48 Scene
GOLDEN HOUR
SCENE & DONE IT
Rewriting history
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) I’m not usually one for an internet row, especially during a time where everyone is wound so tight the term ‘triggered’ is being thrown around like hand sanitiser, but the other day I found myself deep into a two-hour long row over something I found personally abhorrent.
) Poor Judy Garland, penniless with two children in tow, denied room at the inn because she hasn’t paid her bills. And she’s had a few, of course she just wants to lie down. This is how the recent biopic of her later life starts. Naturally, they take liberties to get the heart strings humming, but it certainly worked.
BY BILLIE GOLD
Since the beginning of time people have speculated over other people’s sexuality, and described them to fit their narrative. It wasn’t so long ago that women who were quite obviously homosexual and happily partnered were being referred to as “Gal Pals”. How many times have you read something like: “Mildred’s family grew increasingly disappointed with her inability to choose a suitor, and eventually died an old maid by her best friend Gwen’s side with whom she lived for many years before her spinsterly demise.” Woe betide them to see poor Mildred as happily partnered with a woman. They even found statues in Pompeii with the words “master and his slave died next to each other in an embrace”, when it was quite obvious the two men had been lovers.
“I am not sure whether this woman knew she was, in fact writing back to a gay woman, but bisexual erasure seems to be the only acceptable thing left to be homophobic about in the LGBTQ+ community” The blind refusal to witness a homosexual relationship has plagued history for many years, and has thankfully reached an era where we can call a spade a spade, and no one really cares who you’re with, until I came across a seemingly innocuous Instagram page. Interrupting my mindless scrolling was a post that read in bright red letters “Marilyn Monroe was a LESBIAN”. I looked at the source, which is one that I have followed for quite some time, and saw that this was a guest post from a page called Turn Lesbian Now!. I obviously thought that this was a clear attempt at satire, but upon reading the page, half shocked and half amused, I saw that it was run by two recently ‘out’ lesbian women in a relationship, and their mission was to gather pictures of celebrities who had had the faintest sniff of Sapphic behaviour and out them. Now, ordinarily this wouldn’t be much of a problem for me and I would laugh it off, but upon pointing out that Marilyn Monroe was not in fact a lesbian, and had many lovers which included both genders, and that this in the very least is bisexual erasure, I was met with an incredibly defensive woman who claimed that men are useless and that women do it better anyway so what does it matter. Actually, I continued, it matters a lot. I am not sure whether this woman knew she was in fact writing back to a gay woman, but bisexual erasure seems to be the only acceptable thing left to be homophobic about in the LGBTQ+ community. Here was a woman effectively rewriting people’s history to fit her own cause and her own experience, and isn’t that what homophobia is in the first place? I wonder if when people are choosing how to rewrite their own history, does being authentic to oneself include trashing other sexualities? I sincerely hope not.
BY MICHAEL STEINHAGE
I wanted to find out more about this undisputed ultimate gay icon. Truth be told, I knew very little about her. I’ve watched The Wizard of Oz just once, and thought it was a waste of time. Too much singing and dancing and prancing about, not my bag. Yet hanging on the walls of as many gay bars as she does, this is the Judy I know. Do I know enough? The boyfriend, being of a more traditional nature, sometimes likes to point out that I am too liberal in my columns, focused on the youth and the future. Don’t forget about the “old gays” and what they’ve fought for. That’s why you and I are here, he reminds me. So I promised that for this LGBTQ+ History Month edition, I’d look back. So back to Judy, our icon. Young readers take note, because we’re all Friends of Dorothy after all. Over the decades gay men have sung Over the Rainbow, and donned that blue and white dress and the ruby slippers, and have fallen in love with her music. That is often where it ends, that’s what we know. The film mentioned is superbly played – Renée Zellweger surely deserves that Oscar, but more so it opens your eyes to a life that ended in despair. Judy Garland herself never won an Oscar. She was scared of flying, would have just as well have been a nurse, and that famous dress? Picked so the pattern’s blurring effect would make her look slimmer. And did she ever have to be slim! Those who remember, or have an interest in historic Hollywood, may be aware of the abuse (because that’s what we would call it today) the young Judy, or Frances, suffered at the hands of studio producers, fellow actors, even her mother and family. Pills. Addiction. What would her status have meant to her I wonder? When asked by a reporter once what she thought of her gay following, she is said to have replied, “I couldn’t care less. I sing to people”. Two of her five husbands were gay (or bisexual), it is alleged. One of her many suicide attempts happened when she found her husband, Vincente Minnelli, in bed with a man. She may be a gay icon for her performances, her camp quality, or the Stonewall riots on the day of her funeral. Or because gay men often identify with those who have suffered. Whatever our reasons, it is heartbreaking that behind a screen of such fun and glamour and laughter there was such human misery. So as we remember LGBTQ+ history, let’s remember the history of Judy, the human being, the next time we walk down the yellow brick road.
