Still here!

Haven't been blogging too much as I've been trying to sort the paper. It's coming along verrrrrrrrrrrry slowly but somewhat surely?

Dare I say: Kuch kuch hot hai (sp?)

D'ya ken wat-a mean?

For the transgender in these movies, femininity is a masquerade, but isn't femininity just as much of a masquerade for the women? Think of Jude's three distinct personas, the characters she interchanges throughout the film. Just because she is biologically a woman, she is credited with more authenticity in her femininity. But she's so much harder than Dil at any stage.
Dil literally has her own phallus and absolute control over it, and Jude has had control over both Fergus' physical phallus sexually and then over his manhood/power-as-a-man/fate, even metaphorically. Both "women" here represent female control of the phallus, be it their own or that of another.
Which is scarier? Why?
I don't know just yet, but I'm pondering whether it is the hidden or the overt/dominant. Because, Jude has just as much control over Dil --she could out him and ruin his life, right? So then would Fergus be able to relate to Dil better than if Dil was biologically a woman.
I still don't know.
Just an interesting half-thought that keeps popping up.

Mo' Mulvey

I've not read Mulvey in a minute, so going to go back to brass tacks, grass roots, grass tacks and brass boots and all that.
But before all that: just read an article by Alexander Doty who was my first film professor here:
"There's Something Queer Here"
A handful of interesting tidbits I can use to apply to my idea including the generally "perverse" nature of melodramas---this'll be splendabadoozy for getting me away from the analysis of one genre just. Also snippets on differentiating heterosexual and straight: sweet.
Alrighty, bang on I shall. Offski for some more.

Also:

Getting a touch distracted with the horror film aspect. I've thought maybe my topic was a wee bit broad but fancied it'd be alright if I used specific enough examples. If it explodes over then I have a couple different directions I can reign in with, orrrrrrr not. Yeah.
But mostly: domesticated woman and castrating-female ---> biological women
M-to-F as stronger and less typically effeminate in terms of narrative power
Alright.

Having mentioned horror: I don't want to focus on the horror aspect of the transexxual, although that might be all but impossible. Yeah, there's the "Oh-balls-you-have-balls" scene in "The Crying Game." And yes, in "Psycho," the fellow does dress up as his mum and kill folks. And sure, " The Silence of the Lambs"--maybe that is a wee bit weird skinning women to make a suit for yourself.
But I want to focus on the human, gender-codings, not the ohmygoshshe'sgotapenisandaknife aspect of it.
The need to be loved, the maternal instinct, the self-conciousness all women feel, the over-protective, jealous mother, etc.

To watch or not to watch

I've rewatched a couple of the movies on my list from an earlier post.
I think I'm going not nix "The Bird Cage" as it's mostly just not my cup of tea. Although there are several billion parallels I can draw between that and other films like "Transamerica" and "Some Like it Hot."
I've not quite made up my mind about "Hedwig" as it really just annoys me as a movie. I think I've overdosed on "transgressive" film and all the "ooh" "aah" factors therein. So I'm going to make myself watch again (even though it's about as much as fun as pulling teeth on your birthday in a dark room) and focus on what I can bring to my thesis.

ADD but you'd appreciate it

ILL ILU

Dear Inter-library Loan,

Thank you for bringing me "Nobody Wants to Be a Man Anymore?" by Elisabeth Zimmer. I will now read it.

Post-structurally yours,

Hannah Queer-This Mesouani

Just letting you know...

I may never do work again.

www.peopleofwalmart.com

Sorry.

blonde men in nightgowns

Unmasking Buffalo Bill: Interpretive Controversy and "The Silence of the Lambs" by Kendall R. Phillips

This article was almost as much fun as dodging taxes.

But only almost.

It's everywhere

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQWt3oMids&feature=fvst

The song more than the video.

You get it.

Further shenanigans

• Reading

Unmasking Buffalo Bill: Interpretive Controversy and "The Silence of the Lambs" by Kendall R. Phillips

It's gunna be a good'un I feel.

• Have read

"Dark Desires: Male masochism in the horror film" by Barbara Creed (that's chapter 6 in the best book ever, oh yes)

and

"Gender, Genre Argento" by Adam Knee

• Have re-read

"Her body, Himself" by Carol J. Clover.

Got a fair chunk of goodness from Creed and Knee, only a wee bit of magic going on with Clover, but back to Phillips I go!

Klaus = best name ever

Just read most of:

• From "Taboo Parlor" to Porn and Passing: An Interview with Monika Treut

• by Gerd Gemünden, Alice Kuzniar, Klaus Phillips and Monika Treut

Fairly interesting but not of much use to me. I'm going to focus on M-to-F as I said, so that means ix-nay on "Boys Don't Cry"-ay, as well.

