Coded (2021) - full transcript

People talk about queerness

as if it's something new, right?

But we've always been here.

And because of society seeing
our community as other,

it's been a very complex search,
I guess,

looking for myself within media.

You know, I've always seen
bits and pieces of myself,

but I don't think I've ever seen
myself complete or whole.

But then...

Oh, my God!

I can't, I can't, bb.



Black trans power.

Black trans power, bb.

It's huge!

Queer folks are often
looked over

and not even given a chance.

So seeing these beautiful
representations of queerness

that portray what
you're either feeling

or what you want to experience

give some kind of hope
that you can just be yourself.

But going back into our history,

queerness was so criminalized,

we had to keep a low profile

and use coded language
to express ourselves safely.

And we've seen it within art
and advertising,



like in the imagery of this
gay artist, JC Leyendecker,

who was working
in the early 1900s.

He was able to thread in
queerness

in an era when
it's not accepted.

But he was kinda erased
from history.

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December 3rd, 1950.

I've spent the day
thumbing through old paintings

in the studio,

many of them from decades ago.

The canvases take me back
to a time less encumbered

by what might have been,

the beginning of it all.

I still remember
leaving Chicago,

boarding an ocean liner
headed for Europe.

I was 19 years old.

I'd saved every penny
to achieve my dream,

to study art in Paris.

♪

Paris was the art center
of the world,

and Leyendecker studied at
the Académie Julian, which was

more encouraging of
the free spirit to come out.

And he actually got to study
and become friendly with

the famous
French poster artists...

Chéret...

Toulouse-Lautrec...

and Mucha,
who became JC's mentor.

This was Art Nouveau,
which was less formal,

and all this advertising art

was plastered all over
the Paris streets.

And JC was entranced.

He realized that you could
do something

that you felt good about
as an artist,

but you were also delivering
a message to an audience.

So he went to
the center of publishing,

which was New York.

♪

When he arrives in New York,

this is right after
the Oscar Wilde trial,

when Wilde is locked up
for being gay.

So Leyendecker is
coming at a moment

when there's such concern about
degeneracy in the arts.

And wanting to be
a commercial artist,

Leyendecker had to keep

his sexuality under wraps,
of course.

And in 1899,

Leyendecker did his first cover
for "The Saturday Evening Post,"

and at the time,
"The Saturday Evening Post"

was the most popular weekly
magazine across America.

And its cover told
the whole story in one image.

So for Leyendecker,
this was a moment of arrival.

Leyendecker was a master

at painting the male figure.

He found candlelight was
exaggerating the light

and the shadow,

so if he would put a little oil
on the muscles of his models,

he could then capture
an exquisite male form.

♪

He would always have the most
gorgeous men model for him.

And some of them became
famous actors,

such as John Barrymore...

I fell in love last night.

Brian Donlevy...

I know. Its tough.

And Fredric March...

Man is not truly one,

but truly two.

But then...

It was late 1903 when a
particularly striking young man

appeared at my door.

He said his name was
Charles A. Beach

and that he wanted to be
a model.

Leyendecker was enthralled

with Beach's tall,
beautiful body

and his perfect nose,
perfect eyes, perfect mouth.

He loved painting Charles Beach.

I was hired by Arrow shirts

to design an advertisement for
their new collars

that would feature a man
in Arrow clothes.

I pitched their advertising
director

to make it something more...

Not simply a man,
but the perfect man,

brought to life
in an advertisement.

He gave him different
hair coloring many times,

but the Arrow collar man was
always Charles Beach.

And Arrow shirts
sold like crazy,

putting almost every other
shirt maker out of business.

Before that point,
the male fashion plate

was incredibly rigid,

just like cut-out dolls,
essentially.

But Leyendecker's clothed
figures are always nude,

in a way,

because there's always a body
underneath that suit.

And that is something that
we may take for granted today.

You know, you sell through
the body.

♪

But Leyendecker was
one of the first,

if not the first, to do that.

The Arrow collar man became
the first male sex symbol.

I mean, even my age, I still
find a well-dressed man sexy.

There was something about
the way Leyendecker captured men

that straight women
would find appealing

and a straight man would look at
and say,

"I want to look like him,"
or, "I want to be like him."

But a gay man would say, "Mmm!

There's someone I think I might
want to put on the wall."

It was an innovation.

And as Charles Beach posed
more and more for Leyendecker,

they fell in love.

When I first came out,
I always had a hard time

because, you know,
I find trans women

to be the most beautiful women,
right?

We're powerful
and we walk down the street,

and I'm like, "Oh, my God, yes!"

