Call Me By Your Name…& Tell Me What You Really Think of this Film!

 

Call Me By Your Name is an excellent example of the failings of New Queer Cinema as outlined by Leung. Ostensibly dealing with the gay relationship between a 17 year old (Elio) and a 24 year old (Oliver) , the film is far from a realistic representation of gay youth and relationships, without even addressing the age gap. The book, on which the film was based, was written by a straight man. Therefore, it seems impossible even from the start that the book and film could capture an authentic gay experience. The film itself is clearly more concerned with aesthetic and visual appeal of the story than characterization, and prefers long, lush silences to real character building. Leung highlights the commodification of New Queer Cinema, which is a concept clearly present in CMBYN: “The apparent increase in tolerance for and visibility of queer communities merely reflects a ‘virtual equality’ that masks the absence of genuine and fundamental systemic changes. It is precisely under this climate of ‘virtual equality’ that New Queer Cinema’s once outlawed and marginalized representations of sexuality become transformed into palatable, even marketable, commodities” (Leung 2).

 

The film’s callous portrayal of a 17 year old and 24 year old not only plays into stereotypes of the predatory gay man, but also presents a titillating gay story through the age gap and general “uniqueness” of the queer storyline. Rather than developing strong gay characters with a realistic relationship, this film seeks to draw people in with the main gay relationship but then does it absolutely no justice. The movie focuses far more on the story itself than on either of the 2 main characters. The viewer gets no insight into what would seem to be the most critical aspect of the movie: Elio and Oliver’s relationship with their own homosexuality. Without any examination of their relationship towards and level of acceptance of their own sexuality, the film lacks any kind of moving, realistic portrayal of queerness.

 

The gay relationship present in the film is an exact representation of the commodifying that Leung writes about; the storyline is packaged in beautiful scenery, a lack of character building between the two gay characters, and a tragic ending all show this presentation of homosexuality as a unique film trope, making the 2 main characters and their sexuality actually more of a forethought than the main aspect of the film.

^^That’s how I felt watching the movie…!

“The One with the Football” dropped the ball

In Season 3, Episode 9 of Friends, called “The One with the Football,” Ross, Joey, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, and Rachel are celebrating Thanksgiving.  Within seconds of the episode starting, the friends are divided by stereotypical gender roles; the men, occupying the majority of the shot, are seen watching the Thanksgiving football game, while the women are shown in the background preparing dinner:

When Joey introduces the idea of the six friends playing football, it is immediately assumed that Phoebe and Rachel won’t be any good.  This sexist assumption is perpetuated by Rachel’s “humorous” inability to catch the ball.

When the friendly football game becomes men versus women, Phoebe asks, “but they’re boys! How are we going to beat a bunch of boys?”.  Further preserving this idea that men are inherently better at sports, the women resort to tactics such as flashing and embarrassing Joey and Chandler in front of an attractive woman in order to win the game.

Despite being competent football players and strategic people, Phoebe and Rachel are portrayed as being sexualized, incompetant bimbos, while Monica is constantly mocked and singled out for her competitiveness.  Meanwhile, Ross acts just as competitive and immature as Monica, and Joey and Chandler fight over an attractive woman throughout the entire episode, yet the men never experience any consequences or taunts for their competitiveness or immature behavior.  This misrepresentation and these double standards inflicted on the characters is a prime example of the male gaze, a term often used by both Laura Mulvey and bell hooks, defining “women as an image and man as a bearer of the look”  (Mulvey 33). Shows and movies are often written with male pleasure in mind; men are given the power to look and be entertained, while women are forced to be the enjoyable object being viewed.  The male gaze is obvious in this episode; the men are constantly looking at women as objects as they compete over the woman in the park, and the women constantly use their bodies as their only tactic to get ahead in football.  By degrading these women and their skills to solely what they look like and how they use their bodies, it completely takes away their agency, giving the men the power and pleasure of looking.

 

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminisms, 1975, pp. 29–40.

 

White Savior Complex in (& as a result of) “The Blind Side”

The Blind Side was released in 2009 and my racist grandmother still talks about it. She loves it. I have no doubt it will serve as talking point in future conversations between her and my four year old black baby brother.

