Seven Minute Clip from PBS's Upcoming Documentary on Stonewall

From left: Susan Bellows, David Carter, David Heilbroner, Kate Davis, Martin Boyce

Last night I attended what was billed as a preview clip of a work in progress of the American Experience's forthcoming documentary on Stonewall. The filmmakers were at pains to say this 7-minute sample of talking heads (Stonewall patrons, the arresting police officer, historians, awesome Virginia Apuzzo) was merely a "pastiche," a "taste" of the 90-minute broadcast planned for April 2010. They also promised that the final version would put the riots in "context," though in amplifying that, the wife and husband directing team of Kate Davis and David Heilbroner mentioned only the "incredible archival trove of homophobia" and pervasive anti-gay views across America at the time. During the clip and the lengthy discussion, no one ever referenced Harry Hay, ONE, Phyllis & Del, Daughters of Bilitis, the Mattachine Society, ECHO, the picketing of the White House and Philadelphia's City Hall, or any other gay history prior to 1969. Stonewall is an essential, explosive midpoint in the timeline of gay rights, but the filmmakers will commit a crushing injustice if they cast it as the birth of the movement.

For seventeen years before the riots, organized gay groups fought for gay equality, published gay magazines, won Supreme Court cases (1958), held national gay conferences (1960), successfully lobbied state legislatures to rescind their sodomy laws (1962), and promoted gay visibility, protesting publicly against anti-gay discrimination (1965). To erase these landmark achievements by claiming that the gay rights movement began with a bar brawl is to disgrace those pioneers and history itself. God knows bravery wears many outfits and symbols are powerful, but the drag queens and Stonewall regulars fighting police and doing chorus line kicks while singing, "We are the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls," mustn't obliterate their less cinematic, more scholarly forerunners.

A main source for the series is David Carter and his book Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution, which does acknowledge the earlier activists.

Among director Kate Davis's many documentaries is Southern Comfort about a FTM trans man dying of ovarian cancer who falls in love with a MTF. Rigorously avoiding sensationalism and stereotype, it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2001. Her statement for the DVD begins, "This June marks the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots. In June of 1969, for the first time, transgendered and gay youth fought back against the police because they were fed up with oppression..."

American Experience producer Susan Bellows mentioned that the series has created 275 films over the years, and I asked her how many of those dealt with gay life. She said this was the first. She asked if I thought there was a particular event in American history they'd missed. Feeling that 1 in 275 inadequately represents lgbt contributions to society, I said, "Well, there are people--" She nodded. "Right," she said. "We haven't done Harvey Milk." Subjects of previous films are zydeco music and Tupperware.

Comments

[Todd]

Thanks for posting this. I wrote my dissertation about pre-Stonewall gay male culture (and the book version is coming out soon) and so the whole Stonewall thing gets under my skin. Here in California, LCE, SIR, CHR, etc., all predated Stonewall. Mattachine Society's regional organizations were all relatively independent. Philadelphia's and D.C.'s were quite activist long before Stonewall. I'm not against celebrating Stonewall per se, but as a social scientist who kinda likes historical accuracy, it irks me that a riot at a bar that no one in the gay movement outside of New York even cared about at the time came to be emblematic of the movement as a whole. (In LA and SF, for example, they'd been protesting and suing and running for office and fighting police harassment in the courts and on the streets for years before Stonewall, including the Compton Cafeteria Riots, where transexuals and drag queens fought the police in 1966.) I think that it really is just a generational thing: The younger gays/lesbians of the baby boomer generation saw themselves as different and radical and, frankly (if you believe their publications from the period) better than the gay and lesbian of the pre-Stonewall movement. As they organized events (viz., the first Stonewall memorial march in NYC and LA the next year), and as they both took over the movement and because the first generation of queer scholars, Stonewall becomes anchored in the collective consciousness as the "beginning of the movement."

I'm frankly appalled at Susan Bellow's ignorance, or at least of her unwillingness to hear about gay and lesbian history before Stonewall. Hell, why doesn't American Experience make a documentary based on Chauncy's _Gay New York_ for example? Or the fantastic research that's been done on homosexuality during the colonial period? Or the controversies about "romantic firendship" and 19th century homosexuality? What about all the gay and bisexual artists in the Harlem Renaissance? The anthropolgoical work about Native Americans (that would be an amazing story!). Is there anyway to contact Susan Bellow to float ideas for her?

[ChiChi Fargo]

Thanks, Stephen.
Too bad the heinous bully and former American Experience capo Judy Crichton is no longer here to blame for any of this. She once called me at home out of the blue to call me a liar, hoping to divert some blame from one of her henchmen. I would love an opportunity to repay the compliment.

[mistermoose]

Thanks for this...one of my pet peeves. Stonewall was an effect (one of many) that grew out of what had very vigorously been taking place on the West Coast for a couple of decades by people who really knew the meaning of courage.

Even the Midwest (Minnesota) was a hotbed of pre-stonewall radical gay activism that were being informed by West Coast activism. On May 18th, 1969 (pre-Stonewall) the organization named FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression) was founded at the University of Minnesota. This was the first Gay student organization in the United States and received nationwide press. Pre-Stonewall. The founder of this organization (Jack Baker) went on to become the first Gay Student Body President of any university (University of Minnesota) running on a platform that included attacks on sexism and homosexism. He was re-elected in 1973 after his highly public application for a marriage licence in 1970...apparently the first attempted Gay marriage in the U.S. and, in 1971 the couple applied for and were awarded a marriage licence in Mankato, Minnesota and married by a Methodist minister in Minneapolis. Yet another first. The couple went on to submit joint tax returns which were accepted by the IRS up until 2004 when the DOMA was passed - another first. And in 1972 Jack persuaded the state convention of the DFL (democratic party) to adopt a platform plank supporting equal marriage rights for all adults. This is believed to be the first support for gay marriage by any major United States political party.

Minnesota was very gay and very active before Stonewall, inspired by pre-Stonewall, California-based gay theory/activism and manifesting through FREE, Jack, and an extremely liberal social climate in Minnesota at that time. At 17, living a short distance from the University where this Q bomb was exploding, this was an exciting time for me to be alive. I thought then that the battle had been won...little did I know that the real battlefields hadn't emerged yet.

Stonewall is being inaccurately mythologized, history is being rewritten, and people's experiences and hard-won accomplishments are being erased. grrr...