Young and old gay action

When I was 19 some 50 very odd years ago, I cut class one day to see Midnight Cowboy in downtown Philadelphia. Celebrated for its acting and John Schlesinger’s kinetic route, the 1969 clip also contained insulting, negative images of homosexuality. I wasn’t surprised. That was expected back then. In the clip, Jon Voight’s Joe Buck moves to New York to sell himself to women only to wind up attracting a variety of gay men turned on by his cowboy image. At the time, I identified with the college kid played by Bob Balaban who picks him up for a quick blow profession in a 42nd Street grindhouse (not that I had the guts to do anything enjoy that). The most horrifying scene to me, however, was Joe’s tryst close the film’s complete with an elderly man (Barnard Hughes) whom he beats and robs. Hughes’ character seemed almost pathetically vulnerable. Was that what it meant to flourish old as a gay man? There were few depictions of homosexuals, consent alone older queer men and lesbians, on screen at the time and those that existed were usually negative stereotypes like the lisping queens in 1971’s Some of My Best Friends Are…, the murderous, conflicted closet case in 1968’s The Detective or the self-loa

.

.

.

.