As cold war anxieties surged in the middle of the twentieth century, Western governments became fixated on fears of Communist infiltration. In the US and Canada, these fears sparked a panic that people with so-called “character weaknesses,” and especially gays and lesbians, were susceptible to foreign blackmail, and thus constituted a national security threat.
In The Fruit Machine, filmmaker Sarah Fodey examines the extraordinary toll that this panic took on the lives of LGBTQ+ people working in the Canadian military and civil service in the postwar period. Beginning in the 1950s and lasting until 1992, the Canadian government undertook a sweeping purge of suspected homosexuals from its ranks. Working with researchers at Ottawa’s Carleton University, the government even attempted to develop a machine—known as the fruit machine—for detecting homosexual tendencies in its employees. Harrowing and intimate, The Fruit Machine is a timely examination of what happens when homophobic panic, backed by the power of the state, meets the dubious promise of a new technology.
In this event, filmmaker Sarah Fodey will join moderator Tyler Morgenstern for a post-screening discussion of The Fruit Machine.