Homophobia was very present in the United States during the 1970s. Harvey Milk points out the violence gays had to face and the fact they constantly hid. Being gay was deemed to be wrong. Gays were also often victims of psychological and physical violence that could lead to death (suicide, murders).

Homophobic violence and crimes

In the 1970s, the USA was a very religious and conservative country, and most of its citizens considered that gays should not exist. As a consequence, gays feared to be assaulted or murdered by homophobic people. In the movie, the lingering presence of death is stressed either in Milk’s private life or on the wider scale of the LGBT community.

First, the movie constantly shows it in the politician’s private life: on his 40^th birthday, Milk says to his lover Scott Smith that he will not make it to his fifty years old, whereas later on, another reference to death is made once again by Scott at Milk’s 48^th birthday party, as his political career is at its peak (“Maybe you will then make it to 50 years old after all”).

Second, the movie also underlines the ubiquitous presence of death on the wider scale of the LGBT community. For instance, at one moment of the biopic, Harvey is asked to recognize the corpse of Robert Hillsborough, identified by the policeman who talks about the victim in very pejorative and homophobic terms (“a fruit who was walking home with his trick”). For that part, Gus Van Sant got inspired by a real historical event, the murder of a San Francisco gardener Robert Hillsborough who was stabbed to death fifteen times in June 1977, two weeks after the repeal of Miami-Dade County’s anti-discrimination ordinance (that granted equal rights to homosexuals at work). His murderers justified their crime, shouting the victim was a “faggot”. For that part of the movie, Gus Van Sant used what Robert Rosenstone called “invention” in his article “The historical film as real history”. The movie distorts reality a little bit without violating the discourse of history. By mingling historical reality with fiction (actually Milk did not identify Hillsborough’s body), the movie entails several consequences. First, it points out the daily violence gays had to experience: they could be murdered anywhere or find a dead friend in the street on the way home, as Milk’s protagonist did. Second, the biopic appears to be more realistic by referring to real events, which makes the viewers struck by such violence. Third, it is also a way to pay tribute to Robert Hillsborough who became the embodiment of injustice and cruelty.

A discriminating law

American gays were all the more helpless that the Law, which could have been the only way to protect them, was discriminating them. Indeed, homosexuality was considered as a criminal act by the Law and was also listed as a mental disease on the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. For instance, it was legal for the police to arrest two homosexuals because they were kissing in a public place. Employment discrimination and housing discrimination because of one’s sexual orientation were also very frequent: it was then perfectly legal to fire people for that reason.

The police, who represent the State, often raided into gay bars to arrest or beat up some homosexuals “just for fun” as said in the movie. The biopic, in which archival testimony and fiction are constantly intertwined, begins with black and white archival footage of police raids and arrests made in gay bars during the 1950s and 1960s. The viewer can see gay men sitting in bars hiding from the camera, feeling ashamed or overwhelmed by the intrusive and stalking cameramen. We can see gays being humiliated and arrested by the police. Thus, the very beginning of the biopic adopts a documentary approach to show how American gays used to live in the 1970s: hiding and always fearing danger. We can suppose that showing real pictures is meant to strike the viewers in order to make them fully aware of all the violence gays used to suffer of. We can see it all throughout the movie: the characters constantly talk about police discrimination and at one moment, Milk and his friends have to intervene in a fight between gays and violent policemen. Most politicians did not want to take actions to end such violence and discrimination. Worse, some of them were hatemongers and supported discrimination, like Republican California state senator John Briggs.

Indifference and invisibility

The mind-sets were all the more difficult to change that hate crimes and police unfair harassment toward gays rarely hit the nationwide news. A gay death did not raise the indignation of the press. The suffering gays experienced was invisible. Their claims were not mediatized. As a consequence, the LGBT community belonged to an underworld that was invisible to society.

Suicides

As a consequence of a life in hiding and such discrimination violence, suicides among the LGBT community were very frequent. Several of Milk’s lovers and friends committed suicide. Among them, San Francisco instable and depressed Milk’s lover Jack Lira, who really existed and whose suicide was represented on screen. The movie also deals with this issue by representing a fictional character calling Milk because he is desperate and is contemplating suicide. Indeed, this character is a gay teenager living in Minnesota and whose parents want to send to a psychiatric centre to “fix” him. He is physically disabled and cannot move to leave his home. For that part of the movie, Gus Van Sant used what Robert Rosenstone called “compression” in his article “The historical film as real history”. Indeed, the movie here focused on a fictional character that could be considered as the embodiment of gays’ suffering and helplessness (helplessness because of the discriminating law; and in the case of the teenager, physical disability). It is a generalization to which any gay could identify at that time. It also puts a dramatic effect to highlight that awful situation.