Bully (2011) |
This piece by Monthly Guest Contributor Carrie Nelson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 7, 2012.
Kelby in Bully |
Ja’Meya in Bully |
The radical notion that women like good movies
Bully (2011) |
This piece by Monthly Guest Contributor Carrie Nelson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 7, 2012.
Kelby in Bully |
Ja’Meya in Bully |
Movie poster for Milk |
This guest review by Drew Patrick Shannon previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on September 21, 2011.
“No third person,” says the cis therapist paternally, jumping to her role, which is of course to moderate the way that the trans woman experiences her gendered self.
“My son,” the trans woman agrees, because she is a good trans woman, one which the audience is supposed to respect and admire, except wait–isn’t that Felicity Huffman, who is totally not a trans woman at all? Psyche! You’re watching Transamerica, and director Duncan “wow, trans women really don’t look like Daniel Day Lewis in a dress?!?” Tucker is about to teach all you trans women in the audience how you need to behave in order to become a real woman!
Cissexist ideas are built into the structure of Transamerica. I’ve criticized the trope of the “journey” before in cis narratives of trans lives–cis people love to tell us about our trans “journey.” They love asking how it’s going, telling us how much they support us in it, that whole party line. Now, this movie is literally about a woman going on a cross country road trip so that she can get bottom surgery–and thus, within the film’s cissexist logic, become a “real woman.” She has to do this because she’s got a kid from an affair back when she was still presenting as male, and in order to satisfy her therapist that she’s ready to get surgery, she needs to deposit this kid on the West Coast.
You don’t really have to watch this movie to know it’s going to be a real winner. Just read an interview with the director, then imagine what kind of movie a guy like this would make about a trans woman. He pulls out gems like, “I did a lot of research on transgender women, and most of them don’t look like guys in dresses.” Better yet, that quote is a response to a common query: why on earth cast Felicity Huffman? After all, Calpernia Addams appears in a brief scene, along with a couple of other transgender actresses. Why not cast Calpernia? It’s a mystery. Tucker puts forth that he did his “due diligence” upon discovering that there were “a couple transgender actresses in Hollywood”–what a shock. He also insists that the “couple of transgender actresses” he found “were closeted.” Considering that out transgender actress Calpernia Addams is clearly out, transgender, and in fact in his movie, the mind of Duncan Tucker is simply not to be understood. I will not try. Instead, let’s talk about the real reason Felicity Huffman plays this role.
Tucker says he was looking for “someone who could do stealth–not someone who was going to look like a guy in a dress. . .someone you look at and say, ‘She could be a woman.'” In the context of his casting choice, this quote becomes a kind of post-structuralist gender theory slapstick. Tucker cast a woman, because he was looking for someone who looked like they could be a woman? De Beauvoir called. She wants her famous quotation back. He cast a cis woman specifically, because clearly in this logic, trans women don’t look like they could be women. Or they’re in such deep stealth that they would never want to play a trans woman. The fact that both of these possibilities are disproved by the presence of Calpernia Addams in the film again seems to bother Tucker not at all–after all, he needn’t pay attention to the trans bodies already in the world when he has trans bodies of his own to construct.
Huffman was cast so that Tucker could make her into the transsexual he wanted. He needed a woman, because he is telling a heartwarming story about how Bree–the trans character–turns out to be really a woman after all. Paradoxically, Tucker needs a cis woman, because cis women are the only valid women, to play a trans woman in a movie in which trans women are proved to be valid women. In a story where we’re accepted, our bodies can’t be seen. Only a false version of a transsexual can be accepted, a parody. Tucker’s poisonous brand of “acceptance” cancels our bodies out.
Before Huffman can look plausibly trans, she has to be uglified, and that uglification interests me. The trouble with casting an actual trans person is that we don’t necessarily look like what Tucker has decided he needs a transsexual to look like, but a cis person–Tucker can make her look as hideous as he likes, all in the name of realism! When Transamerica came out in 2005, you may remember how much of the press revolved around the character’s ugliness. Felicity Huffman laughed about how deprecating it was to have to wear all that ugly makeup in interview after interview. In character, she’s caked with goop designed to make her look “trans,” a word which here means, “a little bit manly and a lot aesthetically unpleasant.” In the best example of the film’s “Come See Our Movie About a Hideous Transsexual” school of publicity, the US DVD cover is holographic: tilt it one way, and you have Huffman looking red carpet ready, but tilt it the other and you have her as she appears in the film, frumpy and square-jawed. (Memo for your edification: trans women are frumpy. Duncan Tucker told me.)
DVD cover for Transamerica |
This gimmick mystifies me–what’s it trying to say? That at the beginning of the movie Bree looks one way, but at the end she transforms from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan? Because she doesn’t. At the film’s end, she looks more or less the same, which in itself contradicts the rest of the film’s logic. According to the cis concept of how surgery works, one is not a real woman before and is a real woman afterward. Transamerica supports this narrative in which a trans woman goes under the knife and comes out a different person–Bree’s whole raison d’être is obtaining surgery, and at one point she actually says, and I quote, “Jesus made me this way so I could suffer and be reborn the way he wanted me.”
Sure, at that point she’s pretending to be a missionary, which she really isn’t–this movie’s plot is just as much a gem of shit as the rest of it–but Huffman acts so goddamn much in the scene that we’re clearly supposed to assign a measure of emotional reality to the moment. But after her surgery, there Bree is, looking the same, and not reborn at all, because the film also has to fulfill the cissexist belief that trans people are irretrievably trans, irretrievably ugly, even if we don’t look like Daniel Day Lewis in a dress. The Daniel Day Lewis in a dress comparison, by the way, is an actual Tucker original.
