It may well be that one effect of the streaming revolution, which blurs the lines between cinema and TV, will be to represent queer people more honestly in movies, since part of the calculation seems to be that people will be more accepting of LGBTQ+ themes in their own homes than at the cinema. TV, from Pose to Orange Is The New Black via I May Destroy You and countless others, is, by and large, far more progressive in its representation and casting of LGBT characters. So many gay actors are closeted so few ply their trade in movies. "The continual casting of straight actors in queer roles has had several effects, none of them particularly delightful"īut the situation in film – certainly in mainstream cinema – is otherwise relatively bleak. This means that the relationship depicted in the film has the chance to be visually authentic, connecting to a lived queer experience. Not just this, but he is brazenly gay, being (at least in this queer critic’s recollection) the only actor to come out as both gay and a total bottom. The auguries are good: both are actors of colour, marking a refreshing change from the norm, and Sleiman is one of very few openly out actors in Hollywood. This looks set to change next year with the release of Eternals, the next Marvel film, which features a much-bruited about same-sex relationship between two characters played by Brian Tyree Henry and Haaz Sleiman. This marks, for certain, a step forward for representation and acceptance and yet, as gay rights have progressed, the film world still finds itself behind on certain markers.īlockbusters have been all but absent from our screens in 2020, but the most widely watched movies of our time – superhero franchises – have been appallingly slow to throw the queer community a bone. In prestige, awards-y films, from Francis Lee’s Ammonite to Viggo Mortensen’s Falling, via the Paul Bettany-starring Uncle Frank and the two-hander Supernova (with Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci), we have, perhaps, a plethora of gay-themed stories such as we haven't seen in cinema for some time. With the arrival on our screens this season of several queer-themed films, the thorny question of how best to do justice to LGBT lives onscreen is rearing its head once more.