A paper for my Queer Film Study Class
In the Celluloid
Closet Quentin Crisp remarks that * There is no sin like being a
woman. When a man dresses as a woman, everybody laughs. When a woman
dresses as a man nobody laughs. * Mr Crisp certainly if referring to
the heteronormative power structure in our Western society and it*s
prejudices associated to gender rigidity permeating our media.
Heteronormative attitudes, influenced by Judeo/Christian values and
the cash stockpiles in their control, have guided the reining
cultural reference points through ownership of the corporations that
dominate and create mass culture. Even a man like Mr Crisp; who has
given his whole life over to the great pursuit of being a
professional poof; can fall into the trap of forgetting duality and
myriad of genders that line Kinsey*s world. Even in early cinema
conventions about gender fluidity have been expressed in the stories
of American film. Proving that Mr Crisp is too quick to believe the
convention of the day and its dominance in film. His comment is not
really true but instead steeped in the convention that has been sold
through heteronormative societies manipulation of projected image.
Perhaps saying that men in dresses are fools and women assuming power
are a threat to the belief system of our culture would be a more
realistic way to describe the situation.
A truer take on
what it is that Mr Crisp is alluding to is that men put on a dress
and begin acting like prissy clowns and women become hard and
concerned. That they change clothing and become a parody or a
stereotype. A man dressed as women is often played for comedy but
women as men is usually a hard luck story or a power struggle
anchored to first wave feminist ideals or a mans world. Women who
have been asked to play men and have done it well were able to feel
the pressures of being closed and without an outlet for emotion. For
truly this is the mans plight through social conditioning. Men must
become hard less they rebel against the drudgery and cruelty of
modern society. Men in films are hardly ever shown to have emotions
unless it is the loss of a true love through death or the insane
consumption by love of an object, power, or a women. The roles of
men are fraught with dire circumstance like war and desire, lust,
greed and hardship that it is all his fault. The Patriarchal world
that we live in has not always been and may not always be as it is
and this scares the men of power and they fight and manipulate to
stay in control. Thus the films, usually a patriarchal set up from
director, script boy, lighting and even make up, men control the
media. They fight to control the movies and their hand in it because
it gives them power. They do not want to see the image of a woman
being a representation in all ways of their power.
Yet female stars
that really made it in classic Hollywood like Garbo and Hepburn were
strong and powerful. They were able to stand up to the bosses and
gained control. The strength
of Davis and even the severe manish beauty of Crawford stand the
testament of time and live on. Showing that men resent looking at
women as men but cant help but reward a woman, hold her as an idol in
the world of men, provided she can meet him at his level and
maintain. To seize mans power and hold on as a woman gets you
noticed! Only women who have subverted or gained so called manly ways
with a strong attitudes survive. It*s a mans world.
The movies worship
strength and power and these supernova women either played a man, had
sexual ambiguity, or used cross dressing to elevate them to this rare
stardom. Hepburn*s performance was laughable as a boy along side Cary
Grant in Sylvia Scarlett. Indeed there was nothing funny or
comic about the role other than how terrible it came across. Hepburn
is a down on his luck boy feeling the pangs of lust for Grant through
her disguise. Simply not a good movie. Hepburn, a favorite of mine,
is the worst man ever portrayed on screen. That is because she is
supposed to pass. What Hepburn is being asked to do is be a man not
represent a man. When a drag queen passes she is taken for a woman
and passing as a man as a woman is very hard and visa versa.
However in the
films A Florida Enchantment and The Clinging Vine we
have fine examples of actresses who did indeed pass in a much more
believable way then poor Kate would later. Both performances were
heartfelt and appropriate in their scale. They were believable and in
the Clinging Vine we are taken by the way the character is
played throughout. It is rare to see a sexual deviation that is so
flamboyant in her dress and attitudes not meet with death or sorrow.
It was refreshing to see a winner, who was a winner, on her strength
and that heteronormative morals did not rule the day.
As movies have
progressed there are few female performances that create a character
of a man in any meaningful way. A movie and role that smashes the
parameters of Quentin*s theory would be Julie Andrews in Victor
Victoria. Her performance is comic genius and goes from powerless
woman to powerful man to strong woman all in a faced paced comedy of
errors around gender identity. The Oscar winning tear jerker of a
trans mans death at the hands of a cold and vengeful society by
Hilary Swank in Boys Don*t Cry,
is another fine example sans the comic effect. Truly a very raw and
believable performance. Finally the illuminating film staring Glenn
Close*s recent turn as a man in Albert Nobels.
A woman who must be a man to survive financially in a mans world.
The thing the performances of these women share is the ability to
deftly change their manners and convince us that they were men in
male roles and by not over doing themselves. They didn*t become a man
but a character. If an actor concentrates on the idea of their gender
and the switch we loose the believability and realness. We get the
fool or mimic and the performance lacks truth and gains parody
instead. This is the general problem with drag and cross dressing men
in films as well. The fear that if they can be seen as women then
they will loose their power in the world or that it will open the
door to a truer understanding of gender equality and fluidity. To be
set equal to a woman means that there is no true power structure. So
Instead we use cross dressing as a way to belittle and oppress the
woman of the world and keep them adherent to the patriarchal society.
