Liberation vs Assimilation in Queer Cinema

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This is really good, and the Axis that Rowan presents is actually really useful, the focus on Quantitative analysis for representation Dominates the Discourse, this more Qualitative Approach to representation is what we need.

Her point about dragon prince really got to me, since I was one of the people who praised the show for doing so, and it seemed consistent with the showrunners

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/ComradeMichelle 📅︎︎ Aug 22 2019 🗫︎ replies
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- In the first video in this series, I talked about queer cinema and its relationship to mainstream film, and essentially concluded that, as a single descriptor, it isn't really that useful in measuring the kind and quality of impact that an LGBT film is having. Just simply being mainstream doesn't really tell us that much. So in this second video what I wanna do is have a look at a new way that we can visualise LGBT movies and their impact by plotting them on a two-axis, four-quadrant graph. Stay with me. There is no maths in this. It's just a good way of visualising. So films and shows with LGBTQ+ characters can have the exact genre, even the exact same story, and still be different in terms of how they treat that representation. We can see a difference, I think, between two kinds of representation that we might strive for, and this is the basis of my first axis. Let's take, for example, the classic genre of the sitcom. The first season of "Modern Family" introduced us to three couples, but fans quickly noticed the discrepancy between them. Unlike their straight counterparts, the gay couple Cam and Mitchell were less physically affectionate and specifically had never kissed each other on screen. There was a lot of backlash after this first season, and in the second season Cam and Mitchell were allowed to kiss. The episode in which it finally happens is specifically around Mitchell's issues with public displays of affection. In the show, it's explained away as to with his father's emotional unavailability. - Jay, he's your son, he's a mess! - Oh, come on, now. - We don't have to do that, it's-- - Yes, you do! - Oh, why? - Come on, come on, do it! (all clamouring) - All right, all right, shut up! Mitch, get over here. - What, now, well, I feel weird. - Don't be coy, what are you waiting for, a box of chocolates? Let's do this. (applauding) - [Cam] That's the sweetest thing I've ever seen. - All right, and now, because I never wanna hear this again. You. - Aw. - Not you. - [Claire] Oh, Daddy, I love you. (kisses) (Jay sighs) - The kiss when it happened was in the background of the scene. (Jay sighs) And I think that this really goes to show to me that the excuse given by the writers that they were always planning on having the couple kiss and it just happened to be in the second season because of the natural progress of the show, doesn't really hold much water. What they were forced to do within the narrative of the show was explain away why the gay characters had been treated with such double standards by claiming that Mitchell just didn't like public displays of affection, and so it was written into the characters that this hadn't happened, rather than acknowledging that maybe it was affected by what was going on externally with our society. If this had happened within season one, this kiss in the background would've been an interesting statement, the idea that, you know, gay people kissing shouldn't be this big momentous occasion on the show or a very special episode, it should just be littered in the background. It's just the background noise of our society, it's normal. But by waiting an entire season to do it, it kind of just falls flat. Compare this with another sitcom with queer characters, "One Day at a Time." This show includes a teenage lesbian activist character with a group of like-minded friends and a non-binary significant other after coming out at the end of season one. Elena's coming out story is knowingly linked to the double standards that exist within society, particularly across genders and sexualities. Elena's mother discovers lesbian porn on the family computer and immediately expects it to be Elena's brother who has been looking at it. Sex, relationships, and dating all dealt with in Elena's storyline in a very similar way to all of the straight characters on the show. On top of this, we also get some LGBT-specific issues, some more serious, like the issue of homophobia within your family, but some more lighthearted, like the idea of what do you call your significant other if they're non-binary and don't wanna be called girlfriend or boyfriend? So obviously the first season of "Modern Family" was aired quite a number of years before the first season of "One Day at a Time." I do think that we've made great progress since then. But I also don't think that the good representation on "One Day at a Time" is a given in today's landscape. And I think when we have a look