If homosexuality is the opposite or the counter-sexual activity to that,” he asked, “then what kind of a structure would it be?” It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. “Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. “People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it’s a gay film,” he said in an interview in the spring 1993 issue of Film Quarterly.
When Todd Haynes was working on Safe, the 1995 film starring Julianne Moore as a housewife who becomes increasingly allergic to the world around her, he expressed frustration over the classification of “gay cinema.” It wasn’t that he felt the category was pigeonholing, like some might today, but rather that it should be more exacting.
