A while back, lots of horror movies were suddenly set in the 1980s and 90s: near enough to the present day for TV aerials not to have to be taken down, but sufficiently far to solve the Mobile Phone Problem. Audiences had seen enough of conveniently patchy coverage in this remote forest or that ill-lit hotel. Film-makers had a choice: get creative with the plot, or get the production designer to stockpile scrunchies.
Today, things are different. Horror directors are pioneers when it comes to integrating tech into their screenplays. Cloverfield is “found” footage. Friend Request and Unfriended involve the undead discovering Facebook. In Personal Shopper, Kristen Stewart was plagued by a texting ghost. The trapped souls in Get Out were briefly released by the flash of an iPhone camera.
These days, it’s not horror that routinely time-travels back a quarter of a century for the sake of convenience. It’s serious drama. Multiple hot-topic awards contenders this year are period pieces that superficially look contemporary – none could be dismissed as costume drama – but actually unfold in the late 80s and early 90s. Not because the heroes mustn’t be able to call the cops when they need to, but because the stories are cries for help at a time when prejudice still stifled.
Such is certainly the case with Boy Erased and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, in which gay teenagers are dispatched to Bible camp to have the homosexuality prayed out of them – something that does still happen, but is now considerably less commonplace.
Likewise The Wife, in which meek Glenn Close threatens to rebel against her vain and famous novelist husband, played by Jonathan Pryce. This film (which is brilliant, incidentally) could not have been set any later than 1996 because the power imbalance at the time the couple first met – back in the early 60s, before we were socking it to the patriarchy, and when promising female authors were still met with scorn – would ring false.
Such backdating is not new. Last year, the 80s-set Call Me By Your Name reminded us of a time when two men wouldn’t dare snog in a piazza. 120 Beats Per Minute rewound to a France still shaky on its treatment of people with Aids. The hero of Moonlight might have handled his desires differently had he been raised today.
This is, of course, encouraging, for it points to progress. Were they set in the present day, the conflicts in these films would be, if not redundant, then certainly diluted. So to find battles, the movies must look to the past.
At least, that is, when it comes to gender and sexuality. Race remains enough of an active issue in the US for films such as Get Out and Sorry to Bother You to be set here and now. And there are plenty of topical stories about heinous crimes exacted upon women and gay people. They are just not generally set in the US, where it all feels a bit smug and safe.
Hollywood’s remit, especially at a time when film-makers must pick their way over eggshells and between accusatory hashtags (ideally all the way to the Oscars podium) is to make its audience exit the cinema feeling better; to validate viewers by allowing them to relive past victories; to preach to the converted by inviting them to scoff at the tin-eared script of the ignorant, back in the dark ages of 1995.
Serious cinema should try to challenge who we are now. At least a different approach is taken by Disobedience, also out this autumn, which tells of a forbidden lesbian affair among the Orthodox Jewish community in north London. The novel draws from experiences in the 1990s. But the film takes place in 2017 – because the passage of 20 years hasn’t changed much in that particular community.
The contemporary subject matter is undoubtedly there for film-makers. For evidence that liberal America isn’t as free from homophobia as it might assume, the film industry could even look to its own record. Witness the difference in fallout from the allegations of sexual assault by Harvey Weinstein and by Kevin Spacey. Weinstein will, rightly, never work in the industry again; Spacey’s new film is out next month.
This is not simply a case of appropriate opprobrium being withheld until charges are brought (just ask Woody Allen). No, the key difference is that while Weinstein targeted women – usually very beautiful and often pretty famous – Spacey is said to have assaulted men: gay men, at that, maybe even gay men who sometimes took drugs recreationally. If Hollywood wants finally to champion compelling cinema about contemporary bigotry, its cast is already assembled.
• Catherine Shoard is a Guardian columnist
