Battle of the Sexes in Williams Adaptations (Spoiler: Gay Men Lose)

The changes from Williams’ plays to their film versions are telling in their gender discrepancies. Williams was gay, and some joke that his most famous characters can be categorized as either (a) a woman embodying the Old South’s decay; or (b) a man whose thinly veiled homosexuality is made manifest as sickness or physical disability. Some of the adaptation changes, though:

A Streetcar Named Desire: Few changes from stage to screen…. Stanley is a sweaty, sexy brute; Blanche and Stella are fragile.

The Glass Menagerie: In a 1987 film version, there is less emphasis on the gay male lead (Tom, Williams dramatized) than in the original play.

Suddenly, Last Summer: Explicit references to homosexuality are excised from the screenplay, but the implicit suggestions are none too subtle. The play’s cannibalistic climax is retained, but most of the film focuses on psychological trauma that Sebastian’s mother and cousin suffer in the wake of his death.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: In the play, Brick’s “football injury” keeps him from sleeping with his wife, hypersexy Maggie the Cat. In the final scene of the film, however, Brick tells Maggie to “lock the [bedroom] door,” and we’re left believing that he’s suddenly magically not gay.

Sweet Bird of Youth: Most drastically, instead of ending castrated in a hotel room, cinema’s Chance Wayne*** has his face cut (presumably leaving a ruggedly masculine scar) and is free to leave St. Cloud with his beloved Heavenly.

Not what they meant when they said they were going to "cut him."

In short, Williams’ male characters that exhibit anything “un-masculine” or gay are rewritten, but the women stay the same. 

What do we call this? Homophobia? Unwillingness to accept anything less than Stanley-Kowalski-esque maleness? A Mulvey-style sexist trend in Hollywood narrative cinema, by which women can go crazy, be punished, be weak (because “that’s what girls are like”), but men can’t be punished or feminine (because “guys are tough”)?

[***Interestingly, Paul Newman originated Chance Wayne in theater, and he played the role on screen (he also played Brick, and directed the Glass Menagerie version I mentioned above).]

kz