Gay Stereotypes ( pt-3 )

7)
A GAY MAN WHO BEFRIENDS OR WORKS WITH A GOOD-LOOKING STRAIGHT MAN WILL UNQUESTIONABLY FALL IN LOVE ( OR LUST ) WITH HIM
Among many other films, this is the message of Partners (1982). Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt play a straight cop and a gay cop who team up in order to infiltrate the gay community and catch a killer.

As described by Vito Russo in his indispensable book The Celluloid Closet, Hurt plays “a terrified closet case who can't even hold a gun without dropping it or raise his voice above a whisper. He spends all his time mooning over O'Neal and sweating profusely because he's been thrown into an openly gay situation.”

Likewise, Philip Seymour Hoffman's gay production assistant in Boogie Nights (1997), pines openly for Mark Wahlberg's porn star for no other reason aside from his looks.

On the flip side: See Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. At one point gay Perry and his straight colleague have to kiss to throw off suspicion, and Perry is the first to make clear that he got zero enjoyment out of the situation.

8)
GAY MEN WHO REPRESS THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATION BECOME MURDERERS
In Cruising (1980), Al Pacino plays a New York City policeman on the trail of a psycho killer of gay men. At the end of the film, it's implied that Pacino's character has murdered his gay next-door neighbor (played by Don Scardino) because the cop has come to the disgusted realization that he himself is homosexual.

In American Beauty (1999), Scott Bakula and Sam Robards play Jim and Jim, a well-adjusted gay couple. Compare them to Col. Frank Fitts, USMC (Chris Cooper), a messed-up bastard who openly expresses his hatred of Jim and Jim and of gays in general – which, of course, indicates that he's a closeted poofter. Eventually, Frank shoots Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) because he thinks Lester is also gay. In both of these films, the lesson is all too clear: Repression and self-loathing lead to violence. Alas, this is one of those stereotypes that actually has some validity.

9)
GAY MEN WHO DON'T REPRESS THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATION BECOME MURDERERS
In Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) — based on Patrick Hamilton's play, which was inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case — Farley Granger and John Dahl are not explicitly pegged as gay, but you'd have to be blind not to understand what they do with each other behind closed doors. They're exactly the kind of smug, pretentious, effete young men you'd expect to kill a former prep school classmate just for the thrill of it. Similarly, in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951), Granger and Robert Walker are obvious homos who plot to murder one's wife and the other's father.

On the flip side: The recent Cold Case episode "Forever Blue" nicely portrayed two gay cops who fell in love. One wanted to live his life openly while the other – married with children – didn't have the courage to do it. Nonetheless, he wasn't the one to murder his lover. That was left to the gay cop's father.