AGAINST THE LAW: AN ACCLAIMED BBC DRAMA BASED ON REAL-LIFE EVENTS. (2017) BASED ON THE MEMOIRS BY PETER WILDEBLOOD. DIRECTED BY FERGUS O'BRIEN. WRITTEN BY BRIAN FILLIS AND PETER WILDEBLOOD (AUTOBIOGRAPHY).
STARRING DANIEL MAYS, CHARLIE CREED
MILES, MARK GATISS, RICHARD GADD, PAUL KEATING, JAMES GADDAS, MARK
EDEL-HUNT AND JOSH COLLINS.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
Peter Wildeblood: I
shouldn't be here. This shouldn't be happening.
Prison psychiatrist:
You broke the law.
Peter Wildeblood:
Well then, the law is wrong...!
Queer. Faggot. Pervert. Deviant.
Fairy. Nancy Boy. Homo. Arse-bandit. Uphill gardener. Shirt-lifter.
Pillow-biter. Hershey highwayman. Pansy. Batty-boy. You can add as
many more of your own as you like, but the real-life gay men featured
in this excellent BBC docu-drama have heard every derogatory term for
describing the homosexual male that have ever been invented, and
probably a few more choice ones besides.
They've heard it all, and their
stories will literally break your hearts. I would say that it would
take a hardened gay-basher indeed not to be moved by their terrible
stories, stories that almost seem more suited to Hitler's Germany
than civilised old Blighty in the second half of the twentieth
century. Let's take a look at the film and hopefully you'll see what
I mean.
Peter Wildeblood (what a
fabulous but also sadly ironic name, given what happened to poor old
Oscar Wilde in the early 1900s under what I imagine was the same
archaic law)) is the central character here. He was a
journalist for an English newspaper when the real-life events that
made him something of a household name occurred in Britain in the
early-to-mid-'Nineteen Fifties.
A homosexual male in an era when it
was still illegal to be so, Peter had a love affair with an RAF
Corporal called Eddie McNally. They had full-on homosexual sex with
each other but there's no doubt in the viewers' minds that the two
men loved each other too, in a way which, if it were to happen today,
would raise very few eyebrows and might even lead to a civil partnership
and a plethora of loving photographs across the length and breadth of
social media.
Unfortunately, something of a
witch-hunt that was taking place in Britain at the time against
homosexual males in public life caused the police to investigate
Wildeblood for 'gross indecency and buggery (horrible
words, aren't they?),' along with his two posh chums Lord
Montagu and Michael Pitte-Rivers.
The investigation led to a prison
sentence of twelve months for Lord Montagu and eighteen months each
for Wildeblood and Pitte-Rivers, under what I'm guessing were the
same laws that, as I mentioned previously, had convicted Oscar Wilde for the same offence over half a century ago. This gives us some idea of how outdated and
draconian these laws were.
The police had put pressure on
Wildeblood's lover Eddie McNally to 'fess up about the affair and
also to provide them with the letters and documentary evidence which
helped them to gain a conviction for Wildeblood.
In the film, we see a devastated
Wildeblood saying: 'How could Eddie do this to me?' The
police threatened him with severe jail-time, that's why. I
don't blame poor Eddie, who clearly didn't want to do any of the
things the police made him do and who only did them to save himself
from a hefty jail-sentence. Which one of us wouldn't sell out our own
grannies to spare himself such a grim fate...?
Prison was indeed grim for Peter
Wildeblood, whose only 'crime' had
been that he loved another man.
He would have preferred not to be gay, he tells us, because of all
the fear, loneliness, self-doubt and self-loathing it caused him, and
all that's perfectly understandable. He could no more change what he
was, though, than he could suddenly fly to the moon, and that's about
the size and height of it.
The
scene in the prison psychiatrist's office has to be seen to be
believed. Peter is willing to be 'cured' of
his homosexual tendencies, until, that is, he hears about the
'cures.' Electric
shock therapy seems to involve being 'shocked' whenever you have an
illegal sexual thought about a member of your own sex. Well, forget
about that, for a start. Feck that for a game of soldiers.
