The Oscars and Their Very, Very Complicated Queer History

Back in January, our own David Canfield looked back at a stunning Oscar anniversary: It has been 20 years since Ian McKellen was nominated for best supporting actor for Lord of the Rings, marking the last time an openly gay actor was nominated for an Oscar. Despite enormous progress for LGBTQ+ representation in media over the past two decades, and numerous groundbreaking Emmy nominees, the Oscars have remained remarkably slow in honoring queer actors, particularly men. And all the while, dozens of queer roleshave earned their portrayers Oscar nominations or wins, from Charlize Theronin Monster to Benedict Cumberbatch in last year’s The Power of the Dog. “The performances that queer actors deliver when they’re allowed to play queer characters have an authenticity that is undeniable,” actor Wilson Cruz told David. “I think that studios and agencies and power players believe that the queer roles played by cisgendered, straight people is fertile ground for attention and awards.”   And yet: The Oscars have played a fascinating, sometimes pivotal role in queer film history, from celebrating actors who would become queer icons to recognizing landmark films. This month on the Little Gold Men podcast, we’ll be looking back at five films with a significant role in both Oscar and queer history, starting this week with 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause. Made in a time of strict rules for Hollywood production, Rebel director Nicholas Ray pushed boundaries so much in depicting the relationship between Jim (James Dean) and Plato (Sal Mineo) that the film earned a panicked memo from a Production Code officer: “It is of course vital that there be no inference of a questionable or homosexual relationship between Plato and Jim.” That inference made it in anyway, and Mineo would later call Plato “the first gay teenager in films.”

This week’s Little Gold Men podcast goes deep on Rebel Without a Cause and Mineo’s own sad Hollywood story, as well as the ways in which Hollywood’s depictions of queer people haven’t necessarily advanced all that much in the past 70 years. Then again, there’s also Fire Island, the new film debuting on Hulu this Friday, in which writer and star Joel Kim Booster and director Andrew Ahn weave a fizzy, Jane Austen–inspired romance around the unapologetically queer nightlife of the real Fire Island. The podcast includes discussion of that film too, along with one last look at the Cannes Film Festival and which of the major award winners might also factor into the coming awards season.

Hollywood’s First Gay Teenager and His Two Tragic Endings

This week’s Little Gold Men podcast kicks off a Pride Month series of Oscar flashbacks with Rebel Without a Cause and the sad story of Sal Mineo.

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