Queering the code: performing queerness in George Cukor’s 1930s films

Beginning with a contextualisation of how the Code and “coding” link to queerness, this article will closely analyse examples of queer performance signifiers in characterisation, costume and dialogue within George Cukor’s 1930s films. As has already been noted by scholars such as Richard Maltby and Thomas Doherty, the lead up to and subsequent “enforcement” of the Code led filmmakers to include implicit and connotative indicators of sex, violence and criminal activities in their stories. In this article, I will investigate how filmmakers generally, and Cukor in particular, struck a precarious balance between denotative and connotative indicators of queerness in their films. I do this by accompanying detailed textual analysis of some of Cukor’s films, in a career that spanned (and outlasted) the Code’s enforcement, with an exploration of interactions between Cukor and his producers and the Code officials. As a result, I will chart developments in queer representation in terms of theatricality and performance, as well as the ways the PCA responded to such depictions, to determine how filmmakers were/were not able to represent queer lives in Code-era Hollywood.