When In & Out arrived in theaters twenty years ago, the state of LGBTQ+ representation in cinema was only starting to take shape in the form we know it today. Frank Oz's 1997 comedy starred Kevin Kline as a high school teacher whose life turns upside down when a former student outs him during his Oscar acceptance speech. There's just one problem: Kline's character has no idea he's gay. What follows next is largely a fish out of water comedy with broad, inoffensive undertones of inclusion that also manages to miss almost every aspect of what it means to be an LGBT person beyond the spectrum of amusing a traditional audience. It's stereotypical and reductive, but it is also very much a product of its times and a fascinating moment in the history of queer representation to ruminate on two decades later.

Rebounding from the cultural conservatism of the 80s and reacting to the burgeoning acceptance of gay lifestyles, the Hollywood studio system dipped a toe in the realm of queer diversity with a series of films centered around innocuous gay leads. Even if these films have aged poorly in a number of regards, they were groundbreaking at the time and in order to fully appreciate their impact and shortcomings, it's interesting to look at them in the light of how the matter of homosexuality in film was handled up to that point.

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Image via Paramount Picturs

In the earliest days of Hollywood, films were generally less stringent about depictions of same-sex affection — just take a look at the famous kiss between two World War I soldiers in the very first Best Picture winner, the 1927 drama Wings. That's not to say homosexuality was openly welcomed on film, but the stigma toward on-screen affection between two members of the same gender was less stigmatized than depictions of men and women who acted without the confines of their gender roles.

Following the great depression, studios turned up the sex and scandal factor to sell more tickets, including salacious (for the time) portrayals of homosexuality -- a decision that pissed off a whole lot of religious groups, who boycotted the morally bankrupt institution of Hollywood and their scandalous, sinful films. The blowback from religious groups led to the ideation and institution of the Production Code in 1934; a means by which studio films were subject to the rules and standards of religious groups.

See, in 1915 the Supreme court ruled that free speech did not apply to motion pictures, which they considered a business, and while the Production Code was never law, it was effectively an arrangement that saw studios self-censor to follow the word of a Catholic-based code of conduct. The point of the Production Code was to enforce traditional values, so along with things you’d expect like nudity, there were a bounty of other restrictions like ridicule of the clergy, interracial marriage, and of course, homosexuality. Queer narratives were famously erased from a number of film adaptations during this era, including The Children’s Hour and The Maltese Falcon, and if LGBT heroes were written out of the action, homosexual characters were almost universally portrayed as villains, and they pretty much always died.

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Image via United Artists

The first progress toward better representation came after the Supreme Court overruled that decision in 1952, giving films the right to free speech. After that, the Production Code was torn down in favor of the MPAA as studios realized they could get away with more and make more money in the process. Of course, the portrayals of homosexuality didn’t immediately right ship and new, harmful tropes evolved with the new freedoms, most notably the dejected, often suicidal queer whose entire existence was based in self-loathing.

But the coming years brought a rapid evolution in American culture. The civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and specifically the Stonewall Riots of 1969 changed the profile of queerness in American culture. At the same time, Hollywood executives started to realize they could make money by aiming films at these unserved audiences. As a part of an industry-wide trend toward more provocative, challenging content, the 70s became a momentous turning point for on-screen LGBT representation with films like Midnight CowboyCabaret, and The Boys in the BandWilliam Friedkin's 1970 film that's regarded as the first studio attempt to appeal to gay audiences. But with the shifting tides of history came the 80s, and with it, the culture swing toward conservatism and the return of the religious "moral majority". Film boycotts returns, coalescing with the AIDS epidemic, and media depictions turned LBGT characters into villains once again, both in the news and in cinema.

