The initial question of our class garnered around: what is Queer Cinema? Which by definition and socio-cultural understanding, will remain unanswered. Especially through the context that this class is specifically through a European lens, language and a geopolitical landscape immerse Western audiences and students away from a fixed nature of ‘queer cinema’. In any case, these meandering thoughts on how to define or categorize queer art is constricting, especially since the essence of queer art is based on radical queer thinking. My understanding of queer cinema will stray from heteronormative expectations and lean into my own queer experiences as well as my engagement with course readings.
Here are 2 ways of understanding Queer Cinema:
- Identity-based films whereas a film explores gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender characters through explicit individual themes and their experiences
- Non-Identity based films whereas a film explores a non-normative experience through realms of gender and sexuality which defy identity categorization
A quick example discussed in class with Professor Sergio Rigoletto, was thinking of the 2017 feature film, Call Me By Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino, and written by Oregon alumna James Ivory. The film can be considered radically queer namely because the main character, Elio, doesn’t self-identify any particular sexual preference, and therefore doesn’t quite know himself yet. This can be both a bridge between Identity and Non-Identity based film as the story is grounded in a homosexual love story, however, the characters are unbound to categorization.
Heteronormativity can be described as the set of norms that make heterosexuality seem natural or right and that organize homosexuality as its binary opposite. This set of norms works to maintain the dominance of heterosexuality by preventing homosexuality from being a form of sexuality that can be taken for granted or go unmarked or seem right in the way heterosexuality can. As a result, the dominance of heterosexuality often operates unconsciously or in unmarked ways that make it particularly difficult to expose and dislodge.
Due to this systemic interference of heteronormativity, the spotlight for Queer films and allowing them a platform for view and garnered exploration aids strides for more progressive liberation, since the first brick was thrown at Stonewall. Through the promotion of authentic (a term that has its own downsides) representations of Queerness, denouncement of harmful stereotypes, and recognizing heterosexuality depends on homosexuality for its coherence and stability. This brings me to my childhood and how I came to see homosexuality almost ‘normally’ just like any other heterosexual character in a film has to be in the film Saved! directed by Brian Dannelly. I watched this around eight years old, or maybe younger, with my aunt who was a huge fan, and had it on DVD (or VHS, I can’t remember). The film follows a young Christian girl, who is having a spiritual reckoning when she becomes pregnant after she and her boyfriend lose their virginity to each other. His parents find gay porno mags under his bed one day and send him to conversion school for all types of ‘troubled’ kids, and she, along with her odd group of friends, attempt to bust him out of there. It’s a sweet film about acceptance and gathering allies together to help a friend in need. Uprooting stigma, yet still displaying issues of intolerance through a camp aesthetic. It’s definitely a product of its time.
When we get to the root of queerness explored in film, I have the feeling that a lot of queer people, especially those still coming into their own, go to great lengths to find narrative films and don’t really look into documentaries, which usually give people a wider knowledge of the queer world, especially its prevalence as the subtle underbelly of Hollywood!
Enter: The Celluloid Closet, directed by Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman, the introductory film assigned for the course. And damn, was this so good. I was instantly engulfed into this documentary, sharing snippets of black & white films, from the silent era transitioning into the talkies, exploring physical exploration of femininity and masculinity, along with the subtleties of homosexuality in many films. Mostly, I loved the addition of Harvey Fierstein (arguably one of my favorite openly gay actors who I first saw in my family’s favorite film, Mrs. Doubfire, where he plays Robin Williams’ older gay brother) being his explicitly gay self and sharing his own perspective of queerness:
All the reading I was given to do in school was always heterosexual. Every movie I saw was heterosexual. And I had to do this translation. I had to translate it to my life, rather than seeing my life. Which is why when people say to me, ‘Your work is not really gay work, it’s universal.’ And I say, ‘Up yours.’ You know, it’s gay. And that you can take it and translate it for your own life is very nice, but at last I don’t have to do the translating, you do.
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