To be struggling to think of well known books or films featuring homosexuality

[haphazardbystarlight]

Can only think of Oranges.

I'm sure there must be others - any others??

My best friends wedding

Book - bookends

I guess you mean they need to be gay characters but with no particular story line concerning their gayness? In that case there could be lots but we don't know they are gay because their sexuality doesn't feature in the story!

Aladdin. Pretty sure genie is gay.

Omni no particularly pressing reason - I went to the ballet the other day and was talking to DH about how they still focus very heavily on traditional love stories and he made a rather scathing comment about them being gay.

It did get me thinking though that a m/m romance or f/f romance wasn't really something that had been covered much. Or rather, it has but in the sense that the homosexuality is the topic rather than character or different plot.

I have a sneaking suspicion about DS - and in years to come I DO want him to know it's just fine! Books are a great way in -
Obviously he's way too young for the majority of these - but I suppose I was just thinking and despite having a degree in English literature I could only think of Oranges - which is about homosexuality largely so doesn't fit!

Mumsnetters are a wiser bunch than I so I turned to you

Tv - the wire, rubicon

I explained that badly - I said something along the lines of most of the traditional ballet stories being about love and marriage and DH said 'that's ironic, considering most of the men up there are gay!'

I'd rather like to see a gay ballet.

Bound
high art
Go fish

showgirls

Lesbian/bi characters but they are focus of the stories. I'm struggling to think of LGBT fiction with an incidentally gay character

Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes.

Nobody would ever accuse me of being highbrow!

Yes - it's hard petallic and really it shouldn't be - just something that represents real life.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World - his room-mate (played by Kieran Culkin) is gay.

Queer as folk. Sugar rush.

Billy Elliot.

They're both about gay people as opposed to featuring gay people.

It's true kim. Shame really.

I'd rather like to see a gay ballet

Mathew Bourne's swan lake is fab

Just grinning at the History Boys quote upthread.

Something I like about that film is that though Posner is gay, Deakin is quite up for a bit of gay sex even though he's fairly sure he's not - but it's not dressed up as 'ooh, the poor dear is confused/repressed'.

I think I remember reading about that MrSheen - thanks for reminding me

I'll second the Matthew Bourne Swan Lake. Absolutely brilliant. The son of my old keep fit instructor is currently dancing as Edward in his version of Edward Scissorhands.

I'm sure there are others but off the top of my head:
Fingersmith (a good read!), Tipping the Velvet and probably other books by Sarah Waters that I haven't read.

There are a number of gay characters in the Song of Ice and Fire series (televised as Game of Thrones).

The Wire.

Almost every chick lit / rom com book or film has at least one gay character in it (often the heroine's gay best friend), IME.

And Hector has a 'somewhat unexpected wife'

And the Headmaster gives that rant when Hector is justifying handling the boys balls

'Fuck the Renaissance! And fuck literature, and Plato, and Michaelangelo, and Oscar Wilde, and all the other shrunken violets you people line up. This is a school, and it isn't normal!'

Posner, Daykin, Irwin and Hector are all, as Mrs Lintott would say 'on the other bus', but it's not a film about homosexuality as such.

I don't think Jeanette Winterson meant her protagonist to be just 'generally gay' in Oranges, I would say it's a major theme.