As we entered the 90s, the status shifted once again, and if the 80s represented a step back, the new decade took us a few more steps forward. The early 90s brought the birth of so-called New Queer Cinema, a term coined by film scholar B. Ruby Rich to describe films like Poison, My Own Private Idaho, and Paris Is Burning — irreverent, subversive independent films that explored the queer experience with a rejection of heteronormativity and a fluid understanding of what it meant to be LBGT. Meanwhile, as independent filmmakers continued to embrace the thematic and aesthetic freedom of New Queer Cinema, the studio response was to turn out a series of comic queer-friendly films deemed more acceptable for “traditional” audiences. That’s where we find In & Out, which was one of many such films that hit theaters in the late 90s, alongside The Object of My AffectionThe Birdcage, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything.

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Image via Paramount Pictures

Representation in these films was both progressive and prickly in an unprecedented way. Studios wanted to net inclusive audiences and more conservative audience alike, creating an approach to queerness that was a bit like the cinematic equivalent of don’t ask, don’t tell. Gay characters could take the lead, they could be portrayed as good people, not just as the villains or self-loathing figure, but their sexuality had to remain either offscreen or the butt of the joke. Queer characters could be emotionally intimate, but not physically intimate, often leading to portrayals that seemed more like high fashion asexuals.

In & Out is a key example of this trope. When we meet Kline’s Howard Brackett, everyone around him, including his bride to be, are completely and utterly unaware that he’s gay… and so is he. Howard doesn’t even realize he’s a homosexual until a former student announces it on national television, and even then, he only comes to accept the truth after he endures a series of what I can only describe as gay tests, a sort of reverse conversion therapy; trying to listen to the Village People without dancing, listening to someone insult Barbara Streisand without getting angry, and in a groundbreaking on-screen kiss for the era, getting smooched full-on by Tom Selleck. All of these tests revolve around flagrant gay stereotypes (except the kissing Tom Selleck thing, pretty sure that’s universal), and all of them make Howard’s sexuality something to laugh at.

Perhaps more fascinating though, is the film’s inherent message on otherness and the role of belonging in traditional society. Opposite the fringe society intonation of the New Queer movement, these studio comedies set up a structure of acceptance that at once established LGBT characters as the other, but one that was permitted within the sphere of "normalcy". It's a strange parallel; one that distances the audience from the characters enough to laugh at their oddity, but softens their edges enough to make them welcome. Take, for example, Nathan Lane's role as Albert Goldman in The Birdcage; a flurry of feminine gesture and hyperdramatics who delivers a laugh a minute, but also charms Gene Hackman's conservative old codger Sen. Kevin Keely with his dedication to family values -- as long as he doesn't know it's a gay family. While independent cinema was carving out a space for queer counterculture, where the LGBT community could live by its own rules and definitions, studio filmmaking was carving out a very clear-cut space for homosexuals in society, as long as they played by the rules.

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Image via Paramount Pictures

This was seen in television as well, most notably in Will and Grace in which Eric McCormack’s Will — an analogous character to Howard Brackett — was long played as “My Pet Homosexual,” Grace’s in-house Gay BFF who was rarely afforded the same level of significant relationship arcs or on-screen displays of affection as his female counterpart. This type of on-screen depiction of homosexuality, in addition to being almost exclusively white and male, was more of a construct of personality quirks than a portrait of romantically viable sexual beings. There was also a strange reflection of the times in the way that gay characters were treated with casual cruelty in these films, even by their loved ones. The way the son in The Birdcage so easily discounts his fathers' happiness in his pursuit of "normalcy" or how the town reacts with disgust and fear when Howard's sexuality first comes into question. People would come around to their lifestyle by the end of the film -- In & Out goes so far as having the town unite behind Howard in a Spartacus moment as they all yell, "I'm gay!" -- but the suggestion was that these initial reactions were understandable, to be expected.

And yet, while it’s easy in retrospect to criticize these creative choices as problematic, or worse, money-grabbing tactics to appease traditional audiences, they also played a role in the normalization and acceptance of the LGBT lifestyle in homes across America. Will and Grace was a monumental stepping stone in gay representation on television and Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck’s comedic on-screen kiss in In & Out may have been played for laughs, but it helped break ground and pave the way for Brokeback Mountain, the studio awards-contender that would change the rules of queer representation once again. Unfortunately though, for the studio films of the In & Out era, the choice was between bad representation or no representation at all.

