Has ANY high-profile movie had a gay protagonist?

[ThinkMinty]

But I'm a Cheerleader.

But then again te protaganist being gay is the whole theme of the movie. Its much harder to find a movie where the protaganist just hppens to be in a same sex (or interrcial for that matter) relationship without it being the focus of the whole movie.

But I'm a Cheerleader is underrated and fun. Plus it has Dante Basco in it.

[Serpentine]

Tropic Thunder comes to mind, and apparently hasn't been mentioned.

Oo, good one.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

According to Johnny Depp at least, Jack Sparrow's bi-

[Killer Angel]

Not sure if being sexually attracted to a town counts as homosexual.



OK I'll leave now.

It's clearly homeosexual.
Because of the houses.



I'm not leaving.

I love this place.

[comicshorse]

Oh how could I forget 'Carol'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_(film)

[Winter_Wolf]

According to Johnny Depp at least, Jack Sparrow's bi-

I get the feeling Jack Sparrow would try to get it on with anything. Sea turtles, for example.

[Kislath]

Runaways should count, I think.

[digiman619]

"High Profile" almost by definition mean large budget, but the people in charge of the movie studios are majorly afraid of taking risks; Hell, they're scared of making a female lead in non-romance movies, and female characters are common. How much more afraid would they be to have a gay/lesbian as the protagonist? They're afraid that if they do too much, it'll offend/be too much of a focus, and if they do too little, no one will notice/disregard it.

[ThinkMinty]

"High Profile" almost by definition mean large budget, but the people in charge of the movie studios are majorly afraid of taking risks; Hell, they're scared of making a female lead in non-romance movies, and female characters are common. How much more afraid would they be to have a gay/lesbian as the protagonist? They're afraid that if they do too much, it'll offend/be too much of a focus, and if they do too little, no one will notice/disregard it.

In addition to The Celluloid Closet, there's the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated, which among other things, highlights the double standard that exists within the MPAA in regards to sexual content, both in regards to sexual orientation and gender.

[Ruslan]

highlights the double standard that exists within the MPAA in regards to sexual content, both in regards to sexual orientation and gender.

You mean something like this:

Man and woman hold hands: rated PG
Man and man hold hands: rated R

[ThinkMinty]

You mean something like this:

Man and woman hold hands: rated PG
Man and man hold hands: rated R

Soooorta. You'd have to watch it, but essentially it's treating one as more taboo than the other just for BEING what it is regardless of other factors.

[Rakaydos]

Didnt "Rent" have a few protagonists that wernt the usual sort?

[Bohandas]

In addition to The Celluloid Closet, there's the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated, which among other things, highlights the double standard that exists within the MPAA in regards to sexual content, both in regards to sexual orientation and gender.

I actually saw This Film is Not Yet Rated at a movie theater around when it first came out (it was one of those artsy theaters that shows unusual films)

The MPAA is all around awful. Not just because of the corruption in the ratings system, but also because of their corrupt influence on copyright policy, and general greed.

[ThinkMinty]

I actually saw This Film is Not Yet Rated at a movie theater around when it first came out (it was one of those artsy theaters that shows unusual films)

The MPAA is all around awful. Not just because of the corruption in the ratings system, but also because of their corrupt influence on copyright policy, and general greed.

They're so bad that the censorship is used to punish outsider films while giving insider films a pass, which highlights that they don't even really care about enforcing their so-called standards. That's censorship and a half levels of ****ed up.

[Mister Loorg]

One of the protagonists in the Pitch Perfect movies was gay.

And I hate saying that because it implies that I watched such a crappy movie.

[Bohandas]

While that might be true in theory, a movie where an android character does NOT have a gender, would be much more progressive, as disregard for biological sex (or lack thereof) is very common, and gendering androids is a way of establishing gender as a natural part of a sentient person, even though it very much isn't.

I tried to say something similar about gender on Bay12 Games' forum and somehow it got construed as bigoted (I may have said that all gender was "artificial bull****"). And that's why I now consider Toady1 a jackass.

[Knaight]

You mean something like this:

Man and woman hold hands: rated PG
Man and man hold hands: rated R

As a baseline, before bringing in how the MPAA will rate things differently depending on who made it.

So The Runaways doesn't count after all? How about Love and Human Remains? A lot of the people I was hanging out with in varsity liked it although in retrospect I'm a little uncertain why.

And there's far, FAR more than two anime films that would qualify.

As long as we're on that topic, there's the matter of Tokyo Godfathers. It has three protagonists, and one of them is probably gay (there's two ways to read the character, and the other one has them being a trans woman who would then be straight). It's a significant character trait, but the movie is absolutely not about that. The movie is about three homeless people who find a baby in a dumpster and try to return said baby to their parents, complicated by the fact that they don't know who said parents are and the three of them aren't exactly flush with resources (see: homeless).

I wouldn't call it high profile per se, but within anime specifically it has some big names behind it.

[Frozen_Feet]

While that might be true in theory, a movie where an android character does NOT have a gender, would be much more progressive, as disregard for biological sex (or lack thereof) is very common, and gendering androids is a way of establishing gender as a natural part of a sentient person, even though it very much isn't..

Gender wouldn't be natural part of any artificial sentient person, such an android, but I'd have a hard time byuing that argument for vast majority of natural persons (namely, humans). Contemporary research on transsexuality suggests gender identity is encoded in the brain and is influenced by both genetics and hormones when growing up. Just because various cultures tack arbitrary extra baggage to it doesn't mean gender is a wholly unnatural construct.

