops dead for no reason. Presumably overwhelmed by sheer homosexuality, his heart can no longer keep beating. Beware, non-heterosexuals: Sudden Gay Death Syndrome can strike anywhere...

James Rawson writing for the Guardian Film blog. 

Vito Russo's 1981 book, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality In The Movies - genuinely groundbreaking, seminal etc etc - ended with a "Necrology" of over 30 gay characters on film and how they died.
Hollywood's clearly come a long way, eh?

Tuition Fees: Gay Prof Turns Back On Clegg

Colin Firth - pictured left, just about - has announced he no longer supports the Liberal Democrats.
Firth, best known for starring opposite Nicholas Hoult in A Single Man, said it was "because of what the Liberal Democrats had to say about tuition fees and things."
Firth is certainly a voice to be listened to on further education; he played an English professor in the film A Single Man, where you get to see Nicholas Hoult in the nip.