A Thousand Kindred Spirits

Dear Lisa and Victor,

In truth, with this title I am stealing back a phrase from Monica Pearl (which she borrowed from me originally) that seems apt for the occasion of convening in a banquet room in Atlanta in 2016 with a thousand kindred spirits to celebrate Richard Dyer.

I first encountered Richard on the page in the ferment of 1970s-era Chicago. The occasion was the publication of Jump Cut, no. 16, and the special section "Gays and Film" that included Richard's pioneering article "Homosexuality and Film Noir."¹ It was 1977. Richard was a key figure for this opening salvo. JC editor Chuck Kleinhans back then wrote the grand introduction to the section, observing rightly that "for the most part, open gay criticism in the seventies has resided in the gay press and parts of the alternative press in North America. It hasn't been on the agenda in film studies or in the pages of film publications."² He warned that the situation was changing, though, in no small part due to Richard, whose own "indispensable booklet," Gays and Film, then just out from the BFI, heralded "the emergence of a strong gay presence in contemporary film thought."³

Kleinhans then apologized on behalf of JC for the absence of lesbians in its section and promised a future remedy; sure enough, three years later, there was a "Lesbians and Film" issue, which I coedited.⁴ I'd been inspired by Richard, yes, but by then had also become fully enamored of girls. Richard inspired on many levels! His influence on both life and film should not be underestimated.

Dyer's "Homosexuality and Film Noir" addressed the influence of film noir and the pernicious representations of lesbians and gays in the cinema. He observed:

Given the dearth of alternative images, it is reasonable to suppose that these had an important influence on both public ideas about homosexuality and damagingly gay self-images. I know that as I grew up realizing I was gay, I used to identify with characters like Waldo in Laura [Otto Preminger, 1944] or Jo in Walk on the Wild Side [Edward Dmytryk, 1962]; they concretized and reinforced for me the negative feelings about myself that I picked up elsewhere in the culture. I know from work within the gay movement how widespread these images still are.⁵

And knowing how widespread they were, he went on to write for Jump Cut again, this time in "Gays in Film," an essay that looked at everything from stereotypes to realism.⁶

If Richard offered courage to stand up against these ideas and images, through his great love of genres and movies he equally gave permission to hold on to beloved artifacts. Richard was always embracing his own "bad objects" and wouldn't be shamed into forsaking his passions for those films. In this way, he was different from the more puritanical Vito Russo, who railed against the films and who, I felt, didn't trust the audience to transform their dross into gold.⁷ Richard did, and does, and that explains why so many gathered last year to cheer him on. Richard approached film with love, with a generosity from the very beginning that has continued throughout his work.

Ah, but back then. What were the early years like for "gay and lesbian" film? First of all, nothing unfolded in a fancy banquet room or mainstream conference like the SCMS of 2016. This is no recitation of histories of victimhood, but I must allow an involuntary memory: just how hard fought those early writings were. Don't take them for granted. Imagine instead what a grand, expansive spirit it took to set these ideas afloat in the world, for them to emerge on the page with such ebullience out of an era of repression that had left so many angry and, a decade later, so many dead.

Richard has conducted his career with the grace of a film-worthy prince. It is his willingness to be forever open, putting his ideas out with great sangfroid but also with great love, that explains why those...