Gay Short Film Showcase: How Gay Men Used To Speak – A short film in Polari (the ‘gay language’)

Polari is a rather fascinating part of Britain’s gay past – a dialect that since the 16th Century was used and developed by various underclasses from fairground showmen (some of whom still use a form of it) to prostitutes, and which had its last flowering amongst gay men before virtually dying out in the 1970s.

In its gay incarnation the language was something just for them (although it did famously appear in the popular radio show Round The Horne, although much of the audience didn’t know what they were actually listening to), a mix of rhyming slang and words borrowed from various languages, shot through with normal English. It allowed speakers of Polari to converse about things secretly and helped create a sense of community and bonding amongst the men at a time when being gay was illegal.

It’s actually quite a complex phenomenon and has been studied by many academics who’ve been fascinated by how it brought together everything from theatrical slang and yiddish to Romani and thieves cant, and how over the years it was used and adapted by all sorts of people who wanted a way to talk that was apart from mainstream English. With gay men, the theatrical influence tended to be strong, along with a noticeable element of camp, allowing them to gossip and chat about their sexual exploits in a way that wouldn’t be understood by most people.

It’s a great idea then to make a short film in Polari, which is just what Brian Fairbairn and Karl Eccleston have done, and which you can watch below. You may not understand most of what the guys in the short are saying, but it’s still rather fascinating, especially how something that was so common in gay circles half a century ago has now almost completely disappeared, except for a few words (some of which have gone mainstream) that few know have their roots in the ‘gay language’.

Take a look below and decide for yourself whether Britain’s gay men have lost something with the decline of Polari, or if we’re better off without it.

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