Roland Emmerich’s upcoming historical drama Stonewall, which depicts the 1969 Stonewall Riots that kicked off New York’s gay rights movement, won’t hit theaters until September, but is already stirring up controversy.
After the first trailer was released online Tuesday, LGBT activist groups have denounced the film, the action of which revolves around a white, cisgender male protagonist, for “whitewashing” this important episode in LGBT history.
The Gay-Straight Alliance Network launched a petition to boycott the film, which has garnered more than 10,000 signatures. It reads, “Do not throw money at the capitalistic industry that fails to recognize true s/heros. Do not support a film that erases our history. Do not watch Stonewall.”
And a MoveOn petition that currently has 230 signatures states, “We are BOYCOTTING Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall movie for erasing the contributions of of-color queer and gender non-comforming [sic] activists.”
The statement goes on to argue, “A historically accurate film about the Stonewall Riots would center the stories of queer and gender-noncomforming [sic] people of color like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Not relegate them to background characters in the service of a white cis-male fictional protagonist.”
Jeremy Irvine stars as Danny, a fictional young man who leaves his hometown in the Midwest for New York City in the late 1960s, where he discovers the Stonewall Inn and becomes a part of the gay community on Christopher Street. As tensions rise and the riots erupt over the summer of 1969, Danny finds himself caught up in a historic moment at the birthplace of a new movement.
In response to the backlash, Emmerich posted a statement to Facebook Thursday morning, writing, “when this film — which is truly a labor of love for me — finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.”
When I first learned about the Stonewall Riots through my work with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, I was struck…
Posted by Roland Emmerich on Thursday, August 6, 2015
Watch the trailer below. Stonewall hits theaters Sept. 25.