You know, I want to be real
loud, but I'm like,

"You know, you have to be
subtle, you know?

Maybe the girl doesn't want
everybody to know her tea."

So I give little hand gestures
and little winks,

just to acknowledge that,
you know, I recognize you.

And this kind of coding is what
JC Leyendecker does

in a lot of his images.

He builds a kind of homoerotic
intimacy and physical connection

in places where you may not
even notice it.

Like, he's very interested in
putting male athletes

in various states of undress

in relationship to clothed men.

Or when he was given
a commission...

"We have a new collar coming out
for Arrow shirts.

You run with it"...

He comes up with a gorgeous
depiction of sexual tension.

This man who's holding
the golf clubs...

He's got an interesting grip
on that bag...

The way it's splayed
between his legs,

the way it covers the crotch,
the direction of it,

and there's another man
that's looking

really past the woman
in between them

at looking at him.

This was coded advertising
with a double message

that's supposed to, you know,
portray one thing,

but it really means another.

And for people who aren't
familiar with queer culture,

that would go
right over their heads.

As subtle as he was,

he was still showing us
male relationships,

this intimacy between men.

So Leyendecker...
Through his seductive surfaces,

he is able to lend anything
a kind of homoeroticism.

♪

For many years, I owned
a particular advertisement

painted by JC Leyendecker
for an Ivory soap bar.

It looked absolutely magnificent
on the wall,

and I walked by it all the time.

So one day, Whoopi Goldberg,
who was a friend of mine,

came over, and she said,

"Judy, did you see
that painting?"

And I said, "Yes, I've had it
for 10 years."

So I looked at it just like
I've always looked at it,

and I said, "I don't see.
Is there something the matter?"

And she finally points

to the shadow of an erection.

And now that's the only thing
I see.

It's kind of hard to imagine
that he didn't...

That he didn't know what he was
doing when he did that.

I was partner and founder
of an agency

that specialized in LGBT
marketing in the early '90s.

And we learned that
the lesbian community

had been a big fan of Subaru
for years.

It was kind of like
a little secret.

It became a game
of figuring out,

how do we signal the consumer
that this ad is meant for them

using just language?

And one of the first campaigns
that most successfully did that

had vanity plates designed to
speak to the consumer.

And at the time, Lucy Lawless
was in "Xena: Warrior Princess."

And for some reason,
the lesbians adored Xena.

So that was one of the plates.

And so I'm standing at a corner
in San Francisco,

and a bus pulls up, and it had
one of these ads on the side.

And straight people just looked
at it as if it was nothing,

but a gay couple looked at it
and they kind of pointed at

the "XENA LVR" plate,
and they start laughing.

And I thought, "Job done."

They connected all the dots,
and they got,

"That's for me.
That's the message for me."

And I now realize that
the solutions

that we came up with
for Subaru...

They're not that different than
what JC Leyendecker did

back in the 1920s.

In JC Leyendecker's imagery
of Charles Beach,

you see a definite strong love
for him, you know?

And I think when you are
trying to get

authentic emotion within art,

the relationship between
artists,

like painter and subject,
is so important.

Leyendecker and Charles Beach

were in a committed
relationship.

And Leyendecker recognized that
they complemented each other.

JC was more interested
in just painting,

while Charles was
the business personality.

So eventually,
Charles became his manager.

They were making,
in today's dollars,

millions of dollars.

And they moved into
a beautiful mansion.

♪

They had acres of land

so they could be
out in the garden

or inside,
modeling and painting.

♪

They had spectacular parties.

It was like "The Great Gatsby."

F. Scott Fitzgerald and other
famous friends would come

who were very open
and interested in art.

The '20s was a moment
of great progress and visibility

for queer folks.

And New York at that time
was arguably the place to be

if you're gay.

You have these nightclubs that
were melting pots of New York,

where people of different
identities,

like gender variant people,

what we consider to be
drag queens nowadays,

could have community at
and be free.

And this is Leyendecker
and Beach's life.

♪

In the Roaring Twenties,

American illustrators were like
celebrities today.

And Leyendecker
was a household name.

And it's because of the iconic
American imagery he created,

like his holiday covers for
"The Saturday Evening Post."

Leyendecker provided the
imagery for American traditions,

around which those holidays then
start to be organized...

Fireworks as a part of
the 4th of July,

flowers on Mother's Day.

And he came up with
the rotund, jolly Santa Claus

that you see all around today.

So advertisers demanded
JC Leyendecker.

He captured that essence of
"The Great Gatsby" era

when you were carefree and gay
and uninhibited.

♪

The richest country
in the world

began a bitter journey downhill.

