Sue Yon Kim

U of U Writing
Ms. Rogers
01.09.14
Media Analysis - Homosexuality Representation in Film
Homosexuality is now becoming a new genre in film and becoming popular.
This essay focuses on three different movies which are recently come out and will be
discussing about how the content of homosexual is portrayed in films. They are
Prayers For Bobby (2009), Blue is the Warmest Color (2013), and Kill Your Darlings
(2013). Each film has a different perspective to homosexuality. However, all three
movies represent the wrong concept of homosexuality which causes stereotypes of
homosexuals.
In Prayers For Bobby (2009), the queer content is described as a catastrophe
and illness. The main character Bobby has a trouble dealing with his homosexuality,
because his family is a devout Christian. When his sexuality is divulged by his
brother, his mom tries to cure his homosexuality with praying to God. Bobby,
however, escapes away from his family and starts his new life. Although he enjoyed
his comfortable homosexual life, he committed to suicide at the end of the movie
because of his familys suppression on his growing behaviors. The movie shows only
one negative side of being homosexual in great loss and misfortune, and emphasizes
how homosexual ends up bringing catastrophe to both own life and his family
members. The story leads to the thoughts that homosexuality is still hard to be
accepted and understood by heterosexual people and that homosexuality always
brings about tragic incidence. It would be safe to say the homosexuality still has a
negative impact on families, and create uncomfortable relationships among the
family members as well.

The movie, Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013), shows how the view of
homosexuality has been changed since then. But it still misrepresents homosexuality
and shows only one side of the coin. Adele in the movie is a high school student who
struggles with finding her own sexuality. After she finds no satisfaction with dating a
guy, she went to the gay bar with one of her guy friends. She suddenly realized that
she fits well into that place. After her recognition, there is a scene where she has a
trouble dealing with her school friends. Her friends could not believe she is a lesbian
and did not accept her sexuality. They started condemning her verbally and making
rumors, saying Shes a whore, she sleeps naked in my bed, checks out my ass.
This movie has a tendency to focus on how lesbians love each other and trying to
deliver the message that there is no difference of the way they love each other
between homosexual and heterosexual couples. The movie includes the myth of
homosexual couples having traditional male and female roles. While preparing a
party, Adele plays womans role with cooking and cleaning whereas Emma plays
mans role with greeting visitors. Also, the movie implies that the woman in
homosexual couple heavily relies on the man. They are adopting traditional roles in
heterosexual couples. It is, however, interesting to see that each gender in homosexual
couple keeps biologically homosexual and mentally heterosexual, individually. But
this doesnt imply all of homosexuals couples.
Finally, the movie Kill Your Darlings (2013) shows that homosexuality
represents deviation from the conventions and mundane. Allen Ginsberg wants to
break the mole of some ordinary ideas, in order to escape from his depressing
circumstance due to unstable relationships with his mom and dad. This movie shows
more idealistic view of homosexual than two previous ones. Allen Ginsberg seems
comfortable with accepting his homosexuality and has no conflict with anti-gay

people. The movie illustrates the homosexuality as following: Allen Ginsberg met a
gay friend Lucian Carr and realized that he feels guys are more attractive than girls.
Allen is always with Lucian, and Lucian coaxed him to start taking drugs, drinking
alcohols, and being gradually addicted to the sex. Even Lucien killed his own stalker
who was his ex-boyfriend at the end of the movie. This movie describes
homosexuality as an immorality and misleads the viewers to think that being
homosexual is dangerous. Even though the movie doesnt mean necessarily to make
them think in a way that all of the homosexuals do drugs, drink alcohols and commit
murder, it raises the question: Cant the story be written without the content of
homosexuality?
The portrayal of homosexuals has been changed over time and it is nice to
see that those films try to approach to the content of homosexuality with new
perspectives. Even though those films focus on delivering some messages to the
viewers, the message sometimes leads to misrepresentation of homosexuals. Sadly,
theyve only shown the narrow side of homosexuality so far in films. Ultimately, the
overall image of homosexuality is still problematic.