‘Stonewall’ Under Fire

The director missed an important opportunity to bring visibility to a highly marginalized and forgotten about group of people with ‘Stonewall,’ but instead he made a film that was more easily digestible for a mainstream audience. It comes as no surprise then that members of the queer community have had such strong negative reactions to the film.


This is a guest post by Danika Kimball.


Throughout his career in Hollywood, Roland Emmerich has built a career on destroying the world with mutant lizards, global disasters, and aliens. Many critics who have seen his latest film Stonewall, have come to the conclusion that he has created “yet another disaster movie” by masking a violent protest led by radical queer women as a coming of age story for an attractive white male. Some reviewers have gone so far as to say, “There are not enough bricks in the world to throw at Roland Emmerich’s appalling Stonewall.

The film has been under fire since the release of its trailer in early August, with hundreds of thousands of members of the queer community boycotting its release. Rightfully so, given the erasure of trans womyn of color, butch lesbians, drag queens, homeless queer people, sex workers, gay, bi, and pansexual people who actually put in the grunt work during the riots.

1

Image Courtesy of USC


Emmerich’s erasure of the Black transgender women who incited the riots is a disappointment in and of itself, but when you analyze the statistics for LGBTQ representation in film, the numbers are even more bleak. Professors at the University of California’s Annenberg School of Communication analyzed 100 of the most popular films in 2014 and found that out of 4,610 speaking characters, only 19 total were either gay, lesbian, or bisexual. There were zero transgender characters.

The director missed an important opportunity to bring visibility to a highly marginalized and forgotten about group of people with Stonewall, but instead he made a film that was more easily digestible for a mainstream audience. It comes as no surprise then that members of the queer community have had such strong negative reactions to the film.

Emmerich has responded to the harsh criticism in one of two ways. In an interview with BuzzFeed, he claimed that putting the character Danny at the forefront of the drama was a conscious choice to appeal to both gay and straight people. Later on he remarked that he put a white gay male in the film because he himself is white and gay.

Other times, the director has responded to criticism with a well-intentioned “Kum bah Yah” sentiment, trying to tug at the heartstrings with a “we are all in this together” speech.

2

Roland Emmerich responds to Stonewall backlash


Though his comments are certainly well intentioned, Emmerich exemplifies an attitude that many cisgender white gay males share: the idea that all queer people share the same oppressions. But it’s harmful to assume that there is a blanket of oppression over the entire LGBTQ community. In focusing on how all queer people suffer from the same oppressions, Emmerich ignores the ways in which race, class, ability, and gender identity intersect to create different levels of oppression.

Emmerich’s experience as a cis white man is very different than the trans women of color who should have been represented in the film. This fact makes the erasure of the Black trans leaders who were at the core of the Stonewall riots all the more problematic, and impossible to stomach.

3

Reactions to Emmerich’s Facebook post


Another thing I found interesting about Emmerich’s sentiments on Facebook is his emphasis on LGBT homeless youth. The only seemingly positive headlines surrounding the film seem to be because of Emmerich’s activism in this arena. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Emmerich expresses that one of the driving forces in the film centered on the story of homeless gay youths who fought bravely in the Stonewall riots. While homelessness in the LGBTQ community is a problem that needs to be addressed, it’s troublesome that it’s being filtered through the lens of someone who believes all queer people are going through the same struggles.

In the year 2012, the homeless population was at a staggering 633,782 people throughout the United States. Mental health issues, addiction, physical health issues, and domestic violence were among the main reasons contributing to this number, according to research conducted by Professor Kelly A Schwend of Bradley University’s Department of Nursing.

LGBTQ individuals represent a significant portion of that number. According to the Williams Institute, 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT, 43 percent of clients served by drop-in centers are LGBT, and 30 percent of outreach clients identify as LGBT. These individuals experience a higher percentage of violence, abuse, and exploitation compared to their heterosexual peers. Transgender people are particularly at risk due to a lack of cultural acceptance, and are often turned away from shelters, making them susceptible to even more abuse and violence.

Other studies suggest that Black people represented nearly 40 percent of the U.S. homeless demographic, a startling number when you also consider that according to the U.S. census, Black people make up only 13.2 percent of the U.S. population as a whole.

4

All of this information paints the picture that Black trans women are in all likelihood the most susceptible to experience violence and homelessness at some point in their life. Black trans women were also the most active in instigating the riots in the first place, so tell me again why these women are underrepresented in the film itself?

From his actions in erasing these women from his film, a historically dramatized narrative, it becomes hard to argue that he is concerned about anyone who isn’t a cisgender white gay male. Again, this isn’t to say that Emmerich wasn’t well intentioned in pointing out the problem, but reinforces the idea that he might not be considering intersectional points of identity when doing so.

Emmerich expressed to Vulture that he believed the film represented the diversity of the Stonewall clientele (around 70 percent Black/Latin@) “very well,” but if the trailer and reviews are any indicator we’ll be seeing more what we see in all of Hollywood: a white man in the foreground, and the people of color behind him. I mean, the still from the climax of the movie speaks for itself.

All in all, Stonewall was a film with great potential, but this fictionalized version of the story changed the narrative from one that was about violent, radical resistance, to a watered down coming of age story for a young cisgender white man. Once again, a gay white male becomes the face of a movement, and historical narratives of the rest of the queer community are erased.

 


Danika Kimball is a musician from the Northwest who sometimes takes a 30-minute break from feminism to enjoy a TV show. You can follow her on twitter @sadwhitegrrl or on Instagram @drunkfeminist.

