Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
Director: J.J. Abrams
Writers: Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams, and Michael Arndt. Based on characters created by George Lucas.
Cast: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew
Overview
Watching the seventh installment of the Star Wars saga feels, in spite of the title, like we're watching the Force hit the snooze button as many times as it can before dragging it's sorry arse into the bathroom to drive away the hangover brought on by a night bar hoping through the more wretched and scummy hives of Mos Eisley.
Synopsis
Take scripts from previous episodes. Put in blender. Puree for three to five minutes. Make sure to use a lid to avoid being splattered with spoilers.
The Queering
Detractors of the Star Wars saga on the whole have cynically claimed that the films were little more than marketing gimmicks to sell toys and licensed merchandise. Unfortunately, while I have been a fan of the series up until this point, The Force Awakens pretty much lives up the more cynical criticism the earlier installments received.
Watching The Force Awakens feels like watching a mid-season episode of a TV series during sweeps week (back when sweeps were a thing before everyone just binge watched on Netflix). Everything's dialed up to eleven, everything getting thrown at the audience, and boy you better pay attention or you're going to get lost.
Which pretty much is the main problem I had, the plot moves too fast. Outside of the opening sequences, there really isn't any time to absorb background detail or to really get to know any of the characters.
This is probably best illustrated with how space travel now appears to work in this universe. The earlier films implied that even using hyperdrive, it still took hours, or even days to travel between planets. Now space travel appears to work like long range transporters on Star Trek. You just get in a ship, push a few buttons and arrive instantly at your destination.
The problem this endears is that there is no significant downtime between the frenetic action scenes. Everyone just keeps jumping and yelling and running and swinging their lightsabers at each other. New characters like Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and Maz Kanata (Maz Kanata) are thrown against the wall in the hope that some part of them will stick in viewers mind. A whole village gets wiped out by the bad guys, a planet destroyed, and a major character killed off. But the constant rush to get to the next thing prevents any of these elements from having a significant impact beyond sheer exhaustion.
Remember the scenes on the Millenium Falcon in A New Hope where Obi Wan tries to teach Luke how to use a lightsaber? Remember the line, "it felt like a thousand voices cried out and were suddenly silenced"? Well there's nothing like that here. Turns out sometimes taking a breather is a good thing.
The strength of the Star Wars saga was always it's world building. In earlier episodes, the filmmakers were pretty adept at showing the audience a skeleton and allowing us to flesh out the details of this vast galaxy far away. That doesn't happen here and the lack of any kind of breathing room once the plot kicks into high gear, doesn't help. Why did Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) turn to the dark side besides super vague daddy issues? What is the resistance? And if they're working for the legitimate government of the Republic, why are they called the resistance and not just the military?
Then there are the borderline plot holes: Why is Luke Skywalker in hiding if he wants to be found? Why does no one in La Resistance have a complete map of the galaxy? What's the strategic advantage of having a device that can destroy all of the planets in an entire system for the First Order (besides the fact that the writers hadn't quite ripped off enough elements from the original trilogy at this point)?
Admittedly, it's not all bad. There are a few elements I liked. BB-8 works very well as comic relief and as a substitute for R2-D2. Rey (Daisy Riddle) and Finn (John Boyega) make nice additions to the cast and help to up the diversity quotient. Some of the earlier scenes with Rey exploring (or rather scavenging) through a desert planet littered the remnants of a great battle, with crashed space ships and broken transports littering the landscape, work on their own and promise a more interesting story that never actually gets told. The cast generally acquits itself well during the brief moments when they're actually allowed to act. There's even a fairly obvious queer subtext between Finn and X-wing pilot Poe Dameron. Watch the trailer if you don't believe me. Here's hoping that it becomes text in Episode VIII and that we actually get a fully fleshed out story next time around.
Recommendation
I would recommend The Force Awakens about as strongly as I would allowing ones kids to play Jedi and Sith near a Sarlacc pitt.
The Rating
Two Stars out of Four.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Showing posts with label queer cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer cinema. Show all posts
January 1, 2016
Deadpool or Who Was On First, First?
A new Deadpool movie is coming out, and the filmmakers are promoting this as the "first" queer superhero movie.
Now personally I've never read the Deadpool comic books. In fact the only comic book or rather, graphic novel, that I've ever read is Watchmen. But the word is that Deadpool is bi/pan/omnisexual (depending on who's talking) because he... flirts with both men and women.
Admittedly, this is a case where the movie hasn't come out and thus this is all speculation, but the trailers show the character Deadpool exchanging one liners with other characters, while talking about how he has to save the girl (who at least declares she doesn't do damsel in distress).
The thing is, if flirting is all it takes to make a superhero queer, then the first queer superhero arrived in cinema decades ago with the black and white silent film The Mark of Zorro (1920). It also bears remarking that all around flirting tends to a major feature of well, just about every super hero ever. So if all Deadpool does is flirt, then he's not going to be the first omniqueer superhero by a long webshot.
On the other hand, I do like the flippant gallows humor on display in the trailers. It should at least make for a nice change of pace from the ultra-vanilla Marvel Avengers flicks we've been getting a steady supply of for the past few years.
Now personally I've never read the Deadpool comic books. In fact the only comic book or rather, graphic novel, that I've ever read is Watchmen. But the word is that Deadpool is bi/pan/omnisexual (depending on who's talking) because he... flirts with both men and women.
Admittedly, this is a case where the movie hasn't come out and thus this is all speculation, but the trailers show the character Deadpool exchanging one liners with other characters, while talking about how he has to save the girl (who at least declares she doesn't do damsel in distress).
The thing is, if flirting is all it takes to make a superhero queer, then the first queer superhero arrived in cinema decades ago with the black and white silent film The Mark of Zorro (1920). It also bears remarking that all around flirting tends to a major feature of well, just about every super hero ever. So if all Deadpool does is flirt, then he's not going to be the first omniqueer superhero by a long webshot.
On the other hand, I do like the flippant gallows humor on display in the trailers. It should at least make for a nice change of pace from the ultra-vanilla Marvel Avengers flicks we've been getting a steady supply of for the past few years.
September 9, 2015
Queer Review: Dear White People (2014)
Dear White People
Director: Justin Simien
Writer: Justin Simien
Cast: Tyler James Williams, Tessa Thompson, Kyle Gallner, Teyonah Parris, Brandon P Bell, Brittany Curran, Justin Dobies, Dennis Haysbert, Peter Syvertsen
Overview
A comedy about a group of black students at the prestigious (and fictional) Winchester College, Dear White People manages to make plenty of provocative observations about the state of race relations in the United States, in addition to being both entertaining and funny.
Synopsis
When the prestigious (and presumably Ivy League) Winchester College decides to engage in randomized housing assignments, it threatens to break up the Armstrong/Parker House -- the house which represents the heart of black student life at Winchester College. When the current the head of Armstrong/Parker, Troy (Brandon Bell) fails to protest the new policy, Samantha White (Tessa Thompson) runs against him and to her surprise ends up winning. Sam, who is famous on campus for her in-your-face radio show called Dear White People, sets out to overturn the new housing policy, while dealing with a serious of personal issues. These include the failing health of her white father and the complexities of navigating an inter-racial relationship when one is the face of black resistance on a mostly white campus. While all of this is going on, nerdy student journalist, Lionel (Tyler James Williams), tries to get the scoop on the situation while facing down both homophobia and racism. Further complications arise when Coco (Teyonah Parris) in an attempt to generate conflict so she can be featured in a reality TV series, agrees to DJ for a racist blackface party that will be thrown on campus.
The Queering
Recently, I had a conversation with a few other people that went approximately as follows:
Person 1: So, why did you move to Minnesota?
Me: Because my partner got a job teaching at [local college].
Person 2: Oh nice! What does she teach?
Me: Um well *he* teaches penology.
Person 1: She teaches penology? What's that?
Me: Er, it's the study of prisons. That's what *he* teaches.
Person 2: The study of prisons, eh? That sounds interesting. I might take a class with her.
My partner, as it were, has a similar story of living next door to someone for years, and talking about his (then) boyfriend using male pronouns all the time and the other person, in all of those years, never realizing that my partner was dating another man.
Moments like this, at the end of the day, are easy to brush off as trivial. A minor pin prick, nothing more. But shrugging off each trivial incident can take a little bit more energy each time, eventually becoming simply exhausting to deal with. Some off us develop means of deflecting minor incidents, such as the above. Our skin becomes calloused and tough. Others are not so lucky. If one finds oneself saying, "but it was only a pin prick, it shouldn't have hurt them!" remember this: the place you stabbed was quite likely an open, gaping wound.
Dear White People deals quite frankly with a topic that few films, even amongst those that explicitly care to address the issue of racism, direct their attention toward - that of micro-aggressions. There are no lynchings, no people of color falsely accused of a terrible crime, and no mention of the KKK. When the police show up, it's to break up a party and the only person arrested is a white male who's in the process of beating up Lionel.
Instead, the topics that do get addressed are the lack of representation of interesting and complex people of color in the media, white people constantly touching black people's hair (Lionel refers to his hairdo as a black hole for white people's fingers), and having to deal with a white people simply dating a black partner, for no greater reason than to piss off their parents.
One of the most visceral sequences (not to mention a fairly brilliant one from a writing and technical perspective) has Sam explaining three different patterns black people can fall into when interacting with white people. There's the offta, who dials their blackness up or down depending on the audience, the nosejob, who exchanges their blackness for whiteness, and the 100, or someone who is 100% okay with being black. What makes this sequence so compelling is the way Simien intercuts between different black characters who are all exhibiting the exact behaviors Sam is describing.
Sam, we are told, is a big fan of Bergman, and with two characters (the dean and the president of the college) being described in a perpetual chess match, it would appear that Simien is trying to draw a parallel between the infamous chess match played with death in The Seventh Seal and the constant strategizing black people go through when interacting with white folks.
With the films constant focus on issues of race, Simien naturally has been compared by just about everybody to Spike Lee. However, with Simien coming at the film's premier as gay, a more natural antecedent would be Cheryl Dunye who directed The Watermelon Woman. There is more than a bit of Cheryl (the character Dunye played in The Watermelon Woman) in Samantha White, mixed with Honey, the radio DJ from Born in Flames, (a film Dunye was not involved with).
Dear White People does admittedly make a few missteps along the way. The ending feels a little anti-climactic, some of the melodrama doesn't always work, and a couple of major plot points are a bit confusing. However, these elements don't detract from the overall impact of the film. Based on what he achieved here, I look forward to whatever project Justin Simien chooses to work on next.
Recommendation
Highly recommended. Dear White People would be worth going through all the admission processes at all of the most difficult Ivy League Colleges to get into in order to see.
The Rating
3 and 1/2 stars out of 4
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: Justin Simien
Writer: Justin Simien
Cast: Tyler James Williams, Tessa Thompson, Kyle Gallner, Teyonah Parris, Brandon P Bell, Brittany Curran, Justin Dobies, Dennis Haysbert, Peter Syvertsen
Overview
A comedy about a group of black students at the prestigious (and fictional) Winchester College, Dear White People manages to make plenty of provocative observations about the state of race relations in the United States, in addition to being both entertaining and funny.
Synopsis
When the prestigious (and presumably Ivy League) Winchester College decides to engage in randomized housing assignments, it threatens to break up the Armstrong/Parker House -- the house which represents the heart of black student life at Winchester College. When the current the head of Armstrong/Parker, Troy (Brandon Bell) fails to protest the new policy, Samantha White (Tessa Thompson) runs against him and to her surprise ends up winning. Sam, who is famous on campus for her in-your-face radio show called Dear White People, sets out to overturn the new housing policy, while dealing with a serious of personal issues. These include the failing health of her white father and the complexities of navigating an inter-racial relationship when one is the face of black resistance on a mostly white campus. While all of this is going on, nerdy student journalist, Lionel (Tyler James Williams), tries to get the scoop on the situation while facing down both homophobia and racism. Further complications arise when Coco (Teyonah Parris) in an attempt to generate conflict so she can be featured in a reality TV series, agrees to DJ for a racist blackface party that will be thrown on campus.
The Queering
Recently, I had a conversation with a few other people that went approximately as follows:
Person 1: So, why did you move to Minnesota?
Me: Because my partner got a job teaching at [local college].
Person 2: Oh nice! What does she teach?
Me: Um well *he* teaches penology.
Person 1: She teaches penology? What's that?
Me: Er, it's the study of prisons. That's what *he* teaches.
Person 2: The study of prisons, eh? That sounds interesting. I might take a class with her.
My partner, as it were, has a similar story of living next door to someone for years, and talking about his (then) boyfriend using male pronouns all the time and the other person, in all of those years, never realizing that my partner was dating another man.
Moments like this, at the end of the day, are easy to brush off as trivial. A minor pin prick, nothing more. But shrugging off each trivial incident can take a little bit more energy each time, eventually becoming simply exhausting to deal with. Some off us develop means of deflecting minor incidents, such as the above. Our skin becomes calloused and tough. Others are not so lucky. If one finds oneself saying, "but it was only a pin prick, it shouldn't have hurt them!" remember this: the place you stabbed was quite likely an open, gaping wound.
Dear White People deals quite frankly with a topic that few films, even amongst those that explicitly care to address the issue of racism, direct their attention toward - that of micro-aggressions. There are no lynchings, no people of color falsely accused of a terrible crime, and no mention of the KKK. When the police show up, it's to break up a party and the only person arrested is a white male who's in the process of beating up Lionel.
Instead, the topics that do get addressed are the lack of representation of interesting and complex people of color in the media, white people constantly touching black people's hair (Lionel refers to his hairdo as a black hole for white people's fingers), and having to deal with a white people simply dating a black partner, for no greater reason than to piss off their parents.
One of the most visceral sequences (not to mention a fairly brilliant one from a writing and technical perspective) has Sam explaining three different patterns black people can fall into when interacting with white people. There's the offta, who dials their blackness up or down depending on the audience, the nosejob, who exchanges their blackness for whiteness, and the 100, or someone who is 100% okay with being black. What makes this sequence so compelling is the way Simien intercuts between different black characters who are all exhibiting the exact behaviors Sam is describing.
Sam, we are told, is a big fan of Bergman, and with two characters (the dean and the president of the college) being described in a perpetual chess match, it would appear that Simien is trying to draw a parallel between the infamous chess match played with death in The Seventh Seal and the constant strategizing black people go through when interacting with white folks.
With the films constant focus on issues of race, Simien naturally has been compared by just about everybody to Spike Lee. However, with Simien coming at the film's premier as gay, a more natural antecedent would be Cheryl Dunye who directed The Watermelon Woman. There is more than a bit of Cheryl (the character Dunye played in The Watermelon Woman) in Samantha White, mixed with Honey, the radio DJ from Born in Flames, (a film Dunye was not involved with).
Dear White People does admittedly make a few missteps along the way. The ending feels a little anti-climactic, some of the melodrama doesn't always work, and a couple of major plot points are a bit confusing. However, these elements don't detract from the overall impact of the film. Based on what he achieved here, I look forward to whatever project Justin Simien chooses to work on next.
Recommendation
Highly recommended. Dear White People would be worth going through all the admission processes at all of the most difficult Ivy League Colleges to get into in order to see.
The Rating
3 and 1/2 stars out of 4
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
October 10, 2014
Queer Review: Nymphomaniac Vol. II (2013)
Nymphomaniac Vol. II
Director: Lars von Trier
Writer: Lars von Trier
Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Christian Slater, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Udo Kier, Michael Pas
Overview
Nymphomaniac Vol. II continues the story told in Nymphomaniac Vol. I as the two movies were originally conceived as one single story before being split into two films). Nymphomaniac Vol. II takes Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg/Stacy Martin) in a darker and grittier direction, as she goes to increasingly extreme lengths to satisfy her sexual desires.
