Roland Emmerich's Film: The Stonewall Riot

The popcorn is buttered, the soda is filled to the brim, and an elderly former drag queen settles in to watch a riot play out onscreen. Much to her dismay, none of what she remembers of that heated day in 1969 is reflected there. Director Roland Emmerich has manipulated history with his latest movie, Stonewall, released September 25th, 2015. The film depicts the Stonewall Riot; the event in LGBT history often credited with uniting the LGBT community into one movement. The riot consisted of an ethnically diverse group of LGBT people: homosexuals, bisexuals, transgender people, drag queens, etc. This raises the question as to why the hero of Emmerich’s movie is a straight-passing, white male.
When prompted on whether or not having a lead that
Society shouldn’t have to make exceptions to make an issue more prevalent.” At what point does creative liberty erase the history in historical fiction? Media and information major, Tim Montoya believes, “In terms of film, [creative interpretation is ok] as long as the general story is there, not necessarily every little tidbit, but as long as the main concepts are preserved. I think once you drastically alter what happened and the outcomes of what happened, then it just becomes fiction.” By casting a straight-passing, white male as his lead, the consensus is that Emmerich erases the diversity in the crowd that rioted against police with heels and stones on that monumental day, thus losing much of the historical significance. The assistant director of the Michigan State LGBT Resource Center, Alex Lange, and film studies professor, David Bering-Porter, could not be reached for comment at this time. Elderly drag queens across the U.S. skip the popcorn and sodas, and their tickets to Emmerich’s Stonewall altogether, until they can feel properly reflected onscreen. Until that happens, history will just remain in the