“Films”, according to Ryan and Kellner (1988, p. 12), “transcode the discourses … of social life into cinematic narratives”. They play, argues Pearce (2006, p. 33), “a notable role in the placement of particular ideologies and values” into social thinking and debate. Films, as a popular cultural form, can, as Kuhn (1990, p. 15) suggests, “be regarded as a gauge of social attitudes and change”. If we accept that Hollywood cinema is, through its prolific production and overwhelming synergetic marketing, the dominant force, in Western societies at least, in the development of filmic texts, how accurate a gauge can films be? Particularly, as Ryan and Kellner (1988, p. 1) claim, “Hollywood film operates to legitimate dominant institutions and traditional values”. Indeed, Kellner (Pearce 2006, p. 38) “argues that most Hollywood films … tend to promote versions of the American Dream and dominant American myths and ideologies”. Pearce (2006, p. 38) suggests, for examples of those myths and ideologies, “that money and success are important values, [and] that heterosexual romance is the proper social form”.

How then has Hollywood reacted to changes in attitude regarding sexuality since the ‘enlightenment’ decades of the sixties and seventies, which saw, as Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p. 4) state, people who did not identify with heteronormativity “coming out of the closet”, particularly after the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York? If popular film does reflect the attitudes and concerns of society, as Ryan and Kellner (1988, p. 12) suggest, what evidence does contemporary film provide that more fluid attitudes to questions of gender and sexuality are becoming more widely examined and accepted? A brief look at the history of Hollywood cinema from the 1930s to the end of the twentieth century, and a consideration of two films, both released in 1999, Boys Don’t Cry and Summer of Sam, suggests that although contemporary cinema may appear to be more open towards, even supportive of, non-heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality, it still insists on presenting the ‘normal’ heterosexual relationship of man/male and woman/female as the proper - and safest - sexual practice and expression of gender and sexuality.

While it would be difficult, indeed impossible, to deny that the most prominent gender and sexuality portrayed in Hollywood cinema has been, respectively, male and heterosexual, at the same time, other possibilities and potentialities have not been ignored. The way in which those ‘others’ have been represented, however, is certainly open to debate and contestation. Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p. 6) claim “one of the earliest films”, made in 1895 by W. K. L. Dickson, “showed two men dancing intimately together”. Admittedly, it was not a ‘film’ as such, but an experiment in the development of the camera and film as a medium. They may well have been “heterosexual workers … performing for the newly invented camera”, but it is not, as Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p. 6) point out, “the usual expected heterosexual couple”. One has to wonder, why have them dancing together? Why not, if masculinity is the dominant myth, have the two men engaged in an arm wrestle or a dance of a more pugilistic nature? After all, it was a time when homosexuality was being defined as distinct from heterosexuality - and a time of scandal and prosecution for acts of “homosexual male sexual activity”, the most notable case, according to Cranny-Francis et al. (2003, p. 22), being the judicial condemnation of Oscar Wilde. Perhaps, quite simply, it was a mere aberration that had slipped through the net before the establishment of the institutions, the motion picture studios, which would, and did, enforce the presentation of notions of normative heterosexuality within cinematic productions.

Hollywood was, according to Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p. 6) not reluctant in establishing the heteronormative romantic alignment of male-female as “fundamental to the story-telling formula”. When characters outside of this hegemonic ‘norm’ were portrayed, it was generally with contempt, derision or, Benshoff and Griffin (2004, p.6) claim, as “the butt of jokes”, thus promoting the preferred sexuality and gender identification compliant with heteronormativity. Indeed, in the 1930s, Hollywood’s Production Code Administration laid down Hollywood’s Movie Commandments, in which secretary, Olga J. Martin (Lugowski 1999, p. 5) explains, “No hint of sex perversion may be introduced into a screen story”. This only raises, however, another question: why is non-heteronormative, non-procreative, yet consensual, sexual activity or performance considered a perversion? Perhaps it is no mere coincidence that the Production Code Administration chose to title their regulatory edicts as ‘Commandments’. As Horrocks (1997, p. 3) asserts, “Any discussion of sexuality that ignores the Christian view is incomplete”. Christianity has, continues Horrocks (1997, p. 3), “dominated Western thinking for a very long time”, and continues to do so. The Catholic Church admonishes, indeed condemns to eternal damnation, any sexual activity outside of matrimonial procreativity (Horrocks 1997, p. 17). One cannot sin against heteronormativity and expect to go unpunished.

Brandon (Hilary Swank), from Boys Don’t Cry, and Ritchie (Adrien Brody), from Summer of Sam, though each predominantly portrayed in a positive light, are sinners and punished accordingly. The fact that Ritchie survives his beating, but Brandon dies for his wickedness, suggests, perhaps sardonically, that Hollywood is a fair and just God, administering retribution in keeping with the level of divergence. Boys Don’t Cry is based on the true story of Brandon Teena, who was born with female genitalia, yet grew up to identify himself as a heterosexual male. Summer of Sam is a story about two male, childhood friends, Vinny (John Leguizamo) and Ritchie, who grew apart: the former desperately clinging onto his cultural background as a Christian Italian American; the latter more adventurous, and arguably more successful, in developing his own identity and sexuality. But before further discussion on these particular texts, it is beneficial to trace a brief history of the cinematic representation of sexuality from the decade of the ‘Commandments’ up to the supposedly more liberated nineties.

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