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colej67's review
4.0
Really interesting. Sometimes it was tough to figure out if the author was using the name of a character or the actor. And sometimes it was hard to tell the different movies apart.
I had to stop the book at multiple times to shake my head at how long the fight for LGBT representation had gone on, and knowing that it's far from over.
I had to stop the book at multiple times to shake my head at how long the fight for LGBT representation had gone on, and knowing that it's far from over.
tscott907's review
4.0
Equally dated and depressing. Clearly an educational book, but being presented with the depiction of gay people in cinema in such a stark manner can feel hopeless. I’d watched the documentary based on this film my freshman year of college. (I would recommend watching it in conjunction with reading the book, as it makes some of the arguments made in the book more evident.) I’m interested in the arguments that Russo makes throughout the book, but I wish there could be an updated edition that would show how we have progressed (or regressed) since the eighties.
expendablemudge's review
3.0
Rating: 3* of five
A groundbreaking revelation when it came out almost 30 years ago, this book, as revised by its author in 1987, is very dated; and it's never been my idea of a prose paradigm.
I admit I was going down the primrose path of nostalgia when I decided to read this revised edition. I'd read the first edition as an eager young slut-about-town, yearning to impress the Older Men (25! 30! Oh, those old roues!) I was seducing in job lots with my encyclopedic knowledge of their old-fashioned world.
*snort*
But I did learn a lot, and it's always useful to do so. I wasn't aware that queer subtexts in Hollywood movies were the prime motivating factor for the introduction of the Production Code. I wasn't aware that the hoi polloi didn't know some of its major heartthrobs only throbbed for their own kind (Rock, of course, but Farley Granger, Randolph Scott, Burt Lancaster, ye gods what fun it would have been to be there then!!)...but I've known all that for a long time now, and I found it dreary to go back and read the uninspired prose of the late Mr. Russo without the sense of discovery and amazement I brought to it the first time.
You can't go home again. I suppose one shouldn't want to, either, but the urge hits once in a way, less and less often as the years pile up. I expect I'll stub my toe on this rock again. I'd say, if you're an average straight person, this book could be informative and possibly even interesting if you like the movies a lot. But it sure won't be entertaining.
A groundbreaking revelation when it came out almost 30 years ago, this book, as revised by its author in 1987, is very dated; and it's never been my idea of a prose paradigm.
I admit I was going down the primrose path of nostalgia when I decided to read this revised edition. I'd read the first edition as an eager young slut-about-town, yearning to impress the Older Men (25! 30! Oh, those old roues!) I was seducing in job lots with my encyclopedic knowledge of their old-fashioned world.
*snort*
But I did learn a lot, and it's always useful to do so. I wasn't aware that queer subtexts in Hollywood movies were the prime motivating factor for the introduction of the Production Code. I wasn't aware that the hoi polloi didn't know some of its major heartthrobs only throbbed for their own kind (Rock, of course, but Farley Granger, Randolph Scott, Burt Lancaster, ye gods what fun it would have been to be there then!!)...but I've known all that for a long time now, and I found it dreary to go back and read the uninspired prose of the late Mr. Russo without the sense of discovery and amazement I brought to it the first time.
You can't go home again. I suppose one shouldn't want to, either, but the urge hits once in a way, less and less often as the years pile up. I expect I'll stub my toe on this rock again. I'd say, if you're an average straight person, this book could be informative and possibly even interesting if you like the movies a lot. But it sure won't be entertaining.
alarra's review
3.0
Read this for an essay, and I enjoyed it, having seen the docu a few times. The book has more space for a deeper look at some of the examples that flies back on film. One of my favourite random facts in the book: Greta Garbo once "expressed...her desire to play in a film version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray with herself in the title role and Marilyn Monroe as a young girl ruined by Dorian". Imagine how AWESOME that could've been?
gannent's review
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Great coverage of gay representation in cinema from the very beginning. I wish the chapters were broken up into sections, the lack of sections made reading the long chapters a little tiring.