Reflected Attitudes

The creative arts often have a huge impact on society and its social rules. This is particularly so of video, I think. I also believe the reason for this is that there are loads of people who would never think of picking up a book to read, but who will watch almost anything on television or in the theatre. Movie theatre. I expect the number of live performance attenders is similar to book readers.

Not that there aren't a lot of book readers. There are just more people who don't read book than who do.

But you can see the evolution of things by watching old movies and comparing them with newer issues. There was a lot of religious themes in the early films, although not exclusively. And when Christianity was portrayed it was done in overdramatic fashion. Other religions were put down. Homosexuality was not an overt topic in most Hollywood productions, although there were films to address it.

By the time the fifties came around preachers were almost always portrayed as crazy and/or phony. Gay and lesbian themes were kept in the background, couched with 'in' words and catch phrases that the general public would not understand.

In the sixties and seventies preachers were mostly ridiculous. And so were Gays and lesbians. Gay and lesbian characters were always overt, and always the source of one-line jokes. While this did bring the issue more out in the open, I wonder if it didn't also encourage 'gay-bashing'. I have read of small gangs who would seek out homosexuals in order to beat them up from before this era, so I'm not sure.

Gays and lesbians are still often the focus of humor, particularly on television sitcoms. But it's changing. As more and more people become public about what they believe and how they feel and want to live, society is being forced to acknowledge there are a lot more people who fall within the labels than previously thought.

That's video. What about the written word? What kind of an impact has that had over the years? After all, the written word has existed for thousands of years, while video is barely over one hundred years old. And talkie films are less than one hundred years old. So, how has the written word impacted social mores and such?

To be honest, I don't really know. I am learning through my online research that the subject has been written about for hundreds of years. I also expect there are a lot of stories written in which main characters were GLBT (My research has also shown there are a variety of orders for these letters. I use this order because it's what I'm used to.) Kind of like Abus Dumbledore in J.K.Rowling's, Harry Potter, series. According to Rowling, Dumbledore is gay. And yet the character never behaves or talks in a sexual manner. There are no hints of child molestation or adult affairs**. But then Dumbledore was also monogomous. But he is a natural character, and a favorite.

I expect there are a lot of characters in books which are of a like mold. Their authors saw them as gay, lesbian, or whatever, but didn't make it part of the actual story because that issue had nothing to do with the story. So the differences were subtle. Too sublte to be noticed by most of the reading audience, but probably enough to bring comfort to some. Comfort in the sense of familiarity. Of belonging.

Writing stories has evolved over the centuries. It's harder, I think, to get accepted by major publishers now, but it's easier to write whatever we want to write. And that is good for we who like to write.

** added later for clarification || I do not mean to imply that GLBT people are more prone to child molestation than others. However, it always seemed to me that that was how they were portrayed in the past. My point with J.K.Rowling was that she portrayed Dumbledore as normal.