Bat­tle of The Sex­es and cinema’s hid­den LGBTQ+ heroes

Jonathan Day­ton and Valerie Faris’ new film Bat­tle of the Sex­es brings to life a noto­ri­ous moment in the world of sport and celebri­ty. Emma Stone plays Bil­lie Jean King and Steve Carell Bob­by Rig­gs in a drama­ti­sa­tion of their infa­mous 1973 ten­nis match. It’s an intrigu­ing true sto­ry wor­thy of the big screen, one made even more so by the fact that 39-time Grand Slam Cham­pi­on King was one of the first high-pro­file ath­letes to come out as gay. While trail­ers can be deceiv­ing, the film presents her sex­u­al­i­ty in a pos­i­tive, pro­gres­sive light – it’s part of who she is, rather than a main plot point. This hasn’t always been the case for Hol­ly­wood, where sex­u­al­i­ty is still an issue that is either ignored or pre­sent­ed as a problem.

A recent report by advo­ca­cy group GLAAD out­lined the extent of the prob­lem. In their annu­al ​‘Stu­dio Report’, which analy­ses Hol­ly­wood films’ depic­tions of LGBTQ+ char­ac­ters, rep­re­sen­ta­tion slipped with all major stu­dios. If the sheer pres­ence of LGBTQ+ char­ac­ters are a prob­lem, then it stands to rea­son rep­re­sen­ta­tion of LGBTQ+ peo­ple of note is just as much of a prob­lem. Many promi­nent his­tor­i­cal fig­ures have either not been por­trayed sig­nif­i­cant­ly on film or had their per­son­al life glossed over.

RuPaul’s Drag Race is now some­thing of a TV insti­tu­tion, and drag cul­ture itself more pop­u­lar than ever, yet very few biopics of drag icons exist. For instance, aside form a 2013 doc­u­men­tary there’s been no fea­ture film made about the life of Divine, the Bal­ti­more char­ac­ter actor who helped bring drag iconog­ra­phy into the main­stream via his col­lab­o­ra­tions with John Waters. Divine’s influ­ence on drag cul­ture as well as film and the­atre is still felt today, yet it seems unlike­ly that his sto­ry will be told on film any time soon.

Or how about the equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing life of musi­cian Lit­tle Richard, the flam­boy­ant and open­ly gay singer who influ­enced every­one from The Bea­t­les to Out­kast. The only chron­i­cle of him is a 2000 TV movie which, accord­ing to one review, ​“dances around” his sex­u­al­i­ty. One can’t help but won­der if a sim­i­lar issue has pre­vent­ed the long-ges­tat­ing Fred­die Mer­cury biopic from mov­ing for­ward, with the singer’s per­son­al life being so close­ly linked to his mythology.

Some leg­ends are less well-known than oth­ers, but you real­ly don’t have to look far to find inter­est­ing sub­jects. Take Sal­ly Ride, who in 1983 became the first Amer­i­can woman to trav­el to space, over­com­ing prej­u­dice to make his­to­ry before spend­ing the rest of her days pro­mot­ing sci­ence and space explo­ration, par­tic­u­lar­ly to young women. She also hap­pened to have a female part­ner for the last 27 years of her life, mak­ing her the first LGBTQ+ astro­naut. Just as 2016’s Hid­den Fig­ures cel­e­brat­ed less­er-known NASA pio­neers, the extra­or­di­nary life of Sal­ly Ride is ripe for a major biopic.

In Britain, war poet Siegfried Sas­soon is a name that will be recog­nis­able to any school child study­ing life from the per­spec­tive of a World War One sol­dier. Incred­i­bly, he has not been exam­ined on the big screen beyond the crowd­ed ​’90s dra­ma Regen­er­a­tion (aka Behind the Lines), which bare­ly touch­es upon the same sex rela­tion­ships that many his­to­ri­ans point to as being cru­cial to under­stand­ing his life and work. The impli­ca­tion is that his sex­u­al­i­ty was ​‘prob­lem­at­ic’, much in the same triv­ial man­ner with which The Imi­ta­tion Game han­dled the pri­vate life of Alan Turing.

Anoth­er baf­fling omis­sion came in Roland Emmerich’s 2015 dra­ma Stonewall, which despite its overt­ly LGBTQ+ themes opt­ed to min­i­malise the role of not­ed gay lib­er­a­tion activist Mar­sha P John­son, a pas­sion­ate cam­paign­er believed to be one of the key fig­ures at the Stonewall riots in 1969. Her sto­ry is still wait­ing to be told.

Despite the damn­ing fig­ures pub­lished by GLAAD, the first half of 2017 has shown promise for those want­i­ng a more var­ied Hol­ly­wood. Pos­i­tive por­tray­als of gay char­ac­ters in block­busters such as Pow­er Rangers and Beau­ty and the Beast show a mass audi­ence accept­ing of a more diverse range of char­ac­ters. And of course there’s Moon­light became the first LGBTQ+-themed Best Pic­ture win­ner at the 2017 Acad­e­my Awards.

Emma Stone’s choice to make Bil­lie Jean King her first role after win­ning her Best Actress Oscar for La La Land under­lines the wealth of char­ac­ters that are avail­able to actors work­ing in Hol­ly­wood. Fel­low Oscar win­ner Jared Leto will also soon be play­ing Andy Warhol in the first stu­dio film to take the artist as its main focus, hav­ing appeared as a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter in films about his con­tem­po­raries. These remain notable excep­tions in what is, for the moment, a large­ly con­ven­tion­al cin­e­mat­ic land­scape. We can only hope that films like Bat­tles of the Sex­es will lead to wider rep­re­sen­ta­tion of real-life LGBTQ+ icons on screen.