4 - Promoting Exclusion

By Razvan, Raoul and Luca

Where It Started

Have you ever gotten tired of all the gossiping when you were in high school? The much more subtle, popular, worldwide version of it is stereotypes. Information that takes one small element of truth and caricaturizes it to exclude groups out of the main group which is similar to high school in a way. Much of these stereotypes start or spread through the medium of films. The Celluloid Closet and Reel Injun are two films that closely analyze the stereotyping of homosexuality and Native Americans in Hollywood Cinema.

The Celluloid Closet

(Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 1995, USA, 102 min.)

Numerous famous Hollywood actors by the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Quentin Crisp, and many more were interviewed throughout The Celluloid Closet on the subject of homosexuality in cinema. More precisely, they discussed how it is portrayed and how stereotypes become popular in our culture. Nonetheless, they also stated their desire to witness homosexuality in Hollywood movies to make this certain culture more accepted in today's society. The structure of the documentary comprised  eye-opening interviews with actors and writers alike who had the chance to explore homosexuality in cinema firsthand as well as short clips from relevant movies such as Philadelphia, Rope, Fried Green Tomatoes, and more.

            A key idea that was presented in the film was the three main types of homosexuals that have appeared in cinema through time. In order: the funny sissy, the poor victim and the bloodthirsty killer. It is interesting to see the evolution of these characters through time, but why did they change? Our take on it is that olden values were much more conservative in the West than they are today. Being gay was simply seen as an abomination, something unthinkable, so it could be used as an element of humor because it wasn’t so taboo. Later on, modernization of values may have caused people to see gays as a minority, yet they still pictured them as being sick and so they made the people believe they should be pitied. This movement of thought was kept for years to come.  People would believe that gays were meant to be feared, put away in jail or killed. This oppression had been transmitted to films by making them the victims.  Yet, some interviewed in the movie claimed their hunger for the presence of homosexual scenes in the movies. More precisely, the funny sissy who pointed out that even if the scene wasn't necessarily positive, having an homosexual scene is better than nothing. He also said that including funny sissy's in movies didn't bother him at all cause he claimed that he was indeed a sissy in everyday life. Nonetheless, nowadays when we look back at these movies, we realize that the personalities that were given to these characters were rather harsh. That is why the types of gays are mentioned in the first place – to realize how ridiculous characters managed to agitate society and actually create such stereotypes.
            Stereotypes are images or ideas that categorize groups based on few traits and that are widely agreed upon. What better way for these ideas to spread than through something as popular Hollywood movies? After all, one of the best ways to construct mental images about a group of people is to see them in culture – cinema in this case. Unfortunately, these stereotypes can lead to many misfortunes for the homosexuals in question. Not only do kids grow up to believe everything they see on television or in movies, parents can sometimes encourage the child to think in such way. For homosexuals, stereotypes can lead people to have misconceptions about them and truly believe that because of their sexual attraction, they can sometimes either be inadequate or incapable of certain tasks. Even worse, these stereotypes can lead people to judge a homosexual's personality and character in a negative way. Since it is uncommon even today to see homosexual people, it is hard to understand others by seeing them and being able to judge them yourself. And when receiving information about these people from others, it is usually something that they learned from culture as well. The film goes to show how the hegemony of the white heterosexual male seeks not to include people in groups, but rather to exclude them from their one dominant, standard, hegemonic group by giving them the characteristics of the misfits in movies. This is more specifically referred to as hegemonic masculinity. As mentioned in the film, homosexuality became so taboo that the Production Code had to become stricter to restrict how much people know about them. Since then, they have become a bit looser, but this brings back the ability to expand their negative image. In many cases today, movies such as Philadelphia also ends with the infamous ending of “the gay guy dying at the end.”

Reel Injun

(Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge and Jeremiah Hayes, 2009, Canada, 85 min.)

Reel Injun takes on a similar format as The Celluloid Closet. Basically, short clips of actors, directors or other people involved in movies about American Indians. Between these interviews are short skits from several movies. The documentary argues that ever since the first “cowboys and Indians” movies came out, Native Americans have been falsely depicted in Hollywood cinema.

There are four levels to read people: role, individual, type and member. Normally, we should be able to only see what type of member a person is by looking at them. However, stereotypes in cinema can give false or misleading impressions about the truth. For example, instead of seeing someone as only a member of the Native American community, we judge them right away on the three other levels because of what we’ve seen in culture. We sometimes accredit them a type such as the drunkards, warriors, savages or the groovy, peaceful hippies. Types are general traits that we assign to a person. With the perception that people acquire of these Injuns from movies however, we sometimes prematurely and falsely label them. We also assign roles related to their social structure such as hunters and elders. And by doing so, we also identify them as individuals. For example, elders are all smart and all-knowing.