In the plus column, Nymphomaniac Vol. II has the first openly identified asexual character to appear in a major motion picture. In the negative column, the ending is one of the most problematic I have had the displeasure to witness, both from a dramatic *and* social justice perspective. Not only does it do a grave disservice to the characters, it's very nature reinforces accusations of misogyny against director Lars Von Trier.
Synopsis
After being found injured in the street in Vol. I, Joe continues to tell her story about her life as a nymphomaniac to Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård). In her quest for sexual release, Joe seeks out K (Jamie Bell), an unusual BDSM practitioner, but this leads to her neglecting her child and the end of her relationship with Jerôme (Shial LaBeouf). After K, Joe winds up working for L (Willem Dafoe) as a shady "debt collector". After Joe becomes a successful "debt collector", L suggests that Joe take on a protege P (Mia Goth). Joe is reluctant due to P's young age, but ends up cozying up to her anyways. The two end up forming a lesbian relationship, yet things quickly fall apart when Jerôme comes back into the picture.
The Queering
Never before have I found myself disliking a movie based solely on a single moment tacked onto the very end of the story. Not only does this moment dramatically undermine everything that comes before, it is both pretentious and serves absolutely no purpose other than to stroke Lars von Triers' ego. Everything that can be wrong with a piece of filmmaking is embodied in the last few moments before the end credits roll.
Before the ending Nymphomaniac Vol. II is on the same level as Vol. I. There are a few new wrinkles, such as Joe having to deal with being unable to seek sexual release and later engaging in a sexual relationship with a woman half her age. But for the most part, as with Vol. I there is a great deal to appreciate.
From a queer perspective, Vol. II expands upon elements that were only hinted at in Vol. 1. Seligman comes out here as asexual, making him the first character in a major motion picture to do so. Previously, asexuality has been limited to subtext, and for whatever reason, strongly associated with characters who engaged in cannibalism. (Examples: The Silence of the Lambs and Eating Raoul). Thus, I almost want to call him the first non-cannibal asexual character as well, but for the fact that potentially, there are other subtextual asexual characters out there I am unaware of.
One thing that occurred to me, is that both Seligman and and Joe go against gender stereotypes. Joe seeks out sexual pleasure, no matter the cost, in spite of society constantly telling woman that they should play hard to get. Seligman is asexual and seeks pleasure in the study of music and mathematics, in spite of society constantly telling men that they should do everything possible to spread their wild oats. While this perhaps makes sense, I cannot help but wonder what this might mean for the possibility of female asexual characters. Would most people even think a thing like that strange or would such a character ultimately appear perfectly normal to audiences? This is another reason I am little nervous about declaring Seligman the first openly identified non-cannibal asexual on film, it is quite possible there is a female character out there who fits the bill, but due to our society viewing woman as sexually passive, the characters' identity could easily slip by unnoticed, even by me.
In Lars von Triers' defense, both Joe and Seligman are complex individuals who both happen to exhibit elements of queer identity. There is also plenty of dialog (mostly from Seligman) defending human sexual desires and practices. While this at times borders on an author tract, it is still welcome to hear. Admittedly there are problematic places that Lars von Trier goes with this. For example, in the first film when Seligman defended Joe sexually assaulting a man on a train, and here Joe defends pedophiles who do not act on their desires. While I understand the sentiment, I don't see what is so great about a pedophile merely failing to harm a child. Shouldn't adulation be reserved for those who do genuine good, not merely fail to do bad?
One could potentially find things to criticize in the horrible way Joe's lesbian relationship ends in disaster, but that would ignore the fact that every relationship Joe develops ends badly. There is much more to criticize in the way Lars von Trier chooses to end the story and the way in undermines Seligmans' earlier claims of being asexual. While I try to keep in mind that films themselves are not obligated to adhere to social justice principles, there is much to mourn in what might have been. As it is, while it is nice to have an openly identified asexual character in a major motion picture, I cannot make the argument that this actually represents a step forward for asexual identity on the silver screen.
Recommendation
Pretty much only for completists who viewed Nymphomaniac Vol. I and want to see how the story ends. Just be warned about the pointless awfulness of the ending.
The Rating
1 star out of 4.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: Lars von Trier
Writer: Lars von Trier
Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Christian Slater, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Udo Kier, Michael Pas
Overview
Nymphomaniac Vol. II continues the story told in Nymphomaniac Vol. I as the two movies were originally conceived as one single story before being split into two films). Nymphomaniac Vol. II takes Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg/Stacy Martin) in a darker and grittier direction, as she goes to increasingly extreme lengths to satisfy her sexual desires.
In the plus column, Nymphomaniac Vol. II has the first openly identified asexual character to appear in a major motion picture. In the negative column, the ending is one of the most problematic I have had the displeasure to witness, both from a dramatic *and* social justice perspective. Not only does it do a grave disservice to the characters, it's very nature reinforces accusations of misogyny against director Lars Von Trier.
Synopsis
After being found injured in the street in Vol. I, Joe continues to tell her story about her life as a nymphomaniac to Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård). In her quest for sexual release, Joe seeks out K (Jamie Bell), an unusual BDSM practitioner, but this leads to her neglecting her child and the end of her relationship with Jerôme (Shial LaBeouf). After K, Joe winds up working for L (Willem Dafoe) as a shady "debt collector". After Joe becomes a successful "debt collector", L suggests that Joe take on a protege P (Mia Goth). Joe is reluctant due to P's young age, but ends up cozying up to her anyways. The two end up forming a lesbian relationship, yet things quickly fall apart when Jerôme comes back into the picture.
The Queering
Never before have I found myself disliking a movie based solely on a single moment tacked onto the very end of the story. Not only does this moment dramatically undermine everything that comes before, it is both pretentious and serves absolutely no purpose other than to stroke Lars von Triers' ego. Everything that can be wrong with a piece of filmmaking is embodied in the last few moments before the end credits roll.
Before the ending Nymphomaniac Vol. II is on the same level as Vol. I. There are a few new wrinkles, such as Joe having to deal with being unable to seek sexual release and later engaging in a sexual relationship with a woman half her age. But for the most part, as with Vol. I there is a great deal to appreciate.
From a queer perspective, Vol. II expands upon elements that were only hinted at in Vol. 1. Seligman comes out here as asexual, making him the first character in a major motion picture to do so. Previously, asexuality has been limited to subtext, and for whatever reason, strongly associated with characters who engaged in cannibalism. (Examples: The Silence of the Lambs and Eating Raoul). Thus, I almost want to call him the first non-cannibal asexual character as well, but for the fact that potentially, there are other subtextual asexual characters out there I am unaware of.
One thing that occurred to me, is that both Seligman and and Joe go against gender stereotypes. Joe seeks out sexual pleasure, no matter the cost, in spite of society constantly telling woman that they should play hard to get. Seligman is asexual and seeks pleasure in the study of music and mathematics, in spite of society constantly telling men that they should do everything possible to spread their wild oats. While this perhaps makes sense, I cannot help but wonder what this might mean for the possibility of female asexual characters. Would most people even think a thing like that strange or would such a character ultimately appear perfectly normal to audiences? This is another reason I am little nervous about declaring Seligman the first openly identified non-cannibal asexual on film, it is quite possible there is a female character out there who fits the bill, but due to our society viewing woman as sexually passive, the characters' identity could easily slip by unnoticed, even by me.
In Lars von Triers' defense, both Joe and Seligman are complex individuals who both happen to exhibit elements of queer identity. There is also plenty of dialog (mostly from Seligman) defending human sexual desires and practices. While this at times borders on an author tract, it is still welcome to hear. Admittedly there are problematic places that Lars von Trier goes with this. For example, in the first film when Seligman defended Joe sexually assaulting a man on a train, and here Joe defends pedophiles who do not act on their desires. While I understand the sentiment, I don't see what is so great about a pedophile merely failing to harm a child. Shouldn't adulation be reserved for those who do genuine good, not merely fail to do bad?
One could potentially find things to criticize in the horrible way Joe's lesbian relationship ends in disaster, but that would ignore the fact that every relationship Joe develops ends badly. There is much more to criticize in the way Lars von Trier chooses to end the story and the way in undermines Seligmans' earlier claims of being asexual. While I try to keep in mind that films themselves are not obligated to adhere to social justice principles, there is much to mourn in what might have been. As it is, while it is nice to have an openly identified asexual character in a major motion picture, I cannot make the argument that this actually represents a step forward for asexual identity on the silver screen.
Recommendation
Pretty much only for completists who viewed Nymphomaniac Vol. I and want to see how the story ends. Just be warned about the pointless awfulness of the ending.
The Rating
1 star out of 4.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
July 24, 2014
Queer Issue: Gay Nazis and Transgender Serial Killers: How Filmmakers Queer up Historical Villainy
Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, is a film that depicts 4 Italian fascists torturing, and ultimately murdering a group of innocent youth. In spite of it being hailed as the most controversial film of all time, I find it little more than a mere curiosity. Defenders of Salo claim that it is an edgy and radical indictment of Italian Fascism. Others just call it torture porn. I myself fall into the latter category although I would also addd that it is unfortunately as queerphobic a film as they come.
I have not in fact watched Salo all the way through, I fast forwarded through the Circle of Shit sequence. But the rest of the film is only just about as unwatchable. I tried watching it a second time at one point, only to make it far enough through to feel confident that my earlier reading of the film was not entirely incorrect. Honestly, the Pasolini appears to have included no greater message in Salo other than people can be horribly cruel to each other. Or maybe it was supposed to be that Fascism creates an particularly virulent setting for people to become especially horribly cruel. In either case my response is, "excuse me while I call in Captain Obvious for a rescue mission".
Salo is particularly problematic with regards to the depictions of the Italian Fascists engaging in same sex activity, sodomy, and rape. Rape is rape, wether the victim is male or female but Pasolini depicts the Italian Fascists raping of the male characters as representing particularly heinous behavior. From the way these scenes are filmed, it is clear that Pasolini intends for we, the audience to be just that much more shocked by the male on male activity, over the other scenes of torture, rape, and general depravity. For this reason, I cannot agree with the claim that Salo represents a "radical" vision, but instead I must stress the point the point that it presents a completely conventional viewpoint with regards to sexual politics.
Just as Salo presents it's sexually liberated libertines as unmistikably queer, so too does The Damned present the NAZI SA Sturmabteilung as engaging in a gay orgy, with the officers pairing off before being disposed of on the Night of Long Knives. This is on top of The Damned's most ardent NAZI supporter, Martin, being shown engaging in a variety of queer behaviors, including his iconic drag impersonation of Marlene Dietrich.
Then there is Germany, Year Zero, which includes a NAZI trying to seduce his young charge into joining the NAZI and Homosexual lifestyles. Germany, Year Zero by the way, is apparently prestigious enough to be given a Criterion Release.
Of course, mainstream films (if Salo and The Damned can be considered mainstream) are not the only ones to link same sex desire to Nazism, pretty much every Nazi sexploitation flick (a genre which includes titles such as Love Camp Number 9 and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, includes at least one lesbian officer amongst the NAZI's ranks.
Of course, both the NAZI's and Italian fascists persecuted those they caught engaging in same sex activities. After the Night of Long Knives and the assignation of Ernst Röhm (the openly gay commandant of the SA), the NAZI's stepped up their persecution. In the end, around 15,000 men and women would be imprisoned in camps such as Buchenwald. There they would be the victims of medical experiments, including efforts to create ex-gay therapies.
By using homophobia to condemn fascism, filmmakers commit the ironic sin of promoting a message easily found at any neo-Nazi rally.
Which brings us to the way transgender characters are presented, particularly the image of the transgender serial killer. This is an image that continues to persist up to the present day. The serial killer Ed Gein has served as inspiration for films such as Silence of the Lambs and Psycho. More recently, The X-Files: I Want to Believe paid homage to Silence of the Lambs by borrowing (or ripping off, depending on ones perspective) the plot of Silence of the Lambs, although it should be noted that the villain of I Want to Believe bore little resemblance to Gein.
But once again we have the issue of history and cinema being at odds with one another, for there is almost no evidence that Ed Gein was transgender or engaged in gender non-conforming behaviors. Instead the story of him trying to wear female body parts appears to have been created entirely out of media sensationalism.
Contrast the above examples to the frequency of stories of LGBTQ historical figures who managed to achieve greatness but who inevitably wound up being straightened out when it came time to tell their stories on film. Enigma wrote out Alan Turing from the story of the development of the Enigma machine altogether, the device which helped crack German codes used during World War II and (potentially) saved thousands of lives. Apparently, on the silver screen queers can only be Nazis, we cannot fight them.
More recently, Dallas Buyers Club took a bisexual hero in the fight against AIDS, Ron Woodroof, and presented him as straight.
When it comes depictions of transgender and transsexual historical figures, it gets worse, as their stories typically never making it to Hollywood in the first place. Their is a distinct paucity of transgender historical figures in motion pictures. Mike Newall's Stonewall never mentioned Sylvia Rivera, nor had any character that could act as a stand in, and it looks as if Roland Emmerich's upcoming Stonewall flick will follow a similar path.
Remember this, when people argue that films don't have to present an individuals sexual orientation, it's not so simple as presenting a character as straight or queer when the patterns of who gets straightened out and who does not, is not random. When Hollywood only presents queers as killers or NAZI's, while ignoring the stories where we are the heroes, it does nothing but reinforce the message that we are dangerous, creepy, and immoral. But the LGBTQ community is not composed (at least entirely) of killers and Nazi's, in spite of what some apparently want the public to believe. There are heroes amongst our ranks and it is important that their stories get told as well. But it is also important to remember that the villainy attributed to us, is all too frequently exaggerated.
I have not in fact watched Salo all the way through, I fast forwarded through the Circle of Shit sequence. But the rest of the film is only just about as unwatchable. I tried watching it a second time at one point, only to make it far enough through to feel confident that my earlier reading of the film was not entirely incorrect. Honestly, the Pasolini appears to have included no greater message in Salo other than people can be horribly cruel to each other. Or maybe it was supposed to be that Fascism creates an particularly virulent setting for people to become especially horribly cruel. In either case my response is, "excuse me while I call in Captain Obvious for a rescue mission".
Salo is particularly problematic with regards to the depictions of the Italian Fascists engaging in same sex activity, sodomy, and rape. Rape is rape, wether the victim is male or female but Pasolini depicts the Italian Fascists raping of the male characters as representing particularly heinous behavior. From the way these scenes are filmed, it is clear that Pasolini intends for we, the audience to be just that much more shocked by the male on male activity, over the other scenes of torture, rape, and general depravity. For this reason, I cannot agree with the claim that Salo represents a "radical" vision, but instead I must stress the point the point that it presents a completely conventional viewpoint with regards to sexual politics.
Just as Salo presents it's sexually liberated libertines as unmistikably queer, so too does The Damned present the NAZI SA Sturmabteilung as engaging in a gay orgy, with the officers pairing off before being disposed of on the Night of Long Knives. This is on top of The Damned's most ardent NAZI supporter, Martin, being shown engaging in a variety of queer behaviors, including his iconic drag impersonation of Marlene Dietrich.
Then there is Germany, Year Zero, which includes a NAZI trying to seduce his young charge into joining the NAZI and Homosexual lifestyles. Germany, Year Zero by the way, is apparently prestigious enough to be given a Criterion Release.
Of course, mainstream films (if Salo and The Damned can be considered mainstream) are not the only ones to link same sex desire to Nazism, pretty much every Nazi sexploitation flick (a genre which includes titles such as Love Camp Number 9 and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, includes at least one lesbian officer amongst the NAZI's ranks.
Of course, both the NAZI's and Italian fascists persecuted those they caught engaging in same sex activities. After the Night of Long Knives and the assignation of Ernst Röhm (the openly gay commandant of the SA), the NAZI's stepped up their persecution. In the end, around 15,000 men and women would be imprisoned in camps such as Buchenwald. There they would be the victims of medical experiments, including efforts to create ex-gay therapies.