There’s only one major difference between Bree pre-surgery and Bree post-surgery, actually: now she’s fit for the public cis eye. We see Bree at work at the beginning of the film in back of a restaurant washing dishes, and by the end, she’s moved up to waitressing. She even talks to some people! Which is a relief, because it’s established early on that Bree’s only connection with humankind is that horrible cis therapist I mentioned before. Where are that woman’s ethics, anyway? When did it become proper practice to require a trans woman to take her son on a road trip before you write her a surgery letter? I don’t know; I wish I could say I found this part of the movie implausible, but cis people, you never know. The point is that before her surgery, Bree is too hideous to go out in public and make connections, but at least bottom surgery changes that. THANK GOD.
As trans women invariably are when they aren’t fetishized, Bree is desexualized. In the whole film, we see her flirt once, schoolgirlishly–which is fitting with the style of dress the filmmaker has given her. Said style entails a wardrobe like a sixteen-year-old Mennonite who has just left the church and discovered the color lavender, and is milking her newfound glory for all it’s worth. I have never seen a trans woman who dresses like this. I have never seen a cis woman who dresses like this. According to an interview with Huffman, it’s because Bree orders her clothes from catalogues rather than buying them in shops, because as we all know trans women are unable to buy clothes in public? I’m joking–obviously this is an issue trans women face, but I have yet to meet one who dealt with it by dressing like a cross between a nun and the original 1950s Barbies. By the way, it’s heavily implied that she’ll be able to go back to the man she flirts with after surgery and have a Real Relationship at last. This is because if trans people attempt to have a romantic relationship without getting bottom surgery, we combust.
You know Julia Serano’s seminal trans feminist text, Whipping Girl? You know those machines from cartoons where they’d put the good guy in and the evil version of him would come out? Transamerica is what you get when you put Whipping Girl into one of those machines. In her book, Serano talks about the scenes in media featuring trans women where the trans women put on makeup, clothes, breast forms, and how those scenes exist to remind cis people that trans women are not “real.” Well, Transamerica fulfills its Trans Woman Putting on Lipstick Quota within the first twenty minutes, so you know this is a quality production.
Seriously, this is one of the most misogynistic films I have ever seen: over and over, we see Bree reduced to her body. And what can be more misogynistic than a woman reduced to her body? At one point we even see how damn irrational that womanly estrogen is making her! It’s spotlit in the dialogue, so you can be sure. I’m not sure if all the readers here have encountered the word transmisogyny before, but it is vital vocabulary, and it’s exactly what this movie is riddled with. Transmisogyny is misogyny that’s directed towards trans women, specifically predicated upon their trans status. Trans women experience garden variety misogyny as well, but transmisogyny is specific. When we decide that a woman has to have a certain type of genitalia in order to be acceptable for public view and human relationships, that’s transmisogyny. When we decide that trans women have to enact 50s Mennonite Barbie gender roles in order to look like women, that’s transmisogyny. When we support transmisogyny, we support misogyny; transphobia is a tool of patriarchy. Gee, it sure is nice up here on this soapbox–I’ll just recommend some blogs that get this on the nose and carry on talking about the movie.
At some point in the movie, there is a plot. It seems to involve a mother/son relationship. Kevin Zegers does a good job as the gigolo son, presumably by spending the entire shoot pretending that he’s playing a disaffected hustler in My Own Private Idaho and not this disaster. Kevin Zegers is also SUPER hot, and his beauty combined with his performance makes him the best part of the movie except for Dolly Parton’s theme tune, “Travellin’ Thru,” which is a song by Dolly Parton and thus flawless by nature.
I do not recommend this film. If you feel you must consume it in some capacity, may I suggest distilling the essential elements of the experience? Call up the most transmisogynistic person you know and have them talk to you about what they think bottom surgery signifies. While they talk, look at pictures of Kevin Zegers looking wounded and hot, and listen to “Travellin’ Thru” in one headphone. All of the Transamerica with none of the hassle!
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Stephen Ira is a trans femme-inist poet and activist. He has poems forthcoming in EOAGH and Specter Magazine and short fiction forthcoming in The Collection from Topside Press. He blogs about politics at Super Mattachine on WordPress.
As a queer teacher of color, I personally feel a responsibility to bring a range of narratives about the LGBT experience, especially those that have an intersectional lens of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, to my students, who themselves acknowledge that the queer images they see in the media are too often of white, upper middle class Will & Grace types. For me, screening a film about a young Puerto Rican trans girl is imperative for teaching students that we need to disrupt mainstream narratives of what it means to be queer, young, and of color in today’s transphobic, misogynistic, and racist world.
In addition to illustrating the struggle between Vanessa and her father, the film offers opportunities for educators to have important conversations about gender and sexual identity and bullying in schools. In one locker room scene, Vanessa is taunted by her peers both in Spanish and English, where phrases like “metemelo” (put it in me) and “don’t forget your panties” are hurled. Scenes such as these should give educators the opportunity to discuss important issues such as sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia.
Indeed, according to GLSEN’s (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educator’s Network) 2009 climate survey: “90% of transgender students heard derogatory remarks, such as ‘dyke’ or ‘faggot,’ sometimes, often, or frequently in school in the past year.”
Educators should also note scenes related to discussing bathroom accommodations for transgender youth as well as safe sex practices for all queer youth.
As part of the screening, Rashaad Green, the director of the film, also came to speak to my class. When asked what his goal was in portraying the life of a trans girl, Green responded:
It’s not necessarily a coming out story. I think when we meet Vanessa, we meet somebody who is pretty realized in her own journey. She can’t be who she wants to completely to her own family. But she knows who she is.
