Michael Schiavi
Auteur de Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo
Œuvres de Michael Schiavi
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- Œuvres
- 1
- Membres
- 39
- Popularité
- #376,657
- Évaluation
- 4.0
- Critiques
- 2
- ISBN
- 5
Vito Russo's book, The Celluloid Closet, examines the history of how Hollywood has represented gay and lesbian people in movies from the very beginning to the mid-1980's when the book was published. What made it so important to me was not the thorough examination of gay and lesbian images in American film, though it's coverage is exhaustive, but the political rallying cry Vito Russo turned this issue into. The notion that Hollywood had systematically painted gays and lesbians as monstrous villains, simpering victims or effeminate clowns for decades, and that this was something we as a community should object to, was a radically new notion to my 22-year-old self. I took to the streets, quite literally, ACTing-UP against Ronald Reagan's refusal to fund treatments for people with AIDS or even to speak the name of the disease that had already taken tens of thousands of American lives by the time I was 22 and sending more than a few letters to studios, networks and publishers as well, letting them know just what it was they were doing and just what I thought about it. I tried to be civil, but honestly, why did so many serial killers have to be gay?
So I was a bit disappointed by the movie version of The Celluloid Closet, which didn't come out until many years later. It features lots of wonderful clips from films as far back as the experimental movies Thomas Edison made before movies became movies, but it included none of Vito Russo's passion or his outrage. The Celluloid Closet was meant to educate, but it was also meant to motivate. The book was supposed to make you mad enough to do something. The movie version simply entertained.
Now, almost 30 years after I read The Celluloid Closet, Michael Schiavi has written an entertaining and informative biography of Vito Russo, Celluloid Activist. You don't have to be a movie buff to gain from reading Mr. Schiavi's book. Vito Russo was an active participant in most of the major gay rights organizations beginning several years before the riots at the Stonewall Inn, through the early days of ACT-UP until his own death from AIDS in 1990. Celluloid Activist, by documenting the life of one man, documents the lives of a generation of activists who began demanding equality in a time when they could still be arrested for simply being who they were. Mr. Schiavi's book makes for interesting reading as a piece of history. It makes for interesting reading as a biography as well.
If Mr. Schiavi's book lacks the same fire Mr. Russo's book had, I believe part of that is due to the times we now live in. While there is still certainly cause for outrage, there is not nearly as much cause as there used to be. The struggle for gay and lesbian equality has become an unfinished success story. Mr. Russo did not live to see Hollywood blockbusters with gay characters like In and Out, or Brokeback Mountain or television shows like Will and Grace,k Angels in America, or Modern Family but we have. While big budget production about gay and lesbian people with actors who are openly gay and lesbian in are still rare, that day is probably coming very soon. Rick Santorum is not going to be a happy man in his old age.… (plus d'informations)