The reclamation of the expression “queer” is priceless for many reasons, including the fact that it does not qualify its critique of coming out of the closet with any calls for discretion (just the opposite, in fact). However, the term is perhaps not sufficiently expressive of the urgency and necessity called for by collective mobilizations, such as the war against AIDS, for example, when it became apparent that the disease was ravaging the homosexual population. In fact, the epidemic made it apparent that the praising of those who escape or adopt multiple sexual identities was in vain, given that the method of infection resulted from specific sexual practices; at the same time, a general indifference to the fate of homosexuals explained the absence of a coherent policy to fight the epidemic. Because of this, the closet encouraged both the extension of the AIDS epidemic as well as the suffering encountered by certain people who contracted the disease—because it is understood and has been demonstrated many times over that secrecy about one’s sexuality (and often accompanied by
shame
) does not mesh well with the self-respect required to adopt preventative measures (i.e. safe sex), nor with the vigilance necessary for rapid testing and appropriate care (how may gays shun testing out of fear of encountering homophobic reactions?). Further, many sufferers often refrain from telling family members about their illness, which would risk having to reveal their sexual preferences. In light of this experience, the act of coming out of the closet, though sometimes limited in its effects, becomes a more urgent matter, both individually and collectively.
Historically, the concept of the closet crystallized the moment when a new generation of gays and lesbians realized the political necessity of coming out. This is why the concept was unthinkable until the gay liberation movement in the United States during the 1960s, although traits characteristic of the closet existed well before then: the need for discretion, the leading of double lives, the self-hatred and ensuing internalized homophobia. Within gay activist organizations such as France’s FHAR (Front homosexuel d’action révolutionnaire), the militant argument was constructed mostly against the notion of a homosexuality that was both secretive and respectable, developed by the ranks of the group Arcadie, led by André Baudry, an example of the closet’s aporia.
The development of a history of homosexuality, particularly in English-speaking countries, is nuanced by a rigorously binary concept based largely on the militant mythology. This brings to mind, among others, the works of social history by American George Chauncey, who sought to reposition the closet in history by situating its peak (at least in the United States) during the 1940s. In his book
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940
, Chauncey shows that during the early decades of the twentieth century, a unique male homosexual culture and community existed, integrated into public space and urban life according to details which, despite bearing little resemblance to the gay liberation years of the 1970s, did not fit the concept of the closet. Rather, they were made up of a series of complex social negotiations which blended together the art of evasion, subtext, and the provocative irony of the camp esthetic. The homosexual culture that was forged during the 70s was refined compared to the historical experience of the closet, which was born in the 1920s thanks to the promulgation of repressive laws aimed at diminishing the growing visibility of homosexuals, the subsequent toughening of these laws in the 1930s, and their consolidation during the Cold War.
The example from Chauncey’s works permits a reconsideration of the modern perception of the closet years that has been largely built up by a progressive mythology born of militant heroism. Doubtless, the sociability created within gay and lesbian activist organizations allowed for a new means of freedom and self-invention for some, that is, the creation of a homosexual culture largely unconnected to earlier gay communities. This is also what Chauncey’s more recent research reveals about the closet years, during which the phrase “coming out” was coined to describe the frequenting of homosexual venues, clandestine or otherwise. These efforts at rehistoricization, flying in the face of a “progressive” or whiggish history, leads one to describe the history of homosexuality less as the implacable march toward emancipation from the closet and more as a series of fluctuations between secrecy and visibility.
In any event, the gay liberation movement established “coming out of the closet” as part of the collective vocabulary. “Coming out” was thought of as both a survival technique as well as a way to define heterosexuality, if not as a problem per se, then at least as something that should not be assumed. In a certain sense, coming out of the closet inaugurated what would become an integral element of minority politics in the 1990s: the necessity of initiating a first-person discourse that serves the purpose of both calling current norms into question, and undermining the privilege of those experts who so easily pronounce their opinion on—and against—minority issues (e.g., doctors, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and the like).
It did not take much for new demands for discretion to be heard, aimed at thwarting the effects of coming out of the closet, in response to visible manifestations of homosexuality, under the pretext that one’s sexuality was nothing to be proud of; “Live your sexuality any way you like,” opponents said, “so long as we don’t have to see or hear anything about it.” The naysayers’ claims that sexuality was a private matter was aimed at pushing homosexuality back behind closed doors, while at the same time turning a blind eye to myriad public manifestations of heterosexuality in everything from literature to television to ads in magazines. In every case, the idea of homosexual discretion implied conformity with the heterosexual norm in which the only thing lacking was a companion of the opposite sex. Of course, this level of discretion, which essentially is invisibility, would never be required of a heterosexual.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the demand for a return to the closet is accompanied by a demand to return to the way things were prior to gay liberation. Indeed, the call for discretion and the yearning for the era of when homosexuality was illegal are simply two sides of the same phenomenon. The distance from the old closet to a new one, however golden, is short indeed.
—Philippe Mangeot
Berube, Allan.
Coming out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two
. New York: Plume Penguin, 1990.
Chauncey, George.
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Cu
l
ture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940
. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
Fassin, Eric. “‘Out,’ la métaphore paradoxale.” In
Homosexualités: expression/répression
. Edited by Louis-Georges Tin. Paris: Stock, 2000.
Finkielkraut, Alain. “Il faut résister au discours de la dénonciation,”
Journal du sida
, no.72 (1995).
Gross, Larry.
Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing
. Minneapolis/London: Minnesota Univ. Press, 1993.
Guillemaut, Françoise. “Images invisibles: les lesbiennes.” In
La Peur de l’autre en soi, du sexisme à l’homophobie
. Edited by Michel Dorais, Pierre Dutey, and Daniel Welzer-Lang. Montreal: VLB Editeur, 1994.
Herdt, Gilbert, and Andrew Boxer.
Children of Horizons: How Gay and Lesbian Teens are Leading a New Way Out of the Closet
. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Kosofsky Sedgwigk, Eve.
Epistemology of the Closet
. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1990.
Russo,Vito.
The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies
. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
—Discrimination; Exhibitionism; Heterosexism; Outing; Privacy; Proselytism; Rhetoric; Stonewall; Shame; Tolerance; Violence.
COMIC BOOKS
A successor to the legacy of
caricature
and illustrated novels and, depending on who is asked, a literary genre as well as a “ninth art,” the comic book made its first appearance at the end of the nineteenth century. It was quickly adopted as a narrative vehicle aimed at children and adolescents, and as such, the comic book abstained from addressing the issue of homosexuality in its early years. More precisely, until the 1970s the vast majority of comic book heroes evolved in a primarily asexual universe, populated more often than not by anthropomorphic creatures; any romantic relationships between characters were strictly heterosexual, even in the most realistically depicted settings. The one exception to this rule was the clandestine pornographic comic book publications such as the Tijuana Bibles, which flourished in America during the 1920s.
Paradoxically, the asexual aspect of the comic book opened the door to all sorts of
a posteriori
interpretations concerning the relationships between characters. Outside of short, purely comical narratives (usually four panels long, produced mainly for newspapers), the largest international body of works were stories of adventure. In this context, the heroes were joined by one or more secondary, same-sex characters with whom they maintained friendly relationships, relationships which seemed to subscribe to a “pedagogical” need to extol the virtues of male camaraderie to the young audience. This only begs the (rather contemporary) reinterpretation of a latent homosexuality in these characters. The list of duos to whom this description can be applied is long: Tintin and Captain Haddock, Tintin and Chang (
The Blue Lotus
), Bob Morane and Bill Ballantine, etc. However, aside from the very particular case of Alix (where author Jacques Martin’s discreet commitment on the subject left little doubt as to the nature of the relationship between its two protagonists), it is difficult to readily accept this kind of reinterpretation for most European comic books.