To see her change out of her clothes, recite her poetry, and completely bare her soul was powerful.
DVD cover image of Desert Hearts |
Desert Hearts is one such film for me. In the fall of 1986, still a kid of 22 who had just moved to the city from Podunk, Indiana, I went to the theater in a Boston suburb. There I remember looking around at the audience. I had a hard time believing that I was watching a lesbian romance film in a public place. I don’t think I breathed during the love scene. For the first time in my life, in a mainstream movie theater, I watched a film that gave me a model for what love could be. It made me want to fall in love, to find my own Cay or Vivian and hop on the train to start a life together.
It is a conventional romance, which is one of the reasons that it is so successful. As Jackie Stacey points out, “it uses the iconography of romance films: train stations, sunsets and sunrises, close-up shots, rain-drenched kisses, lakeside confessions, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’ orgasms.” It is those Hollywood conventions that conjure up shared memories of hundreds of heterosexual romances. Thus the filmmaker uses what are sometimes clichés as shortcuts to elicit particular emotions and reactions from the audience. Although the world of 1959 would certainly have been more challenging for these two lovers in the real world, the cinematic world Deitch created signals that there is an all-important happy ending coming up, a romantic Hollywood ending.
Deitch’s use of music also contributes to the romance convention. The country songs of Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash are very emotionally evocative. In particular, they conjure up a feeling of wanting that comes from knowing the themes and voices that accompany these artists’ work. The soundtrack, which took up a large portion of the film’s budget, makes brilliant use of the audience’s previous knowledge. We know how we should feel before the scene plays itself out.
Cay and Vivian in Desert Hearts |
Placing the film’s setting in Reno also taps into our shared impressions of the West from movies and popular culture. It is a place in which one can start a new life and throw caution to the wind. The chances for romance certainly would not have felt so hopeful without the wide open spaces and bright, beautiful colors of the Nevada desert. Cay’s cowboy boots and western clothes make her the equivalent of the cowboy who sweeps the newcomer to town off of her feet. It’s the wild westerner who charms the shy school marm, just like we’ve seen a million times in the movies.
Others (like Mandy Merck) discuss Desert Hearts as conventional, criticizing it for not being challenging enough, not tackling issues of lesbian identity, for example. For me, that criticism totally misses the point. Deitch intentionally did not make an issues kind of film. She took Hollywood formula and tilted it on its ear, creating a lesbian love story that audiences still crave today.
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Angie Beauchamp is a freelance internet marketer, making her living by managing other people’s blogs and social media. She also runs the Lesbian Film Review.
This review by Editor and Co-Founder Amber Leab previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 30, 2012.
Frida (2002) |
Le due Frida |
Amber Leab is a writer living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a Master’s degree in English & Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature & Creative Writing from Miami University. Outside of Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared in The Georgetown Review, on the blogs Shakesville, Opinioness of the World, and I Will Not Diet, and at True Theatre.
Movie poster for The Kids Are All Right |
“‘That Nic and Jules are a lesbian couple is important to the movie thematically because they are raising a family in an unconventional setting and are more anxious than some parents about how having two moms will affect the mental health of their children. But it could have been the same thing with a divorced couple,’ she says. ‘I always thought we were making a movie about a family, and the threat to the wholeness of the family. It was not about politics. If there was anything calculated, it was how do we make this movie universal — how do we make this a story about a family?'”
“‘Lesbians love it when a married woman has an affair with another woman on film, which is perceived as moving toward authenticity, but we’re not happy seeing a woman in a same-sex marriage have an affair with a man, which to them represents a regression. And raises concerns about whether it adds fuel to the notion that sexual orientation can be changed from gay to straight. Sitting in the audience, I found myself feeling concerned about that as well…'”
“‘It boils down to this: I’m upset because I believe the takeaway from this film will be that lesbians and the families they create need men to be complete.'”
“‘Your mom and I are in hell right now and the bottom line is marriage is hard. It’s really fucking hard. Just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing. It’s a fucking marathon, okay? So, sometimes, you know, you’re together for so long, that you just… You stop seeing the other person. You just see weird projections of your own junk. Instead of talking to each other, you go off the rails and act grubby and make stupid choices, which is what I did. And I feel sick about it because I love you guys, and your mom, and that’s the truth. And sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most, and I don’t know why. You know if I read more Russian novels, then…Anyway…I just wanted to say how sorry I am for what I did. I hope you’ll forgive me eventually…'”
Movie poster for Kissing Jessica Stein |
(Warning: Contains spoilers about Kissing Jessica Stein.)
Though words like “bisexual” and “queer” are never used, Kissing Jessica Stein is about sexual fluidity. The Rilke quotation mentioned throughout the film makes this theme obvious:
“It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.” (Emphasis added)
Much like Alyssa in Chasing Amy, Helen places a personal ad in the Women-Seeking-Women section because she “excludes nothing” sexually. When it occurs to her that, in all her sexually adventurous years, she has yet to sleep with a woman, she decides to give it a try – hence the personal ad. But she’s completely unprepared for Jessica Stein – who Helen later calls a “Jewish Sandra Dee” – to respond. As the film chronicles the rise and fall of Jessica and Helen’s romantic relationship, it tackles some big questions: Can a woman who’s only dated men have a successful sexual relationship with a woman? When, if ever, is secrecy in a relationship acceptable? Can a relationship with high emotional connection and low sexual compatibility survive?
