I'd rather be a live bit - (explicit) then a dead brother. As an African American man during the Reagan years, I get this movie. How; as a young boy transitioning from 17 to 18, I ceased to be cute, none threatening and worthy of existence to being a worthless, no good bum. This is pretty much what Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon experience when the "Gun Joint" they're working in her busted by the fuzz ( police ).
What two of my favorite actors experience is having to determine how much is their masculinity in the face of hunger, murder and subzero temperatures. During my transition from "boy" to "man", I lived in Fort Wayne Indiana, KKK central, during the Reagan administration which sat Civil Rights Initiative gains back nearly thirty years. The impact of this action was that black men of various ages that were not firmly entrenched in areas of employment related to industrial or the emerging financial services and grey collar/tech workforce found themselves unemployed and experiencing the upheaval of imploding sexual identities and exploding nuclear families. For most of these men this would be a time where black not white masculinity would begin to experience vicuous political attacks from white conservatives and liberals. But the most disenheating attack came from black women who had began to pull ahead of their male counterparts areas of education and employment.
During this time, I watched young black men and women take on gender roles that their grandparents and parents would not have approved of. In other words, I watched young black men who should have been going off to college if not the military become "Welfare Queens", prostitutes, gay men and transgenders. Which meant that I witnessed black men also become female impersonators/drag queens, male dancers, and literally switch places with their female counterparts in terms of being criticized for their relationships with white men; thus, the term "race traitor", "sissy", "boy" it phrases such as "that birch/sissy dates only white boys" became extremely injurious to both black men and women during this time. Later on it would be discovered that the term "on the DL, on the down low" as emerged from that period. Despite politically driven contradictions about the impact of the Reagan years upon the sexuality and gender identity of black America; many blacks rather male or female found themselves in positions similar to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in "Some Like It Hot".
During this time many black men found themselves entering into none traditionally male positions within the work force. What was intresting about this period was that black men found themselves in positions of unemployability due to their being perceived as dangerous, illiterate or incapable of being able to fit into white collar environments. Because of this situation a number of black men found themselves confused about what role they we're supposed to fill; let alone who they we're supposed to be.
Unlike their black and white female counterparts; the option of marriage for the sake of respect and security was not available to black men; although black women also stated that this was not an option for them either - this is not true due to black women of quality; those possessing degrees, careers and reproductive capabilities becoming to increasingly marry successful white men; as black men felt ever more dis-empowered due to the value of their on masculinity becoming increasingly devalued.
Many of these problems are comedicly presented throughout the movie. As Jack, Tony and Marilyn blunder their way opposing gender identities as they attempt to avoid the mob and prevent their true gender identities from being discovered. Although Marilyn possesses the least problematic role, she does present the femininist delimma of women during being forced to transition from home makers to self sufficient wage earners. However despite Marilyn's dilemma, it's Jack and Tony who's dilemma is far more destructive due to the stakes being played for. If we view the mob as the white military-industrial complex; in their male and female aspects then Tony, Jack and Marilyn are all under siege by the mob and police due to their possession of knowledge concerning the mob's hidden operations. This part of the film demonstrates how the knowledge of how white America reacts to the hidden knowledge possessed by black America concerning not only white America's collusion I'm its unspoken treatment of black America, but the knowledge possessed by traditionally oppressed groups of how Coporate America utilizes various forms of coercion to manipulate the "other" into making business deals that are favorable to Corporate America I'm spite of the future repercussions that the "other" will inevitably suffer in the long run; as demonstrated by Curtis's and Lemon's climactic flight from both Law Enforcement and the Chicago Mob At the Florida resort.
The most disturbing questions that consistently, yet silently emerge in the film are: do men/women choose alternative sexuality and gender as a survival mechanism when necessary; are LGBTQ individuals capable of being converted into heterosexual identities under the right conditions, if provided with the correct incentives and partners, and if attitudes towards the LGBTQ members of Western; particularly American society has changed enough for LGBTQ individuals; especially white LGBTQ individuals, to live and travel freely without harm in any part of U.S society, or like black Americans who despite having had a black President still be forced to exercise caution in which parts of the country they choose to travel and exist in.
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