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1 Why It is Simpler To Fail With What Defines Soft Lesbian Content Than You May Assume

It’s of little surprise to most sapphic movie buffs that Hollywood doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to positive lesbian representation. From the widespread trope of "bury your gays" to the equally widespread phenomenon of gay-baiting, it can get tough out there for free lesbians a film supporting dyke.

Hays CodeA lot of the problems with gay cinema started all the way back in 1934, with the adoption of the Hays Signal. The Hays Code was a list of 36 rules that filmmakers had to follow in order to get their movies made. The regulations bundled bans on issues like abnormal assault and depictions of lustful attack, but the list forbidden the interpretation of "sexual perversion furthermore." Homosexual love, desire, and sex fell under the definition of "perversion" in the Hays Computer code.

The Hays code existed to please the more conservative and religious movie-goers of the ’30s. The more progressive views of 1920s Hollywood led conservatives to fight for government sanctioned censorship in film, bringing about the code, which lasted until 1968. Films of the 1920s, including a film with the first on-screen kiss between two men, Wings (1927), were even more friendly in their depictions of LGBT folks.

Wings was an anomaly in its portrayal of homosexual love as something serious. Despite it being of a tragedy somewhat, the main characters of Wings expressed gay love in a sober way. The couple’s romance seemed to be treated with the same gravity as a straight one, unlike gay films that came before it.

However, with the adoption of the Hays Code, movies had to present homosexuality in a "morally upright" way: either eliminating explicit depictions altogether (which was more frequent) or by making gay characters tragic figures to show the "lonely and tragic" life of a homosexual if they were to "choose" the lifestyle.

The first on-screen kiss between two women was in a film from 1930, three years after Wings and four years before the adoption of the Hays Code. This theme-women participating in homosexual for the natural male gaze-characterizes lesbian movie theater even now to this working day. The film, Morocco, was not about lesbians but had a heterosexual woman in drag smooch another heterosexual woman for the attention and pleasure of a crowd of heterosexual men.

Of the ten top grossing LGBT movies of all time, there are only two that feature lesbian relationships: The Favorite (2018) and The Hours (2002). Both films have male directors, with Yorgos Lanthimos and Stephen Daldry respectively directing. According to Indiewire, only 13 videos with a lesbian or bisexual woman lead possess ever grossed more than $5 million in US dollars and, of those films, only three were directed by women.

Mainstream lesbian cinema is a bit of a boy’s club, which may explain why real life lesbians have a hard time seeing ourselves adequately represented on screen.