Aversion
therapy seems to be about being injected with a certain substance
which no-one in the film could remember the name of, and which causes
every morsel of food and drink to leave your body one way or the
other. Then you lie in your own vomit, shit and piss for several
days, without being cleaned up or assisted in any way, until the
authorities decide you've had enough.
That's supposed to put you off being gay? Jesus wept. It might make you really ill for several days, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't stop you from being gay. Nothing can really do that, can it, as Nature can't be denied.
That's supposed to put you off being gay? Jesus wept. It might make you really ill for several days, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't stop you from being gay. Nothing can really do that, can it, as Nature can't be denied.
The
drama bits of AGAINST THE LAW are
inter-sliced with real documentary footage of real-life elderly gay
men, who actually lived through these awful times, describing their experiences.
One elderly man who underwent this so-called 'aversion
therapy' said that these
were the worst two or three days of his entire seventy or eighty
years on this earth, and that's really bloody saying something.
Another
elderly male featured in the documentary was a male nurse who'd
facilitated at some of these aversion therapy sessions back in the
bad old days. With tears in his eyes, he apologises profusely to the
men he'd forcibly put through such a barbaric practice.
Other gay
men, all elderly now and pitifully frail-looking, describe their own
experiences of fear, loneliness, the threat of imprisonment and the
hostility from family, friends, total strangers and society at large
that were all part and parcel of being a homosexual male from that
era.
The old
man who described being cripplingly lonely his whole life for fear of
anti-gay backlash and repercussions had me bawling into my cushion.
That shouldn't have happened to anyone. Life is a tough enough
journey without being condemned by society or by the law to go through it
alone. I wanted to hug this sweet old geezer so much and tell him
that I'm in awe, literally in awe, of his tremendous courage.
Anyway,
after his imprisonment, Peter Wildeblood (1923-1999)
gave evidence to
something called the Wolfenden Commission, which looked into the
question of homosexuality with a view to changing the punitive laws
which had landed Peter in prison in the first place. Peter was the
only openly homosexual male to do so.
The
law was changed
after several years to allow homosexual males to be gay, as it were,
with other homosexual males above the age of consent and behind
closed doors. I'm not sure if any other changes to this law have
taken place since then, but it certainly looks like it could do with
some amending, doesn't it, to remove the awful stigma altogether?
Peter
gives the Commission his definition of the 'three
categories of homosexuals.' According
to Mr. Wildeblood, there were the 'pansies,' the
openly gay men who were effeminate and feminine, bitchy and gossipy,
and who called each other luvvie and duckie and who referred to each
other as 'she' and
'her.'
The
flaming homosexuals, in other words, as Homer Simpson from THE SIMPSONS would probably
call them. Remember the episode about John the Gay Guy, in which
Homer is openly homophobic to John Waters's gay character, an antique
shop owner who's also called John?
By the end of the episode, Homer has
reconciled himself to the fact that not all gays are bad eggs and
all's well again in 742, Evergreen Terrace...! Real life isn't quite so 'pat' though and doesn't always wrap itself up neatly after thirty minutes with time for three sets of commercials.
The
second 'category of homosexuals' are
the pederasts, the paedophiles, and the third and
final
'category' contains
men like Peter Wildeblood, gay men who don't necessarily 'flaunt'
their gay status but who
want to be left in peace to choose a life partner and love him as
they wish. It's only what the rest of us are automatically entitled to, after all.
I
liked the choice of James Gaddas (Vinnie from Coronation Street) as the Guv'nor of the prison. He's
well-used to this kind of role as he was the Guv'nor of Larkhall
Prison in fantastic women-behind-bars television drama series BAD
GIRLS in the 'Nineties
and the 'Noughties. I loved that show...! So many bad girls, haha, including a few celebrity faces like Stephanie Beacham from glamorous prime-time television drama serial THE COLBYS.
This
marvellous docu-drama was broadcast as part of BBC2's GAY
BRITTANIA season that
commemorated the 50th
anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. It's described as 'a
powerfully emotive factual drama of the court case that led to a
review of the laws regarding homosexuality.'
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You
can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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