at what was going on behind the scenes on the show, we start to have an idea about why this became something that was so well-done. Michelle Badillo and Becky Mann, two writers on the show, shared their coming out stories with the writers room when they were first starting to script the show. And the sitcom's showrunner Mike Royce's daughter came out to him around the same time. This had a marked impact on the way that he looked at the series. He said, "The things the writers were talking about, "their own experiences, "made me understand things I was seeing "in my own life with her. "So I was crying a lot, not from sadness, "but from being emotional." His fellow showrunner Gloria Calderon Kellett remembers, "He was going through it in real time "and we wanted to talk about it. "What's beautiful about Mike "is that he wanted to do everything right. "How do I do this right? "How do I parent a gay kid "so she says that her coming out was amazing? "That's a different perspective than I'd ever heard." This commitment to doing it right from the beginning can be compared to the attitude of "Modern Family's" showrunners, who immediately denied that they had done anything wrong and that this was all part of the plan to begin with, when the double standards in their show revealed themselves. That's not to say that they consciously and deliberately chose to have this double standard. But I think there seems to be a real lack of critical engagement with what might have unconsciously swayed them in that direction. So we can see both shows have LGBTQ+ representation, but they deal with it in very different ways. And we can see this happen even with the exact same story. Take the film "The Birdcage" and the musical "La Cage aux Folles," for example. They're both based on the same source material, and ostensibly on the surface tell the same story, just with slightly different names. As we discussed then for clarity's sake, I'm gonna use the names from the musical. But the different way in which they deal with the conflict and character moments within the story betrays a difference of attitude they have towards the queerness at the heart of the tale. Both the film and the musical tell the story of a gay couple, a nightclub owner, Georges, and his partner and star drag queen Albin. The story starts when their adult son Jean-Michel comes back home to tell them he's engaged. However, his fiancee Anne is the daughter of a notoriously conservative couple, and they want to come and meet his parents, who they assume to be heterosexual, before they will agree to the marriage. Although Georges, Jean-Michel's biological father, can fake straight, he realises that Albin won't be able to. And so, a secret plan is hatched without Albin's knowledge to send him away for the night when the parents are coming over, and then get the biological mother to come back and kind of play straight, happy families just for that night to try and make the wedding day through. The centrepiece song of the musical "La Cage aux Folles" is an anthem written by an openly gay man called "I Am What I Am." ♪ I ♪ ♪ Am ♪ ♪ What I am ♪ ♪ I am my own special creation ♪ It's the last song before the first act finale, an absolutely emotional show-stopping number. It's after Albin finds out about the plan, and it's out of utter defiance at a partner and a son that would ask him to just disappear as if he doesn't exist. The song talks about the way in which his femininity and queerness are an intrinsic part of who he is, and it's the ultimate F-U to people who would consider the plan for even a second. ♪ It's one life ♪ ♪ And there's no return and no deposit ♪ ♪ One life ♪ ♪ So it's time to open up your closet ♪ ♪ Life's not worth a damn ♪ ♪ Till you can say ♪ ♪ Hey, world ♪ ♪ I am ♪ ♪ What I am ♪ Most importantly, in the musical the audience is fully on his side. This is in direct contrast to the film "The Birdcage," in which the audience is often asked to laugh at the Albin character, because being a flamboyant game man is just kind of inherently funny. The film really doesn't do a very good job in expressing the devastation that Albin feels. It kind of seems more preoccupied with this archetypal, hysterical gay man and the comedy that might come from it. - I'm hideous! Hideous, fat and hideous! (sobs) I've endured such pain! - I know, honey, it's gonna pass. - Oh, no, it'll never pass! I hate my life! Oh! - [Armand] Hey, look. There is a packed house out there! - That's all I am to you, isn't it, a meal ticket? - If you wanna hear more about that, I've actually done a full-length podcast episode with Jazza John, my cohost on the Queer Movie Podcast, so I'll leave it in the description if you're interested in learning a little bit more about "The Birdcage," in particular. In musicals there's often this sort of point of view song that the main character will sing, often just to themselves and to the audience, which explores something that they want or they need or an element of their character. In "La Cage," this is Albin's song "Put a Little More Mascara On." This