More than thirty years after Word Is Out premiered at San Francisco's Castro Theater, one of the most intriguing things about it is how clearly and drastically it has aged. Watching this pioneering gay documentary now, it's easy to view it as a barometer of how much has changed for the public perception of homosexuality in America, since the film predates the AIDS activism that galvanized the gay community in the Eighties, the post-structuralist queer theory that became academic vogue in the Nineties, and the mainstreaming of gay experience that continues to reach new heights (or lows—depending on your perspective) in the new millennium. Formally, Word Is Out is also something of a relic. Intercutting the direct-to-camera reminiscences of twenty-six gays and lesbians, it combines two modes of self-exposure—the act of coming out and the interview-based documentary—that trace their appeal to the psychoanalytic notion of a "talking cure," which has since fallen out of favor as a model for truth-telling. Understandably, the contemporary audience wants more from its queer cinema than an expression of what now seems obvious; aesthetic subversion and politically astute critique have taken precedence over earnest, tear-stained testimonies... [The rest of the post can be found at The L Magazine.]
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