Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) Queer Film (F)

Theresa (Diane Keaton) meets Gary (Tom Berenger) in a bar and brings him back to her apartment. When Gary is unable to perform sexually, Theresa responds with patience but ultimately asks him to leave. Instead of departing, he erupts in rage and fatally stabs her—a shocking climax that reframes the film’s supposed moral message.

THE MOST VIRULENTLY HOMOPHOBIC MOVIE OF THE 1970s

Among the all the virulently homophobic movies of the1970s, Looking for Mr. Goodbar may be the most insidious. It cloaks itself in the prestige of serious art, presenting itself as a profound meditation on the sexual freedoms of the Disco era. Yet beneath that veneer lies a reactionary narrative that weaponizes moral panic.

REACTIONARY NARRATIVE

WEAPONIZES MORAL PANIC

Earlier, we glimpsed Gary in a gay club, dancing and kissing his older male partner. This brief but telling moment establishes his conflicted sexuality and deep self-loathing. The film revisits this thread only to position Gary’s repression and violence as the ultimate danger.

BAIT AND SWITCH

After two hours of heterosexual escapades—casual hookups, fleeting romances, and Theresa’s own search for identity—the story reserves its harshest judgment not for the straight milieu it has been dissecting, but for queer desire. The result is a troubling bait-and-switch: the film pretends to critique the excesses of heterosexual liberation, but its final condemnation lands squarely on a marginalized community that has played little role in the preceding narrative. In doing so, Goodbar reinforces destructive stereotypes, conflating queer identity with pathology and violence, while masquerading as a cautionary tale about modern morality.

REINFORCEMENT OF DESTRUCTIVE STEREOTYPES

CONFLATION OF QUEER IDENTITY WITH PATHOLOGY AND VIOLENCE

DIRECTOR RICHARD BROOKS
Director Richard Brooks wrote the novel The Brick Foxhole in 1945. One of the first American novels to deal with homosexuality, it was adapted to the screen under the title Crossfire in 1947 by writer John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryk, with the book’s homophobia being replaced by antisemitism. Brooks also wrote the screenplay for the Jules Dassin film noir prison breakout movie Brute Force (1947), and in 1958, he directed the queer film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Richard Brooks, who was married to actress Jean Simmons from 1960 to 1980 and directed her in Elmer Gantry (1960) and The Happy Ending (1969), passed away in 1992 at the age of 79.

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