The movie essentially states that there have been several different depictions of Indians through time, all negative. First, there is the image of the Indian warrior. Since “Real Americans” first came and took over their lands, they are portrayed as fearless fighters willing to defend each other at any cost. This changes however as the aggressive trait of the warriors became more apparent in movies. The Indians in cinema had become savages. Obviously, this strongly affected American culture because it reinforced the belief that true Americans aren’t natives and natives stop them from moving forward.

The Oka Crisis as well was a big event in Quebec in 1990 where the city wanted to build a golf course over land that had been used by the Mohawks. This land even had a cemetery on it! As a result, media had to take the side of the government for the most part in order to not shock the international community. In this way, Mohawks were portrayed as not only warriors but also savages. Police and even the military were deployed during this conflict against people who were not really warriors but really just people trying to protect their ancestral lands. A famous picture circulated all around media of a stare-down between a member of the military and a Mohawk named Lasagna.

 Furthermore, Pocahontas claims to be a true movie about a native girl but really, it is just an American image of what kind of people natives are seen as. John Smith falls in love with Pocahontas who is really only a 9 year old girl! More stereotypes from Pocahontas can be seen here.

Later on, western movies gained unimaginable popularity in American culture. The typical stoic, impassible, silent cowboy(s) going up against the (still) savage, less technologically and socially advanced Indians in cowboys and Indians movies. Of course, the cowboys always won. Americans wouldn’t expect any less from such movies. And so as mentioned in Reel Injun, the motto became: “a good Injun is a dead Injun.” Some couldn’t even consider them human. It’s as if the reason they wanted to kill the natives was to erase the memory of what it used to be like to be human.

Then, around when the hippie movement came along, we started looking at the more peaceful side of American Indians, but in a very exaggerated way. It’s at this point that Indians started fighting more for their rights as well. In movies, they took on a more stoic, silent, peaceful image. To give one example of an inaccuracy, Indians only rarely wore headbands. Usually, they were for actors to keep their headdresses from falling, yet hippies were always seen wearing headbands such as natives in movies.

In the Real World...

            In general, the two films resembled each other in terms of the methods of sharing the information. The interviews were done with people who have all taken part or had a role to play in the issues presented by each film. The clips nicely complemented the interviews to give the viewer a more visually appealing experience while also serving as examples for the words of each interviewee.

            Each film offers an enlightening perspective to understand the stereotype and hegemony issues present in the movie industry and that are transmitted to North American culture as well as the rest of the world. Stereotypes are not something that we necessarily realize are wrong or offensive about a certain group of people until the targeted group speaks out.

We are conditioned to believe what we see in culture. It makes us think: how many of these stereotypes could we possibly have? More importantly, how did the white heterosexual male become the hegemonic group and why do we, as humans, have a reflex to exclude people that don’t belong to this category with the use of stereotypes?

            What would be interesting to see though is how this hegemony would be different from one place to another, how the taboo from one place can be considered completely normal in another. For example, how would a white man be seen living in a country in Sub-Saharan Africa other than maybe South Africa? How would a heterosexual male be seen in the Gay Village or how would a man be perceived if he was fighting for women’s rights?

            These movies teach us to start paying more attention to the things we learn from culture and how sometimes we can use it against others, although we do not want to. We should be able to tell only what kind of member a person is when looking at them, not what kind of role, type or individual. That is up to each person to discover about others.

            It is sad to see the new Russian anti-gay law as well. Not only does this law show great discrimination toward the LGBT group, but often things like this can go two ways: why does the rest of the world sometimes judge the Russian population as a whole? We say Russians are intolerant and drink vodka all day, Colombians are all violent and involved in drug trafficking, Eastern Europeans are poor and filthy, French people drink wine and eat baguettes, Canadians are all peaceful and ride polar bears… These stereotypes however are nothing that can put you in jail. This all started somewhere. Here is a map of LGBT rights around the world.

Staying Alert

We can see how stereotypes in The Celluloid Closet and Reel Injun are really actually present in the real world too. In general, it is good to be more aware of the information we receive about other people in order to still stay open-minded to the differences that exist between them. A more educated, alert population would help from wrongfully spreading “rumors” about other members. What if you were the only human in a population of aliens?

1. ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=artspapers

2. http://nativeamericanstereotypesinchildrensmedia.wikispaces.com/Stereotypes+in+Movies-+Pocahontas

3. http://www.simplypsychology.org/stereotype.jpg