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Image via Focus Features

While rare films in the 90s like Philadelphia and Boys Don't Cry treated LGBT subject matter with honesty and managed to break through to the awards scene, Brokeback Mountain represented a seismic shift in depictions of on-screen homosexuality and how it was received. The film presented a narrative about two masculine queer men -- played by two of young Hollywood's heartthrobs, no less -- who were locked in a passionate affair that was romantic, sexual, and completely validated. The film was nominated for Best Picture and while it was denied the win, it marked a tremendous moment in on-screen representation, and the ripple effects are still being felt. In the years since, other queer films like MilkA Single Man, and more recently, Carol all continued to establishing the legacy of awards recognized films, and last year, Moonlight, a film that is unapologetically focused on the coming-of-age experience of a gay black man, took home Best Picture in a surprise upset over La La Land. It was the first LGBT film to win Best Picture and you can't ask for much better representation than what we see in Moonlight, a film that was validated at the highest level of Hollywood pedigree.

But does that mean we've reached the pinnacle of on-screen representation for the LGBT community? Unfortunately, no. If there's one thing that looking back through the history of queer sexuality in cinema makes abundantly clear, it's that the industry is always shifting, as is the conversation surrounding representation. Steps forward are met with steps back, and larger cultural shifts toward and against conservatism tend to manifest in what we see on screen. Representation always matters, but the people who believe that are too rarely in power, and those in power are too often motivated by the pull of purse strings alone. As it stands, the numbers make it abundantly clear that, even while a film like Moonlight can offer an impressive beacon of hope, studio films continue to offer subpar representation. Certainly, there is more of it, but most of it doesn't measure up in quality.

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Image via A24

GLAAD regularly runs reports on the entertainment industry, such as the Studio Responsibility Index, analyzing the data to see what percentage of studio films offer representation, along with which studios are excelling and which fall behind in that regard. These reports offer a broad scale picture of how Hollywood is depicting LGBT characters, and you will probably not be surprised to find out that it's not all great out there. Last year's report found that 23 of the 125, or 18.4% of the films released by the seven major studios included LGBT character. That might not sound so bad to you, but the report also found that nearly half of those characters had less than a minute of screentime. The numbers for less than ten minutes were even worse.

They're not exactly encouraging numbers, but numbers only tell a part of the story, and statistics tend to get twisted in debates of on-screen representation. Making representation a numbers game will never yield a full portrait because the subject is so complex. For example, GLAAD also found that the majority of characters represented are white male homosexuals, leaving lesbians, bisexuals, LGBT people of color, and the rest of the queer spectrum drastically underrepresented. Perhaps even more interesting is the Vito Russo Test, GLAAD's analysis of LGBT characters against a set of criteria investigating how developed the queer character is and how integral they are to the film. Only 39% of those 23 films that included LGBT characters in 2016 passed the Vito Russo Test, meaning the majority of on-screen representation was underserved at best and superfluous set dressing at worst. Finally, and most disappointing in light of Moonlight's uplifting Oscar victory, the 2016 Index revealed that representation is dropping back once again, worse now that it was a few years ago -- a particularly jarring fact considering gay marriage has been legalized and broader cultural acceptance has historically led to better representation, which further leads to cultural acceptance. It's a cycle, and when one end withers out, it threatens to reflect back on the other.

So what does this mean in light of In & Out's 20th anniversary? It means that even though so much has changed, too much remains the same. We've made incredible strides, and yet, queer representation in studio filmmaking remains frustratingly stifled relative to the norms of the times, and like so many strides toward diversity, each new advancement is met with the staggering realization that it took so damn long to get here. And as intersectionalism enters the conversation, the bar is raised higher even though the media has yet to catch on. The whitewashing of Stonewall, the insistence on having cis men play transgendered women -- these moments in the conversation prove that Hollywood is ever behind in the cultural conversation. Perhaps most discomfiting is that too often the option for LGBT audiences turning to studio filmmaking remains bad representation or no representation at all.

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Image via Paramount Pictures