By using homophobia to condemn fascism, filmmakers commit the ironic sin of promoting a message easily found at any neo-Nazi rally.
Which brings us to the way transgender characters are presented, particularly the image of the transgender serial killer. This is an image that continues to persist up to the present day. The serial killer Ed Gein has served as inspiration for films such as Silence of the Lambs and Psycho. More recently, The X-Files: I Want to Believe paid homage to Silence of the Lambs by borrowing (or ripping off, depending on ones perspective) the plot of Silence of the Lambs, although it should be noted that the villain of I Want to Believe bore little resemblance to Gein.
But once again we have the issue of history and cinema being at odds with one another, for there is almost no evidence that Ed Gein was transgender or engaged in gender non-conforming behaviors. Instead the story of him trying to wear female body parts appears to have been created entirely out of media sensationalism.
Contrast the above examples to the frequency of stories of LGBTQ historical figures who managed to achieve greatness but who inevitably wound up being straightened out when it came time to tell their stories on film. Enigma wrote out Alan Turing from the story of the development of the Enigma machine altogether, the device which helped crack German codes used during World War II and (potentially) saved thousands of lives. Apparently, on the silver screen queers can only be Nazis, we cannot fight them.
More recently, Dallas Buyers Club took a bisexual hero in the fight against AIDS, Ron Woodroof, and presented him as straight.
When it comes depictions of transgender and transsexual historical figures, it gets worse, as their stories typically never making it to Hollywood in the first place. Their is a distinct paucity of transgender historical figures in motion pictures. Mike Newall's Stonewall never mentioned Sylvia Rivera, nor had any character that could act as a stand in, and it looks as if Roland Emmerich's upcoming Stonewall flick will follow a similar path.
Remember this, when people argue that films don't have to present an individuals sexual orientation, it's not so simple as presenting a character as straight or queer when the patterns of who gets straightened out and who does not, is not random. When Hollywood only presents queers as killers or NAZI's, while ignoring the stories where we are the heroes, it does nothing but reinforce the message that we are dangerous, creepy, and immoral. But the LGBTQ community is not composed (at least entirely) of killers and Nazi's, in spite of what some apparently want the public to believe. There are heroes amongst our ranks and it is important that their stories get told as well. But it is also important to remember that the villainy attributed to us, is all too frequently exaggerated.
July 19, 2014
Queer Issue: The Unfortunate Straightening Out of Hollywood Redux
It is easy to get caught up in analysis of LGBTQ related films that focus on movies in isolation without consideration of larger patterns. But those larger patterns can be more revealing than any in depth analysis of a single film can accomplish. When it comes to the presentation of characters based on LGBTQ historical figures, there are plenty of examples of films that have had no problems presenting their characters sexual orientation and gender identities with a reasonable degree of accuracy. There are also plenty of films that have even exaggerated the queerness of their characters, while on the opposite end of this issue are those that have downplayed or straightened out the sexualities and gender identities of LGBTQ historical figures.
The question then becomes, in what situations are LGBTQ historical figures most likely to retain their sexualities and gender identities or have them exaggerated and when are they going to be straightened out?
To analyze this issue, I divided up films based on LGBTQ historical figures into the following categories: Killers, Criminals and Other Villains, Neutral, LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers, Artists, and Generally Heroic. I also included films that presented certain historical figures as queer, even if the gender identity or sexuality of the historical figure has not been well established or is otherwise known. In order to include as wide a range of films as possible in this analysis, I have included films that are heavily fictionalized or merely used certain historical figures for inspiration. Films in this category are marked with a ✦. Films made during the Hays Code, which banned depictions of same sex sexuality, are marked with an asterisk.
Here are how the results broke down:
Killers
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Kill Your Darlings
Monster
I Shot Andy Warhol
Swoon
Heavenly Creatures
The Krays
Bloody Mama
Braveheart
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Deranged
Elephant
Psycho*✦
Silence of the Lambs✦
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde✦
Salò✦
The Damned✦
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS✦
Texas Chainsaw Massacre✦
Straightened Out:
Rope*
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith✦
Criminals and Other Villains
Accurate or Exaggerated:
I Love You Phillip Morris
Dog Day Afternoon
Boys Don’t Cry
Bent✦
South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut✦
Angels in America✦
Straightened Out
Mommie Dearest
Neutral
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Queen Christina
Philomena
Straightened Out
LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Milk
Kinsey
The Christine Jorgensen Story
Straightened Out:
Artists
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Wilde
Capote
Howl
Gods and Monsters
Ed Wood
Love is the Devil
Next Stop, Greenwich Village
Frida
The Hours
Straightened Out
De-Lovely
The Libertine
Anonymous
Saving Mr. Banks
Cabaret
Quills
Shadow of the Vampire✦
Night and Day*
The Agony and the Ecstasy*
Generally Heroic
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Alexander
J. Edgar
Straightened Out:
Dallas Buyers Club
Silkwood
A Beautiful Mind
Enigma
Lawrence of Arabia*
Percentages (Excluding fictionalized cases and films made during the Hays Code):
Killers: 100% Accurate
Criminals and Other Villains: 75% Accurate
Neutral: 100% Accurate
LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers: 100% Accurate
Artists: 60% Accurate
Generally Heroic: 33% Accurate
Conclusion
If a queer individual wants their sexuality or gender identity to be presented accurately by Hollywood, kill someone, become an LGBTQ activist or do nothing noteworthy. You also stand a pretty good chance of your sexuality and gender identity being presented accurately if you choose a non-homicidal life of crime. However, if you want to become an artist or do something influential outside the LGBTQ community, you better be prepared to play Hollywoods' heterosexualization lottery.
The question then becomes, in what situations are LGBTQ historical figures most likely to retain their sexualities and gender identities or have them exaggerated and when are they going to be straightened out?
To analyze this issue, I divided up films based on LGBTQ historical figures into the following categories: Killers, Criminals and Other Villains, Neutral, LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers, Artists, and Generally Heroic. I also included films that presented certain historical figures as queer, even if the gender identity or sexuality of the historical figure has not been well established or is otherwise known. In order to include as wide a range of films as possible in this analysis, I have included films that are heavily fictionalized or merely used certain historical figures for inspiration. Films in this category are marked with a ✦. Films made during the Hays Code, which banned depictions of same sex sexuality, are marked with an asterisk.
Here are how the results broke down:
Killers
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Kill Your Darlings
Monster
I Shot Andy Warhol
Swoon
Heavenly Creatures
The Krays
Bloody Mama
Braveheart
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Deranged
Elephant
Psycho*✦
Silence of the Lambs✦
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde✦
Salò✦
The Damned✦
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS✦
Texas Chainsaw Massacre✦
Straightened Out:
Rope*
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith✦
Criminals and Other Villains
Accurate or Exaggerated:
I Love You Phillip Morris
Dog Day Afternoon
Boys Don’t Cry
Bent✦
South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut✦
Angels in America✦
Straightened Out
Mommie Dearest
Neutral
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Queen Christina
Philomena
Straightened Out
LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Milk
Kinsey
The Christine Jorgensen Story
Straightened Out:
Artists
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Wilde
Capote
Howl
Gods and Monsters
Ed Wood
Love is the Devil
Next Stop, Greenwich Village
Frida
The Hours
Straightened Out
De-Lovely
The Libertine
Anonymous
Saving Mr. Banks
Cabaret
Quills
Shadow of the Vampire✦
Night and Day*
The Agony and the Ecstasy*
Generally Heroic
Accurate or Exaggerated:
Alexander
J. Edgar
Straightened Out:
Dallas Buyers Club
Silkwood
A Beautiful Mind
Enigma
Lawrence of Arabia*
Percentages (Excluding fictionalized cases and films made during the Hays Code):
Killers: 100% Accurate
Criminals and Other Villains: 75% Accurate
Neutral: 100% Accurate
LGBTQ Activists and Pioneers: 100% Accurate
Artists: 60% Accurate
Generally Heroic: 33% Accurate
Conclusion
If a queer individual wants their sexuality or gender identity to be presented accurately by Hollywood, kill someone, become an LGBTQ activist or do nothing noteworthy. You also stand a pretty good chance of your sexuality and gender identity being presented accurately if you choose a non-homicidal life of crime. However, if you want to become an artist or do something influential outside the LGBTQ community, you better be prepared to play Hollywoods' heterosexualization lottery.
June 4, 2014
Queer Review: Blue is the Warmest Color (2013)
Blue is the Warmest Color
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Writers: Abdellatif Kechiche and Ghalia Lacroix. Based on the book Le Bleu est une couleur chaude by Julie Maroh.
Cast: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Léa Seydoux, Salim Kechiouche, Aurélien Recoing, Catherine Salée, Benjamin Siksou, Anne Loiret, Benoît Pilot
Overview
A talky French drama about two women falling in and out of love, Blue is the Warmest Color shows the evolution of a complex and multifaceted relationship. While glacially paced, this is a movie that offers plenty of rewards for viewers with the patience to read the Bible from the beginning all the way to Job. Seriously, the lists in Genesis of who begat who take forever to get through and anyone who can make it through those parts will have no trouble with this film.
Synopsis
Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is a typical, if rather introverted, French teenager. When Adèle first has sex with her boyfriend, she finds the experience unsatisfying. At a lesbian bar, she meets Emma (Léa Seydoux) and the two begin a passionate relationship. Eventually the two move in together with Adèle taking up a career as a teacher, while Emma pursues work as a fine painter. However, their domestic relationship leads to a routine that leaves Adèle lonely and Emma unsatisfied. When Adèle has an affair with one of her coworkers, Emma kicks her out. More time passes and Adèle has trouble moving on. When she receives an invitation to an art show featuring Emmas' paintings, she goes and manages to find closure to this chapter in her life.
The Queering
Blue is the Warmest Color is filmed with explicit scenes that are designed more to develop and advance the characters than they are to titillate or arouse. Of course, as a gay man, I cannot say I can really judge how titillating they actually are. Of course, this being a character focused piece this a slow moving meditation on the nature of love and relationships. There is little effort to focus on queer or lesbian issues specifically. Adèle goes through a period where she is clearly questioning her sexuality and has to face homophobia from friends when the suspect that she is dating a woman, but this becomes a non-issue once she moves in with Emma. Futhermore, the characters never come out to anyone that the audience is made aware of. As it is, outside of a scene where Adèle marches in an anti-austerity march, the film is largely apolitical.
This doesn't stop the film from raising questions about depictions of female sexuality and desire. Given that the director is a man, the male gaze is of course utilized but as far as I could tell, never subverted nor averted. However, Director Kechiche does raise questions about it. In one scene, a character comments on how men are the ones who most often depict female sexuality in spite of the fact that men cannot know what women really experience when it comes to sex. It's a philosophical question and one reflective of Platos' views of art in general. Plato, as it were, had a pet peeves was that since our world was merely a copy of his beloved Forms, then the highest thing art could aspire towards was being a second hand imitation of a copy of a copy of the "original" forms.
It makes sense then, that Kechiche films Blue is the Warmest Color in a cinema vérité style with many hand held camera shots, no voiceover, and a minimal soundtrack. Blue is the Warmest Color tries to be real, even while it acknowledges in sometimes subtle ways that it's not. Furthermore, all we ever see of Emmas' drawings or paintings of Adèle are brief glimpses, yet there implications that the Kechiche is trying to frame Adèle through the same lens that Emma views her in. That is just as Emma paints Adèle on canvas, so too does Kechiche attempt to present Adèle through the eye of the camera.
When people refer to the "male gaze", they invariably mean the "straight male gaze". But this raises the question: Is there a difference between the straight male gaze and the lesbian gaze and if so, what is it? Furthermore, can a difference between the two gazes be established at all without resorting to gender essentialism?
At the end of the day, it is Kechiches' willingness to address this issue that sets Blue is the Warmest Color apart. At nearly 3 hours, with little action, combined with the slowest of plots, it would seem that this would be a drag to sit through. It is a testament to those involved that Blue is the Warmest Color manages to be engaging from start to finish.
Recommendation
For fans of dialog heavy films that focus on characters over action or plot, this would be worth crossing the most depressingly warm blue ocean in existence in order to see.
The Rating
3 out of 4 stars.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Writers: Abdellatif Kechiche and Ghalia Lacroix. Based on the book Le Bleu est une couleur chaude by Julie Maroh.
Cast: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Léa Seydoux, Salim Kechiouche, Aurélien Recoing, Catherine Salée, Benjamin Siksou, Anne Loiret, Benoît Pilot
Overview
A talky French drama about two women falling in and out of love, Blue is the Warmest Color shows the evolution of a complex and multifaceted relationship. While glacially paced, this is a movie that offers plenty of rewards for viewers with the patience to read the Bible from the beginning all the way to Job. Seriously, the lists in Genesis of who begat who take forever to get through and anyone who can make it through those parts will have no trouble with this film.
Synopsis
Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is a typical, if rather introverted, French teenager. When Adèle first has sex with her boyfriend, she finds the experience unsatisfying. At a lesbian bar, she meets Emma (Léa Seydoux) and the two begin a passionate relationship. Eventually the two move in together with Adèle taking up a career as a teacher, while Emma pursues work as a fine painter. However, their domestic relationship leads to a routine that leaves Adèle lonely and Emma unsatisfied. When Adèle has an affair with one of her coworkers, Emma kicks her out. More time passes and Adèle has trouble moving on. When she receives an invitation to an art show featuring Emmas' paintings, she goes and manages to find closure to this chapter in her life.
The Queering
Blue is the Warmest Color is filmed with explicit scenes that are designed more to develop and advance the characters than they are to titillate or arouse. Of course, as a gay man, I cannot say I can really judge how titillating they actually are. Of course, this being a character focused piece this a slow moving meditation on the nature of love and relationships. There is little effort to focus on queer or lesbian issues specifically. Adèle goes through a period where she is clearly questioning her sexuality and has to face homophobia from friends when the suspect that she is dating a woman, but this becomes a non-issue once she moves in with Emma. Futhermore, the characters never come out to anyone that the audience is made aware of. As it is, outside of a scene where Adèle marches in an anti-austerity march, the film is largely apolitical.
This doesn't stop the film from raising questions about depictions of female sexuality and desire. Given that the director is a man, the male gaze is of course utilized but as far as I could tell, never subverted nor averted. However, Director Kechiche does raise questions about it. In one scene, a character comments on how men are the ones who most often depict female sexuality in spite of the fact that men cannot know what women really experience when it comes to sex. It's a philosophical question and one reflective of Platos' views of art in general. Plato, as it were, had a pet peeves was that since our world was merely a copy of his beloved Forms, then the highest thing art could aspire towards was being a second hand imitation of a copy of a copy of the "original" forms.
It makes sense then, that Kechiche films Blue is the Warmest Color in a cinema vérité style with many hand held camera shots, no voiceover, and a minimal soundtrack. Blue is the Warmest Color tries to be real, even while it acknowledges in sometimes subtle ways that it's not. Furthermore, all we ever see of Emmas' drawings or paintings of Adèle are brief glimpses, yet there implications that the Kechiche is trying to frame Adèle through the same lens that Emma views her in. That is just as Emma paints Adèle on canvas, so too does Kechiche attempt to present Adèle through the eye of the camera.
When people refer to the "male gaze", they invariably mean the "straight male gaze". But this raises the question: Is there a difference between the straight male gaze and the lesbian gaze and if so, what is it? Furthermore, can a difference between the two gazes be established at all without resorting to gender essentialism?
At the end of the day, it is Kechiches' willingness to address this issue that sets Blue is the Warmest Color apart. At nearly 3 hours, with little action, combined with the slowest of plots, it would seem that this would be a drag to sit through. It is a testament to those involved that Blue is the Warmest Color manages to be engaging from start to finish.
Recommendation
For fans of dialog heavy films that focus on characters over action or plot, this would be worth crossing the most depressingly warm blue ocean in existence in order to see.