essentially explains the appeal of drag to him. And it's not pandering to a straight audience. During this song he doesn't explain it as a sort of softly, softly way of gaining acceptance from a straight audience, nor is it kind of over the top that you're meant to laugh at him being effeminate or flamboyant. Instead, he's allowed to be angry and sad and unashamed all at the same time. ♪ Once again I'm a little depressed ♪ ♪ By the tired old face that I see ♪ ♪ Once again it is time to be someone ♪ ♪ Who's anyone other than me ♪ ♪ With a rare combination ♪ ♪ Of girlish excitement and manly restraint ♪ ♪ I position my precious assortment ♪ ♪ Of powders and pencils and paint ♪ But as well as queer angle within the musical you also have multiple love songs between these two men, some of what I think are the most understated and beautiful love songs in musical theatre. Really unlike in the film, in the musical Georges very quickly realises how awful the plan was and completely sticks up for Albin in the song "Look Over There." ♪ How often is someone concerned ♪ ♪ With the tiniest thread of your life ♪ ♪ Concerned with whatever you feel ♪ ♪ And whatever you touch ♪ ♪ Look over there ♪ ♪ Look over there ♪ ♪ Somebody cares that much ♪ And their son Jean-Michel also realises how awful it was and ends up being utterly ashamed, again, in a way the film doesn't really portray, in the "Look Over There" reprise. In the film "The Birdcage" the two men never kiss. They never say "I love you." In fact, I don't think the Georges character really sticks up for the Albin character at all. When you look at these two pieces of media, on the surface they seem like they're the same. They're telling the same story. They might even seem to have the same message. But when you dig even a little bit deeper, you realise that these differences in representation are pretty stark, and for me there is nothing that compounds this more than the ending of each of each of them. In "La Cage," the very end song is the love refrain that has been going through this entire musical between these two men. The rest of the characters leave the stage, it's just those two. They go up the stairs upstage, and they share a kiss, and the curtain closes. They are the last things that we see. "The Birdcage" movie, on the other hand, ends with the wedding between the son and the daughter-in-law, and ends on a freeze-frame of them kissing. That's what you're left with. The end of the musical really tries to emphasise the idea itself of acceptance and of mutual support and love. And the ending of the film seems to be emphasising I guess how the surface level plot line of the straight boy who wanted to marry a straight woman was resolved at the end? Now, make no mistake, "The Birdcage" and "Modern Family" are both extremely successful and celebrated. They aren't bad pieces of media at all. And a lot of people would say that it's the overall message that counts, that the idea that they have exposed straight people to queer characters should be enough. What I do think we can acknowledge is the difference in the way they approach representation and the way in which "One Day at a Time" or "La Cage" has. And this difference is the first axes, assimilation versus liberation. Because this is an axis, we have to acknowledge that this isn't black and white. You aren't just here or there. You can be plotted across anywhere on that line. So what kind of thing would we count along the assimilation part of this spectrum? Well, they often fall into three kind of categories. One, they might be sort of safe and sentimental and careful not to upset straight audiences. Two, they might dig into extreme suffering of LGBT characters to promote empathy from the straight audience. Or three, they'll be using gay characters purely as comic relief. All three will often avoid having straight or cis audiences confront their own prejudice or biases by making the villains exaggeratedly so or gay themselves. Sometimes these films will be focused on an LGBT person but will have them as part of an ensemble at large, which isolates them from an LGBT community and stops the film really having to go very far in looking at what that community looks like. They'll often try and make queerness universal, kind of very much digging into the idea of like, "we're all the same" mentality. It's very much the film embodiment of that sort of "Love Is Love" slogan, which I see very similar to the whole, "I don't even see colour," where you are attempting to broadcast acceptance while not actually being interested in the particular nuances or the joys or the experiences or the legalities of being an LGBTQ+ person. Because of this big focus on normalising, you'll kind of remove any differences that you might have and try and slot LGBT people into the traditional cis and heterosexual narratives, essentially making them the Cool Girl of sexuality on screen. - [Amy Voiceover] Cool Girl is game, Cool Girl is fun. Cool Girl never gets angry at her man. She only smiles in a chagrined, loving manner. - An then on the other