As
Hollywood has used the sissy as comic relief so has the cross
dressing male been the queen of capers and confusion garnering us
hours of film hilarity. Some Like It Hot
a film staring
Jack
Lemmon and Tony Curtis as cross dressing musicians is considered the
greatest comedy of all times in many critical circles. It certainly
helped that these two had one of the greatest drag stars in the form
of Marilyn Monroe to accent their rather dowdy appearance. This film
is actually a movie that gets drag right. Drag is a costume and not
always a gender signifier. The wearer to pull it off in a convincing
way must again subvert something in themselves and become a character
and not try to be a woman. To try and be a woman would have the drag
persona relying on stereotypes and not giving credence to the truth
that there is no way to act as a woman, because women; just like men
and gender; have infinite possibilities.
Comparing
the fine film of Curtis, Lemmon and Monroe to two later offerings by
Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire
and Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo in Too
Wong Foo Thanks For Everything Julie Numar
we see what little progress we have made in accepting the female
sides of ourselves. Where Curtis and Lemmon added some sincerity and
integrity to their roles Robin Williams hardly ever does. The biggest
complaint about Williams in Doubtfire
is that he can change within seconds to the old lady made. Simply
dash behind the clock and out comes a plain but kindly granny. This
shows how little we understand about the cultural preparation most
women go through just to get out the door in the morning much less an
understanding of what drag entails! The production team should have
watched Paris is Burning
a few times before making their film. The misconception also being
that drag teaches a man how to feel and understand his family is a
far fetched notion. Drag teaches men how to represent a feminine
identity around themselves not how to be, act and fell like a woman.
In
the other film Too Wong Foo
we have three men in roles that are so stereotypical and from such a
heteronormative view point that none of them could possibly be
believable. The situations that these drag performers get into is a
complete misrepresentation of what drag is. Drag is for the stage not
for mid day strolls down dusty paths in a small rural village where
the men want to kill you. To live as a woman is to live a
transgendered life and that is not what these three were to portray.
They were Drag Queens acting like Trans women in a movie about
American values and truth. When it comes to Queer culture being
represented by Hollywood there is more often than not these types of
mistakes. Mostly because we are not taught to think of gays and
lesbians as not having a culture. We instead as a society are thought
of as a square peg that needs to be taught how to fit into a round
hole. This film is a one hundred and ten percent misrepresentation of
Queer culture and a complete misrepresentation of our numerous gender
identities. Here Patrick Swayze is the square peg being shoved into a
Doris Day shaped hole and I doubt very much that a drag queen would
do this for any reason other than to parody the heteronomative world.
Two
films that were able to use gender deference in a very real way were
the little known Lillies
and the foreign film Ma Vie en Rose
or My Life in Pink.
Lillie is a tale of
redemption for past transgressions of a dying man who has rotted away
in jail for a crime of passion against his gay lover he did not
commit. The crime was instead perpetrated by the gay priest who has
come to hear his confession and give his last rights. The confession
is heard in a gay prison ward and they hold the priest captive and
relive the drama of the crime in play form before the captive priest.
We the movie goer are allowed to see the drama as it really happened
with the inmates playing the same charaters but dressed as them in
the actual setting, thus mixing reality and dreams in the telling of
the tale. This movie takes the men playing women in the real world
and also has them play women in the dream world and they do it so
well the movie works seamlessly and is a true masterpiece of Queer
cinema.
Ma
Vie en Rose is the story of
Ludwig and his family in Belgium and the difficulty that his gender
identity causes for the whole family. He is a little girl inside and
would do anything to prove it to the world thus innocently outing
himself and shaming his family. The story is so close to the gender
confusion that queer children feel it is hard to believe how close it
comes to my own experience. A beautiful and triumphant tale of how a
family changes and lets go of their own prejudice to love their son
who thinks he is a girl. The cross dressing here is the innocent
childish play of childhood that is ended when dominant culture is
enforced through social pressure. It also relies heavily on a fantasy
world much like in Lillies
but this one being filled with pink doll houses a living Barbie and
pretty dresses.
To do drag films correctly or males to cross dress as females and
for it not to be bafoonary there needs to be the idea of fantasy at
play. When we loose the fantasy and the magic it creates we loose the
idea behind gender and its portrayal becomes hollow. So it is not
really about a man or a woman being the joke. Nor is it about how
women are punished in a mans world. Instead of what Mr Crisp stated
it is about the heteronormative male dominated culture refusing to
look at anything but itself as acceptable thus remaining in power. In
Hollywood the laws must apply in general and certainly to gender
representation because the status quo and money flows must be
maintained. Gender deviance is often used to titillate (Dietrich),
show courage and strength (Garbo), ability (Hepburn) and the spirit
to achieve (Davis and Crawford) when applied to women. For men it is
a chance to subvert women*s power and make fun of queer identity.
Perhaps Quentin Crisp should have said * Nobody laughs at a woman
with male traits because they are afraid of her power while men who
subvert the symbols of their power are nothing but fools in the
Hollywood eye. *
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