π¬ #TCM is #screening its 4th #movie today based upon Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning playβ"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958) starring #PaulNewman and #ElizabethTaylor.
Newman's "Brick" is an ex-jock, the scion of a wealthy Southern family. He has "latent homosexual feelings" for his jock buddy "Skipper" who recently died.
But when the smash-hit #Broadway play was adapted for film:
"'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' not only conforms with the [rules to self-#censor] #HaysCode but, through revisions, is made an exemplar of it. Director and co-writer #RichardBrooks neatly erases the #narrativeβs knottiest questions and replaces them with the kind of perfect #Christian values the code sets out to propagate. The #film became the kind of #homophobic attack on #queerness that Williams sought to #critique, inverting his complex progressives in favor of easily digestible #moralizing.
https://filmdaze.net/homosexual-erasure-in-cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof/
#tcm #screening #movie #paulnewman #ElizabethTaylor #broadway #censor #hayscode #richardbrooks #narrative #christian #film #homophobic #queerness #critique #moralizing