Year in Review: The Best LGBT Characters
Monday, December 31, 2012 at 3:00PM Over at my weekly (okay, bi-weekly) column at Towleroad, I put up my annual review of the best queer characters of the film year. The year's most acclaimed gay narrative feature was obviously Keep the Lights On but since I didn't personally respond to that one I had to look elsewhere for my favorite gay characters. Likewise, many will wish for more love for that dandy Cloud Atlas couple of Sixsmith and Forbrisher.
But I made room for films as diverse as On the Road, ParaNorman, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The most controversial bit of the top ten will probably be the section I like to call "The 'Are They Or Aren't They?' Box Set" which begins like so..
With the ever increasing number of gay-identified characters it's less of a parlor game to imagine the characters who might well be queer than it used to be but it's still fun: Tomboy does not always equal lesbian but regardless of her orientation "Princess Merida" in Brave really shakes up the heteronormative Disney fairytale world merely by being utterly uninterested and even opposed to that Someday When Her Prince Might Come; The chorus of townsfolk who continually sound off on "Bernie" in Bernie argue about whether he's cruising for men on the sly or sleeping with rich widow Shirley Maclaine but both sound pretty gay to me...
Previously on 'Year in Review'
James Bond Mania -Bond Girl Reader Ranking. (+ Silva)
The Year in of Snow White the apple muching fairest of them all was everywhere
Overrated Amy Adams, superheroes, film critics, and more
Worst of 2012 Cloud Atlas, The Amazing Spider-Man, and more
Summer Crushes Pt. 1 and Summer Crushes Pt. 2
Best of the Blog from...
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November
Reader Comments (7)
Thanks for mentioning Ezra Miller's astounding work in "Perks." And thanks for the best movie blog on the internet, Nathaniel! Happy 2013 For the rest of the world (since TFE's official new year comes Oscar Night).
wasn't there a foreign picture you really liked about an elderly gay men?
I remember being curious on the story.
*man
marcelo -- yes, but it never opened so I didn't include it :( It was called BWAKAW. Now that it got swept out of the foreign film category I fear it will never open
At the theatre where I work, we had people complain about there being a gay character in ParaNorman. My favorite was the gentleman who stated "It's unfair to manipulate children that way; making them like a character and then revealing they were gay the whole time!"
....Oh the joys of customer service. To say I wasn't necessarily an all star manager to those people is an understatement. I'm pretty sure my only real response was "I LOVED that movie!"
The jock in "Paranorman" does not reveal his gayness until the end- which what seemed to me as kind of final gag. People who complain about this are homophobic idiots. How about the entire cast of " The Hobbit"? Tolkien was really into bromance...
Oh for the good old days when you didn't have any of those nasty gay characters in films, all those wonderful Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers musicals ...