The Rating
3 out of 4 stars.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
May 26, 2014
Setting the Record Queer: Stonewall - Those Who Forget History Are Doomed to Repeat the Same Myths About it
I can recall back when I was a young teenager having breakfast one morning when my mom, while flipping through the newspaper said, "I see that Independence Day is rated PG-13".
"Uh uh," I replied, not really paying attention. I had seen trailers galore up until that point and my snobbish teenage self (go figure) had decided that the movie had looked boring and derivative.
"Do you want to see it?" my mom asked.
"No," I answered, although at this point my curiosity was peaked a little. Why would my mom of all people want to see what was essentially a sci-fi shoot-em-up? Well, a shoot-em-up where aliens shoot up major cities with flaming walls of flame.
She shrugged, and said, "Well, I thought it might be educational".
The advertising at the time for Independence Day had been so ubiquitous with giant alien space craft blowing up human civilization that it took took me a moment to realize what was going on here.
"Um.... mom," I replied, "you should know that the movie Independence Day isn't actually about the American Revolution..."
Skip ahead 18 years and the openly gay director of Independence Day Roland Emmerich, is now promising to make a movie about an actual historical event. Specifically the Stonewall Riots that launched the LGBTQ rights movement.
When it comes to getting the history of the Stonewall Riots "correct" I am leary of Emmerich for reasons that have nothing to do with his reputation as a purveyor of derivative action flicks, but because of Emmerichs' involvement in the film Anonymous which relays the story of Shakespeare but is set in an alternative universe where the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship happens to be true. For those unfamiliar with the theory, it posits that William Shakespeare was not the "real" author of the plays, sonnets, and poems now attributed to him. Long story short, it's a conspiracy theory that has little basis in actual historical facts.
What might be the Osfordian Theory's worst sin though, is the way it erases (possibly unintentionally) some of the best evidence that William Shakespeare experienced same sex desire. By this I mean the conspiracy theory here ultimately sets out to explain why Shakespeare dedicated his romantic sonnets to a man by eliminating the possibility that the dedication was romantically inclined. As such the Oxford Theory posits that the dedications are evidence for the conspiracy, rather then the icky possibility that one the finest English writers ever (or so English scholars say, I could barely understand him personally) had same sex desires.
What I find troubling at this point in the production (which is set to begin filming this summer) is that thus far it appears to focus on white, gay characters. The IMDB page for the movie lists Jeremy Irvine, Calab Landry Jones, and Karl Glusman as those who have been cast thus far. In addition, the plot is described as:
Whatever issue Emmerich has with being derivative, historically speaking this is a problem because it means that the next Stonewall Riot flick is going to be regurgitating the erasure of transgender/transsexual and gender non-conforming people of color from queer history. In addition, there is the history of transgender rights activists, such as Sylvia Riveria and Martha P. Johnson, also being erased from the Stonewall Narrative.
Even the films' Facebook page gets in on the act by stating:
And in casting calls for extras for the movie, the only word that shows up is "gay". Not LGBT, not Queer, gays only. Bisexual, lesbian, and Transgender, Transsexual, and gender non-conforming folks need not apply.
Normally, I wouldn't make a big deal out of mere word choice, but the erasure of transgender, transsexual, and gender non-conforming folks in addition to people of color specifically from the Stonewall Narrative has gone on for too long and is simply too extensive to be allowed to pass without comment.
In any case, one can only hope that Emmerichs' Stonewall has more in common with the actual riots than his movie about Will Smith saving the world from aliens had with the American Revolution. Too bad the prospect of that actually happening looks about as good as the world ending in 2012.
"Uh uh," I replied, not really paying attention. I had seen trailers galore up until that point and my snobbish teenage self (go figure) had decided that the movie had looked boring and derivative.
"Do you want to see it?" my mom asked.
"No," I answered, although at this point my curiosity was peaked a little. Why would my mom of all people want to see what was essentially a sci-fi shoot-em-up? Well, a shoot-em-up where aliens shoot up major cities with flaming walls of flame.
She shrugged, and said, "Well, I thought it might be educational".
The advertising at the time for Independence Day had been so ubiquitous with giant alien space craft blowing up human civilization that it took took me a moment to realize what was going on here.
"Um.... mom," I replied, "you should know that the movie Independence Day isn't actually about the American Revolution..."
Skip ahead 18 years and the openly gay director of Independence Day Roland Emmerich, is now promising to make a movie about an actual historical event. Specifically the Stonewall Riots that launched the LGBTQ rights movement.
When it comes to getting the history of the Stonewall Riots "correct" I am leary of Emmerich for reasons that have nothing to do with his reputation as a purveyor of derivative action flicks, but because of Emmerichs' involvement in the film Anonymous which relays the story of Shakespeare but is set in an alternative universe where the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship happens to be true. For those unfamiliar with the theory, it posits that William Shakespeare was not the "real" author of the plays, sonnets, and poems now attributed to him. Long story short, it's a conspiracy theory that has little basis in actual historical facts.
What might be the Osfordian Theory's worst sin though, is the way it erases (possibly unintentionally) some of the best evidence that William Shakespeare experienced same sex desire. By this I mean the conspiracy theory here ultimately sets out to explain why Shakespeare dedicated his romantic sonnets to a man by eliminating the possibility that the dedication was romantically inclined. As such the Oxford Theory posits that the dedications are evidence for the conspiracy, rather then the icky possibility that one the finest English writers ever (or so English scholars say, I could barely understand him personally) had same sex desires.
What I find troubling at this point in the production (which is set to begin filming this summer) is that thus far it appears to focus on white, gay characters. The IMDB page for the movie lists Jeremy Irvine, Calab Landry Jones, and Karl Glusman as those who have been cast thus far. In addition, the plot is described as:
A young man's political awakening and coming of age during the days and weeks leading up to the Stonewall Riots.Note that it says "man". Not "trans man". Not a "drag queen". Just "man". Also is it just me or does it sound like this is the plot of the 1995 Stonewall film directed by Nigel Finch? I realize that being about the same event could easily lead to similar plots on their own, but Emmerich sounds like even his historical epic is going to be a rip-off.
Whatever issue Emmerich has with being derivative, historically speaking this is a problem because it means that the next Stonewall Riot flick is going to be regurgitating the erasure of transgender/transsexual and gender non-conforming people of color from queer history. In addition, there is the history of transgender rights activists, such as Sylvia Riveria and Martha P. Johnson, also being erased from the Stonewall Narrative.
Even the films' Facebook page gets in on the act by stating:
"Stonewall" will tell the story of the men and women of the modern Gay Rights movement and the establishment where it all took place: The Stonewall Inn.
And in casting calls for extras for the movie, the only word that shows up is "gay". Not LGBT, not Queer, gays only. Bisexual, lesbian, and Transgender, Transsexual, and gender non-conforming folks need not apply.
Normally, I wouldn't make a big deal out of mere word choice, but the erasure of transgender, transsexual, and gender non-conforming folks in addition to people of color specifically from the Stonewall Narrative has gone on for too long and is simply too extensive to be allowed to pass without comment.
In any case, one can only hope that Emmerichs' Stonewall has more in common with the actual riots than his movie about Will Smith saving the world from aliens had with the American Revolution. Too bad the prospect of that actually happening looks about as good as the world ending in 2012.
May 24, 2014
Queer Review: X-Men - Days of Future Past (2014)
X-Men - Days of Future Past
Director: Bryan Singer
Writers: Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman, and Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Daniel Cudmore, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart
Overview
With a glimpse into a grim future filled with holocaust-esque imagery, Days of Future Past can be said to open in a similar fashion to the first X-Men film. Following that grim opening though, is the best film in the series since X2 - X-Men United.
Synopsis
In the year 2023, the last surviving mutants of a war to eliminate their species find hatch a desperate plan to avert that war. They decide to send back on of their own, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to alter the past. This means inserting his future conscience into his past body. Once Wolverine goes back, his job becomes reuniting Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart) with Magneto (Michael Fassbender, Ian McKellen) in order to prevent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from setting in motion the events that could potentially lead to the extinction of all mutant kind.
The Queering
The opening of Days of Future Past is the rockiest part of the film, particularly in an exposition heavy scene where Charles Xavier lays out the backstory and explains key details primarily for the benefit of the audience. Fortunately the film improves dramatically after that. While a story featuring centered around a post-apocalyptic future might seem rather entirely grim, there is plenty of fun to be had in the 70's timeline. The best parts include a brilliant sequence set to Jim Croces' Time in a Bottle and a clever reference to John F. Kennedy being a mutant whom Magneto tried to save (which is why the "magic" bullet curved).
X-Men - First Class ended with the break up of Professor Xavier and Magneto. While Professor Xavier believed that peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants was possible, Magneto instead held to a hard line anti-assimilationist stance. Mutants like Mystique whose blue skinned appearance fail to endear her to mainstream society are drawn to Magneto because he advocates being able to live as a mutant openly without persecution. On the flip side, mutants like Beast and Xavier live in the closet, covering up their appearance in order to avoid being detected. Xavier even went so far as to sacrifice his powers in order to be able to walk. These differences of opinion leads to their relationships' inevitable split. This means that in addition to bringing out the mutant abilities of Beast and Xavier, Wolverine spends the middle section of the movie acting like a couples counselor in order to get Magneto and Xavier to reconcile their irreconcilable differences.
On the queer subtext front, this may have the strongest LGBTQ political subtext of any of the movies. The sentinels that lead to the future war, are robots that are designed to hunt down, detect, and kill mutants. The scene where the Sentinels designer Dr. Trask (Peter Dinklage) demonstrates their abilities evokes the U.S. government programs of the 50's and 60's to eradicate gays and lesbians from civil service jobs. This parallel is made particularly clear in the scene reveals that there is already a mutant in the room where Dr. Trask is making his presentation.
Many people were disappointed back when X-Men III - The Last Stand and it was viewed as a less than desirable send off for characters. Here Bryan Singer takes full advantage of the opportunity to give many of the characters from that trilogy a better wrap. However, many of them, such as Storm (Halle Barry), are given little more than extended cameos. For the most part however, the action is more epic than anything we've seen before in this series and many of the primary characters are given a bigger chance to shine.
In particular the characters of Magneto, Professor X, and Mystique are all given much better development here than in past efforts. I found the development of Xavier to be the most interesting. In the original movies, Professor Xavier is pretty much the all knowing, wise old mentor without a flaw. There's nothing wrong with such character but it's one we've seen in many other movies. First Class showed Xavier as an immature frat boy, who was willing to play around in the minds of others without a thought to the consequences or ethics of such behavior. Not to mention his inability to acknowledge his privilege as a mutant who could easily pass in public as a non-mutant. This time around he is shown to be a broken man who has given up his telepathic abilities along with all hope for the human race. While 1973 Magneto is still pretty much the angry mutant leader we were shown in past efforts, the one who was willing to kill anyone (including his fellow mutants) in order to protect all of mutant kind, future Magneto is shown to be more reflective and introspective.
As for Mystique, here she is shown to be a women driven by the murder and torture of her fellow mutants into taking extreme actions. What makes her interesting is that she believes absolutely in the righteousness of her actions, which are shown to be entirely justified, even if the consequences will be devastating. However, the queer/trans subtext regarding Mystiques' character is downplayed here compared to First Class (there is no utterance of "Mutant and Proud"), although it is still possible to see it given a broad enough reading.
Recommendation
This is one superhero film that would be worth skipping a few days into the future in order to see.
The Rating
3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: Bryan Singer
Writers: Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman, and Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Daniel Cudmore, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart
Overview
With a glimpse into a grim future filled with holocaust-esque imagery, Days of Future Past can be said to open in a similar fashion to the first X-Men film. Following that grim opening though, is the best film in the series since X2 - X-Men United.
Synopsis
In the year 2023, the last surviving mutants of a war to eliminate their species find hatch a desperate plan to avert that war. They decide to send back on of their own, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to alter the past. This means inserting his future conscience into his past body. Once Wolverine goes back, his job becomes reuniting Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart) with Magneto (Michael Fassbender, Ian McKellen) in order to prevent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from setting in motion the events that could potentially lead to the extinction of all mutant kind.
The Queering
The opening of Days of Future Past is the rockiest part of the film, particularly in an exposition heavy scene where Charles Xavier lays out the backstory and explains key details primarily for the benefit of the audience. Fortunately the film improves dramatically after that. While a story featuring centered around a post-apocalyptic future might seem rather entirely grim, there is plenty of fun to be had in the 70's timeline. The best parts include a brilliant sequence set to Jim Croces' Time in a Bottle and a clever reference to John F. Kennedy being a mutant whom Magneto tried to save (which is why the "magic" bullet curved).
X-Men - First Class ended with the break up of Professor Xavier and Magneto. While Professor Xavier believed that peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants was possible, Magneto instead held to a hard line anti-assimilationist stance. Mutants like Mystique whose blue skinned appearance fail to endear her to mainstream society are drawn to Magneto because he advocates being able to live as a mutant openly without persecution. On the flip side, mutants like Beast and Xavier live in the closet, covering up their appearance in order to avoid being detected. Xavier even went so far as to sacrifice his powers in order to be able to walk. These differences of opinion leads to their relationships' inevitable split. This means that in addition to bringing out the mutant abilities of Beast and Xavier, Wolverine spends the middle section of the movie acting like a couples counselor in order to get Magneto and Xavier to reconcile their irreconcilable differences.
On the queer subtext front, this may have the strongest LGBTQ political subtext of any of the movies. The sentinels that lead to the future war, are robots that are designed to hunt down, detect, and kill mutants. The scene where the Sentinels designer Dr. Trask (Peter Dinklage) demonstrates their abilities evokes the U.S. government programs of the 50's and 60's to eradicate gays and lesbians from civil service jobs. This parallel is made particularly clear in the scene reveals that there is already a mutant in the room where Dr. Trask is making his presentation.
Many people were disappointed back when X-Men III - The Last Stand and it was viewed as a less than desirable send off for characters. Here Bryan Singer takes full advantage of the opportunity to give many of the characters from that trilogy a better wrap. However, many of them, such as Storm (Halle Barry), are given little more than extended cameos. For the most part however, the action is more epic than anything we've seen before in this series and many of the primary characters are given a bigger chance to shine.
In particular the characters of Magneto, Professor X, and Mystique are all given much better development here than in past efforts. I found the development of Xavier to be the most interesting. In the original movies, Professor Xavier is pretty much the all knowing, wise old mentor without a flaw. There's nothing wrong with such character but it's one we've seen in many other movies. First Class showed Xavier as an immature frat boy, who was willing to play around in the minds of others without a thought to the consequences or ethics of such behavior. Not to mention his inability to acknowledge his privilege as a mutant who could easily pass in public as a non-mutant. This time around he is shown to be a broken man who has given up his telepathic abilities along with all hope for the human race. While 1973 Magneto is still pretty much the angry mutant leader we were shown in past efforts, the one who was willing to kill anyone (including his fellow mutants) in order to protect all of mutant kind, future Magneto is shown to be more reflective and introspective.
As for Mystique, here she is shown to be a women driven by the murder and torture of her fellow mutants into taking extreme actions. What makes her interesting is that she believes absolutely in the righteousness of her actions, which are shown to be entirely justified, even if the consequences will be devastating. However, the queer/trans subtext regarding Mystiques' character is downplayed here compared to First Class (there is no utterance of "Mutant and Proud"), although it is still possible to see it given a broad enough reading.
Recommendation
This is one superhero film that would be worth skipping a few days into the future in order to see.
The Rating
3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
May 10, 2014
Queer Review: High Tension (2003)
High Tension
Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Ajas and Grégory Levasseur
Cast: Cécile De France, Maïwenn, Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun, Andrei Finti, Oana Pellea, Marco Claudiu Pascu
Overview
As a slasher flick, there are times when High Tension succeeds as a bloody descent into pure horror. However a third act twist causes the proceedings to wind up reveling more in homophobia, than the workings of the Grand Guignol.
