LAVENDAR SCARE Film Review – McCarthy Style Homophobia and the Heroes Who Fought It

Posted on by J.C. Wright

Early in Josh Howard’s documentary The Lavender Scare, a cartoonishly pulpy voiceover reads aloud fragments of historic State Department investigative files that profiled and perpetually targeted homosexual employees in the United States government. The melodramatically bureaucratic villainy of the voice serves to underscore the essential absurdity of the homophobic oppression that is this film’s subject. As with prejudicial oppression in general, the cruel injustice with which characters such as Dwight D. Eisenhower and Sen. Joseph McCarthy systematically excised homosexuals—no matter how closeted—from federal employment of any kind—whether it be the from the navy, the State Department, the post office, etc.—was completely unfounded in any statistical or observational evidence. In the years following WWII and on through the Cold War, the claim, as the camera zooming in on a contemporaneous news headline reveals, was that “The Reds Blackmail Homosexuals into Spying for Them!” And yet, as the interviews and documentations tell, there was not a single verified case of this actually happening within any United States office of any kind.

Accentuated in this story, as well, is a truly frightening aptitude possessed by sinisterly powerful politicians: the clever ability to amalgamate unrelated propagandistic symbols and paranoid codifications. The title of the film, partially based on David K. Johnson’s same-titled book, is in reference the Lavender Scare’s precursor, the Red Scare of McCarthyism, which became the pretext for rooting out homosexuals in government agencies in the decades between the War and Stonewall. The Lavender Scare was an offshoot of the Red Scare, the former based in the latter, but the former would take on an apparent life of its own independent of paranoia about the Communist menace. Although there were many parallels, such as the demand that those accused or exposed name names, and while possible breaches in security continued to be flaunted as the reason for the expulsion and continued ill-treatment of outed homosexuals, representations of the homosexual man in clips from Boys Beware, a short public service film from 1961, illustrate that the demonization of gays and lesbians had taken on a life of its own.

In the clips included in The Lavender Scare, we see, underneath chirpy wind instrumentation, against the black and white sunshine of Rockwellian suburbia, a bald, weaselly-toothed man with a greasy mustache in dark sunglasses luring an innocent, clean-cut adolescent boy into his car and then into his apartment after some activities such as a little afternoon fishing. In addition to the stated implications that all homosexuals are lurking predators, the cop narrating the film also makes it clear that homosexuality is a contagious mental illness threatening to infect and pervert when least expected the minds of America’s plucky, trusting youths.

LAVENDAR SCARE
Senator Joseph McCarthy ignited the Red Scare with his claim that Communists had infiltrated the government, the news and entertainment industries and academia. But the Lavender Scare, the fear of a spreading homosexual menace, would become an even more powerful political weapon.

Arguments about the realities of sexual predation aside, that campy representation in Boys Beware is a stark contrast to the interviews with people affected by anti-gay governmental policies in Howard’s film, but even more striking is the contrast to the collage of romantic photos that one must assume were kept hidden away amidst the most private shoebox memories for many years and over which the camera pans as Jimmie Rodgers’s “Secretly” begins to play. These photos from the 50s and 60s show one by one a series of men with men and women with women in a variety of consensually intimate embraces. There are men in military garb, others in loosened shirt and tie, women wearing pants in the comfortable scenery of homey houses, and others resting party-weary heads on lovers’ shoulders. Anyone of sound mind and heart would have to recognize these depictions as more tender than terrifying, which makes another photograph presented in the film that much more poignant: a picture of men around a table in a gay bar hiding from the camera their faces in their hands. This is a testament to the intense fear of being socially outed, but also to the courage of people like Frank Kameny.

LAVENDAR SCARE
First White House Protest: The U.S. government’s anti-gay witch hunts helped ignite the gay rights movement years before the Stonewall riots. This 1965 picket in front of the White House in Washington D.C. was the first demonstration of its kind.

Fired from his job as an astronomer for the U.S. Army’s Map Service for no other reason than that of being gay in 1957, Kameny founded the Mattachine Society of Washington D.C. and in his words was “to the best of [his] knowledge and belief...the first person to fight back out of all those large, huge numbers of people that were fired in the fifties.” His political battle was both public and civilly aggressive, but it is perhaps through another means by which he achieved his greatest success and that is through the thwarting of the American establishment’s perception of the average homosexual. As per the strict dress code that he required to be part of the protests that he organized, the news footage shows not wild deviants in outrageous outfits, but men and women marching with signs and wearing the garb of professional and employable job-seekers, that of suits and ties, dresses and pumps. Apart from including to some degree Kameny’s story as part of the gay rights movement before Stonewall, if The Lavender Scare pays homage to his legacy in any way, it is in this: the recognition that prejudicial oppression by the powerful occurs most effectively when they usurp the right of representation and dictate perception to the misled and trusting masses. Activists like Kameny fight to reclaim that right of representation and strive to restore critical thinking to a media-constrained society.

If The Lavender Scare does nothing else, it reminds us of that continuing struggle and of the damaged souls who found the courage and conviction to step forward in those tumultuous early days of the Gay Rights Movement which continues to this day.

LAVENDAR SCARE
Two women photographed in the 1950s.
LAVENDAR SCARE
The U.S. government’s witch hunt of gay men and lesbians was front page news in the 1940s and 1950s. But as the firings continued well into the 1980s and ‘90s they would draw less and less attention.
LAVENDAR SCARE
Frank Kameny leads a picket line in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1965. Forty activists joined the protest, making it (at the time) the largest public demonstration for LGBT rights in world history.
LAVENDAR SCARE
Two men photographed in the 1950s.
LAVENDAR SCARE
Joan Cassidy, a retired Navy captain, discusses her experiences during the anti-gay witch hunts with Josh Howard during a filming for The Lavender Scare.
LAVENDAR SCARE
Two women photographed in the 1950s.
LAVENDAR SCARE
Two men photographed in the 1950s.
LAVENDAR SCARE
Frank Kameny and Josh Howard: Producer/Director Josh Howard with Dr. Franklin Kameny during a 2010 filming for The Lavender Scare.

Recommended

Produced and Directed by: Josh Howard

Based on the acclaimed book by: David K. Johnson

Narrated by: Glenn Close

Featuring the voices of: Cynthia Nixon, Zachary Quinto, T.R. Knight, and David Hyde Pierce

THE LAVENDER SCARE opens Friday, June 7, 2019 in New York (Cinema Village) and Los Angeles (Laemmle Music Hall,  timed to the 50-year anniversary of Stonewall, with a national release to follow.

NEW YORK
Cinema Village
22 East 12th Street

LOS ANGELES
Laemmle Music Hall
9036 Wilshire Blvd

Washington, DC
June 5th
​
Key West, FL
June 6th
​
Vero Beach, FL
June 8th
​
Nantes, France
June 11th through 16th

Chicago
June 15th
​
Yonkers
June 15th
​
Berlin
June 18th

For more information visit The Lavendar Scare webpage

Photos courtesy of LAVENDAR SCARE Film

Share this:
     

Make a Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *