Actually, that's not true.
During all the long long years when Hollywood was forbidden to show gay people or same-sex relationships on the screen, or discouraged from doing so because of fears over box office returns, some characters were deliberately written as being subtly or covertly gay. The most famous example is Massala in "Ben Hur", where the gay writer deliberately wrote the character as gay and the actor played along, and mainstream audiences assumed the character was straight. It was decades after the film's release that the writer told the world that yes the character was written as gay, although gay movie fans had clued in for decades.
So yes, people looking for coding and subtext sometimes assume a straight character is gay, sometimes there are situations where some people want a character to be gay and the studio won't have it* so audiences are confused, sometimes gayness is subtly presented, and nowadays, some people are finally, after all this time, just allowed to be gay.
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* Like a certain actor in the new Star Wars film has claimed.
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KD637 (488)
5 years ago
I think what I said is much more common. By far. You gave an example from 1959 and while I guess there might be few more recent examples too, it's extremely rare. Guessing that a character is gay based on the way the actor walks, the fact that he has a best friend or that he refuses sex with a woman at some point is something that can be found under discussions about thousands of movies and with confidence I say 99% of them is wrong. And it's really just an immature jab at the character in most cases (refused a bj? hah, must be gay!), not recognition of some gay subliminal messaging.
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Catbookss (13664)
5 years ago
"And it's really just an immature jab at the character in most cases (refused a bj? hah, must be gay!)"
Yeah, I see a lot of people taking jabs at characters, actors, whatever, in general. It's tedious.
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Otter (24464)
5 years ago
Well, here's a really recent example.
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/12/04/oscar-isaac-star-wars-poe-finn-gay-relationship-john-boyega/
Okay, when "The Force Awakens" came out in 2015, some people thought Poe read as coded Gay, because he had no girlfriend and was friendly-to-flirty with Finn. And because they were both in a Disney family-friendly PG-rated tentpole film, where no gayness is ever allowed above the coding/subtext level, so some people do keep an eye out for the codes and subtext. And yeah, it turns out that at least one person (Oscar Isaac) really was thinking along those lines, and that those who saw subtext where corporate policy forbade overtness were on to something.
If it bothers you, ignore it all, because the people who like to look for these things aren't going to stop on your say-so.
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Catbookss (13664)
5 years ago
You misunderstood me. I was referring to people taking jabs at characters (and people) in general, not specifically about whether or not a character (or person) is or isn't gay. Although yes, sometimes that is used by the immature as a jab.
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kuku (3510)
5 years ago
The most famous example is Massala in "Ben Hur", where the gay writer deliberately wrote the character as gay and the actor played along, and mainstream audiences assumed the character was straight.
This is how it should be, because this is how it works in real life. If you're straight, unless you know somebody personally, chances are you won't notice he's gay.
If a movie is properly done, I expect some character to be gay (like in real life) but you won't notice it unless you have the 'gay radar' (like in real life) or that character has some romantic subplot.
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