Jessica and Helen in Kissing Jessica Stein |
Kissing Jessica Stein provides no easy answers to the questions it asks, which I appreciate. The film understands that sexuality is complicated, and not everyone shares the same capacity for fluidity and sexual experimentation. The film also understands that there is no definitive recipe to a successful relationship, because people are different and have radically different priorities when choosing significant others. Jessica and Helen start out coming from similar places – both of them have identified as straight for all of their lives, and both of them want to question that assumption and explore the possibility of dating another woman. In time, they find that they truly are attracted to each other – more than that, they love each other – but that attraction manifests differently in each of them. While Helen has no insecurities about a sexual relationship with Jessica and longs to have the kind of relationship with Jessica that she’s had with men in the past, Jessica is more interested in her emotional connection with Helen than her sexual one. I don’t think this means that Jessica is straight or that she isn’t genuinely attracted to Helen – we never see her in a relationship with a man, so it’s likely that her sex drive is naturally low. Rather than judging Jessica and Helen for their differences, the film shows both women as they are, and it explores the ways in which their differences both cultivate and destroy their relationship.
Jessica and Helen in Kissing Jessica Stein |
When I watch Kissing Jessica Stein now, I’m transported back to a very specific time and place. I remember being sixteen and newly out as bisexual. I remember anxiously anticipating my first kiss from another girl. I remember starting to understand that sexual expression can be flexible and doesn’t have to conform to societal norms. It shouldn’t matter whom we love or what we call ourselves – only that we love at all, and that we express that love in the most honest way we can. Kissing Jessica Stein is not the first film to convey this message, nor does it do it as well as some other films. It’s certainly not as risky as Shortbus, or even Humpday. But it captures a feeling to which many can relate. And even when it fails, it feels far more believable than most comedies of its genre.
These techniques are uniquely suited to the onscreen portrayal of adolescence. It almost seems churlish to complain that Water Lilies and Tomboy lack full structural coherence, because that’s arguably intentional. Growing up, after all, is not a tightly-plotted three-act hero’s journey with clear turning points, tidy linear progression through the successive stages of personal development, and a satisfying ending. It’s a messy and confusing struggle to find a place in the world, littered with incidents that may or may not ultimately be significant (with no way to tell the difference), and most of the time the morals make no sense.
Sciamma instinctively understands this, and the little stories she tells of growing up queer are given vivid life through her two greatest strengths as a filmmaker: her ability to coax marvelously deep and naturalistic performances out of her young actors, and her eye for a strikingly memorable little scene that perfectly encapsulates a moment of overpowering adolescent emotion – the normally boisterous Anne clutching at a lamppost and weeping in Water Lilies, for example, or Tomboy‘s Laure curling up on the couch, thumb in mouth, suddenly overwhelmed by an earlier humiliation.
Both films are carried on the remarkably expressive faces of their lead actresses. There are no voice-over monologues or expository conversations, but both Water Lilies and Tomboy present the inner life of their protagonists with stunning depth and rawness.
Movie poster for Water Lilies |
Anne, though less conventionally feminine than the other girls, is confidently heterosexual and determined to sleep with the boy she finds attractive. Marie is so eager to spend time with Floriane that she agrees to help her sneak out to meet François, and her yearnings for the lithe bodies slipping through the water are beautifully conveyed through moments such as the shot of Marie shifting, flustered, as Floriane unselfconsciously changes into a swimsuit right in front of her. Floriane herself, despite the reputation she cultivates (perhaps recognizing that denial would be futile – once branded a “slut,” a teenage girl is hopelessly trapped in a no-win morass of contradictory social pressures), eventually confesses to Marie that she has never actually had sex, and in fact is afraid to do so.
“If you don’t want to do it, don’t.”
“I have to.”
“Where did you read that?”
“All over my face, apparently. If he finds out I’m not a real slut, it’s over.”
Movie poster Tomboy |
Any ten-year-old lives in the present, and Mikael meets each challenge as it arises – sneaking away deep into the woods when the other boys casually take a pee break; snipping a girl’s swimsuit into a boy’s, and constructing a Play-Doh packer to fill it; swearing Jeanne to secrecy when Lisa unwittingly tells her about Mikael – even as it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that eventually Laure’s parents must find out about Mikael. As loving as they are, they still exert some gender-policing of their oldest child: Mom’s delight at hearing that Laure has made a female friend (“You’re always hanging out with the boys”) might have been tempered if she’d remembered that “copine” can also mean girlfriend!
The relationships between the various children are superbly observed, and constitute reason enough to see Tomboy in themselves. The energetic activities of childish horseplay that give Mikael such joy in himself and in his body – dancing enthusiastically with Lisa, playing soccer shirtless, wrestling in swimsuits on the dock – are balanced by the many lovely domestic scenes demonstrating the closeness of Laure’s relationship with Jeanne. This is honestly one of the most moving and genuine cinematic portrayals of a sibling relationship in years, and after her initial shock Jeanne takes to the idea of Mikael like a duck to water, boasting to another child about her awesome big brother, and telling her parents that her favorite of Laure’s new friends is Mikael.
The parents themselves, unfortunately, are much less accepting of Mikael. The film’s ending is ambiguous, allowing for multiple readings of the exact nature of Laure’s queerness; indeed, the film has been criticized as “an appropriation of trans narratives by a cis filmmaker toward her own purposes”; but to me the ending is terribly unhappy. With deep breaths and with profound conflict on Héran’s preternaturally expressive face, the character is forced to claim “Laure,” the name and gender assigned at birth and not the ones of choice. The cissupremacy has won this round.
Though Tomboy is the better film, the two movies make excellent companion pieces. Between them they depict a range of queerness and explore a variety of strategies for growing up queer (and/or female) in a hostile world. And yet they offer no easy solutions, no cheap moralizing, no promise that it gets better. These films, and the characters they portray, simply are. And, in the end, isn’t that the one universal truth of queer people? There is no ur-narrative of queerness. There is no right or wrong way to be queer. We simply are.
