Vito Russo (Image via Wikimedia Commons) Yesterday, Sunday, July 11, was the 75th anniversary of the birth of gay film historian Vito Russo, a man whose '80s book The Celluloid Closet taught us how to view the totality of cinema through a lavender lens — and who urged us to admit the view was pretty abysmal up till then.
I've encountered gay men who sniff at Russo these days, but I think his work was so incredibly important in getting more people to realize some important facts: that movies aren't just movies; that there is a difference between movies about anti-gay characters and movies whose anti-gay characters presume the audience is also anti-gay; and that while one single movie in which a lesbian dies in the end isn't necessarily