The significance of these gender bending movies was discussed in our entry on November 15. These awards reveal that the gender bending and societal exploration of non-traditional sexual orientations is still an emerging trend. As we have noted (see the additional references to our November 15 entry), society went through the same transformation in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the issue of homosexuality was brought out of the closet for the first time. The same openness to diverse sexualities was recorded by The Boys in The Band, a 1968 play (and a 1970 movie), “which for the first time truly and honestly dealt with the lives of contemporary homosexuals.” This time around, the greater number of works dealing with these issues, as well as their critical acclaim, probably speaks to the larger degree of the turn.
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