Max Thornton is a grad student and a stranger in a strange land, who writes words at Gay Christian Geek and has previously contributed a review of No Country For Old Men.
This is a story about lesbian schoolgirls.
Those of you who have already seen Lost and Delirious, The Moth Diaries, D.E.B.S., Therese and Isabelle, Fucking Åmål, But I’m A Cheerleader, Heavenly Creatures, Bilitis, and every other lesbian schoolgirl film out there, just hear me out and try not to roll your eyes yet.
Cracks, the directorial debut of Jordan Scott (daughter of Ridley Scott), is an independent film based on Sheila Kohler’s novel of the same name. Although it was released in Ireland and the UK in 2009, Cracks didn’t come out the US at all until 2011, showing on only six screens. While it takes several liberties with the book, setting it at an isolated British boarding school in the 30’s rather than a South African boarding school in the 60’s, the story faithfully focuses on a group of girls who make up their school’s diving team, their mysterious mentor, Miss G (Green), and the new student who overturns the status quo just by existing.
This is also, mind you, a lesbian boarding school movie in which neither the character with the crush nor the object of the crush tragically commits suicide. Now, I’m not going to swear to you that this is an entirely death-free film, or even that it’s a particularly easy film to watch. I will, however, swear that the characters are fascinating, the score and cinematography are stunning, and Eva Green’s costumes (thank you, Alison Byrne) will take your breath away.
And, for those of you with more refined interests, there’s a scene where she strips off and urges a group of students to join her for some late-night skinny-dipping. This is actually (a) relevant to the plot and (b) shot so beautifully it doesn’t feel gratuitous, both factors that could easily have proven to be pitfalls for several scenes. The entire movie manages to evoke sensuality without crossing the line into lewdness, no mean feat considering how effortlessly it could have portrayed the girls as archetypal nubile young things seething with sexual frustration. Instead, the emphasis is on the characters’ development, not the audience’s titillation.
“To dive is to fly,” says Miss G to her girls. “Set yourself free of the shackles of conformity. Let nothing hold you back except the air itself. You are between heaven and earth. The rules no longer apply.”
And let’s be real, if Eva Green was your diving instructor, you’d probably cede to her every whim too.
When we first meet Miss G, she happens to be wearing the ensemble pictured above while lounging in a rowboat with Di, one of her students, and discussing a scandalous book she had no qualms about lending her.
Di Radfield (Juno Temple) is the star of the diving team and something of a bigwig on campus, the Regina George in the 1934 edition of Mean Girls.
She’s also head over heels for Miss G.
Based on this knowledge alone (and possibly the same three plotlines that tend to occur in most boarding school movies), I personally would already be gritting my teeth in preparation for ninety minutes all about Di’s introspective self-loathing and her efforts to avoid the censure of her peers, the castigation of her teachers, and the denunciation of her desires. In most cases, I wouldn’t be far off the mark: usually, the character with the same-sex crush encounters some kind of scorn from others simply for daring to find another woman attractive, which then becomes the main source of conflict.
But that isn’t the case at all for the girls of the fictitious St. Mathilda’s. Di, instead, is admired for being daring. Already a natural leader, she has even more prestige by being the favorite and having the ear of the teacher all the girls idolize.
Nor does Di herself have any apparent issue with her feelings. “I’ve had rather a lot of lustful thoughts,” she admits during confession, one of only a handful of scenes to feature a male character. “Do I have to be sorry for all of them?”
Her teammates and sometimes lackeys, a garden of British blossoms with names like Poppy (Imogen Poots), Lily (Ellie Nunn), Laurel (Adele McCann), Rosie (Zoe Carroll), and awkward Fuzzy (short for Persephone, played by Clemmie Dugdale), are all in awe of her. One of the first scenes features Poppy eagerly asking if Di, emerging from the chapel, admitted to reading the book Miss G let her borrow. Di only scoffs that they can’t stay pure forever and she sees nothing wrong with wanting to know about the real world. And of course, she would never do anything that might get Miss G into trouble.
Miss G, who is cultured and serene and has a killer wardrobe, teaches diving (though always fully clothed and from the safety of a dock or rowboat) and apparently at least one additional class that involves textbooks. The only evidence we see of the latter is when she has the girls put their books away and then proceeds to regale them with tales of her adventures in far-off lands—which her students, of course, lap up without question.
Enter new girl Fiamma (María Valverde), the Spanish noble who happens to actually be as well-traveled as Miss G claims to be.
Fiamma, the living embodiment of the outside world, quietly challenges the authority of both Di and Miss G almost immediately. She joins the team and usurps Di as their top diver, exposes Miss G’s fantastical stories as word-for-word recitations of Mary Kingsley, and demands to know why the divers never compete against other schools. She is every bit the catalyst her name implies, causing the students to consider several of the questions we as viewers have been accumulating all along.
Until now, the girls have been accustomed to the remoteness of their lives, with only Miss G’s stories as a window to anything else. The school itself, located on a fictional island off the coast of England, is accessible only by ferry. Letters home are meant to show students’ “fine penmanship and turn of phrase” and are read by their teacher before being approved and sent. The divers share the same dorm and classes, bound into an elite little coterie by their positions on the team, led all the while by a teacher who never dives, never risks or plunges herself, but swears that the most important thing in life is desire and makes them all believe it.
While the rest of the team is amazed by her, Miss G in particular becomes fascinated with Fiamma, both wanting her and wanting to be her. Di, however, resents Fiamma for replacing her as Miss G’s favorite.