side of the spectrum we have this liberation kind of area. These are more likely to made by queer creators or with queer people at the heart of the process or the subject matter. Because traditionally this isn't necessarily the kind of representation that major studios have been investing in, when we look at this type of queer cinema, historically it's probably gonna have a lower budget, and the quality maybe won't be as good. But they'll probably be much more unapologetic in the way that they deal with queer issues and experiences, a lot less kind of censored or palatable. They might be engaging with conversations around queerness that happen within the community, or be focused on a hyper-personal story from that particular filmmaker's life. Almost always we're gonna have an LGBT character as the lead or as multiple leads rather than one person in an ensemble of straight characters. It's not necessarily that assimilation films are bad and liberation films are good. There are a lot of liberation-based films that have not good scripts or good acting. I have watched enough straight-to-DVD queer cinema to know that. In the way in which it deals with LGBT stories and identities, for me, the liberation stuff comes up top. But both are better than the alternative, which is open condemnation. So this first axis is condemnation through to assimilation through to liberation. But this doesn't show us the whole picture. So let's look at the second axis. There's a difference between incidental LGBT characters and a queer-focused story. A side character, parents of a teen protagonist, or one character in an ensemble are all incidental. - I'm definitely not turning gay. - Be neither. (upbeat dance music) - Oh, it could be a lot of fun! Paul made a police formation dance team here last week. What a blast! - [Rowan] Whereas a main character in a non-ensemble film, a group of queer leads, and exploring queer issues, are all queer-focused. - No, I haven't been back there in 16 years. - Why not? - Well, let's just say there isn't always a welcome in the hillsides. Shall I get you the phone book? - Well, what's the worst that could happen? - Oh, hello! I represent a bunch of screaming homosexuals! - May I inquire about your communal baths? (all laugh) - What's that gonna do us, Johnny? - Oh, nothing, I'd just like to inquire. (all laugh) (overlapping chatter) - Ah, thank you! All right, hey! If we're gonna do this, we need to take it seriously. Come here. - Both kinds of films have their own purpose, but just to get it out there at the beginning, I prefer the more focused ones. And so that second axis is invisible, incidental, and focused. So we can have films which are focused on LGBT characters, but which condemn them within the narrative. Or films with only incidental or secondary representation, but which allows that character in the small place that they hold within a film to dig into the queer experience in a more in-depth way. They may also be children's films which use metaphor to dig into the queer experience while not being able to visibly show queer characters on screen. Or examples of queer-catching in film, where in the film's marketing they will announce that there is a queer character who doesn't actually seem to be visible on screen. Where a film falls on this graph is not a mark of quality, but it's a helpful way of referencing the impact the film has beyond just being popular or mainstream. A lot of statistics around LGBT representation focus on percentages. You know, what percentage of the characters on mainstream TV are lesbians? How many trans characters do we have on major networks? That kind of thing. Without necessarily being able to dig into the quality of representation. In the age of representation where we are now, I do think that incidental representation often gets overly praised. It kind of feels like the suggestion that we should just be grateful for any queer character to turn up, no matter how small the role is or what kind of character they are. The Netflix animated children's show "The Dragon Prince" has recently gotten praise for showing a queer character at all, even though they're a side character's parents who die before the start of the show and who are only shown in a flashback across a couple of episodes. We're so starved for representation that this is seen as a big deal. Because it is a big deal. To see queer characters on a children's show still feels revolutionary, even though we know that it shouldn't. Like in most issues of our representation, I think most of us can see where we should be, and it feels frustrating to be so far behind. So this is the question, do we lean into this and celebrate this kind of representation, even if they are minor characters and dead? Do we take away from potential progress by criticising the issues we have with that? I think a lot of people are worried about this type of criticism, because they see it as playing into the hands of the people in power who may be uninvested in queer stories being told at all. A lot of people are worried that it might