[Bohandas]

Gender wouldn't be natural part of any artificial sentient person, such an android, but I'd have a hard time byuing that argument for vast majority of natural persons (namely, humans). Contemporary research on transsexuality suggests gender identity is encoded in the brain and is influenced by both genetics and hormones when growing up. Just because various cultures tack arbitrary extra baggage to it doesn't mean gender is a wholly unnatural construct.

Perhaps, but you don't consider a person's appendix or tonsils an important part of their character.

EDIT:
It has a vestigial biological side, but I still think the greater part of it is cultural BS. And both sides are without worth. The cultural side is mostly outmoded relics, and it's biological usefulness has been eroded. The only marginally useful purpose it has ever had on either side is to telegraph physical sex; since this has become an outmoded paradigm it has now therefore passed into the realm of complete uselessness and vestigiality (regardless, and this is important, of whether you're trans or not).

[Hiro Protagonest]

Perhaps, but you don't consider a person's appendix or tonsils an important part of their character

...Because those don't affect how they think?? Brains are considered important in many movies.

[Bohandas]

...Because those don't affect how they think?? Brains are considered important in many movies.

The point is that they're vestigial traits, as is gender

[Frozen_Feet]

I don't think your stance is well-supported by actual evidence, Bohandas. See, for example, cases of intersex people who had their sex arbitrarily assigned in infancy. They had the misfortune of being test subjects for "gender is just a cultural construct", and it ended up in tragedy: even if you surgically assign a person as female and rear them up according to feminine tropes of a culture, their brain can keep telling them they're male, leading into gender dysphoria, depression and all other symptoms of transsexuality.

Having your gender identity be in sync with the rest of your body is clearly important to a person's mental health. More to the point, unlike with appendix or tonsils, there's no known way to remove it or even alter it without severe harm to a person. How on Earth do you reconcile that with considering it "vestigial and outmoded"?

[The Glyphstone]

Great Modthulhu: If you guys want to continue this topic, I suggest a new thread in Friendly Banter or MS&GT. It's thoroughly off-topic for this thread, however worth discussing it might be.

[veti]

I'd like to add to the list:
Capote
The Talented Mr Ripley
Boys Don't Cry
My Own Private Idaho
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Rope

[Liquor Box]

Because representation matters.

If there are no gay protagonists, that tells gay folks that they don't get to be the hero or the center of the story. If the black character is always the sidekick in the action movie or the first to die in a horror movie, that tells black people that they don't get to see their stories all the way through. When trans people exist only to be made into a joke, vomited at, or stereotyped - that tells an adult that they'll only ever be seen as a joke, and it tells a little kid that nobody is like them.

Destroy the idea that a middle-class straight white cisgender male is the default. That person isn't even statistically average. It's time for everybody to get their stories told.

It's not the job of movies to be sending messages about people's value. It's the job of movies to entertain.

[Lethologica]

It's not the job of movies to be sending messages about people's value. It's the job of movies to entertain.

People have an appetite for movies that send messages about people's values as well as for movies that entertain. People have an urge to make movies that send messages about people's values as well as movies that entertain. Movies do many things beyond entertainment, and you have neither authority nor justification to exclude those things from "the job of movies".

[Liquor Box]

Orange is the New Black, Dallas Buyer's Club, Hangover (does Chow count as a protagonist in the sequels?), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (a homosexual in theory, although not in practice anymore), Brokeback Mountain, James bond -Goldfinger (if ***** Galore counts as a protagonist).

Edit - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels

In some of those the protagonist is bi-sexual rather than exclusively homo-sexual. I'm not sure if that meets the request of the original poster.

[Liquor Box]

People have an appetite for movies that send messages about people's values as well as for movies that entertain. People have an urge to make movies that send messages about people's values as well as movies that entertain. Movies do many things beyond entertainment, and you have neither authority nor justification to exclude those things from "the job of movies".

I have as much authority to assert how I see the role of movies as you do. To be clear I am not being critical of movies that do have gay characters. I am only saying it is not fair to criticise movies (or the industry as a whole) if there is a lack of gay characters.

If people had an appetite for movies demonstrating certain values (say prominently featuring homosexuals) then the market would ensure such movies would be made - they would be profitable because people would watch them. That does happen to an extent, so you are right the appetite and urge is there, although I suspect not to the extent you would like.

[LaZodiac]

It's not the job of movies to be sending messages about people's value. It's the job of movies to entertain.

Regardless of intent, movies, and the media in general, send messages. Even if your not intending your movie to tell a message you should be aware of what messages it IS sending.

[Liquor Box]

Regardless of intent, movies, and the media in general, send messages. Even if your not intending your movie to tell a message you should be aware of what messages it IS sending.

But what message a movie is sending is highly open to interpretation.

I do agree a movie that clearly sends an anti-social message is ok. For example, a movie where the protagonists are committing hate crimes against homosexuals, and this is portrayed in a positive light, that is sort of movie that I prefer not be made.

But I don't think that because a movie has non-homosexual protagonists that sends the message that homosexuals should be marginalised or are incapable of doing the things the protagonists do (save the world or whatever).

I certainly don't think a movie (or the movie industry) should be criticised for not pro-actively sending a positive message about everything under the sun. In my view, it's simply not the role of movies.