11 Brilliantly Controversial Martin Scorsese Moments
7. Mean Streets - The Gay Couple
Mean Streets was released in 1973, and represents the "breakout" moment for Martin Scorsese's career. The film focuses on the friendship of Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro), two friends growing together and apart during the San Gennaro Feast in Little Italy. Quintessentially New York and influenced by Scorsese's fascination with gangs, the film shows how vested business interests can tear apart even the closest of bonds. Halfway through the film, following a bathroom shooting at their friend Tony's club, Charlie and Johnny escape to a car before the cops arrive. As they are about to speed off into the night, a gay couple pleads with them to let them in as well. A brief struggle over the door leads to the couple gaining entry, and what follows is a scene which has gotten more controversial with time. One member of the couple makes passes at men on the street from the car window, his flamboyance being repaid by threats and violence. By today's standards, this portrait of a gay man is largely overwrought, but, in 1973, a gay man being portrayed on film in a sexualized manner was almost unheard of. Scorsese's choice to include this scene, while it appears to reflect poorly on the couple, does the exact opposite. The gay man is the only one comfortable with himself and how he chooses to act while everyone around him makes a conscious choice to be embarrassed. He's just trying to get lucky, and no one around him is willing to be comfortable with that reality. The viewer is forced to look at Charlie and Johnny Boy in a negative light as a consequence of their close-mindedness. Scorsese cut through homophobia at a basic level by allowing for the fact that gay people exist. By making a bold choice, even one that comes across today as dated, Scorsese was willing to give exposure to a gay man in a situation that most "polite" society considered threatening at that time in history, progressing the ideals of social liberation in 1970s cinema.