Synopsis
Marie (Cécile De France) and Alexia (Maïwenn) travel to the French countryside to visit Alexia's family. However, it isn't long before a demented serial killer shows up, kills the family and kidnaps Alexia, while Marie sneaks a ride in the back of his truck. What follows is a tense cat and mouse game, with Marie alternatively trying to free Alexia from the killers chains or seeking a means of signaling for help from authorities.
The Queering
(Spoilers ahoy! as there is no way to analyze this film without explicitly discussing the nature of the twist itself)
High Tension is gory, make no mistake, but the pacing and suspense level are kept high enough that it still manages to be an entertaining thrill ride, at least until the twist ending introduces homophobia by invoking the psycho lesbian trope. Typically, I am not one who goes for a lot gore in my films, but this particular horror endeavor is slickly enough made that the splatter element didn't bother me. Although I will admit to a few moments where I was paying more attention to the inside of my eyelids than what was occurring on screen. Basically, this falls comfortably within the realm of torture porn, a genre I generally avoid. The score (which for whatever reason reminded me of the one from Halloween) and the gritty - yet stylish - cinematography come together to create an atmosphere of pure dread.
However, the ending cannot be ignored, as it informs everything that happened before. As the "big reveal" reveals, the "killer" was Marie all along, and she simply hallucinated him into existence in order to disassociate herself from the terrible acts that she commits. It is a ludicrous twist, one that has been done before (although not quite like this), and requires that the audience accept that an entire car chase occurred only in Maries' mind. That's not even it's worse sin, as the reason why Maria turns into a killer in the first place is because of her sexual attraction to Alexia. Thus Maries' descent into madness and subsequent murder spree are intractably linked to her sexuality. In other words, the twist manages to be both ableist and homophobic at the same time.
There is nothing terribly original about this movie, which is neither good or bad as far as I'm concerned. There are plenty of references and nods to past horror efforts. This makes sense given the horror genre's tendency towards self cannibalism. Reviewers who liked the movie called these references homages, while those who took a dim view labeled them "rip-offs". I bring this up only on the off chance that someone out there was wondering what the difference between a "homage" and a "rip-off" happens to be.
Recommendation
In spite of being well made, there is no need to go to high lengths to see this (unless one really likes torture porn), the low tension road should work just fine.
The Rating
2 stars out of 4.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Alexandre Ajas and Grégory Levasseur
Cast: Cécile De France, Maïwenn, Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun, Andrei Finti, Oana Pellea, Marco Claudiu Pascu
Overview
As a slasher flick, there are times when High Tension succeeds as a bloody descent into pure horror. However a third act twist causes the proceedings to wind up reveling more in homophobia, than the workings of the Grand Guignol.
Synopsis
Marie (Cécile De France) and Alexia (Maïwenn) travel to the French countryside to visit Alexia's family. However, it isn't long before a demented serial killer shows up, kills the family and kidnaps Alexia, while Marie sneaks a ride in the back of his truck. What follows is a tense cat and mouse game, with Marie alternatively trying to free Alexia from the killers chains or seeking a means of signaling for help from authorities.
The Queering
(Spoilers ahoy! as there is no way to analyze this film without explicitly discussing the nature of the twist itself)
High Tension is gory, make no mistake, but the pacing and suspense level are kept high enough that it still manages to be an entertaining thrill ride, at least until the twist ending introduces homophobia by invoking the psycho lesbian trope. Typically, I am not one who goes for a lot gore in my films, but this particular horror endeavor is slickly enough made that the splatter element didn't bother me. Although I will admit to a few moments where I was paying more attention to the inside of my eyelids than what was occurring on screen. Basically, this falls comfortably within the realm of torture porn, a genre I generally avoid. The score (which for whatever reason reminded me of the one from Halloween) and the gritty - yet stylish - cinematography come together to create an atmosphere of pure dread.
However, the ending cannot be ignored, as it informs everything that happened before. As the "big reveal" reveals, the "killer" was Marie all along, and she simply hallucinated him into existence in order to disassociate herself from the terrible acts that she commits. It is a ludicrous twist, one that has been done before (although not quite like this), and requires that the audience accept that an entire car chase occurred only in Maries' mind. That's not even it's worse sin, as the reason why Maria turns into a killer in the first place is because of her sexual attraction to Alexia. Thus Maries' descent into madness and subsequent murder spree are intractably linked to her sexuality. In other words, the twist manages to be both ableist and homophobic at the same time.
There is nothing terribly original about this movie, which is neither good or bad as far as I'm concerned. There are plenty of references and nods to past horror efforts. This makes sense given the horror genre's tendency towards self cannibalism. Reviewers who liked the movie called these references homages, while those who took a dim view labeled them "rip-offs". I bring this up only on the off chance that someone out there was wondering what the difference between a "homage" and a "rip-off" happens to be.
Recommendation
In spite of being well made, there is no need to go to high lengths to see this (unless one really likes torture porn), the low tension road should work just fine.
The Rating
2 stars out of 4.
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
March 13, 2014
Queer Review: Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Dallas Buyers Club
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Writers: Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Denis O'Hare, Steve Zahn, Michael O'Neill, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne
Overview
A potent story about the development of underground drug markets in the face of the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis is undermined by Hollywood's propensity to straighten out LGBTQ heroes and the unfortunate casting of the talented (yes) but otherwise cisgendered actor Jared Leto in the role of a transgender character.
Synopsis
When Ron Woodroof (Mathew McConaughey) is diagnosed as being in the advanced stages of AIDS, he is given 30 days to live by the doctors treating him. Unwilling to accept this prognosis, he begins doing research on his own into the disease and starts taking off-market drugs that had yet to be approved by the FDA. Eventually, after a few complications and with the help of Rayon (Jared Leto) (a transgender woman who is also living with HIV that he meets during one of his hospital visits) Ron forms the Dallas Buyers Club, a program to distribute unapproved drugs that offer promise and hope to those with HIV. While this program is able to help some, it is not long before Ron and Rayon find themselves facing down increasing opposition from the authorities who want to shut down the whole operation.
The Queering
The story of the HIV epidemic is among the most horrifying stories in LGBTQ history. When the first HIV cases were discovered, the disease was deadly and before advanced anti-viral therapies were developed, the prospects of those infected were dark. In the absence of a cure and with so little known about the disease, terror and uncertainty were the characteristics of the day. It was the sort of time that tends to bring out the best and worst in people.
Unfortunately, only glimpses of the real life HIV/AIDS story make it to the big screen. While the essentials behind the actual Dallas Buyers Club formed by Ron Woodroof are approximately accurate, there are few rather problematic changes worth noting. For starters, several people close to the real Ron Woodroof have reported that he was bisexual and not at all bigoted, as depicted in the film. The other issue is that Rayon is made up. While this is not a problem in of itself, the character essentially fills the same role as a "Magic Negro" in that she helps Ron Woodroof to become a better person before winding up dead. This trope, for whatever reason, appears to becoming more often applied to LGBTQ characters, who like the "Magic Negro" serve as inspiration for the heterosexuals before typically winding up dead. Another recent example would be Tom Wilkinson's character in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, as well as V for Vendetta which has two examples of LGBTQ characters who serve as inspiration for the main characters before going to the great beyond. Easy A provides a non-deadly example.
In other words, we have a story of a straigt(ened out) dude saving queers with the aid of a magic queer. In the Hollywood imagination, the only true hero allowed is the cis-gendered hetero. Ron is presented as straight and macho as they come. We see him fucking a woman in the opening scene and later on engaging in bull riding. There are few moments in fact, where we are not in some way reminded that Ron is a total hetero. Just for the record and at the risk of repeating myself, I wouldn't mind this so much if it wasn't for the fact that Ron Woodroof was (probably) bisexual.
Then there is the casting of Jared Leto, a cisgendered man, in the role of a transgender woman. There are potential problems with the character, given that while the filmmakers attempt to essay a sympathetic presentation, she still tends to come across as pathetic and weak. While I think it's problematic to ignore the suffering LGBTQ people went through at the height of the AIDS crisis, I find it even more problematic to have a weaker queer character contrasted in such a fashion as is done in this film with a stronger straight(ened out) hetero male. It just doesn't jive. And that's before we get into the problems with the casting of Jared Leto. Generally speaking, acting is about taking on the role of a person not yourself. Therefore, hypothetically speaking, in a world where transgender actors were cast to play cis-gendered roles, there would be no problem with the casting of cis-gendered actors to play transgender roles. The thing is, we don't live in such a world and thus the casting comes across as a blatant form of discrimination at best, if not explicitly transphobic.
On the plus column, the film is actually more than competently made, with the some effective examples of editing being employed to demonstrate Ron's mental functions breaking down as the disease ravages his body. There are also some memorable and evocative scenes, such as one involving Ron walking through an atrium full of butterflies that land on his body. Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, and Jennifer Garner all give strong performances (at least insofar as their roles were written). There are also some interesting philosophical questions raised about the ethics surrounding drug testing when dealing with a disease as fatal as AIDS. How long do you let people die while tests are conducted to ensure the safety of a medication? Is it right to give people sugar pills (while tricking them into thinking they are taking the real thing) simply so researchers can isolate the placebo effect? And as I hinted at earlier, there are certain hints and shadows of the real AIDS/HIV crisis that do make it on screen, such as the scenes which show the fears and anxieties which characterized the era as well as, the extreme desperation of those people who had been infected with the virus in the early days of the epidemic.
At the end of the day though, none of these elements are enough to overcome the ahistorical straightening out that was applied to the story, nor the problematic casting of Jared Leto.
Recommendation
Not worth driving out to Dallas or joining any buyers clubs in order to see, unless one is desperately interested in seeing every film ever made with an LGBTQ character in it.
The Rating
2 out of 4 stars
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Writers: Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Denis O'Hare, Steve Zahn, Michael O'Neill, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne
Overview
A potent story about the development of underground drug markets in the face of the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis is undermined by Hollywood's propensity to straighten out LGBTQ heroes and the unfortunate casting of the talented (yes) but otherwise cisgendered actor Jared Leto in the role of a transgender character.
Synopsis
When Ron Woodroof (Mathew McConaughey) is diagnosed as being in the advanced stages of AIDS, he is given 30 days to live by the doctors treating him. Unwilling to accept this prognosis, he begins doing research on his own into the disease and starts taking off-market drugs that had yet to be approved by the FDA. Eventually, after a few complications and with the help of Rayon (Jared Leto) (a transgender woman who is also living with HIV that he meets during one of his hospital visits) Ron forms the Dallas Buyers Club, a program to distribute unapproved drugs that offer promise and hope to those with HIV. While this program is able to help some, it is not long before Ron and Rayon find themselves facing down increasing opposition from the authorities who want to shut down the whole operation.
The Queering
The story of the HIV epidemic is among the most horrifying stories in LGBTQ history. When the first HIV cases were discovered, the disease was deadly and before advanced anti-viral therapies were developed, the prospects of those infected were dark. In the absence of a cure and with so little known about the disease, terror and uncertainty were the characteristics of the day. It was the sort of time that tends to bring out the best and worst in people.
Unfortunately, only glimpses of the real life HIV/AIDS story make it to the big screen. While the essentials behind the actual Dallas Buyers Club formed by Ron Woodroof are approximately accurate, there are few rather problematic changes worth noting. For starters, several people close to the real Ron Woodroof have reported that he was bisexual and not at all bigoted, as depicted in the film. The other issue is that Rayon is made up. While this is not a problem in of itself, the character essentially fills the same role as a "Magic Negro" in that she helps Ron Woodroof to become a better person before winding up dead. This trope, for whatever reason, appears to becoming more often applied to LGBTQ characters, who like the "Magic Negro" serve as inspiration for the heterosexuals before typically winding up dead. Another recent example would be Tom Wilkinson's character in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, as well as V for Vendetta which has two examples of LGBTQ characters who serve as inspiration for the main characters before going to the great beyond. Easy A provides a non-deadly example.
In other words, we have a story of a straigt(ened out) dude saving queers with the aid of a magic queer. In the Hollywood imagination, the only true hero allowed is the cis-gendered hetero. Ron is presented as straight and macho as they come. We see him fucking a woman in the opening scene and later on engaging in bull riding. There are few moments in fact, where we are not in some way reminded that Ron is a total hetero. Just for the record and at the risk of repeating myself, I wouldn't mind this so much if it wasn't for the fact that Ron Woodroof was (probably) bisexual.
Then there is the casting of Jared Leto, a cisgendered man, in the role of a transgender woman. There are potential problems with the character, given that while the filmmakers attempt to essay a sympathetic presentation, she still tends to come across as pathetic and weak. While I think it's problematic to ignore the suffering LGBTQ people went through at the height of the AIDS crisis, I find it even more problematic to have a weaker queer character contrasted in such a fashion as is done in this film with a stronger straight(ened out) hetero male. It just doesn't jive. And that's before we get into the problems with the casting of Jared Leto. Generally speaking, acting is about taking on the role of a person not yourself. Therefore, hypothetically speaking, in a world where transgender actors were cast to play cis-gendered roles, there would be no problem with the casting of cis-gendered actors to play transgender roles. The thing is, we don't live in such a world and thus the casting comes across as a blatant form of discrimination at best, if not explicitly transphobic.
On the plus column, the film is actually more than competently made, with the some effective examples of editing being employed to demonstrate Ron's mental functions breaking down as the disease ravages his body. There are also some memorable and evocative scenes, such as one involving Ron walking through an atrium full of butterflies that land on his body. Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, and Jennifer Garner all give strong performances (at least insofar as their roles were written). There are also some interesting philosophical questions raised about the ethics surrounding drug testing when dealing with a disease as fatal as AIDS. How long do you let people die while tests are conducted to ensure the safety of a medication? Is it right to give people sugar pills (while tricking them into thinking they are taking the real thing) simply so researchers can isolate the placebo effect? And as I hinted at earlier, there are certain hints and shadows of the real AIDS/HIV crisis that do make it on screen, such as the scenes which show the fears and anxieties which characterized the era as well as, the extreme desperation of those people who had been infected with the virus in the early days of the epidemic.
At the end of the day though, none of these elements are enough to overcome the ahistorical straightening out that was applied to the story, nor the problematic casting of Jared Leto.
Recommendation
Not worth driving out to Dallas or joining any buyers clubs in order to see, unless one is desperately interested in seeing every film ever made with an LGBTQ character in it.
The Rating
2 out of 4 stars
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
March 3, 2014
Some thoughts on the 2014 Oscars.
This may come as a surprise, but even though I consider myself a dedicated movie buff, I do not actually pay that close attention to the Oscars. Many like to call the Oscars "the Superbowl" for movie buffs. However, I pay more attention to the actual Superbowl, then I do the Oscars, in the sense that I actually sit down and watch the Superbowl each year (even though I never actually watch a football game the rest of the year), whereas I have never watched the Oscars telecast. Never ever. I understand there's a red carpet involved and people walk on it, and such and that statues get involved at some point.
Also, given how busy I was this past year, I have not actually seen any of the nominees for best picture. I was able to catch a few movies on the big screen Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Lone Ranger, and one or two others whose titles escape me. I have recently purchased copes of and plan on watching Dallas Buyers Club, Blue is the Warmest Color, and pre-ordered Philomena so expect reviews of those in the coming weeks.
However, a quick glance at the Oscar winners raised a few eyebrows for me. 12 Years a Slave winning best picture was not a surprise. Steve McQueens' Hunger fell into the ambitious but flawed category and in the end, he showed enough promise to make me very interested in whatever films he made afterwards. I do have questions about Shame as I question the concept of sex addiction itself, but I have to reserve any judgement until if and when I manage to see it.
The more problematic win was for Jared Leto's performance. I have not seen it so I cannot comment on the performance itself, but I will say that it is high time that producers started casting transgender performers in transgender roles. I won't say that doing so is the equivalent to blackface (the LGBTQ community does a little too much appropriation of the Black Civil Rights Movement as it stands) but gosh darn it, if there aren't too many parallels between the two, to let the practice go without comment.