We learn, through Miss G’s snooping, that Fiamma was sent away for becoming involved with a boy of a far lower social status than her own. While Fiamma believes she will only be held at the school until the air clears for her back home, its almost ethereal isolation assumes a more menacing role when Miss G calmly reels off the names of other girls who also thought they would only be there for a short time. “Only Di,” she tells Fiamma, “realized this is forever.”
But Fiamma’s only response is, “It is not forever. They will leave you.”
Gradually it comes to light that, although Miss G constantly tells outrageous anecdotes about her life, she herself is actually a product of the same school. When asked by a ferryman, she coolly admits she does not care for open water. The one time she leaves school grounds, we see her mumbling to herself and visibly steeling up to stroll through the tiny town on the mainland in order to buy treats for Fiamma. As the girls’ coach, she easily plays the sultry storyteller who captivates them all, but once out of her element she literally isn’t able to walk the walk.
Her obsession with Fiamma manifests in progressively disturbing ways, from showering her with affection to stealing her belongings to a truly disturbing scene where she forces Fiamma to dive whilst on the verge of an asthma attack. While the other girls adore Miss G unquestioningly, Fiamma fails time and time again to be ensnared by her spell. And when Miss G learns that she can never regain control or save face while Fiamma is around, her resolution isn’t pretty.
This is a story about three passionate women that just so happens to take place in a boarding school: Miss G, who struggles to uphold the persona she’s created for herself within the institution she can’t leave; Fiamma, everything Miss G could never be; and Di, enthralled by her hero’s tales of far-off places but so reluctant to accept a person actually from one of them.
Cracks is guilty of falling into the characterization trope of the sophisticated mentor who isn’t at all what she seems, as well as the more troubling trope of the predatory deviant who clearly isn’t right in the head. As Miss G’s obsession with Fiamma escalates, so does her exposure as a pathological liar who glamorizes herself for the teams’ affections. The film also borrows liberally from the old boarding school standby of catty girls turning on each other at every opportunity (interestingly, several actors were boarding school students themselves when the movie was filmed) and their motivations blow hot and cold too quickly to seem logical at times—one minute they’re turning on Fiamma at Di’s behest, and the next they’re striking a truce and planning to have a midnight feast.
While the novel Cracks was titled after a slang term for a crush, throughout the movie we see actual cracks as they appear in Miss G, in the sway she holds over her girls, and in the complacence of the girls themselves when their world and their idol are shaken apart. The story ends with all three of the main characters taking leave of the school in different ways, a conclusion just open-ended enough to leave you wondering if the reality created for these girls actually is forever, or if independence is still possible in spite of it all.
Emily Campbell is an M. Ed. candidate who has taught English on three continents and still secretly wants to be an Animorph when she grows up.
1960s America saw its share of emerging social and political movements—the civil rights movement, second wave feminism and anti-Vietnam activism, just to name a few. And in June 1969, the modern gay liberation movement was born. The Stonewall riots resulted in gay people rushing out of the closets and into the streets in the hopes of gaining equal rights. For the first time, gay men and lesbians were able to express their attractions openly, build communities and mobilize activist efforts. None of the recent advances in LGBT equality would have happened over the last four decades were it not for the bravery and chutzpah of the Stonewall Inn’s patrons on that fateful summer evening in 1969.
Unfortunately, in the world of AMC’s Mad Men, it is still the first half of the decade. There was no gay liberation movement between 1960 and 1965, the years during which the first four seasons of the series take place. On the contrary, homosexuality was still considered a deviance by mainstream society and an illness by the medical community. There was certainly no such thing as gay pride—the great majority of closet doors were locked tightly. This makes it harder for Mad Men to address the experiences of gay people than to address those of women and people of color, as it’s a challenge for such a dialogue-driven character drama to address a topic that was rarely discussed openly. But that doesn’t mean that the effort isn’t made.
Despite the complete lack of visibility of gay people in the early 1960s, there is a surprisingly high amount of explicitly queer characters on Mad Men. Only one—Salvatore Romano, Sterling Cooper’s Art Director—is substantially developed, but a half dozen gay characters have passed through the Mad Men universe over the course of four seasons. All of the characters are unique, with distinct personalities and significantly different approaches to navigating same-sex desire in a hostile climate. And while Mad Men steers clear of making profound statements about the nature of gay identity in the 1960s, the characterizations it does present do have a few interesting things to say about gender identity and the ability to out oneself.
To discuss the depiction of homosexuality on Mad Men, one first needs to look at Salvatore. To the 21st century viewer, Sal reads undeniably as gay, yet no one at Sterling Cooper seems to notice this. Certainly, he isn’t out, nor does he intend to be. In season 1, he is a bachelor; in seasons 2 and 3, he is married to Kitty, a sweet and completely naïve woman who is either unaware or in denial of her husband’s internal struggles. Though Sal is an outwardly confident, charismatic and good-looking man, one who attracts the attention of men and women alike, he constantly lives in fear of his identity and the possibility that someone might discover it.
Salvatore and the bellboy |
For the most part, the only people who catch on to Sal’s secret are other gay men. He is sexually propositioned by men on three separate occasions: by Elliott, a representative from Sterling Cooper client Belle Jolie Cosmetics; by an unnamed hotel bellboy in Baltimore; and by Lee Garner Jr., the owner of Lucky Strike, Sterling Cooper’s most lucrative account. Only in the case of the unnamed bellboy does Sal decide to give in to his desires. In that instance, he is with a man who he doesn’t know in a professional context, in a city he is only visiting for one night. The stakes are minimal, and his arousal is palpable, so when the bellboy leans in for a kiss in the privacy of Sal’s hotel room, he gives in. The scene is short—Sal is only granted a steamy make-out session and a crotch grab before the hotel fire alarm goes off— but it serves an important purpose. It is the only moment in the series when the audience is able to see Sal authentically satisfied. As the bellboy removes Sal’s clothing, a leak from an exploded pen is visible on Sal’s shirt—as blatant a symbol of unabashed excitement and premature ejaculation as one is likely to get past network censors. As the bellboy kisses and caresses his body, Sal emits heavy, hiccuped breaths and repeated moans of “Oh, God” and “Oh, Jesus.” The intense degree of passion he exhibits makes it clear to the viewer that this is his first sexual experience with a man. Though we never see Sal in an intimate situation with a man again, this scene represents a clear turning point in Sal’s comfort with his own identity.
