The top 10 gay movie cliches
After spending last week at the BFI's festival of short gay films, Jack Cullen feels qualified to list the top 10 cliches of the genre – from the ironing mother to the very long shower scene …
Jack Cullen
The Guardian, Monday 25 March 2013 19.40 GMT
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| Is it time for some gratuitous rage? A scene from Beyond the Walls Photograph: Matthieu Poirot-Delpech |
Artistic shots of trees
Nothing conveys the gay psyche like a bleak sky glimpsed through a dizzying rush of distant poplars – the type gay boys stare at longingly from the homophobic inferno of the school bus. It's fairly cheap and easy to capture, too: best shot from a moving Peugeot 207, with the camera balanced on the sill of a half-opened side window. The short film Sunshine Sparkling in My Eyes has plenty of this.
The ironing mother
She is angsty, sombre, frayed, yet just a tiny bit fabulous. Think of a fat Joan Rivers cast in a John Osborne play. She's probably 30th in line to being the next Sheila Hancock. She needs to be watching a massively crap chat show or a feckless daytime TV quiz. She should shout at the TV as if it can hear her and she will definitely shout at her gay son when he comes in from school.
At first, her dialogue revolves around schoolwork, nagging her son to wear a bike helmet and complaining about his (erotically shot, of course) piles of dirty socks. Later, she will ask if he's gay, then feign shock at the answer. But let's face it, she's already spotted the cock ring and poppers in his bottom drawer. And then there's that Eurovision wallchart ...
Working-class mothers are generally the best, but a rich bitch can work, too. The Portuguese mother in Mau Couti's bad gay cult classic Tunel Russois a tremendous example.
Scenes of gratuitous rage
How dare that boy call me a faggot!? How dare my dad suggest he wants me to be straight like him and everyone else he's ever known!? It's time for a moment of rage! Throw your mobile on the floor so that the battery pack smashes! Cycle furiously while bent over your handlebars with a deep frown! And don't acknowledge Mrs Friendly Old Bitch who lives next door when she says hi. Pick up a brick and chuck it off a provincial bridge into a dried-out river and imagine what your body would sound like slamming against those … oh God, now we're quoting Bjork lyrics. We're on to a winner here.
Some of the better gay films acknowledge that lovers are capable of hating each other at the same time, and expressing it beautifully: see the Heath Ledger/Jake Gyllenhaal "I wish I knew how to quit you" rage scene in Brokeback Mountain.
The long and unexplained shower scene
The main character takes a shower, as most people tend to do on a daily basis. For some reason, this has to be included in the film. Unlike most showers, it goes on for quite some time. With plenty of lather. Some shower scenes (Midnight Express, Gus Van Sant's Elephant) get it right. But mostly, they're just baffling.
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Beautiful eyes staring into the distance
Mesmerising peepers ? as deep, blue and mysterious as a lake ? will often be captured on the point of tears, before being clenched tightly shut to indicate intense feeling.
The heartwrenching piano score
Preferably by Sibelius ? not the Finnish composer, but the affordable software programme that lets anyone become a bedroom Beethoven. At some point, you will need restless chords to communicate the misery of realising that one is gay. If in doubt, use Dial-a-Violin. For summer scenes, use something playful in a major key; in winter, try the deep end of a glockenspiel but use very sparingly. Remember: your audience's musical knowledge will tend to stop at Donna Summer. Anything without a beat is essentially classical.
An introspective fag break
It's all getting a bit much for our hero Tyler/Ricky/Brent/Hugo: his secret longings, his stubborn parents, that boy in the swimming team, the imminent school poetry contest. What better way to communicate this inner turmoil on a budget than to have Tyler/Ricky/Brent/Hugo pop out for a cigarette and look tremendously introspective while he's about it.
Smoking is phallic and all directors think they are the first to realise this. The other advantage of a long fag-having-a-fag scene is that it makes the protagonist appear slightly older, so you'll feel less pervy about fancying him. Cigarettes and homosexual longing have been closely related ever since Jean Genet made his short film Un Chant d'Amour in 1950.
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The generic clubbing scene
The T-shirts are white, the music is thudding, the lasers are green, and the night is hot, hard, deep and relentless. We don't want faces, we want a feeling of anonymity and collective isolation ? in other words, lots of shots of smooth tanned necks filmed from behind. Wait, who's that over there? A face is emerging from the muscly crowd. Could this be the introduction of another character in the … Ooh, look, he's noticed you, too! And now you're kissing! Cut to the bedroom.
TV series Queer As Folk understood this right from the very start. Look up scene one, episode one of the US series if you want a textbook guide.
A male body filmed very slowly in close-up
The softly pulsating ribcage that looks like pale fingers grasping a mug of tea. The erect, quivering nipple. A single chest hair. Goose-pimples. Back dimples. Lots of titillating pans southwards: following the curve of a shoulder blade down to the spine, leading to that big lolling wave of arse; from the enclave of the belly button to the taut, tanned abs, and then ? gulp ? into cock country. Intersperse with shots of sad, beautiful eyes (see above).
Alternatively, rather than an architectural survey of the young male body, you could, like director Xavier Dolan, turn this bit into a music video. His film is a short, and so are his audience members' lives.
Complex acknowledgements
When you're Gus or Lars, you can dedicate your entire film to your pet owl if you like, but the gay short film-maker will have some dues to pay. Ideally, the end credits should be about the same length as the film. The more charities, sponsors, authoritative-sounding organisations, obscure archives and volunteer van drivers the better. Remember: this isn't just a gay short film. It's a moral marathon. Lengthy credits also give the audience a chance to fire up Grindr and scour the auditorium and/or work their 3m-long scarf into the double-loop ascot wrap.
・ Jack Cullen writes for Gay Times, So So Gay and French magazine TETU. He also writes a blog called Jack of Hearts and can be found on Twitter @jackcullenuk
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