Historical texts provide us with a contextual understanding of the past, allowing commentary on our own contemporary social and political landscape. In reference to cinema, the past can be constructed by the directors positioning within the landscape, as communicated clearly in the 1961 film Boys Beware; an educational text used to warn parents and children against homosexuals.
Produced in coordination with the Los Angeles police department and the Inglewood Unified Schools District, the film was made during a period where sexual prejudice was normalised throughout much of the ruling classes of Western society. Using the problematic concoction of narration, (re) enactment and musical 'sugarcoating', Boys Beware is a classic example of the propaganda techniques used to prop-up white Christian conservative values and institutionalise the condemnation of homosexuality and the process of othering more generally.
From the (IKEA) armchair of 2014, it is easy to distance oneself from the dialogue of Boys Beware and assume that 'we have come along way since 1961'; indeed this point of view carries some merit. However, this film should also remind the viewer that such ignorant perspectives are still manifest in the contemporary context, existing in the more elusive and less-public discourses of homophobia.
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