A layer of complexity is added to Sal’s tryst when Don Draper, evacuating the hotel after the alarm blasts, runs down the fire escape, makes eye contact with Sal and notices the bellboy putting his clothes back on. Sal quickly looks away, ashamed and perhaps even scared of losing his job. Don doesn’t fire Sal on the spot, nor does he even directly broach the topic with him. Instead, he proposes a new campaign for London Fog raincoats that uses the slogan, “Limit Your Exposure.” When Don says this to Sal, his message is clear. And, ultimately, it becomes his undoing.
Lee Garner, Jr. propositions Sal |
Sal’s interactions with Elliott and Lee are less fruitful than his night in Baltimore. In both instances, as soon as Sal realizes that he is being propositioned, his body tenses, a look of terror and sadness crosses his face and he declines the gesture. With Elliott, there are no consequences—Sal merely excuses himself from the bar where they had been sitting together. With Lee, though, the rejection costs Sal his job at Sterling Cooper. Lee’s proposition to Sal is abrupt, almost threatening; when Sal bristles at being grabbed around his chest, Lee just smiles and says, “I know what I know.” Still, Sal rejects the overture; embarrassed by the rejection, Lee sees to it that Sal is fired. He meets with Don to try to win back his job, appealing to the fact that Don knows his secret. But it doesn’t work because, in Don’s mind, Sal has violated the only piece of wisdom he was able to give him.
After Don fires Sal, we see him talking to Kitty from a phone booth, telling her not to wait up for him. We are to infer that Sal is going to go off on a night of cruising in the park, and this ultimately reads as more troubling than liberating. We know Sal has only had one sexual experience with a man before, and he certainly doesn’t have the language for discussing his sexual desires, let alone his identity. He is taking Don’s advice to limit his exposure, but at what cost? This is the last time we see Salvatore, and it’s an unsatisfying ending for such a beloved, complex character.
Joan and Carol |
Though Sal is the gay character with which the audience spends the most time, the two (briefly appearing) lesbian characters are just as nuanced as he. Those characters are Carol, Joan Holloway’s roommate in season 1, and Joyce, Peggy Olsen’s friend at Life Magazine in season 4. Unlike the gay male characters, who, with one exception [i], only voluntarily come out to other gay men, Carol and Joyce both come out to straight women. Carol confesses her love for Joan in a beautiful monologue before they go out on the town for a night to meet men. As they dress and put on jewelry and make up, Carol confides in Joan, “I did everything I could to be near you, all with the hope that one day you’d notice me…Just think of me as a boy.” Joan pretends not to understand what Carol is talking about, and she gently brushes her words off. As hurtful as that may be for Carol, it’s certainly not as negative a response as it could have been, given the era. And it’s clear by Joan’s soft, attentive facial expressions and the look of compassion in her eyes that, even if she doesn’t acknowledge it, she appreciates what Carol is telling her. It may confuse her, but it doesn’t scare her, and she won’t let it change her relationship with Carol, someone who has been her friend for years. Though sad, there is a bit of sweetness in Joan’s rejection of Carol.
Joyce and Peggy |
Joyce and Peggy have a similar, if far less dramatic, exchange. After meeting in the elevator of the building where they work (Joyce works for Life Magazine), Joyce visits Peggy at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and invites her out to a party. At the party, Joyce kisses Peggy on the side of her face. Peggy giggles and backs away, leading her to tell Joyce that she has a boyfriend. Joyce responds, “He doesn’t own your vagina,” but Peggy counters, “No, but he’s renting it.” Joyce laughs—she takes this as a perfectly reasonable response, even if she did have designs on Peggy. Although Peggy rejects Joyce, it is not (or, at least, not directly) because she’s a woman. Peggy might very well be willing to reciprocate Joyce’s interest, but not while she’s in a relationship.
Both Carol and Joyce are able to say things to their straight love interests that Salvatore can’t say to his. In season 2, Sal develops a crush on Ken Cosgrove, going so far as to invite him for dinner in his home. Though he spends dinner hanging on to Ken’s every word and completely ignoring Kitty, Sal never dreams of explicitly coming out to Ken (or coming on to him). By contrast, Joyce is a blatant flirt. In addition to crushing on Peggy, she loiters by secretary Megan’s desk, chatting her up just like any of the men in the office would do. And during the season 4 finale, she visits Peggy’s office with another friend—a beautiful model named Carolyn. Though they aren’t a couple, Joyce and Carolyn have a definite butch/femme dynamic, as evidenced by the way they sit together and the way Joyce chivalrously puts her arm around her. It doesn’t matter to Joyce if it’s obvious what she’s doing— she is self-confident enough to own her sexuality, even if it isn’t socially acceptable for her to do so. Joyce hasn’t been a part of Mad Men for very long, and I certainly hope she’s back in season 5, continuing to make straight women blush wherever she goes.