The stock market buckled
and crashed,

and the nation's economy
plummeted into the Depression.

In the '30s,
during the Depression,

it's as if it's
a back-to-basics,

back-to-morality
kind of moment in the U.S.

And there was this clamping down

on anything deemed excessive
or non-normative.

These laws are put in place
to police people,

to police how people dress,
to police who they love.

So JC and Charles hid their
relationship from the public

because society wasn't open

and society wasn't accepting.

At a banquet for the
New Rochelle Art Association,

I met a young illustrator named
Norman Rockwell.

It seemed he was looking for
something of a mentor.

Rockwell took a studio
next to mine in the city.

He'd often knock on my door
and ask my advice on a painting.

It was Rockwell's aspiration
to become like Leyendecker.

He even wanted to know
Leyendecker's secret

of how he painted.

And Rockwell confesses
in his book,

"I tried and I failed."

Rockwell said again and again
he wanted to please people,

like the audience of
"The Saturday Evening Post"...

Those middle-class,
straight Americans.

And Leyendecker didn't do
any of that.

While Leyendecker shrunk
from the public eye,

Rockwell sought it.

And it drove him to become even
more popular than Leyendecker.

By the end of the Depression,

I'd lost many of most of my
notable commissions,

among them Arrow collar
and Kuppenheimer clothing.

Then in 1942,
I received word from

"The Saturday Evening Post" 's
new editor,

informing me that
my next cover illustration

was to be my last.

I'd created over 300 covers
for the magazine over 40 years.

Charles was beside himself
with anger,

ranting "If it weren't for
JC Leyendecker,

there would be no 'Post'!"

I've looked everywhere
to try to find the answer

to why he was fired
from the "Post."

We don't really know why.

Maybe it is because of his
seclusion, his sexuality,

but whatever the case,

this is the moment when
Leyendecker falls out of favor.

And in the '50s, another one of
these backlash periods happens.

And the repressive,
incredibly homophobic atmosphere

of McCarthyism starts to
take over American culture.

And so by the end
of Leyendecker's career,

he and Beach became
more reclusive.

They kind of fell out
of fashion.

The house at Mount Tom Road
began to feel rather lonely.

We were forced to release
all of our staff

when the money dried up.

So now it's just Charles and I,
left to wander the gardens

and drink alone
in the great halls

that once played host
to so many wonderful people

not so long ago.

Leyendecker lived
with Charles Beach for 50 years,

and then in 1951,
JC was out one day, relaxing.

He had a cocktail in his hand
and it fell out,

and he yelled for Charles,
and Charles came out,

and he died of a heart attack
in Charles' arms.

♪

Special to
"The New York Times,"

August 13th...

"'Model' inherits $30,000.

Joseph C. Leyendecker left half
of his $60,400 estate

to a friend who had posed for

the original Arrow collar
portraits.

The friend is Charles A. Beach,

who had been associated with
Mr. Leyendecker for 49 years

as his secretary and aid."

The way it's covered
in the press,

it's coded just like the art is,

through all of these terms
that circle around

the reality of their intimacy.

He's an aid.
He's a secretary.

I mean, Beach is
his lifetime partner,

and there's real pain
and trauma there.

In JC's will, he had expressed

that he wanted Beach
to destroy everything...

All of his mementos,

anything relating to
their relationship,

and his paintings.

If you feel that you have to
obliterate traces of your life

so that you won't be judged

or your art won't be judged
according to your life,

I would imagine
he didn't have high hopes

for where queerness could live

within mainstream culture
in the U.S.

The more that we stay firm
in our identities

and what we stand for
and what we believe,

the more I think
people will see us for us.

And with the power of
advertising specifically

to embed ideas
in people's minds,

one clear way to do that
is to shout it out

visually, powerfully.

♪

But, you know, we tend to think
linearly about social progress.

But it does not move
in a linear fashion.

It's cyclical.

As queer people, every move
we make is politicized...

Me stepping outside every day,

me being able to love
who I want to love.

And it just further tells us
that we need to keep fighting.

Because there's always a risk
of forgetting history

and entering another one
of these backlash periods

against queer people,

just like with Leyendecker.

♪

His sexuality is fundamental

to his removal from
the historical record today.

And although he was the
primary image maker of his day,

by the time he died,
he was almost forgotten.

♪

♪

But 10 years after his death,

an artist rented
Leyendecker's studio.

She allowed kids
to play in there,

and they climbed a ladder,
they went through a hatch,

and they found a chest full

of undiscovered
Leyendecker artifacts,

like sketches and paintings

that were not destroyed.

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