But since those two men first danced, there have also been scores of stories, characters, and filmmakers that have presented the varied, multitudinous aspects of LGBTQ experiences 24 frames per second that have gone past those stereotypes, or flipped them on their heads. That clip appears in The Celluloid Closet, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s documentary based on Vito Russo’s study of homosexuality in the movies, along with countless examples of how gay characters showed up, per narrator Lily Tomlin, as “something to laugh at, or something to pity, or even something to fear.” The history of representation is long, and extremely storied, often shaping how the public viewed “the love that dare not speak its name” for better or worse. It’s considered by many to be one of the first examples of gay imagery in film, and a reminder that homosexual representation has been with the medium from the very beginning. While there’s nothing to outright suggest that these men were romantically involved or attracted to each other during the roughly 20-second length of their pas de deux, there is nothing that contradicts that notion either. It’s known as “The Dickson Experimental Sound Film,” and dates back to 1895, the same year movies were born.
It was an experimental short made by William Dickson, designed to test syncing up moving pictures to prerecorded sound, a system that he and Thomas Edison were developing known as the Kinetophone. But this brief footage is not so ancient that you can’t clearly make out two men, waltzing together, as a third man plays a violin in the background. Rest assured that your children are what they are, and providing information will only help them have a better understanding of the world around them.It’s grainy, faded, and, given the clip is now 125 years old, more than a little worse for wear. you!) kids are more likely to get faulty information from other sources or just fill in the blanks themselves. The reality is that in the absence of information provided from a reliable source (a.k.a. This could not be further from the truth. Some parents also fear that telling a younger child that sometimes men are attracted to men and women are attracted to women will put ideas in their kids' heads about "becoming gay" themselves.
And, even if they do, the answer is pretty simple: they do the same things that straight couples do.
This might sound something like, "Sometimes men fall in love with men and women fall in love with women - when they do, we call it a 'gay' relationship." The question of why it is called gay is a whole different story, but the good news is that when you don't know the answer to a question, it is perfectly fine to simply say, "You know, I don't know the answer to that!" Some parents may fear that if they tell their younger children that "gay" is what it means when people of the same gender are attracted to each other that they will be forced to answer questions about sexual relations between same sex couples, but in my experience that is rarely the case - it doesn't occur to most kids that age to ask. Most 8 year-olds will gladly accept an answer that is honest and to the point (without giving excessive details). A: When an 8 year-old asks this kind of question, the answer is almost always more straightforward than most parents fear: the truth.