Before the gay best friend could be phased out, he had to come out. Today, those three short words tend to denote the most confining limitations to queer characters in film, a trope and archetype designed to keep homosexuality on the sidelines, adjacent to the more palatable lives and loves of straight people. For a time, however, sassy support was about the best representation queer people could hope for on screen, even if it required some code-reading on the viewer’s part. In Code-era Hollywood, ascribing a sexuality at all to the waspish single man commenting on, or even assisting in, the protagonists’ own entanglement would have been a detail too far. He had a name, a role, a handful of good lines. What more could he want – an identity?
Curated by the critic Michael Koresky, a mini-season of films on the Criterion Channel in June affords some depth and dignity to a character often demeaned as a patronising relic of now-outdated prejudices – even as it persists in film and TV today. Koresky’s selection delves beyond the romantic comedy realm where the trope made its most enduring impression, and into the realist dramas, psycho-thrillers and unclassifiable art films (Irma Vep, most unexpectedly) through which the gay best friend has evolved from a type to a human being.