be used as an excuse to quash any progress in the future. So, for example, if you have a mainstream film, and it casts a cis man to play a trans woman, there's a worry that if you decide to boycott that film, the powers that be will not see it for what it is, which is a boycott because you have a man playing the role of a trans woman, but instead will just simply say, "Well, trans stories don't sell." Should we have to suffer through bad, minimal, or inaccurate representation just for the hope that in the future the representation might be better? Some people say, "Yes, be grateful, take what you're given "and don't bite the hand that feeds you." But other people question, "Well, how will they know "that that representation is bad, minimal, or incomplete "if no one talks about it?" It's a tricky one because individual voices sometimes feel powerless. But with the vastness of the internet, it means that even the mildest criticism can feel overwhelming when so many people are voicing it. Showrunners, writers, and directors can feel attacked and defensive about a piece of feedback given online by a great many people who are anonymous, when one-on-one that might have seemed like pretty mild and reasonable criticism that they'd have been able to listen to and discuss. And so it kind of becomes a PR issue rather than a story issue. Similarly, in the way in which the internet works in terms of entertainment news or commentary journalism, something which is treated in frustration by one person may be used in an article to describe the way the LGBT community feels about a film. Tweets that are meant to vent personal frustrations become about outraged fans and, "The LGBT community has something to say about this." YouTuber Sarah Z recently made a video about the idea that marginalised creators often face a harsher level of criticism and call-out culture. - On one hand we do tend to feel as though we have a closer personal relationship with small indie creators, which can lead to us feeling even more betrayed when those creators let us down in some ways. But there's also something very real to be said about how our own subconscious biases can play into who we choose to criticise and for what reasons. - She points out that there's a difference between stories created by marginalised people, which include tropes and stereotypical elements because they reflect on the lived experience of that person and can be treated with more nuance, and the kind of stories by non-marginalized people that might include those tropes and stereotypes, but often with little nuance and only because they've seen them played out on screen before. This isn't to say that cis and straight people can't write LGBTQ+ characters or stories. Of course they can. It's just that they need to do research, in the same way that you would when you are writing anything. If you have a character with a job you've never done, you'd need to do that research. But I think where we often fall down in terms of marginalised identities is that the type of research that's done is looking at books or looking at films or TV which was in turn created by straight and cis people. And that, again, creates this cycle where the same tropes and stereotypes are recycled without people actually going and researching with first-hand sources and talking to people who actually hold those identities. Sometimes there are truths behind the stereotypes. Some gay men are effeminate, some bisexual people are promiscuous, and sometimes queer people are killed. But there is a difference between using these as presupposed consistencies across an identity, just because that's what you've always seen on screen, versus looking at them as individual cases with a three-dimensional personality beyond that. Is your gay character effeminate because it's an easy joke, you've seen it that way before, or it's a seemingly really easy indicator of his sexuality? Or are you going to allow that character to explore what the experience of being an effeminate gay man is in the society that the character is living in? To have layers, to be vulnerable? To understand the strength that it takes to exist beyond a very narrow idea of gender and sexuality? Are you gonna give him other gay people to interact with? Are you engaging with people in real life who have this experience in the same way that you might engage with nurses or doctors if that was the job that your character had? Are you making a queer character die on screen because you think it will be shocking? Because you think queer people just have sad lives? Because you haven't done your research and haven't heard of the Bury Your Gays trope and therefore think it's no big deal? Or because it's a way for your straight characters to learn a very important lesson about the importance of love and acceptance? Or are you engaging with a personal experience with queer death? Are you channelling a queer rage at past and current injustices? Are you trying to find the most respectful and least painful way of acknowledging the high murder rate across the globe of