Mainstream

Jon Bastian goes back to the 1960s for a take on how audiences have learned to accept gay actors playing straight roles leading up to "college-hero" Neil Patrick Harris.

When Captain Jack Harness (John Barrowman) burst onto the scene (Doctor Who, "The Empty Child," 2005), what was most refreshing was his lack of bisexual angst. Or at least, what angst there was had nothing to do with his sexuality. Here was simply a man as likely to kiss the Doctor as his female companion, a man who could use his seductive charisma for good, a man who ultimately would run his own "fringe division" as if it were some nontraditional family structure unafraid of sex or sexuality. The real source of angst among the Torchwood team, at least at a personal level, was love and commitment. So what went wrong?

As any proclaimed auteur, Pedro Almodóvar works in tropes. His most recent film, The Skin I Live In (2011), employs many of the director's favorites: disenfranchised motherhood, male-female dynamics, their social consequences, and the desire for an unattainable perfection of beauty. This contemporary take on Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960) a self-reported favorite of Almodóvar's–by way of Cronenberg body-horror slickness and the director's own preoccupations encapsulates so much of what makes his work integral. And its depiction of the transgender body highlights the running theme through his work of dismantling the gender binary to arrive at deeper truths. Throughout his career, Almodóvar has used non-traditional gender behaviors and transgender characters in supporting and featured roles to develop a body of genderqueer cinema that is perhaps the most potent we have available to us.

Back in 1988, Julianne Moore won an Emmy for her roles as identical twins in the daytime CBS soap "As the World Turns" for the category of Outstanding Ingénue in A Drama Series. Six years later, she appeared bottomless in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993) proving to the world that, in fact, her carpet matches her crimson curtains. Those two roles may be worlds apart. Yet, they not only show Moore’s range but also her foremost asset as an artist: she has a mean streak for taking risks. Other actresses are more beloved or more successful, but no other film performer has been willing to court failure as often as Moore, or be as much a hero to gay audiences and directors alike.

In only three pictures, veteran theatre director Stephen Daldry has established himself as a master of tackling taboo topics while resisting the urge to provide tidy closure. Though Billy Elliott (2000), The Hours (2002) and The Reader (2008) may appear to exist in separate cinematic universes, they are linked by themes of identity and sexuality that are somewhat reflective of the auteur's own personal life.