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.