OUT ON FILM 2020 REVIEW: Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer’s CURED documents the gay and lesbian fight against the psychiatric community
We’re supposed to feel a sense of well-earned victory and triumph by the end of Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer’s Cured, which screens as part of Out on Film, as landmark achievements in legal LGBTQIA+ rights are documented in end titles. But given the timing, it’s hard instead not to feel a sense of dread and wonder how many might be undone with a 6-3 religious conservative supreme court. So much ground has been gained that it’s unlikely all of it can be walked back, but in my lifetime, we’ve already seen gay marriage walked back a few times before finally becoming law, and the same with trans recruits serving in the military in just the last four years. Fortunately, Cured also offers, straight out of recent history, a possible strategy for fighting back. The filmmakers may not have initially thought it would be necessary to instruct and train future resisters, but their footage can serve as vital encouragement.
Early on in Cured, we hear Mike Wallace from 1967, proclaiming that the majority of Americans find homosexuality disgusting, in what sounds very much like an approving manner. Again, to hear a respected newsman I actually remember, talking like this, is horrifying. I’ve no idea if his personal views improved over time, but the documentary suggests that, as much as anyone, the American Psychiatric Association was to blame for this perception. Despite Sigmund Freud having a neutral opinion, saying basically he didn’t think homosexuality was either beneficial or detrimental, American psychiatrists determined it it be a serious mental illness. One worth taking extreme measures to treat.
And we’re warned that these extreme measures will be shown. Electrodes aren’t even the worst – that would be the spike through the eye and into the brain as lobotomy. We might assume all of this is thanks-no-thanks to Christian zealots, but the movie makes the case that it’s something more banal. Essentially, since the only homosexuals psychiatrists knowingly came into contact with were either their patients or prisoners, they assumed that all homosexuals must be mentally ill, because gosh, they’d never met any others so they must not exist. The Kinsey report and movies like The Boys in the Band helped change perceptions, but most of all, it was activists taking on the APA directly. Cured would like to introduce us to a few, not all of whom survived to see the film get released.
There’s photographer Kay Lahusen, who met her activist partner Barbara Gittings after driving to a meeting of a lesbian club. Dr. John Fryer, a gay psychiatrist who publicly testified in a Leatherface-like mask to maintain his anonymity for fear of losing his practice. The Rev. Magora Kennedy, who got married at age 14 to avoid being institutionalized, then later came out and debated TV host David Susskind. And many more.
Cured proceeds to make the leap most viewers already will by themselves: the stereotypical, dismissive things that were once said about gay and lesbian people are now said about trans people. But the dilemma in that struggle is that if you take gender dysphoria off the disorder list, transition surgery may no longer be considered “essential,” and thus less likely to be covered by insurance. It’s almost like an entirely different battle, and movie, is being set up – but before that can happen, our generation has a part to play. Let’s hope we come off as well in the inevitable future documentary that one day looks back on that fight.