trans women of colour, so as not to erase that experience, without using it as a way that is exploitative, making sure it isn't gratuitous or fetishized? Something that Sarah didn't go into but I think is an important distinction, specifically within LGBT creators and the criticism they face, is that being LGBTQ+, for a lot of people, is a kind of invisible minority. That you can't know someone is LGBTQ+ unless they tell you they are. And because being queer is still seen as something that people should be ashamed about and that often is kept secret, it means that we can't assume that just asking someone is going to be enough for them to disclose it to you. So when we're looking at a piece of media created by someone who hasn't said that they're LGBTQ+, do we take it at face value and just assume that they aren't? Or do we always leave room for the possibility that they could be LGBTQ+ but just closeted? We're in a situation where we have to kind of treat everyone as if they might secretly be LGBT, or treat creators who haven't said they're LGBT as if they aren't, and only acknowledge in our criticism the personal experiences of those who are out. Because asking a creator directly if they are LGBTQ+ runs the risk of either having to out themselves or to lie to you. It's an impossible situation which for me calls for a more nuanced and individualistic approach than just these broad brushstrokes. When we see so few portrayals, every portrayal that we do see seems like it has to be saying something, it has to be representative of an entire community, because so often it's the first or the only of its kind. And this is why with the axis I've created what I'm interested in is the impact. I always talk about the idea that representation isn't true representation unless it can be seen in the piece of media itself, understood by its target audience, and that you don't need anything outside of it to appreciate it. It's not representation, for example, if it's queer-catching, if somebody says in the press tour, "By the way, this character was meant to be bisexual, "but we had to cut a scene," that's not actually representation, because what it does is it means that people would have to know about this secondary piece of media, this interview, for example, to appreciate the representation that's on screen. Representation in this context being in very inverted commas. And so for me what's important in this axis is the impact. Intent doesn't really mean much when what we should be judging is what's actually on the screen. So for me, although it can be really useful to learn about the filmmakers and whether this thing was autobiographical, whether it was something that they came up with in a team, how long they've been working on it, all that stuff's really interesting, but in terms of the axis I've come up with, I think it's much more useful to look at the impact that it's having, rather than the intentions around them. What this graph also allows us to do is to plot multiple films on there at the same time. I think often there's a difficulty with the complete lack of representation that we have, that when we're criticising these films, we kind of seem to in a vacuum. The idea that, because especially the way that they're marketed and the way we talk about them as being the first film to do this, or the only film to do that, it feels like it has to be everything to everyone. It has to carry that entire identity or experience on its back. And so by plotting multiple films within the same graph, we can appreciate the different things that the individual films might give us. Or from the other side of things, we can appreciate that some films that have been given the benefit of the doubt by being the first and the only maybe need to be examined more critically. And it's that labelling and pressure that I'm gonna look at in the third video in this series, as I use the recent teen movie "Love, Simon" as a case study alongside 20 upcoming queer films from 2019 and 2020. That's going to be the final video in this trilogy of videos about the mainstream future of LGBTQ+ cinema. If you are interested, obviously you can subscribe so you get that into your sub box. If you want to help support me make these videos, I'm gonna leave a link to my Patreon in the description, along with all my social media so you can find me all over the internet. Until I see you next time, bye.
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Channel: Rowan Ellis
Views: 327,567
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: female youtuber, small youtuber, queer youtuber, lesbian youtuber, sarah z, queer cinema, queer cinema history, queer cinema films, queer cinema 2019, lgbt cinema, lgbt cinema history, moonlight movie, one day at a time kiss, one day at a time kiss elena, one day at a time elena and syd kisses, one day at a time elena, la cage aux folles, rowan ellis
Id: L2KvWP5_Q9k
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 25min 52sec (1552 seconds)
Published: Wed Aug 21 2019
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