 

 

Seed & Spark: ‘Stonewall’ Movie Fail

The movie adaptation of the Stonewall Riot entitled ‘Stonewall,’ directed by Roland Emmerich, is harboring unprecedented criticism from the entire LGBTQI community. Countless blogs, online publications, and social media pages have each blasted the movie with comments on whitewashing and altering of the historical facts.

Huffington Post Gay Voices released an article with the headline title “#NotMyStonewall: Why I’m Not Giving the Movie “Stonewall” a Chance.” The bbc.com entertainment section focused on the petition against the movie that reached more than 20,000 signatures.

I personally feel embarrassed for the director. No matter how hard he and his team try to damage-control this situation, I don’t think they will have any way out.

Stonewall movie
Stonewall movie

 


This is a guest post by Jethro.


The movie adaptation of the Stonewall Riot entitled Stonewall, directed by Roland Emmerich, is harboring unprecedented criticism from the entire LGBTQI community. Countless blogs, online publications, and social media pages have each blasted the movie with comments on whitewashing and altering of the historical facts.

Huffington Post Gay Voices released an article with the headline title “#NotMyStonewall: Why I’m Not Giving the Movie “Stonewall” a Chance.” The bbc.com entertainment section focused on the petition against the movie that reached more than 20,000 signatures.

I personally feel embarrassed for the director. No matter how hard he and his team try to damage-control this situation, I don’t think they will have any way out. The director released this statement on his Facebook page:

“When I first learned about the Stonewall Riots through my work with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, I was struck that the circumstances that lead to LGBT youth homelessness today are pretty much the same as they were 45 years ago. The courageous actions of everyone who fought against injustice in 1969 inspired me to tell a compelling, fictionalized drama of those days centering on homeless LGBT youth, specifically a young midwestern gay man who is kicked out of his home for his sexuality and comes to New York, befriending the people who are actively involved in the events leading up to the riots and the riots themselves. I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film – which is truly a labor of love for me – finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.”

Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson

 

No matter how he reassures his audience against his misappropriation of a widely known struggle for civil rights, it’s almost impossible to fictionalize an important and pivotal piece of LGBT history. This is utterly unforgivable in my opinion.

Where did this director grow up? Does he live on the same planet as us? Did the civil rights movement just pass him by, and he hardly even noticed?

As a filmmaker, I would seek to educate myself about historical movements that are intersectional or closely interrelated to what I am conveying in a movie, especially one that’s so pivotal in LGBT history.

This is not ignorance but unconscious racism on the part of the director and screenwriter, which plagues most big-budget Hollywood films. The first person that threw a brick at the Stonewall Riot is Marsha P. Johnson, an African-American, transgender woman. Why on earth would you replace her with a White, cisgender gay man?

Jose Sarria
Jose Sarria

 

This is not only dumbfounding but outrageous. Is it because White, cisgender gay men have more commercial value than African-American, transgender women?

Why is this still an issue we fight at our level of cultural awareness and gender identity critical-mindedness? It’s possible that this could be a reflection of a deeper problem that exists within our cultural consciousness. Interestingly, this parallels events that are taking place today, with most of the media transfixed on Caitlyn Jenner and Black Lives Matter.

I find it ironic that on one hand we have a transgender woman who single-handedly takes the world by storm, and on the other, black people continue to be brutally discriminated against, harassed, even killed by criminal authorities.

In the eyes of Hollywood, some historical events cannot be adapted into a multi-million dollar blockbuster movie. Perhaps, the Stonewall riot is one of them. It’s impossible to replace iconic personalities in history when the point is to cater to a wider audience. I consider this a crime.

Denying younger generations the truth of history only allows it to repeat. Sadly, this isn’t a new trend in the film industry. Hollywood is known to appropriate and alter history for the sake of profit. I believe this has to stop.

When dealing with history, filmmakers have a responsibility to be accurate about the facts and events. A movie adaptation such as the Stonewall is nothing short of a failure, and it’s downright disrespectful to a movement that is still continuing at present.

Imperial Council of San Francisco
Imperial Council of San Francisco

 

Recently, I came across a short film that promises a more accurate portrayal of the Stonewall Riots, entitled Happy Birthday Marsha, written and directed by Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel. It’s a film about the transgender artist and activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson and her life in the hours before Stonewall.

Like any other historical event, the story of Stonewall did not start at the Riot itself. The LGBT movement had been brewing years before. In the 1960s, when it was illegal to be gay, there had been an insurgence and uprising against institutionalized discrimination both in the East and the West.

In San Francisco, a man named Jose Sarria became the first openly gay individual to run for public office in an attempt to counteract the hatred that was the norm. He later founded an organization called the Imperial Council of San Francisco, the oldest surviving LGBT charity organization in America, which later gave birth to the International Court System composing of 64 affiliates in the US, Canada, Hawaii, and Mexico.

My documentary film 50 Years of Fabulous: The Imperial Council Story chronicles the 50-year history of the organization that became the pioneering nonprofit organization fundraising millions of dollars for HIV and AIDS organizations and causes throughout the decades. The film is set for postproduction and is raising funds to finish.

Please check out our Seed and Spark campaign at www.seedandspark.com/50yearsoffab.

 


Jethro is a filmmaker/video producer based in San Francisco, California. He is currently working for Adecco at Google producing marketing and training videos for Google Maps Street View and Business View. He is the director of the award winning documentary film My Revolutionary Mother and two upcoming documentaries 50 Years of Fabulous: The Imperial Council Story and My Name Is Protest.