Crisis averted question mark?

Right.

Techno-death avoided. (OIT = heroes)

Existential-angst going strong.

I've been at that point for a couple weeks now where if I think about something for more than twenty minutes it becomes cliche in my own head and I think there's nothing new to say.

I'm fair certain that my topic's still worth writing about, but my little ADD brain is already hankering after something new to write about.

Reading a bunch of pseudo-related articles at the mo like this one by Miriam Hansen called "Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship." Whilst I know it's not going to be filled with quotes-a-plenty, there's always wee things that bring it back to my topic, and I like the movie-specific recaps of Lacan's and Mulvey's theories and such.

Favourite quote from that article:

“the female spectator ends up being caught in a conflict ‘between the deep blue sea of passive femininity and the devil of regressive masculinity’” (Hansen 8)

Now there's some imagery, and it sort of roundabout fits with the idea of the alternative voyeurism of the transexxual body. This other article, "I dream of Jeannie" (not really useful to me, but go Team Read-Everything) chats about "the transexxual striptease as scientific display." This is sort of gender neutral also. Conventional male-narrative-power plus female-command-of-the-screen: makes for a pretty unstoppable character. And a lengthier-than-thou paper.

Gotta reign it in, methinks.

Really now?

My word document with all my quotes and things: frozen.

Frozen.

Revolving rainbow of doom. (I'm on a Mac wotsit.)

No.

No.

It's fine.

...

I would chuck myself into a river but

a) I go to Muhlenberg, and river I have not.

and

b) I just dropped my phone in the loo (kljnbhyhjkdrjsnm!!!) and refuse to meet that same fate.

...

*sigh*

And how could I forget:

Thought you might like this, sort of fits in with everything ever from class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TOve6swe7M

And so on...

Just read an article called Fear of the Trannies--nothing of real use for my paper, but eh well!

Did have a funny realisation though during yet another impromptu nap---

Last semester I had apparently already made my rendition of Kissed before having seen it.

I shall now call it Kissed 2.0-1.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1134776773223

Cheers!

"It's only a piece of meat"

Reading the article called "it's only a piece of meat," you know the one--comparing The Crying Game and Madame Butterfly.

Anyhoo, it's chatting about how femininity is a spectacle put on by women just as much as the men aka Dil.

This supports my argument, maybe a little too much so, but only in places so I'm still going to run with it.

Anyhoo again, the article's got this nifty little analysis of Jude's masquerade from blonde-bombshell, to biker-chick, to man-woman-ass-kicker and how that parallels Dil's changes.

Uhh....don't you hate it when you think of something only to read that someone else has had the same thing? Damn literacy.

But touche sir "doing work in a vaccuum."

No worries, I can use this to help my paper along so read on I shall!

This is just cos I can...

Wouldn't that hurt?

Another other thing!

It's like dominoes up in this blog----

I just reminded myself of something from off Silence of the Lambs. Know how he says, "We covet what we see every day"?

That could mean either wanting to get with the neighbour's wife or flat out be her.

I had to read this book called "The Dread of Difference" back in the day, and this fellow Christopher Sharrett wrote about "Girard's notion that all interchange, all language, all systems of belief spring from the imitative desire to possess what the Other has, to become a double to the Other, to destroy the Other as mimetic desire inevitably degenerates into rivalry and violence." (257)

There ya go, someone smart I can use to back me up.

"Acknowledging the Other by its obliteration"--even when one is trying to be that other.

One other thing:

The same thing (below from about three seconds ago) applies to Psycho, another M-to-F film I think I could use.

All of the negative stereotypes of castrating mother come to mind with Mrs. Bates. Of course, Mrs. Bates only still exists in Norman's mind, but that does not make her actions any less real. I could whip out some Walter Lipmann theory here from my Mass Persuasion and Propaganda class to ground that last statement but saying that even when folks react to a fabricated reality (aka, they're batty) the effects their actions have on the real world are no less real, regardless of the initial stimuli that prompted them.

But back to Mama-Bates. She is threatened by any women that come into Norman's life, just as either Dil or Jude would be. (recap: Dil's "a man," and Jude's a bit too hard for her own good.)

So by striving to protect their femininity, all these women--real or not-- condemn themselves in conventional film lingo and condemn narratively any real women that are around them.

The only untouched characters are the men who stay men.

Hmm. OK.

More than just a pickle...

Now, I've been thinking....

Remember how Dil kills what's-her-nuts (hang on, IMDB check) oh yeah, Jude?