The situation in America was much more complex. The dominant type of American comic book since 1938, the superhero genre, also saw the creation of the sidekick character: a young male adolescent who fights alongside the heroic main character, possessing the same powers or skills, and to whom the adult serves as mentor or father figure (Green Arrow and Speedy, Flash and Kid Flash, Aquaman and Aqualad, Captain America and Bucky, and of course, Batman and Robin). This tradition has its roots in another familiar figure of American culture, the hobo. Typically an itinerant worker accompanied in his travels by a younger sort who is learning the trade, the hobo shares with the superhero the same image of virility and sense of adventure. However, it was also suggested that the nature of this hyper-masculine scenario dictated that the younger hobo provide sexual favors in return for his apprenticeship. It was probably the similarity between these two types of relationships that engendered the reinterpretation of the nature of the bond between superhero and sidekick, such as that between the famous duo of Batman and Robin. The case of Batman is even more striking in that his principal rival (created in 1940) was the Joker, the lanky and sinister clown who dressed in purple and green and wore face powder and makeup, not unlike that used by the flamboyant gays of New York during the 1930s.
In the Batman comics, it is not possible to conclude that Batman is truly portrayed as a manly homosexual, wiith his young friend Robin, fighting against a highly effeminate Joker. Nonetheless, this interpretation first opened the door to criticism, accusing the comic book of homosexual
proselytism
. Indeed, it was during
McCarthyism
in the US during the 1950s that the first edition of the book
Seduction of the Innocent
was published, in which psychiatrist Fredric Wertham denounced the corruption of American youths as promoted through the medium of the comic book. From then on, comics were blamed for all sorts of youthful trouble, from delinquency to suicide. According to critics, comics warped young minds doubly through violence (especially in the horror publications of EC Comics, such as
Tales from the Crypt
) and sex. From the promotion of homosexuality by Batman and Robin; of lesbianism by Wonder Woman, the “Amazon princess”; of sadomasochism through the countless girls appearing bound and tied at the hands of a super-villain: the writing was on the wall. In an America preoccupied with chasing internal enemies, comic books were identified as willing accomplices of the growing red menace.
The success of this hypothesis was such that the large comic book publishers (with the exception of EC Comics, which went out of business as a result of these criticisms) were forced to create an agency of self-censorship and “good behavior”: the Comics Code Authority, an organization whose purpose was to approve all comics before they could be published. The American industry would have to wear this millstone around its neck until the 1980s—thus in comic books at least, sex, and in particular, homosexuality, did not exist.
France did not experience the same type of psychosis as its neighbor across the Atlantic, but the French law of 1948 regarding the protection of children had a similar effect on comic books that did not end until the 1980s. In the 60s, however, some young French authors (e.g., Marcel Gotlib, Nikita Mandryka, and Claire Brétécher), mostly published by Pilote, began to abandon the idea that comics were only for children. Alongside the post-1968 counterculture, titles such as
L’Echo des savanes
,
Charlie
, and
Fluide glacial
began appearing: new French comics conceived for adults, where sexuality finally could be depicted. However, other than a few drawings by Jean-Marc Reiser or Philippe Vuillemin, it was not until the publication of the gay magazine
Gai-Pied
that the theme of homosexuality would really find its place in comics, which were starting to become increasingly political (e.g., the works of “Copi” and José Cunéo). Even then, it was not until the early 1990s that a “mainstream” publisher, Glénat, dared to publish an openly gay comic book, the translation of German cartoonist Ralf König’s work,
La Capote qui tue (The Killer Condom)
. Thereafter, a dichotomy began to appear in comics, between the type of comic book “series” targeted primarily at children and adolescents, and adult-oriented, “artistic” comic books (considered more in the same vein of literature); the latter allowed a place for the expression of homosexual themes, albeit limited to “strictly gay” comic books (as was the case for gay
film
and gay
literature
). Any sort of homophobic outrage was avoided, however, given that these comics were directed at gay audiences.