This film capitalizes on that “Based on a True Story” affect, but again the sides of the story told are given different attention, affect, and value.

It (sorta) aims to tell the story of Michael Oher and (but definitely) the Tuohy family. Michael, a black teenager is struggling with housing insecurity and accepted into a new school shortly before his father dies. Importantly from a far, Leigh Anne Tuohy notices Michael outside one night and she invites him to sleep in their spare room. Over the course of the movie, Leigh Anne takes Michael in as much as she takes him on as a sort of project, representing the white savior complex and perpetuating its idealization to the masses.

In a movie where someone is struggling with housing and food insecurity, death of a parent, on top of every systematic piece of oppression, as is a common trend of white savior complexes in movies, the film guides viewers to empathize with the white woman saving the black child rather than the black child as an individual. This is done throughout the film.

It has been a few years since having watched the film in its entirety however I distinctly remember SO many scenes that depict a close up of Leigh Anne and her expressions as she is watching Michael from afar; from the moment she notices him outside in the cold from inside her luxury car, to when he is playing on the field and she is on the sidelines. This separation between Leigh Anne and Michael is important in facilitating the white savior complex. At the same time that it separates Leigh Anne and Michael from each other, it separates viewers from Michael further too, realigning them more closely to Leigh Anne.  It’s important to note how much of Leigh Anne’s “good deeds” are decided in these moments of separation. This includes how when her racist friend’s had “concerns” for her daughter Collin’s safety with Michael in the house, and after talking to her daughter, Collins ultimately end up being the reason Leigh Anne asks him to stay. She decides to do all of these things for Michael without ever really engaging with him.

If we look just at the above movie poster, so quickly did Michael Oher’s “extraordinary true story” become anyone’s but his own, with Quinton Aaron’s name not even making the poster credits. Michael’s story truly is “subservient to the white protagonist” as Julien Gignac discusses in their piece on white savior complexes in films with indigenous characters (or lack thereof). It quickly became Sandra Bullocks character’s “extraordinary true story” and subsequently middle-aged white women clung to it dearly. I just recently watched the 2nd season of “American Vandal” on Netflix with my brothers and the show never continues to surprise me with their surprisingly well landed satire given the plots of the season. Set in a school with only two black students, Mrs. Montgomery, the English teacher, is “obsessed” as described by other students, with DeMarcus, one of said black students. In Mrs. Montgomery’s interview for the documentary, after reading her framed poem written by DeMarcus she says:

“I think of myself as Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side. Um…And just being so connected [inhales deeply] with my students, the way Sandra was connected with, um…ah the black kid in that movie. [with a dismissive shake of the hand] He was great. Love him.”

This white savior mantra was quickly adopted by so many because everyone wanted to be Sandra Bullock (who still, despite Michael being the one to make it big and overcome, is depicted as the hero and the triumphant one), no one was actually paying attention to Michael nor his well being, nor the societal systems that were at play (racism, capitalism, education disparities etc.). And no one was paying attention to those things because again, they weren’t what viewers were made to care about, because they weren’t what would get as many viewers into the seats, as many times, and for how long that they have.

Nearly 10 years my grandmother has clung to this movie and I know why much more than she.

Castration Complex in The Handmaid’s Tale

The castration complex is the theory that man fears woman because of her lack of a phallus and the threat that he too could be castrated. This subconscious fear causes man to respond to the woman in various ways. Among other responses, it can cause the man to see and treat the woman as inferior, because of her lack, or it might evolve into the extreme sexualization of the woman so that the man’s fantasies can be imposed on her.

Mulvey writes, “The function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is twofold, she first symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and second thereby raises her child into the symbolic. Once this has been achieved, her meaning in the process is at an end, it does not last into the world of law and language except as a memory, which oscillates between memory of maternal plenitude and memory of lack.”

This theory is evident throughout the entire series of a Handmaid’s tale, but I thought the first scene in S1E9 in particular clearly showed the fear of the lack along side the adoration of maternal plenitude.