Seriously it's high time Hollywood started casting roles appropriately. In spite of the Academy's longtime habit of rewarding them, the world does not need another able bodied, cis-gendered, white male playing a disabled person, a transgender/transexual person, or a person of color.
Also, given how busy I was this past year, I have not actually seen any of the nominees for best picture. I was able to catch a few movies on the big screen Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Lone Ranger, and one or two others whose titles escape me. I have recently purchased copes of and plan on watching Dallas Buyers Club, Blue is the Warmest Color, and pre-ordered Philomena so expect reviews of those in the coming weeks.
However, a quick glance at the Oscar winners raised a few eyebrows for me. 12 Years a Slave winning best picture was not a surprise. Steve McQueens' Hunger fell into the ambitious but flawed category and in the end, he showed enough promise to make me very interested in whatever films he made afterwards. I do have questions about Shame as I question the concept of sex addiction itself, but I have to reserve any judgement until if and when I manage to see it.
The more problematic win was for Jared Leto's performance. I have not seen it so I cannot comment on the performance itself, but I will say that it is high time that producers started casting transgender performers in transgender roles. I won't say that doing so is the equivalent to blackface (the LGBTQ community does a little too much appropriation of the Black Civil Rights Movement as it stands) but gosh darn it, if there aren't too many parallels between the two, to let the practice go without comment.
Seriously it's high time Hollywood started casting roles appropriately. In spite of the Academy's longtime habit of rewarding them, the world does not need another able bodied, cis-gendered, white male playing a disabled person, a transgender/transexual person, or a person of color.
February 9, 2014
Queer Review: Rope (1948)
Rope
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Hume Cronyn, Arthur Laurents, and Ben Hecht. Based on the play by Patrick Hamilton.
Cast: Dick Hogan, John Dall, Farley Granger, Edith Evanson, Douglas Dick, Joan Chandler, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, James Stewart
Overview
Loosely based on real life story of "Leopold and Loeb", two gay lovers who killed a 14 year old Bobby Franks, Rope tells the story of two upper class college students who strangle one of their fellow classmates. In short, another example of Alfred Hitchcock's fetisation of queer killers.
Synopsis
Two college students, the reluctant Philip (John Dall) and the daring Brandon (Farley Granger) strangle one of their former classmates David (Dick Hogan). Then they invite members of his family, mutual friends, as well as their former school headmaster Rupert (James Stewart), to a party in order to increase the thrill of the kill. However, Philips' obvious nervousness piques Ruperts' suspicions. When Brandons' repeating of Ruperts' interpretation of Nietzche, that superior individuals have a moral right to kill their inferiors, further draws attention to Davids' absence.
The Queering
The presentation of Rope was somewhat experimental. The entire story is set in "real" time, with Hitchcock attempting to use as few edits as possible and hide a couple of cuts by zooming in close to a couple of objects. However, this backfires, as the efforts to disguise said cuts are clumsy and draw attention to themselves and unfortunately an uncharismatic Jimmy Stewart addslittle to the attempts at verisimilitude.
There is a pattern that I have noticed, where real life individuals who were gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, or transexual, did something "evil", then movies are infinitely more likely to accurately depict characters based on those historical figures sexual orientation or gender identity. On the other hand if the real life person did something heroic or good, then the pattern is reversed. Gay or lesbian individuals become bi and bi characters become straight, while effeminate queens will inevitably get butched up.
The only thing that prevented Hitchcock from following this pattern was, ironically, the Hays Code. Since depictions homosexuality was banned outright, the director was forced to limit the characters sexuality to mere subtext. However, offscreen the filmmakers and particular Hitchcock made it clear that they wanted to make a film about queer sexuality. The final product was even banned by some theaters due to the fact that it had gone so far as to include coded gay characters, even if said characters were depicted as evil murderers. Honestly, I never thought I would see the day when I would find myself mildly thankful for Hollywoods' infamous production code.
On the philosophical side of things, the character of Brandon attempts to justify the murder by quoting Rupert, who in turn had been riffing on Nietzche. Unfortunately, the message ends up being garbled. Perhaps it's because Nietzch is a difficult writer to "get" that any superficial analysis is doomed to failure. Ruperts' eventual condemnation of the ideas he had (apparently) originally endorsed doesn't help matters very much. A more recent film to be based on the Leopold and Loeb case, Swoon managed to avoid this problem by focusing more on the psychological forces driving the characters rather than any philosophical justifications they tried to come up with.
Recommendation
No true ubermensch would allow themselves to be roped into seeing this movie, unless they had a strong interest in Hitchcock or the history of queer cinema.
The Rating
2 stars out of 4
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Hume Cronyn, Arthur Laurents, and Ben Hecht. Based on the play by Patrick Hamilton.
Cast: Dick Hogan, John Dall, Farley Granger, Edith Evanson, Douglas Dick, Joan Chandler, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, James Stewart
Overview
Loosely based on real life story of "Leopold and Loeb", two gay lovers who killed a 14 year old Bobby Franks, Rope tells the story of two upper class college students who strangle one of their fellow classmates. In short, another example of Alfred Hitchcock's fetisation of queer killers.
Synopsis
Two college students, the reluctant Philip (John Dall) and the daring Brandon (Farley Granger) strangle one of their former classmates David (Dick Hogan). Then they invite members of his family, mutual friends, as well as their former school headmaster Rupert (James Stewart), to a party in order to increase the thrill of the kill. However, Philips' obvious nervousness piques Ruperts' suspicions. When Brandons' repeating of Ruperts' interpretation of Nietzche, that superior individuals have a moral right to kill their inferiors, further draws attention to Davids' absence.
The Queering
The presentation of Rope was somewhat experimental. The entire story is set in "real" time, with Hitchcock attempting to use as few edits as possible and hide a couple of cuts by zooming in close to a couple of objects. However, this backfires, as the efforts to disguise said cuts are clumsy and draw attention to themselves and unfortunately an uncharismatic Jimmy Stewart addslittle to the attempts at verisimilitude.
There is a pattern that I have noticed, where real life individuals who were gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, or transexual, did something "evil", then movies are infinitely more likely to accurately depict characters based on those historical figures sexual orientation or gender identity. On the other hand if the real life person did something heroic or good, then the pattern is reversed. Gay or lesbian individuals become bi and bi characters become straight, while effeminate queens will inevitably get butched up.
The only thing that prevented Hitchcock from following this pattern was, ironically, the Hays Code. Since depictions homosexuality was banned outright, the director was forced to limit the characters sexuality to mere subtext. However, offscreen the filmmakers and particular Hitchcock made it clear that they wanted to make a film about queer sexuality. The final product was even banned by some theaters due to the fact that it had gone so far as to include coded gay characters, even if said characters were depicted as evil murderers. Honestly, I never thought I would see the day when I would find myself mildly thankful for Hollywoods' infamous production code.
On the philosophical side of things, the character of Brandon attempts to justify the murder by quoting Rupert, who in turn had been riffing on Nietzche. Unfortunately, the message ends up being garbled. Perhaps it's because Nietzch is a difficult writer to "get" that any superficial analysis is doomed to failure. Ruperts' eventual condemnation of the ideas he had (apparently) originally endorsed doesn't help matters very much. A more recent film to be based on the Leopold and Loeb case, Swoon managed to avoid this problem by focusing more on the psychological forces driving the characters rather than any philosophical justifications they tried to come up with.
Recommendation
No true ubermensch would allow themselves to be roped into seeing this movie, unless they had a strong interest in Hitchcock or the history of queer cinema.
The Rating
2 stars out of 4
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
December 8, 2013
Queer Review: Eating Raoul (1982)
Eating Raoul
Director: Paul Bartel
Writers: Paul Bartel and Richard Blackburn
Cast: Mary Woronov, Robert Beltran, Paul Bartel, Susan Saiger, Richard Paul, Darcy Pulliam, John Shearin
Overview
A cult classic from early 80's, Eating Raoul offers up an interesting menu of the blackest bits of comedy one can imagine. A clever, albeit weakly acted effort, Paul Bartel manages to offer an offbeat perspective on human sexuality and deviance.
Synopsis
A prudish couple, Paul and Mary Bland (Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov) want little more than to open a restaurant and live happily ever after. However, financial difficulties relating to their inability to get a loan (amongst other issues) make it seem like this dream is unlikely to ever come true. But when a drunken man attempts to rape Mary, Paul kills him with a frying pan in self defense. Rather than go to the police, the two take his money and decide to raise money for their restaurant by killing other "perverts". Things start to get out of hand though when Raoul (Robert Beltran) finds out about the scheme and forces the Blands to cut him in.
The Queering
Hollywood (and society in general) is so enamored in the sexy sexiness of sex, that it can sometimes be easy to forget that not everyone collapses into lustful convulsions of lusty lustiness at the mere sight of a bit of exposed flesh. The human sex drive is a well honed engine for many people, but it is by no means a universal characteristic. There do exist such people who experience no sexual desire towards any other person, in spite of the fact that society attempts us to bludgeon everyone into thinking otherwise.
Admittedly the way society promotes compulsory sexuality flies in the face of the way more conservative elements treat sex as something dirty and shameful. But those same prudes who scream the hardest about the ebilness of sexy sex, are also the ones most likely to be downloading porn and such.
Enter Paul and Mary Bland, a couple who genuinely shuns sex both in words and deed. Like Adam and Eve cast from the garden of Eden, the two find themselves in the cruel wild where they are constantly beset upon on all sides by display of raw sensuality. They speak of engaging in cuddling and a little kissing, but nothing more. When they go to bed, they sleep in separate beds. Paul can be easily read as asexual and not in a subtext kind of way. His attitude and behaviour is consistent with that of asexual desire.
As presented in the film, Mary is a little bit more complicated. She expresses similar antipathy as Paul to naked pretzel type activities, but after Raoul gets her to smoke a Thai stick, she has sex with him. And then goes on to have sex with him several more times. She eventually ends up rejecting Raoul but the affair makes it difficult to read her strictly as an asexual.
Then there is Raoul, who is undoubtedly the most problematic character. Not only is Raoul both Hispanic and a thief, which represents a racist stereotype in of itself, but his ethnic identity is used to further exoticize him.
Of course, even further problems are represented by the fact that the Blands are technically speaking, serial killers. Given their sophistication and lack of sexuality, the Blands eventual descent into cannibalism makes them clear cinematic forerunners to Hannibal the Cannibal from The Silence of the Lambs. Which of course means that they evoke the trope that sexual deviance = bloody violent psychopaths. The wrinkle here is that these sexual deviants are sexual deviants precisely because they engage in the most conservative, 1950s-esque, Hays Code approved lifestyle possible. Talk about subversive...
The humor in Eating Raoul can charitably be labeled as subdued. There is wit and sophistication here, but one has to be paying close attention to get it. It doesn't help much that the acting, while not too terrible, is often bordering on amateurish. It also says something about my particular sense of humor that the moment that made me laugh the hardest involved killing a large number of people via the oh-so-subtle method of chucking an electric lantern into a crowded hot tub. Now let the recommendations that I need professional help commence in 3... 2... 1...
Recommendation
Worth eating any slimy bit of human flesh (from Raoul or not) in order to see.
The Rating
3.5 out of 4 stars
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: Paul Bartel
Writers: Paul Bartel and Richard Blackburn
Cast: Mary Woronov, Robert Beltran, Paul Bartel, Susan Saiger, Richard Paul, Darcy Pulliam, John Shearin
Overview
A cult classic from early 80's, Eating Raoul offers up an interesting menu of the blackest bits of comedy one can imagine. A clever, albeit weakly acted effort, Paul Bartel manages to offer an offbeat perspective on human sexuality and deviance.
Synopsis
A prudish couple, Paul and Mary Bland (Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov) want little more than to open a restaurant and live happily ever after. However, financial difficulties relating to their inability to get a loan (amongst other issues) make it seem like this dream is unlikely to ever come true. But when a drunken man attempts to rape Mary, Paul kills him with a frying pan in self defense. Rather than go to the police, the two take his money and decide to raise money for their restaurant by killing other "perverts". Things start to get out of hand though when Raoul (Robert Beltran) finds out about the scheme and forces the Blands to cut him in.
The Queering
Hollywood (and society in general) is so enamored in the sexy sexiness of sex, that it can sometimes be easy to forget that not everyone collapses into lustful convulsions of lusty lustiness at the mere sight of a bit of exposed flesh. The human sex drive is a well honed engine for many people, but it is by no means a universal characteristic. There do exist such people who experience no sexual desire towards any other person, in spite of the fact that society attempts us to bludgeon everyone into thinking otherwise.
Admittedly the way society promotes compulsory sexuality flies in the face of the way more conservative elements treat sex as something dirty and shameful. But those same prudes who scream the hardest about the ebilness of sexy sex, are also the ones most likely to be downloading porn and such.
Enter Paul and Mary Bland, a couple who genuinely shuns sex both in words and deed. Like Adam and Eve cast from the garden of Eden, the two find themselves in the cruel wild where they are constantly beset upon on all sides by display of raw sensuality. They speak of engaging in cuddling and a little kissing, but nothing more. When they go to bed, they sleep in separate beds. Paul can be easily read as asexual and not in a subtext kind of way. His attitude and behaviour is consistent with that of asexual desire.
As presented in the film, Mary is a little bit more complicated. She expresses similar antipathy as Paul to naked pretzel type activities, but after Raoul gets her to smoke a Thai stick, she has sex with him. And then goes on to have sex with him several more times. She eventually ends up rejecting Raoul but the affair makes it difficult to read her strictly as an asexual.
Then there is Raoul, who is undoubtedly the most problematic character. Not only is Raoul both Hispanic and a thief, which represents a racist stereotype in of itself, but his ethnic identity is used to further exoticize him.
Of course, even further problems are represented by the fact that the Blands are technically speaking, serial killers. Given their sophistication and lack of sexuality, the Blands eventual descent into cannibalism makes them clear cinematic forerunners to Hannibal the Cannibal from The Silence of the Lambs. Which of course means that they evoke the trope that sexual deviance = bloody violent psychopaths. The wrinkle here is that these sexual deviants are sexual deviants precisely because they engage in the most conservative, 1950s-esque, Hays Code approved lifestyle possible. Talk about subversive...
The humor in Eating Raoul can charitably be labeled as subdued. There is wit and sophistication here, but one has to be paying close attention to get it. It doesn't help much that the acting, while not too terrible, is often bordering on amateurish. It also says something about my particular sense of humor that the moment that made me laugh the hardest involved killing a large number of people via the oh-so-subtle method of chucking an electric lantern into a crowded hot tub. Now let the recommendations that I need professional help commence in 3... 2... 1...
Recommendation
Worth eating any slimy bit of human flesh (from Raoul or not) in order to see.
The Rating
3.5 out of 4 stars
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
November 23, 2013
Queer Issue: Do Androids Dream of Binary Gendered Sheep?
A long time ago, like back when I was in high-school, I remember reading an article in Scientific American about the possibility of machines producing copies of themselves. This doesn't have much to do with anything, other than I wanted to start this out by pointing out that if mechanical reproduction were ever to end up taking place, it would be more akin to asexual - if we really, really wanted to compare this to biological reproduction - or single unit reproduction. More importantly, if we really wanted to stretch a few metaphors, that even if machines were to end up reproducing, there would still be absolutely no need for them to have sex traits of any kind.
More recently, I finally managed to watch Wall-E the story of two robots who fall in love with each other. Wall-E is the last surviving robot on an Earth that has long been abandoned by humans after it became covered in garbage. His primary task is cleaning up and stacking all of the trash lying around, a task that as presented would make Sisyphus grateful the fate he ended up with. One day a robot sent from the survivors of the human race, named EVE, shows up and the two bond and eventually fall in love. What makes this noteworthy, is that the romance follows typical hetero-normative patterns. Automatically, I find myself in a question begging exercise. To start out with, why do writers write robotic characters that exhibit gender traits?
