The film’s reception developed into a cultural controversy rather than a production scandal. Gay-rights groups objected to its depiction of homosexual characters as neurotic, sexually unstable, or defined by melodramatic relationship crises. The Gay Activists Alliance circulated a letter protesting the movie, while Gay Left, a gay-rights and socialist journal, criticized it as another supposedly liberal film that ultimately made homosexuality look like a problem to be solved. The backlash was amplified by the ending’s conventional trajectory: marriage, pregnancy, and a heterosexual household appeared to resolve the characters’ earlier identities. Critics were divided about the performances—Janet Maslin praised Foster’s “aggressive vitality,” and other reviewers found King and Foster unusually appealing together—but even favorable notices often argued that the screenplay deteriorated into formula. Seattle Gay News writer Bill Alpert called the film exploitative and objected to its apparent suggestion that a drunken sexual encounter could “cure” homosexuality. The lasting historical judgment was that A Different Story used the language of tolerance while retreating into a reassuring heterosexual conclusion, making it an important example of the limits and contradictions of mainstream gay representation in late-1970s American cinema.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Gay Activists Alliance Condemns A Different Story as Hollywood Stereotyping
A Different Story / 1970s
The film’s reception developed into a cultural controversy rather than a production scandal. Gay-rights groups objected to its depiction of homosexual characters as neurotic, sexually unstable, or defined by melodramatic relationship crises. The Gay Activists Alliance circulated a letter protesting the movie, while Gay Left, a gay-rights and socialist journal, criticized it as another supposedly liberal film that ultimately made homosexuality look like a problem to be solved. The backlash was amplified by the ending’s conventional trajectory: marriage, pregnancy, and a heterosexual household appeared to resolve the characters’ earlier identities. Critics were divided about the performances—Janet Maslin praised Foster’s “aggressive vitality,” and other reviewers found King and Foster unusually appealing together—but even favorable notices often argued that the screenplay deteriorated into formula. Seattle Gay News writer Bill Alpert called the film exploitative and objected to its apparent suggestion that a drunken sexual encounter could “cure” homosexuality. The lasting historical judgment was that A Different Story used the language of tolerance while retreating into a reassuring heterosexual conclusion, making it an important example of the limits and contradictions of mainstream gay representation in late-1970s American cinema.
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