Movies - Improper Conduct

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	Movies - Improper Conduct

Mauvaise Conduite or Improper Conduct is the title of a 1984 documentary film directed by Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal. The documentary interviews Cuban refugees to explore the Cuban government's imprisonment of homosexuals, political dissidents, and Jehovah's Witnesses into concentration camps under its policy of Military Units to Aid Protection. The documentary was produced with the support of French television Antenne 2 and won the Best Documentary Audience Award at the 1984 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.

Criticism

Many American and European left-wingers in the 1980s treated gay rights issues as minor concern that was secondary to oppression based on a person's race, or class. Many of these same people also supported the socialist economic polices of the Cuban dictatorship, and felt that there was no viable alternative to helping the poor in Latin America other then a Marxist economic policy. As such the response to this documentary was mixed.

Stephen Harvery in the Inquiry wrote, "Cultural reporters in The Nation and the Village Voice who are against anti-fag beastliness in principle but embrace Latin Marxism in practice really had to twist themselves into a pretzel over this one." Many liberals that felt some disdain for violent homophobia but also felt that a left-wing régime would take better care of the poor in Latin America then a right-wing régime were leery of supporting a film that pointed out Cuba's authoritarian social and political polices. Many American and European conservatives were equally forced to 'twist a pretzel' over their own reaction to the film.

The Reagan Administration in the United States and the Thatcher Government in the United Kingdom were both fircely anti-Communist and often supported right-wing régimes over ones in the era of Cold War foreign policy. Yet, conservative politicans also opposed gay rights and in the early 1980s there had been talk within conservative circles about putting people infected with AIDS into concentration camps; conservative writer William F. Buckley even went as far to advocate requring tattoos to be put on gay people. Thus conservatives could support the documentary because it showed the oppressive side of Latin American Communism, but many conservatives were not terribly upset with the idea of putting homosexuals into concentration camps.

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