That may not exactly be entirely accurate. Unless I missed it, neither Wall-E or EVE (the two robot lovers) are ever referred to by anyone else has "he" or "she" in the film. However, there are some really obvious ways that the two are marked as feminine and masculine. For starters, Wall-E's main task is trash disposal, which means him messy and a little rough around the edges. When he winds up on the spaceship with the last survivors of humanity, he makes a mess by tracking dirt everywhere, much to the chagrin of the robot assigned to clean up duty. His electronic voice is also deeper than EVE's. EVE on the other hand is smoother, has an obviously female assigned name, and turns into an egg shape at one point following the completion of her mission on Earth. Her task, to find life, can also be seen as feminine in nature, given the trope of mother earth and all that.
This is not the only issue I had with the films message as the second half of the film exhibits some blatant fat shaming. It does this by implying that the humans in the future setting of the film, are fat and obese because they have grown lazy by having machines do all their work for them. However, the connection between being fat and being lazy does not hold up to close medical scrutiny.
But back on topic, why do robots need gender? If they cannot reproduce (and reproductive traits are not deterministic of how gender roles are assigned in our society anyways, otherwise anyone incapable of biological reproduction due to age, disease, injury, etc. would have to be considered in gender neutral terms only) then why would gender be at all relevant? And as I mentioned before, any consideration of machine reproduction to date, has primarily focused on single unit reproduction.
While there is an obvious strain of cisnormativity going on here, I think the main reason for gendering the characters is so the writers could have the robots mimic the steps of heterosexual romance. While I'm not sure the filmmakers of Wall-E (or any other film with obviously gendered robots and androids) think about this issue, it's fascinating to observe where artists end up when they're not thinking.
Regardless, the only way one can think of machines as having gender traits is if one assumes that gender traits are solely based on social conditioning and not the result of biological fact. Does the practice of gendering robots create absolute proof that gender is a social construct, not a biological fact? I don't know. But we do have an odd tendency to force gender binary everything, even in cases where it makes little sense. For example, we describe insect behavior in ways that strongly reflect our own gender biases.
This has real world consequences as well. When I wrote my senior thesis for my philosophy degree on language, I wondered if the way our language (at least traditionally) strongly reflected the gender binary by only creating two sets of gender pronouns, one each for masculine and feminine people, caused us to be unable to imagine or cope with the existence of people who exist outside the gender binary. Specifically, I wondered if our traditionally binary gendered language, which failed to consider the possibility of non-binary gendered folks, was a driving reason for society to have intersex infants mutilated to fit them into binary gendered norms.
Ultimately, the same thinking applies here, for there is little reason to believe that the impetus for doctors to cruelly mutilate the genitals of intersex infants is any different from the thinking that ends up creating two robots boxed into binary gender stereotypes.
More recently, I finally managed to watch Wall-E the story of two robots who fall in love with each other. Wall-E is the last surviving robot on an Earth that has long been abandoned by humans after it became covered in garbage. His primary task is cleaning up and stacking all of the trash lying around, a task that as presented would make Sisyphus grateful the fate he ended up with. One day a robot sent from the survivors of the human race, named EVE, shows up and the two bond and eventually fall in love. What makes this noteworthy, is that the romance follows typical hetero-normative patterns. Automatically, I find myself in a question begging exercise. To start out with, why do writers write robotic characters that exhibit gender traits?
That may not exactly be entirely accurate. Unless I missed it, neither Wall-E or EVE (the two robot lovers) are ever referred to by anyone else has "he" or "she" in the film. However, there are some really obvious ways that the two are marked as feminine and masculine. For starters, Wall-E's main task is trash disposal, which means him messy and a little rough around the edges. When he winds up on the spaceship with the last survivors of humanity, he makes a mess by tracking dirt everywhere, much to the chagrin of the robot assigned to clean up duty. His electronic voice is also deeper than EVE's. EVE on the other hand is smoother, has an obviously female assigned name, and turns into an egg shape at one point following the completion of her mission on Earth. Her task, to find life, can also be seen as feminine in nature, given the trope of mother earth and all that.
This is not the only issue I had with the films message as the second half of the film exhibits some blatant fat shaming. It does this by implying that the humans in the future setting of the film, are fat and obese because they have grown lazy by having machines do all their work for them. However, the connection between being fat and being lazy does not hold up to close medical scrutiny.
But back on topic, why do robots need gender? If they cannot reproduce (and reproductive traits are not deterministic of how gender roles are assigned in our society anyways, otherwise anyone incapable of biological reproduction due to age, disease, injury, etc. would have to be considered in gender neutral terms only) then why would gender be at all relevant? And as I mentioned before, any consideration of machine reproduction to date, has primarily focused on single unit reproduction.
While there is an obvious strain of cisnormativity going on here, I think the main reason for gendering the characters is so the writers could have the robots mimic the steps of heterosexual romance. While I'm not sure the filmmakers of Wall-E (or any other film with obviously gendered robots and androids) think about this issue, it's fascinating to observe where artists end up when they're not thinking.
Regardless, the only way one can think of machines as having gender traits is if one assumes that gender traits are solely based on social conditioning and not the result of biological fact. Does the practice of gendering robots create absolute proof that gender is a social construct, not a biological fact? I don't know. But we do have an odd tendency to force gender binary everything, even in cases where it makes little sense. For example, we describe insect behavior in ways that strongly reflect our own gender biases.
This has real world consequences as well. When I wrote my senior thesis for my philosophy degree on language, I wondered if the way our language (at least traditionally) strongly reflected the gender binary by only creating two sets of gender pronouns, one each for masculine and feminine people, caused us to be unable to imagine or cope with the existence of people who exist outside the gender binary. Specifically, I wondered if our traditionally binary gendered language, which failed to consider the possibility of non-binary gendered folks, was a driving reason for society to have intersex infants mutilated to fit them into binary gendered norms.
Ultimately, the same thinking applies here, for there is little reason to believe that the impetus for doctors to cruelly mutilate the genitals of intersex infants is any different from the thinking that ends up creating two robots boxed into binary gender stereotypes.
November 1, 2013
Queer Review: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Bride of Frankenstein
Director: James Whale
Writers: William Hurlbut, John L. Balderston, Josef Berne, Lawrence G. Blochman, Robert Florey, Philip MacDonald, Tom Reed, R.C. Sherriff, Edmund Pearson, and Morton Covan. Inspired by the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester, Gavin Gordon, Gavin Gordon, Una O'Connor, O.P. Heggie
Overview
A campy horror flick, James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein serves just as much of a deconstruction of the first Frankenstein, as it does a sequel. Then there's the queer subtexts galore to consider, which spend most of the running time competing with each other for the opportunity to scream "it's alive!"
Synopsis
After a brief intro in which Mary Shelly (Elsa Lanchester) reveals that both Dr. Frankenstein and his creation survived the first movie, Dr. Frankenstein is approached by Dr. Pretorius with a proposal. He wants to work with Dr. Frankenstein to create something new and even more ambitious then either one had previously achieved. Dr. Frankenstein refuses, but after Dr. Pretorius joins forces with The Monster (Boris Karloff) and kidnaps Dr. Frankenstein's bride to be, Dr. Frankenstein agrees to help create the most monstrous creation possible, a bride for The Monster.
The Queering
It is not unusual to find queer subtexts in older movies, it is however unusual to find them quite like they are in The Bride of Frankenstein where they're running around each other under thunder clapped skies, dripping off of the ceilings of mad scientists' laboratories, and humping each other in the corner of every forgotten graveyard. Starting with The Monster himself, we have a creature shunned from society, blamed for crimes it cannot understand. When he tries to conform to societies standards of true happiness by getting married, he finds himself disgusted by the results. The revelation of the bride and subsequent destruction of Dr. Frankenstein's lab, can be read as a reflection of the potentially disastrous consequences that await (or at least the anxieties of) lesbians and gays who suppress their sexuality in order to conform to heterosexual ideals of wedded matrimony.
Furthermore, the scenes with the blind hermit are overladen with homoerotic suggestion. It is the hermit who introduces The Monster to the pleasures of smoking, which The Monster likes, a lot. *wink* *nudge* Dr. Pretorius also can be seen "initiating" The Monster into a deviant lifestyle when he offers Frankenstein's creation a cigar as well, while proclaiming that it's his "only vice".
Then we have the relationship between Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius. On one level, you have the obvious reading of these two scientists attempting to usurp God in their pursuit of creating new life. On another, you have two men trying to create a family without the aid of a female mother.
Of course what must also be discussed is the fact that Elsa Lanchester plays both Mary Shelly and The Bride Dr. Frankenstein created. This has interesting implications in that we have the creator becoming the created. Not only that, but very label The Bride (at least under traditional standards) is an image of something that is to also create new life. It suggests a sort of endless cycle of creation, one in which the creators of The Bride of Frankenstein openly suggest that the sequels are never, ever going to end. Or something to that effect, methinks.
Keeping in with the theme of endless sequels and cycles of rebirth, comes also the constant imagery of resurrection, namely in the form of dozens of crucifixes littering nearly every frame. When The Monster is captured early on, he is tied to a large post and held up in an image that is a cross between the iconic image of Sebastian being stuck with arrows, but of the image of Christ himself. In another scene, where the hermit and The Monster become friends, the screen slowly fades to black at the end, with the last item remaining visible is the crucifix on the hermit's wall. It's easy enough to see the connection, The Monster represents the resurrection/rebirth of each of the bodies that Dr. Frankenstein used to create him. But The Monster here is no misunderstood savior, by the end he saves no one, merely grants Dr. Frankenstein and Elizabeth the opportunity to escape.
The original Frankenstein was adapted to film from a stage play and while containing some memorable moments and showing hints of genuine creepiness, often felt stilted and a little silly. The Bride of Frankenstein however, was not adapted from a play, but takes elements found in the Shelly's novel that were not in the first movie, and runs in it's own direction with them. The result is a more organic, more enjoyable motion picture. True, the films do cheapen the themes of the original novel and ends up turning Frankensteins' creation into a farce. Given that the original novel is legitimately considered to be a classic of it's own right, this dumbing down is hard to excuse. On the other hand, how many people have read the novel today because of the movies? Not to mention this movie is a lot of fun it's own right and that is the deciding factor as far as my opinion is concerned.
Recommendation
Whether it's his wedding day or not, even the most superstitious groom should see make every effort possible to see The Bride of Frankenstein.
The Rating
*** out of ****
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Director: James Whale
Writers: William Hurlbut, John L. Balderston, Josef Berne, Lawrence G. Blochman, Robert Florey, Philip MacDonald, Tom Reed, R.C. Sherriff, Edmund Pearson, and Morton Covan. Inspired by the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester, Gavin Gordon, Gavin Gordon, Una O'Connor, O.P. Heggie
Overview
A campy horror flick, James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein serves just as much of a deconstruction of the first Frankenstein, as it does a sequel. Then there's the queer subtexts galore to consider, which spend most of the running time competing with each other for the opportunity to scream "it's alive!"
Synopsis
After a brief intro in which Mary Shelly (Elsa Lanchester) reveals that both Dr. Frankenstein and his creation survived the first movie, Dr. Frankenstein is approached by Dr. Pretorius with a proposal. He wants to work with Dr. Frankenstein to create something new and even more ambitious then either one had previously achieved. Dr. Frankenstein refuses, but after Dr. Pretorius joins forces with The Monster (Boris Karloff) and kidnaps Dr. Frankenstein's bride to be, Dr. Frankenstein agrees to help create the most monstrous creation possible, a bride for The Monster.
The Queering
It is not unusual to find queer subtexts in older movies, it is however unusual to find them quite like they are in The Bride of Frankenstein where they're running around each other under thunder clapped skies, dripping off of the ceilings of mad scientists' laboratories, and humping each other in the corner of every forgotten graveyard. Starting with The Monster himself, we have a creature shunned from society, blamed for crimes it cannot understand. When he tries to conform to societies standards of true happiness by getting married, he finds himself disgusted by the results. The revelation of the bride and subsequent destruction of Dr. Frankenstein's lab, can be read as a reflection of the potentially disastrous consequences that await (or at least the anxieties of) lesbians and gays who suppress their sexuality in order to conform to heterosexual ideals of wedded matrimony.
Furthermore, the scenes with the blind hermit are overladen with homoerotic suggestion. It is the hermit who introduces The Monster to the pleasures of smoking, which The Monster likes, a lot. *wink* *nudge* Dr. Pretorius also can be seen "initiating" The Monster into a deviant lifestyle when he offers Frankenstein's creation a cigar as well, while proclaiming that it's his "only vice".
Then we have the relationship between Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius. On one level, you have the obvious reading of these two scientists attempting to usurp God in their pursuit of creating new life. On another, you have two men trying to create a family without the aid of a female mother.
Of course what must also be discussed is the fact that Elsa Lanchester plays both Mary Shelly and The Bride Dr. Frankenstein created. This has interesting implications in that we have the creator becoming the created. Not only that, but very label The Bride (at least under traditional standards) is an image of something that is to also create new life. It suggests a sort of endless cycle of creation, one in which the creators of The Bride of Frankenstein openly suggest that the sequels are never, ever going to end. Or something to that effect, methinks.
Keeping in with the theme of endless sequels and cycles of rebirth, comes also the constant imagery of resurrection, namely in the form of dozens of crucifixes littering nearly every frame. When The Monster is captured early on, he is tied to a large post and held up in an image that is a cross between the iconic image of Sebastian being stuck with arrows, but of the image of Christ himself. In another scene, where the hermit and The Monster become friends, the screen slowly fades to black at the end, with the last item remaining visible is the crucifix on the hermit's wall. It's easy enough to see the connection, The Monster represents the resurrection/rebirth of each of the bodies that Dr. Frankenstein used to create him. But The Monster here is no misunderstood savior, by the end he saves no one, merely grants Dr. Frankenstein and Elizabeth the opportunity to escape.
The original Frankenstein was adapted to film from a stage play and while containing some memorable moments and showing hints of genuine creepiness, often felt stilted and a little silly. The Bride of Frankenstein however, was not adapted from a play, but takes elements found in the Shelly's novel that were not in the first movie, and runs in it's own direction with them. The result is a more organic, more enjoyable motion picture. True, the films do cheapen the themes of the original novel and ends up turning Frankensteins' creation into a farce. Given that the original novel is legitimately considered to be a classic of it's own right, this dumbing down is hard to excuse. On the other hand, how many people have read the novel today because of the movies? Not to mention this movie is a lot of fun it's own right and that is the deciding factor as far as my opinion is concerned.
Recommendation
Whether it's his wedding day or not, even the most superstitious groom should see make every effort possible to see The Bride of Frankenstein.
The Rating
*** out of ****
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
October 30, 2013
X-Men: Days of Future Past (Very Confusing) Trailer Released
Alright, I've been following the news of this new X-Men movie, and I get that it has something of a more complex plot than the previous movies but... what the bleep is going on here? Am I the only one who was unable to discern the premise of the movie at all? It's kind of like, oh look it's dark! and features characters from both X-Men: First Class and The Original Trilogy! and is... uh... really, really dark!
So from what I read, this involves time travel and alternative timelines, and is set in some kind of post-apocalyptic future, and the one thing I got from the trailer is that it sounds like Wolverine is going to be sent back in time to convince past Professor Xavier of Something Really Important. For a trailer more than 2 minutes long, that's not a lot. Although, given the way movie trailers can sometimes give away every minor plot point, this may be not be a bad thing...
In any case, I'm still looking forward to it. Since this isn't one that will focus exclusively on Wolverine, the political subtext should be front and center. Therefore there should be some nice queer subtexts buried in all the running around.
In other news, I'm planning on writing up two reviews for Halloween, one classic review of Rosemary's Baby and the other on the queer subtexts in Bride of Frankenstein.
