FILMS TO CONSIDER:
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! -Julie Newmar
IMDB
first few minutes, wherein the gaze is established:
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Hedwig and the Angry Inch
The Origin of Love, a musical interlude:
IMDB
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La Cage Aux Folles/ The Birdcage
La Cage Aux Folles: IMDB
(remade as) The Birdcage: IMDB
La Cage Aux Folles - the Diner scene, in which the camera shares a booth with the actors.
The Birdcage - the same sequence.
please note the violence inherent in the performance of masculinity.
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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
As per Gaines, have we privileged whiteness in our discussion of spectatorship, by providing visual examples that exclude, for the most part, women, especially women of color? For mainstream black women's films to consider, see Love & Basketball (IMDB) (trailer). You might want to refer to Matt's question on how the films we have watched this semester (especially this week) have challenged or upheld traditional gender (but also racial, class, and so on) norms.
Gaines, Butler, and hooks are all especially concerned with the connections between various aspects of identification: each questions the primacy of a given condition (eg race, gender, language, class, culture...) over any other. In other words, none of these theorists accepts that one position in a binary (eg male-female) is more important either than the other half of the binary, or a position in any other binary relation. For discussion, consider the various conditions of identification that inform your own spectatorial position. If, as hooks suggests, the potential for agency is grounded in opposition rather than identification, then think of some positions (of viewing) you oppose. What agencies does such opposition open up for you as a viewer? (you might think of this in terms of how you theorize spectatorship and/or in terms of how you practice looking)
Finally, in the spirit of opposition to the oppositional gaze, what value might there be in uncritical spectatorship?
observe, and report. see you thursday...
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First of all, thanks so much for posting these videos. I really think they’ll add to our discussion this week. The scene from the Birdcage really got me thinking about gender performativity and the cultural signification imprinted on the body that Judith Butler talks about in this week’s reading. After two years of grad school and three courses involved Butler’s Gender Trouble I think I finally understand what she is saying…maybe.
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning of the excerpt we read for class she described the body as a blank meaningless surface on which “signification” is imprinted. I could be off base here, but I understood “signification” here to mean what we recognize or understand a body to be. I assume she means gender, specifically in this work, because I am having trouble thinking of a corporeal signification that is culturally recognized before gender. In looking at The Birdcage clip you provided for us, we can see how the expectations and delineations of traditional gender role are rigidly imposed on bodies. At the say time, we see how genders can be performed out side of the man/woman binary. Albert must fight against his “nature” in order to fit into his appropriate gender role. If bodily signification comes from society and genealogy, how is Albert recognizable in any society? How or what imprinted Albert’s gender? Or is he in a constant precarious state forced to perform a recognizable gender, ie a straight man, when the strict heteronormative system invades his space, ie the visit from the traditional married couple. Heteronormativity, as represented by the conservation politician here, becomes the police of out-of-the-binary genders, forcing all who don’t fit to perform.