In this scene, Janine, referred to as “Of Warren,” is forced to hand over her new born child to Mr. and Mrs. Warren Putnam. After birthing Warren’s child, she is expected to wean the baby and move on to bear a child for a different family. Warren fears her because she represents tremendous loss(loss of a penis, of sexual freedom, of actual freedom, of a child, and even an eye), but at the end of the scene he also praises her because she is fertile and has given him a child. Tying into Mulvey’s analysis, Warren’s memory of Janine’s fruitfulness will truly be the only meaning of her that is left in the Putnam household once she hands over her child. Although she has no choice, Janine in turn contributes to patriarchy by giving the child over to the commander and his wife, ensuring that it will be raised in the same patriarchal society that forced her to have the child.

Media Example Rosie Joyce

As ridiculous as this might seem at first, the adult animated film Sausage Party clearly portrays some of Mulvey’s most important theories relating to pyschoanalysis and its role in feminist film analysis. First, let’s discuss the concept of scopophilia. Mulvey defines this as such: “There are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure… [and] there is pleasure in being looked at… Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexuality…”. In movies, Mulvey argues, sexual pleasure can be derived simply by looking at sexual objects on screen. Furthermore, Mulvey claims that men are the more active participants in sexual looking.

So, why is this relevant to Sausage Party? Well, aside from all of the sexual jokes and references throughout the film, there are scenes where scopophilia is actually being portrayed for the audience to see. The movie follows a male hotdog and a female hotdog bun who are dating. However, the two are unable to leave their packaging, so their relationship exists solely through sight. They are not able to touch one another and only receive sexual pleasure through looking at one another from afar, just as audiences in a movie theater receive sexual pleasure from viewing stars on the big screen. The hotdog also portrays his sexuality onto the bun far more than bun, who is portrayed as naive and unknowledgable about sex and the sexual looks placed upon her, portrays her sexuality on the hotdog.

Mulvey’s other important theory is that women in movies represent the male fear of castration. She writes, “[Woman’s] lack of a penis [implies] a threat of castration and thus unpleasure. Ultimately, the meaning of woman is sexual difference…”. Women in film must then always have male sexual partners because they are missing a fundamental part of themselves. Without the insertion of the penis, they are not whole. Women on screen are a warning to men that their penis is essential to their pleasure and success in life because they are allowed to love complete lives while those without penises must be in constant such for this missing link.

And how is castration portrayed in a movie about food? It is so clearly seen in the foods that were chosen to represent the different genders. All hotdogs, perhaps one of the most phallic foods possible, are male, while all hotdog buns, a food that has a slot specifically for a hot dog, are female. Going even further, a hotdog can be eaten without a bun. It is a complete food on its own. But no one would ever just eat a bun. The bun is nothing without the hotdog. It is incomplete and undesirable. The sexualized hotdog bun, just as human women in film, is nothing without the penis symbol, and she spends the entire movie attempting to get the hotdog to commit further to their relationship, thus ensuring she will be whole again with a penis.    

 

Media Example – Gaby Kraus

Janelle Monáe’s song and music video for “Q.U.E.E.N. feat Erykah Badu

In the beginning of the music video set in the future, Janelle Monáe, a black woman is an object in a museum, being looked at by white people, who refer to her as a ‘rebel.’ Most of Monáe’s music is centralized around this futuristic storyline set in a dystopian and capitalist city. Monáe is a robot/android which is an oppressed community. In the video you see her get “freed” by her song being played. She comes alive and starts to sing her song, becoming the subject of the music video. The video has many symbols, such as the two black men covered in white paint, which is a reverse of “Jumpin’ Jim Crow,” or black face.

Now the song itself has lyrics that speak to what we’ve been talking about in class as well. The title itself stands for queer, untouchables, emigrants, excommunicated and negroid. I will give one example of the lyrics:

 

“Add us to equations but they’ll never make us equal

She who writes the movie owns the script and the sequel

So why ain’t the stealing of my rights made illegal?

They keep us underground working hard for the greedy

But when it’s time pay they turn around and call us needy”

 

Monáe touches on a topic we have discussed in class. Just by adding a person of color or a minority doesn’t mean everything is equal. It is all about how they are developed (or not developed) and what is the gaze. This quote from the Bell-Hooks “Even when representations of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve-to enhance and maintain white woman- hood as object of the phallocentric gaze,” shows that even when black women are present in film the often are characters such as the mammy, jezebel, or other small characters that are basically just a tool used to develop white characters.