October 20, 2013
Queer Review: Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale (2000)
Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
Directors: David Shapiro, Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Writers: David Shapiro, Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Cast: Tobias Schneebaum
Overview
An intellectually stimulating documentary about the controversial Tobias Schneebaum which analyzes the lined between civilization and the wilderness; between the other and the not-other.
Synopsis
Tobias Schneebaum created a brief stir when he emerged from the Amazon wilds with tales of having eaten human flesh and made love with the males of the Arakmbut tribe. The documentary follows the modern day Tobias Schneebaum as he returns to the Amazon to revisit the places that he had once lived.
The Queering
It is difficult to know exactly where to begin in a review of Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale. For starters the issue of cannibalism may be the films least interesting element. In many ways it's almost a McGuffin. We never actually see anybody eating anyone else, although the topic is broached at several points, while like any good McGuffin, the film ultimately is not about cannibalism at all, it's simply a device to drive the rest of the plot. What the filmmakers are more interested in exploring is the line that divides the civilized from the uncivilized, or if any such distinction can be made.
Of course, Tobias Schneebaum is an interesting individual in his own right. He comes across as charismatic, yet naive, open minded and without guile, but frequently takes a patronizing attitude towards the individuals and tribe that he once studied. He suggests openly the that the closeness that the Arakmbut live with nature make them superior to Western Civilization.
The thing is, his attitude is not uncommon. Our society has this weird, almost hypocritical dichotomy where the civilized world is set up as superior to the uncivilized, but the natural is thought of a superior to the unnatural. Just think about that for a little bit. But as David Wong once said in this Cracked article, "there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them."
And perhaps this is the downfall of the nature is superior line of thinking for it implies that those who live in harmony with nature live outside the realm of human laws. Yet there are no known societies/group of humans that functions without laws or methods of resolving interpersonal disputes, even non-technologically advanced societies.
For an example of this kind of thinking, watch the following video about an uncontacted (by western civilization at least) tribe in the Amazon, is described as "the last free people on earth", because you know, primitive savages lacking advanced technology are *obviously* too feeble minded to develop rules and systems of laws.
Sorry non-westerners, we Superior Beings can just know this kind of thing simply taking long distance photos of you.
Perhaps the most pertinent statement Keep the River on Your Right is made when one academics points out how weird it is for someone to walk into another persons home and start asking that person questions about their sex lives. In Western Society after all, this would generally be considered stalking and trespassing. Apparently, all rules are bendable, particularly for the rule makers.
Like any good documentarians, David and Laurie Gwen Shapiro make little effort to provide concrete answers to the questions that they are raising. Instead they document as many perspectives as the format allows and then assemble the most relevant of those into a coherent motion picture. The final result is as compelling a tale as could be made from this material.
Recommendation
Worth fording many a river in order to see.
The Rating
*** out of ****
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Directors: David Shapiro, Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Writers: David Shapiro, Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Cast: Tobias Schneebaum
Overview
An intellectually stimulating documentary about the controversial Tobias Schneebaum which analyzes the lined between civilization and the wilderness; between the other and the not-other.
Synopsis
Tobias Schneebaum created a brief stir when he emerged from the Amazon wilds with tales of having eaten human flesh and made love with the males of the Arakmbut tribe. The documentary follows the modern day Tobias Schneebaum as he returns to the Amazon to revisit the places that he had once lived.
The Queering
It is difficult to know exactly where to begin in a review of Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale. For starters the issue of cannibalism may be the films least interesting element. In many ways it's almost a McGuffin. We never actually see anybody eating anyone else, although the topic is broached at several points, while like any good McGuffin, the film ultimately is not about cannibalism at all, it's simply a device to drive the rest of the plot. What the filmmakers are more interested in exploring is the line that divides the civilized from the uncivilized, or if any such distinction can be made.
Of course, Tobias Schneebaum is an interesting individual in his own right. He comes across as charismatic, yet naive, open minded and without guile, but frequently takes a patronizing attitude towards the individuals and tribe that he once studied. He suggests openly the that the closeness that the Arakmbut live with nature make them superior to Western Civilization.
The thing is, his attitude is not uncommon. Our society has this weird, almost hypocritical dichotomy where the civilized world is set up as superior to the uncivilized, but the natural is thought of a superior to the unnatural. Just think about that for a little bit. But as David Wong once said in this Cracked article, "there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them."
And perhaps this is the downfall of the nature is superior line of thinking for it implies that those who live in harmony with nature live outside the realm of human laws. Yet there are no known societies/group of humans that functions without laws or methods of resolving interpersonal disputes, even non-technologically advanced societies.
For an example of this kind of thinking, watch the following video about an uncontacted (by western civilization at least) tribe in the Amazon, is described as "the last free people on earth", because you know, primitive savages lacking advanced technology are *obviously* too feeble minded to develop rules and systems of laws.
Sorry non-westerners, we Superior Beings can just know this kind of thing simply taking long distance photos of you.
Perhaps the most pertinent statement Keep the River on Your Right is made when one academics points out how weird it is for someone to walk into another persons home and start asking that person questions about their sex lives. In Western Society after all, this would generally be considered stalking and trespassing. Apparently, all rules are bendable, particularly for the rule makers.
Like any good documentarians, David and Laurie Gwen Shapiro make little effort to provide concrete answers to the questions that they are raising. Instead they document as many perspectives as the format allows and then assemble the most relevant of those into a coherent motion picture. The final result is as compelling a tale as could be made from this material.
Recommendation
Worth fording many a river in order to see.
The Rating
*** out of ****
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
October 13, 2013
Queer Review: Performance (1970)
Performance
Directors: Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg
Writers: Donald Cammell and Anita Pallenberg
Cast: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michèle Breton, Ann Sidney, John Bindon, Johnny Shannon, Anthony Morton, Allan Cuthbertson, Stanley Meadows
Overview
Inspired by the works of Jorge Luis Borges, this psychedelic gangster tale has a few interesting elements but is ultimately too incoherent and badly paced to be worth a full watch.
Synopsis
Chas (James Fox) is a gangster on the run after he becomes the target of an inexplicable hit gone wrong. He takes refuge in the home of retired musician Turner (Mick Jagger) and the their two opposing personalities cause the two to clash. Eventually though, they begin to take on each others identities. By the end, they are indistinguishable.
The Queering
When I took metaphysics back at SUNY Oneonta, I absolutely despised the material and lines of questioning the lone saving grace of the course was having to Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths. Due to the obtuseness of certain parts of the narratives, it took me a little while to warm up to his work. However, once I did, I found it to be some of the most provocative and intellectually stimulating material I had ever read.
Unfortunately, the only aspect of Borges captured by the filmmakers here is the obtuseness. "Provocative" and "stimulating" are far from the descriptors that could apply. The terms that spring to mind instead are "relatively boring" and "pretentious". There is a lot of stuff that goes on in Performance that is designed to simply not make sense. Randomness and incoherence are perhaps the best keywords to describe the philosophy of the filmmakers.
That is not to say there are not any small pleasures to be had. Mick Jagger performing a psychedelic version of "Memo from Turner" is chief among them and for reasons that have nothing to do with the stripping gangsters the scene features.
I'm including "Memo from Turner" here as it's the only scene from the film worth seeing and imagine that more than a few people out there might want to watch it without watching the whole movie. Although, thanks to the aforementioned stripping gangsters, a NSFW warning is warranted:
Speaking of Mick Jagger's performance in the film, it shows flashes of brilliance, at least outside of the scenes where he isn't too busy looking stoned. James Fox is alright I suppose. And nobody else does anything worth commenting on.
From a technical perspective, the opening scenes are the worst, with editing that jumps from scene to scene without bothering to make sense. Once things settle down after a little bit, the film becomes a little easier to understand, but by that point, the whole thing turns into a turgid mess.
Borges was a brilliant writer and elements of his philosophies and stories can be found scattered throughout. Most notably, "The Theologians", of which the ending of Performance borrows a key plot twist from. Also, the camera frequently focuses on labyrinth-esque imagery as well, which were a common motif in Borges' writings. The idea of our lives being little more than performances for outsiders, which the film relies heavily upon, can also be seen as Borgesian.
There is a certain tendency among certain groups of artists and storytellers, that I have encountered, that holds that randomness and (and thus the resulting incoherence of that randomness) are markers of original storytelling and artistic vision. This attitude can be seen most strongly in not only the filmmakers of Performance but in defenders of films like Mulloholand Drive, among others. However, it was while contemplating some of Borges works, particularly, "The Library of Babel", that a reason why this attitude is problematic occured to me.
In "The Library of Babel" Borges proposes a universe that is simply a library, in which people live, and has books that contain every possible combination of letters of a certain page length. In short, the library of Babel contains not only every possible story and nonsensical combination of letters possible. What is important to note about this, is that in the Library of Babel, that stories that are random and incoherent are going to be most common stories. In short, what I am getting at is that randomness and incoherence are not markers of originality but rather indicates that an artist or storyteller has exhausted their creative energies. Of course, I have issues with the idea that "originality" is something worth striving for to begin with, but that's an issue for another day...
Of course, I would be remiss to note that Performance does have something of a place in cinema history. The "Memo From Turner" scene would inspire the development of music videos in the eighties. Furthermore, the obviously queer gangsters that Chas starts out on the same side of, appear to have been directly inspired by The Kray Brothers organization, The Firm. John Bindon, who plays one of the gangsters, was rumored to have been an associate of The Krays. Furthermore, Performance can be seen as having influenced subsequent British gangster films, most notably those by Guy Ritchie.
Other queer elements worth commenting on include the queer subtext that develops between Chas and Turner, in addition to the instances of cross dressing.
Recommendation
This particular Performance is one best appreciated from a distance, if at all.
The Rating
** out of ****
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
Directors: Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg
Writers: Donald Cammell and Anita Pallenberg
Cast: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michèle Breton, Ann Sidney, John Bindon, Johnny Shannon, Anthony Morton, Allan Cuthbertson, Stanley Meadows
Overview
Inspired by the works of Jorge Luis Borges, this psychedelic gangster tale has a few interesting elements but is ultimately too incoherent and badly paced to be worth a full watch.
Synopsis
Chas (James Fox) is a gangster on the run after he becomes the target of an inexplicable hit gone wrong. He takes refuge in the home of retired musician Turner (Mick Jagger) and the their two opposing personalities cause the two to clash. Eventually though, they begin to take on each others identities. By the end, they are indistinguishable.
The Queering
When I took metaphysics back at SUNY Oneonta, I absolutely despised the material and lines of questioning the lone saving grace of the course was having to Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths. Due to the obtuseness of certain parts of the narratives, it took me a little while to warm up to his work. However, once I did, I found it to be some of the most provocative and intellectually stimulating material I had ever read.
Unfortunately, the only aspect of Borges captured by the filmmakers here is the obtuseness. "Provocative" and "stimulating" are far from the descriptors that could apply. The terms that spring to mind instead are "relatively boring" and "pretentious". There is a lot of stuff that goes on in Performance that is designed to simply not make sense. Randomness and incoherence are perhaps the best keywords to describe the philosophy of the filmmakers.
That is not to say there are not any small pleasures to be had. Mick Jagger performing a psychedelic version of "Memo from Turner" is chief among them and for reasons that have nothing to do with the stripping gangsters the scene features.
I'm including "Memo from Turner" here as it's the only scene from the film worth seeing and imagine that more than a few people out there might want to watch it without watching the whole movie. Although, thanks to the aforementioned stripping gangsters, a NSFW warning is warranted:
Speaking of Mick Jagger's performance in the film, it shows flashes of brilliance, at least outside of the scenes where he isn't too busy looking stoned. James Fox is alright I suppose. And nobody else does anything worth commenting on.
From a technical perspective, the opening scenes are the worst, with editing that jumps from scene to scene without bothering to make sense. Once things settle down after a little bit, the film becomes a little easier to understand, but by that point, the whole thing turns into a turgid mess.
Borges was a brilliant writer and elements of his philosophies and stories can be found scattered throughout. Most notably, "The Theologians", of which the ending of Performance borrows a key plot twist from. Also, the camera frequently focuses on labyrinth-esque imagery as well, which were a common motif in Borges' writings. The idea of our lives being little more than performances for outsiders, which the film relies heavily upon, can also be seen as Borgesian.
There is a certain tendency among certain groups of artists and storytellers, that I have encountered, that holds that randomness and (and thus the resulting incoherence of that randomness) are markers of original storytelling and artistic vision. This attitude can be seen most strongly in not only the filmmakers of Performance but in defenders of films like Mulloholand Drive, among others. However, it was while contemplating some of Borges works, particularly, "The Library of Babel", that a reason why this attitude is problematic occured to me.
In "The Library of Babel" Borges proposes a universe that is simply a library, in which people live, and has books that contain every possible combination of letters of a certain page length. In short, the library of Babel contains not only every possible story and nonsensical combination of letters possible. What is important to note about this, is that in the Library of Babel, that stories that are random and incoherent are going to be most common stories. In short, what I am getting at is that randomness and incoherence are not markers of originality but rather indicates that an artist or storyteller has exhausted their creative energies. Of course, I have issues with the idea that "originality" is something worth striving for to begin with, but that's an issue for another day...
Of course, I would be remiss to note that Performance does have something of a place in cinema history. The "Memo From Turner" scene would inspire the development of music videos in the eighties. Furthermore, the obviously queer gangsters that Chas starts out on the same side of, appear to have been directly inspired by The Kray Brothers organization, The Firm. John Bindon, who plays one of the gangsters, was rumored to have been an associate of The Krays. Furthermore, Performance can be seen as having influenced subsequent British gangster films, most notably those by Guy Ritchie.
Other queer elements worth commenting on include the queer subtext that develops between Chas and Turner, in addition to the instances of cross dressing.
Recommendation
This particular Performance is one best appreciated from a distance, if at all.
The Rating
** out of ****
Trailer
Want to find a review of a particular work? Check out the Title Index, the archive of all reviews posted listed alphabetically.
September 16, 2013
Queer Issue: Alan Turing Was a Genius Who Had a Lady Friend
I came across this article on Movie Scope today onThe Imitation Game about the life of Alan Turing, the openly gay man who cracked NAZI codes, saved thousands of lives, shortened WWII, on his way to becoming the father of computer science.
I have no idea how the movie intends to portray Turing (and frankly do not have the time to do the research) but there were a few details that jumped out at me. For starters the article points out that Kiera Knightly will play Alan Turing's "lady friend". That's nice, given that Turing was GAY, I'm sure there are plenty of ladies out there who enjoyed coordinating accessories with him. I mean, that is what gay men and ladies do together, right? Certainly, they could not just be co-workers and Knightly is simply Turing's friend (why does the term 'lady' even need to be there?) This is a movie after all, certainly the male lead is just absolutely, going to have to have fall in love with his lady friend, right?
Oh wait, Turing was GAY? But the article does not mention that at all, just that he was a victim or something of a close minded government.
I mean honestly, if someone did not know Turing was gay, they might very easily come away with impression that Turing is going to hook up with his lady friend from this article.
I have no idea how the movie intends to portray Turing (and frankly do not have the time to do the research) but there were a few details that jumped out at me. For starters the article points out that Kiera Knightly will play Alan Turing's "lady friend". That's nice, given that Turing was GAY, I'm sure there are plenty of ladies out there who enjoyed coordinating accessories with him. I mean, that is what gay men and ladies do together, right? Certainly, they could not just be co-workers and Knightly is simply Turing's friend (why does the term 'lady' even need to be there?) This is a movie after all, certainly the male lead is just absolutely, going to have to have fall in love with his lady friend, right?
Oh wait, Turing was GAY? But the article does not mention that at all, just that he was a victim or something of a close minded government.
I mean honestly, if someone did not know Turing was gay, they might very easily come away with impression that Turing is going to hook up with his lady friend from this article.
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