When Dil kills Jude, it's the classic end-of-the-other-woman, although it's debatable which qualifies as "other" and which qualifies as "woman"....but let's save that for a minute.

So, Dil kills Jude. Jealousy? Of Fergus? Or of Jude being a lady? Either would've killed t'other, therefore either would've been the castrating female. Here the "phallus" (aka the symbol of power, or that which could have power over Fergus) is the vagina, an inverted phallus, yes, but powerful nonetheless.

Dil's penis is a sybmol of her weakeness--her failing as a woman--back to my "lack of lack" theory. And Jude's overall man-nish, abrasive-y, not-very-nice-ness is her masculine-coded failing as a woman. If she were sweet and bread-and-butter than Fergus would be all about her. Just as if Dil had lady-bits going on down under, Fergus would be chuffed as could be to be with her.

So the phallus here is the vagina, and the castrating woman (ok, not quite mother) is after anything that challenges her own femininity as opposed to that which defines another's masculinity. It is anything that labels her (not another) as masculine that must go, because in the case of trying to get with Fergus, the more masculine the less desirable.

So" lack of a lack" bad. "Lack" good.

D'you ken what I mean?

Binaries. AHH.

So, you know how every class ever talks about patriarchy and "the system" or "the man."

Normative this and subversive that, all that la-de-da.

Well, we were all going on about how by challenging the norm--the conventional categorisations of man-woman, queer-straight, etc-- one upholds it. In order to talk about femininity one needs masculinity, and in order to talk about feminism one has to make mention of patriarchy and such.

So, by challenging the norm, you are upholding it, merely by fact of mentioning it.

But doesn't that mean by upholding a norm (patriarchy's constant reaffirmation of its prowess) it challenges itself. As in, if a norm was so right or so secure then it could ignore the subversive, that which is against it.

You have to speak "the enemy's" language in order to pick a fight.

But you wouldn't pick a fight unless you felt there was something to defend.

I mention this in reference to films that seem to condemn non-conventional sex and sexuality as opposed to those that portray them positively.

These are just my ramblings at the moment, not sure how they fit in with anything. I did just watch Harold and Maude, though, gooooood movie. That doesn't fit in with anything either, but thought I'd share. Cheers!

...ooh, well here's a thought

Doing some reading and this Freud quote came up:

"The idea of a woman with a penis returns in later life, in the dreams of adults: the dreamer, in a state of nocturnal sexual excitation, will throw a woman down, strip her and prepare for intercourse-- and then, in place of the female genitals, he beholds a well-developed penis and breaks off the dream and the excitation."

---from "On the Sexual Theories of Children"

Now, this is a bit Fergus and Dil.

Except Fergus isn't as put-off as he'd like to have Dil think, he sticks about.

Could this be a wee bit of narcissm?

And back to me ramblings of men-making-better-women-than-women....vanity again?

This plus the whole gender-dysphoria bit (watched Transamerica last week---should've posted on it then, but *sigh*)....doesn't quite fit? Or does it?

Just a thought.

I like to movie-move-it.

Some films I'm interested in chatting about:

The Crying Game

Transamerica

Silence of the Lambs

Boys Don't Cry

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Better Than Chocolate

The World According to Garp

Todo Sobre Mi Madre

To Wong Foo: Thanks for everything Julie Newmar

The Bird Cage

Some Like it Hot

There's one or two more I had in mind and I'm not sure which of the above I'll be using how much if any of--but there ya go!

Alrighty, then.

I feel like a slow waitress in the wrong shoes.

But still, one thesis, coming up.

I want to talk about M-to-F transexuals on film and how by disavowing stereotypical male codings on screen, these movies propagate all sorts of negative stereotypical portrayals of females.

This sounds convoluted only because it's multi-faceted, but here goes.

Male characters are typically coded with all the trimmings of strong machismo, so one may assume that a man's pursuit of womanhood would render them weaker/inferior/what-have-you and bump up the typical codings of women. But from the few films I've seen, this does not make womanhood desireable or praised as men make better women than women.

Think Dil.

Going back to that, remember my comment (maybe?) on the transexual M-to-F "woman"--her "lack of a lack is more of a lack" than a "real" woman's "lack" aka vagina. This causes the "real" females around transexuals to carry the burden of the usual castrating female malarkey, except in this event, her castration is of the man's identity as woman.

To try and sum it up, films on transexuals disaffirm typical codings of males and masculinity, but re-affirm conventional (mostly negative) codings of concepts of femininity.

BAMM.

