Why shared view­ing expe­ri­ences are vital to queer audiences

Queer cin­e­ma is in rude health. This year has seen the gen­er­al release of, among oth­ers, Lev­an Akin’s And Then We Danced, Hong Khaou’s Mon­soon and François Ozon’s Sum­mer of 85, with Har­ry Macqueen’s Super­no­va and Fran­cis Lee’s Ammonite still to come. How­ev­er, much like the rest of every­day life, the ever-chang­ing COVID-19 restric­tions are bring­ing about dis­rup­tions to cin­e­mas and sub­se­quent­ly the avail­abil­i­ty of these titles in a shared pub­lic space.

These restric­tions, along with the clo­sure of major cin­e­ma chain Cineworld (and its sub­sidiary com­pa­ny Pic­ture­house), have fuelled an indus­try-wide debate on the future of cin­e­ma, with many spec­u­lat­ing that the tra­di­tion­al the­atri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el is in seri­ous dan­ger of becom­ing obso­lete. One con­se­quence of films being released on dig­i­tal stream­ing plat­forms is the effect on LGBT+ view­ers, for whom the shared view­ing expe­ri­ence is of para­mount importance.

For those queer indi­vid­u­als who grew up clos­et­ed, going to see an explic­it­ly queer film open­ly in a pub­lic space would have been out of the ques­tion. Instead, we resort­ed to watch­ing what­ev­er queer con­tent was avail­able on tele­vi­sion, or any­thing we could get hold of on DVD. For those liv­ing with fam­i­ly this view­ing always hap­pened in secret, after dark and most like­ly in the pri­va­cy of a bedroom.

By con­trast, being able to proud­ly pur­chase a tick­et for a queer film at the cin­e­ma and share the expe­ri­ence with a wide range of peo­ple is vital­ly impor­tant and often for­ma­tive for queer indi­vid­u­als. Gone is the shame of hav­ing to hide who you are just to see your­self rep­re­sent­ed on screen.

Of course, as lib­er­at­ing as watch­ing queer films in a shared space can be, it’s naïve to ignore the poten­tial for dis­com­fort. I’ve met a num­ber of fel­low cin­ema­go­ers whose view­ing expe­ri­ence has been taint­ed by dis­crim­i­na­to­ry reac­tions, includ­ing instances of audi­ble homo­pho­bic com­ments from oth­er audi­ence mem­bers, peo­ple mak­ing vom­it nois­es, tut­ting, gasps and walk­outs. That queer audi­ences are still being sub­ject­ed to such dis­crim­i­na­tion, albeit indi­rect­ly, is a dis­ap­point­ing real­i­ty. But this fur­ther high­lights how vital pos­i­tive screen­ing expe­ri­ences are for queer audi­ences, coun­ter­ing any poten­tial­ly harm­ful inci­dents they may encounter.

The poten­tial clo­sure or so-called ​“death” of cin­e­ma robs queer audi­ences of these pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences; some­thing as sim­ple as watch­ing a film with two queer leads and it feel­ing like noth­ing out of the ordi­nary. This needs to become the norm and tak­ing away the oppor­tu­ni­ty for pub­lic screen­ings is ulti­mate­ly detri­men­tal to progress.

Shared cin­e­ma expe­ri­ences can also help queer indi­vid­u­als to explore and even dis­cov­er their sex­u­al­i­ty. See­ing an audi­ence react pos­i­tive­ly to the queer con­tent on screen can be vital to those still wrestling with their iden­ti­ty. There are many queer peo­ple whose sto­ries of com­ing out cen­tre around film, and while these aren’t always viewed in a cin­e­ma, this shared expe­ri­ence is no doubt a con­tribut­ing fac­tor. The recent teen dra­ma Love, Simon is a com­mon exam­ple of a film with this pow­er – a pow­er that is only enhanced in a cin­e­ma with an open-mind­ed audience.

So while film fans are right to be con­cerned about the future of cin­e­ma, the loss of these essen­tial expe­ri­ences for queer view­ers should not be over­looked. Queer audi­ences deserve cheers when the boy gets the boy, or the girl mar­ries the girl. It helps to reaf­firm the truth that, despite what many of us have grown up with, our sex­u­al­i­ty is nor­mal and deserves to be just as much a part of cin­e­mat­ic nar­ra­tives as het­ero­nor­ma­tive ones. These should and need to be enjoyed together.