It remains to be seen how far into the 1960s Mad Men will travel. Perhaps it will go all the way through 1969. Perhaps we will see a Stonewall episode, in which Peggy and Joyce are caught up in the riots, and Peggy sees Sal with another man somewhere in the crowd. Perhaps we’ll see less gay content, and homosexuality will take a backseat to other social issues, particularly as the Vietnam War heats up. But if the first four seasons are any indication, we’ll continue to see gay characters pop up every now and again, and while their full political and social histories may not be documented, we will continue to see the ways in which they limit—or, in some cases, enhance—their exposure.
[i] That character is Kurt, a member of Sterling Cooper’s art department during season 2. The scene in which he comes out in front of the likes of Ken Cosgrove and Harry Crane is rather funny, but due to space constraints I won’t get into it here.
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Carrie Nelson is a Bitch Flicks monthly contributor. She was a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.
When considering the finest LGBTQ representation in television, the short-lived science fiction television series FlashForward may not be at the top of your mental list.
The 2009 ABC show—about a mysterious event that causes the entire planet to black out for two minutes and seventeen seconds (exactly), during which each person on Earth experiences a “flash-forward” into his or her life six months into the future—lasted for only one season. The cancellation was perhaps warranted due to the extreme overacting of lead Joseph Fiennes (no doubt better suited for roles like Shakespeare in the lauded Shakespeare in Love) and the contrary “blahness” of his co-lead John Cho.
However, the show’s premise of getting a glimpse into one’s future provided a gamut of philosophical conundrums concerning free will—whether or not we have any—that charmed the pants of this philosophy major’s heart. If those quandaries would not suffice to make you all hot and heavy though, I have five magic words for why you should find and watch this one-season show: FBI Special Agent Janis Hawk.
Janis is introduced to the show as a member of the L.A.-based FBI team (led by lead character Mark Benford, played by the histrionic Fiennes) that will strive to solve the mystery of the flash-forward. She wears navy power suits, speaks in a gravely, sarcastic tone, and is, in her own words, “super gay.” Thank you baby Jesus!
Now let’s get this straight. She is (*sob* was) an out lesbian character on a major television network whose sexuality has nothing to do with the show’s premise and little to do with the character’s personality and interaction with her coworkers. She is a strong, female character who happens to like the ladies, much to the dismay of some poor shmuck who asks her out at karate practice. Instead, she leaves with this woman, the alluring Maya:
The fabulous Christine Woods as Janis Hawk is only an auxiliary character; a B story to the show, and her love life is only a B story to her B story, if you will. The fact that Janis’ romance has the emotional turmoil to guide us from first-date jitters to steamy sexual tension and then on to disappointment and abandonment in such a short span of screen time is a testament to the character’s strength.
Indeed, Janis Hawk is not a fabulous character because she is a lesbian and that lends her some sort of diversity credential. She is a fabulous character because she is a layered one. In her fast-forward, she sees herself as pregnant, getting a sonogram, enamored with love for her unborn child. This startles her because 1) she has never wanted a child and 2) in order to have a child, it would seem that there would need to be a penis involved and she remarks dryly, “I don’t like them.”
(Her “I don’t like them”—best delivery of a line… ever).
The fact that Janet broke up with Maya when Maya suggested that Janet’s future baby is theirs is a wonderful example of character complexity. Maya is overeager to make a family with Janet and Janet is understandably protective of her possible future pregnancy. She tells Maya, “This isn’t a me-you thing, Maya, this is a me thing.” She makes clear that her pregnancy would be just that, hers, and that Maya has no right to put claims over it. Feeling pressured and exposed, Janet ends it. What’s left from the brief relationship? Two characters—neither the villain nor the hero, no savior nor saved. These are the pieces left in a broken relationship, whether it be a straight or LGBTQ one, and when film or television manages to mirror reality like this, it is doing something very, very right.
When a run-in with some bad guys leaves Janet with a bullet wound in her stomach and a very rare chance of being able to conceive, Janet faces true heartbreak for the first time. She copes with feelings of failure, inadequacy and hopelessness stemming from the sickening feeling of recognizing her own desire to be a mother too late.
She also probably ruined her olive suit. (It matched my eyes and everything).
On a more frivolous note, the character of Janis wears this silver ring on her thumb—the very same thumb that she uses to draw Maya closer and sink them both into the ephemeral bliss of a kitchen kiss.
That flash of silver just gets me every time.
However, if getting to pretend that you’re dating this bundle of FBI-agent strength, sarcasm and flashing smile–
–is not enough motivation for you to watch the show, let’s remind ourselves of our little secret. Remember that Janis’ romance is a B story to her own B story within the show. There are many other complex and fascinating characters, including the male doctor she spoke with who is diagnosed with cancer yet sees a future with a beautiful Japanese woman and a haggard father who sees, in his vision, the daughter killed in action in Afghanistan alive and well six months later.
Moreover, as stated, Janis’ own story is far more complex than her romantic life and sexuality—as any well-rounded character should be, especially any LGBTQ character whose broadcast might stretch the minds of bigoted people.
At this point, I would like to warn you that there are a lot more surprises to the show that will keep you coming back for more, but if you hate any kind of spoilers, put your hands over your ears and sing “I Was Born This Way” right now. … Did I trick you? Instead, just don’t scroll down past this picture of a bunny in a knitted hat:
If Janis Hawk wasn’t already badass enough, she turns out to be…
A DOUBLE AGENT!!!!!!!!!
My case is closed. Love her, cherish her, cheer her on, and cry that this show only lasted a season so that we do not have more time with Janis Hawk.
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TJ Murphy is a rising senior at Dartmouth College studying philosophy and art history. She is now accepting any advice from anywhere as to what she should do for a living. She enjoys writing, bookstores, cappuccinos, and climbing trees and she is not usually bitter about cancelled television shows.