Freud vs. Porn

The following post is a response to reading:

• The Pornographic Image and the Practice of Film Theory

• Stephen Prince
• Cinema Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Winter, 1988), pp. 27-39
• Published by: University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of "Masculinity and Film" (and this will not surprise you) is "man-bits." Every film class ever touches upon the patriarchal context of every film ever's creation: it all comes down to a man's down-under....doesn't it?
The focus of masculinity's effect on film is a filmic focus of various portrayals of feminitity. Heteronormative film typically caters to men who like to look at women, and what more extreme scopophilic tendency does film have than to lend itself to not merely a voyeuristic, but a pornographic gaze.
Pornography typically emphasises "looking" over narrative, so one could assume that conventional film theories on the male-gaze would apply extra to this filmic medium. This assumption prompted me to do a wee bit of research on men in porn and whether or not that does or does not deviate from the Mulvey, Lacan and Freud schools of thought.
Prince begins his article by attempting to challenge the "shortcomings of post-structuralist, psychoanalytic account[s] of sexual representation." Now, this may be over my head, but it looks like he's picking fights with theoretical conventions that easily diagnose the male-gaze and its castration fear a la Mulvey.
I thought he made an interesting point that a problem of film theory is that is dismisses the object of its study. He gave an interesting example of the lady who studied and theorised on porn in a paper without ever citing a specific film or image.
Before Prince totally banishes Lacan and Freud from the realms of analysing porn, he takes their slant and likens all film to an analog-code; he mentions the film-as-dream idea and how that lends itself to (theoretical) interpretation. Prince also handily recaps Freud's theory that all sexuality begins as perverse (because it is objectless and auto-erotic --much like porn, no?) and, according to heteronormative standards, sexuality is like a journey to the "morally OK" man + woman, and one must be wary that they do not stray along this path to heteronormative monogamy.
Prince then goes on to explain the different usages of the notion of the fetish. When I first learned about Mulvey and her take on fetishism and the fear-of-castration, I was confused by the disjunct of the word 'fetish' that Prince here points out. Freud and co. do not have a place in pornographic analysis (according to Prince) because of the use of the filmic fetish.
Prince quotes "the iconicity of the female disavows the threat of the castration signifier" and recalls conventional film theory which states that the female as "signifier of threat or anxiety or castration within a phallocentric order will generate textual strategies (fetishisms) to contain this threat." This completely goes against the pornographic definition of a fetish and pornography's tendency to highlight, emphasise, zoom-in-on and absolutely flaunt images of female genitalia for male viewing pleasure. According to Prince's take on Mulvey's theory, men who watch graphic pornography would be horrified by the female-lack as opposed to aroused by it.
This is the main paradox of the application of conventional theory to pornography: porn centres around images of the vagina whereas Hollywood film completely denies them.
According to Prince, the term 'fetishism' has evolved into 'scopophilia,' a deviation from its intended meaning when used by Mulvey in her paper.
Freud would also have to condemn pornography as perverse, according to Prince, as Freud believed all sexuality to be driven by impulses of looking and cruelty, therefore pornography would be an extreme case of film based upon "pain and punishment." So...film is mean? And porn's just the meanest?
Prince catches himself by harkening back to his earlier claim that the theory must not ignore the subject about which it is theorising. But to prove any theory about porn is nigh impossible due to the sheer volume and diversity of pornography created. However, Prince does prove a point.
Prince successfully disproves certain assumptions that conventional (aka Mulvey, Lacan, Freud) film theories by applying them to pornography where they have no place, seemingly.
Prince disproves the assumed 'centrality of male sexuality and the male gaze' by using empirical data. Conventional theorists would say that the female form on screen is there for male scopophilic pleasure, even in lesbian porn where the male 'presence' is inserted through the use of sex toys and such, and through the seeming 'goal' or pornography being male penetration of the film. Prince calls upon a UPenn study that showed that only 29% of lesbian porn used male-coded sex toys and only 71% of all pornography studied ended in penetration. Therefore the assumed male-viewer does not 'get his way' as he would with conventional cinema.
The male gaze is also ignored by further statistics which show that males disrobe on screen more than females and that there is almost equal initiation of sex by the male and the not-so-castrating female on screen. Conventional theory says that "man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like" but pornography shows that this is not universally true.
Whilst Prince's argument is a brave one, he does, in my opinion, a good job of giving film theory a run for its money. I was most interested by one of his final claims that film theorists should assume an empirical lense when approaching the study of film. Of course, any theory or hypothesis needs evidence, but his theories are a good reminder to study a variety and a volume of film before claiming any generalised 'truths' about the structure, purpose of representations of film.