Varda the Message

script:
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. RAINBOW THEATRE – ROOF – DAWN – 1975
 
We pass through to the roof where it is dawn and snowing. Curt and Arthur are there, hanging out after sex. They turn in our direction but we continue our ascent.
 
            DISSOLVE THROUGH:

A series of shots:
 
EXT. LONDON STREETS – DAY – 1974
 
Shots of busy Londoners on their way to work.

[INT. ENGLISH FACTORY - DAY - 1974

Female Workers turn up a song on the radio, nodding their heads with the chorus.]*omitted from the final film.

LONDON PUB – NIGHT – 1974
 
The song’s chorus continues through a small transistor radio from which we TRACK, revealing a candle-lit pub during the 1974 miners’ strikes.
 

The visual of a candle-lit pub during the 1974 miners’ strikes is a rather obscure reference, especially for younger and non-British audiences. The miners had previously gone on strike for better wages in 1972. That strike lasted seven weeks. By 4 February 1974 the miners' situation had deteriorated and a national miners strike was called again. This strike lasted four weeks. A state of emergency and a three-day working week were once again declared. [Because of a shortage of electricity, hence the candles.] The Prime Minister, Edward Heath, called a General Election hoping that the electorate would support the Government's attempts to deal with the deteriorating industrial situation, but the Conservative Party was defeated. The new Labour government reached a deal with the miners shortly afterwards.

Todd apparently sees the solidarity of the British people at that time reflected in both the music played at the factory and the local pub as well as the country backing the strikers. Again, it's also another contrast to 1984's Thatcher government, who, (like Reagan, and presumably the fictional Reynolds) would try and break the unions, resulting in the miners striking again that year.

script:
BRIAN
And they tell you it’s not natural!


The phrase "unnatural practices" – a euphemism for homosexuality – was used against Wilde at his trial.
While at Trinity College, one of Wilde's teachers was the Reverend J.P. Mahaffy, professor of ancient history, and author of Social Life in Greece, From Homer to Menander. Oscar (then 16) and another pupil were thanked in the preface for having "made improvements and corrections all through the book", so he was well versed in this work that in the original edition was the only book in English for a general readership to touch upon the question of homosexuality in ancient Greece. Richard Ellmann: "Mahaffy characterized it as an ideal attachment between a man and a handsome youth, and acknowledged that the Greeks regarded it as superior to the love of man and woman. Unless debased, as he conceded it sometimes was, it was no more offensive 'even to our tastes' than sentimental friendship." Ellmann also believes that a sentence in the book sounds more like Wilde than Mahaffy, "As to the epithet unnatural, the Greeks would answer probably, that all civilization was unnatural." The second edition dropped the references to homosexual love and omitted the acknowledgment of his two pupils.

script:
Cecil stares in quiet, amorous shock while his companions make the customary cracks.

FRIEND 1
Ooo, varda Mistress Bona!
(Subtitle reads: 'Say, have a look at “Miss Beautiful”!')
 
FRIEND 2
Varda the omie palome!
(Subtitle: 'Have a look at the homosexual!')
 
FRIEND 1
A tart, my dears, a tart in gildy clobber!
(Subtitle: 'A slut, mates, a slut in fancy clothes!')

The girls are speaking Polari, a gay slang that developed from Parlyree which was spoken by circus people, beggars and others on the fringes of society. Polari is a creative, campy secret language that allowed closeted gay men to communicate with each other in a society that had criminalized their existence. As Paul Baker says in the introduction to his wonderful book, Fantabulosa, A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang, "Because being openly homosexual was dangerous, the need for a language that protected gay men, and at the same time acted as a kind of 'gaydar' by allowing them to recognize others, was extremely useful."

While the language has fallen out of usage because it is no longer necessary, polari expressions like drama queen and fag-hag have entered the general usage. When Carson on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy explains how to jzuzh your cuffs just so, he is speaking polari.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have translated the bible into polari which somehow manages to make both the ridiculous aspects of that work and the sublime ones even more pronounced. "Let there be sparkle" has a certain glamour and majesty that "Let there be light" lacks.

Feel free to add your favorite polari expressions, book recommendations or sites.

script:
INT. NEWSROOM LIBRARY – NIGHT – 1984
 
Music continues as Arthur scans through another roll of microfilm.

Before computers and the internet, microfilm was the way back issues of newspapers, magazines and any type of records were stored. The documents were photographed and put on long reels that could be viewed with a reel to reel type viewer at the library. Reporters and anyone doing research would regularly have to consult them. Arthur also uses a Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, an index that lists articles from general interest magazines, which would help you find out what microfilm reels to ask the librarian for.
(see comments below for a correction.)

script:
Brian walks directly into the arms of a Sailor in white and kisses him firmly on the mouth.

The figure of the sailor as a gay icon has been around for most of the 20th Century. Sailors as objects of desire figure prominently in the works of Quentin Crisp and Jean Genet:


In a more contemporary way Jean Paul Gaultier riffs on the homoerotic image for his clothes and perfumes.


The book Hello Sailor! The Hidden History of Gay Life at Sea by Paul Baker and Jo Stanley is a fascinating account.