Queerness and Sexuality In American Beauty

American Beauty can be interpreted to have many messages. On the surface layer, the message is to live life without sacrificing your desires. Among these desires is sexuality. The film deals with repressed sexual desires of both Lester and Col. Fitz. Lester has a repressed desire for his daughter’s friend, Angela. Is this an example of the effects of the incest taboo we drew a diagram for in class? In the film, we see that Lester loves his daughter, but no longer feels close to her. Perhaps Angela is the sexual manifestation of his desire to reconnect with his daughter. Col. Fitz has repressed his homosexuality. We see hints of this first as he feels uncomfortable when speaking to his gay neighbors, complaining about it to Ricky in the car. “How can they be so shameless?” Col. Fitz asks Ricky, suggesting that Fitz feels shame for his own homosexuality. It is also apparent in his vast collection of guns, a phallic object. This repressed homosexuality culminates in him beating his son, who he incorrectly believes is performing sexual acts on Lester, and then kissing Lester during what seems to be a mental breakdown in which he is confronted with his homosexual desires. No doubt, Fitz coming from an institutionalized military background: the opposite of Lester’s ideal way of life (because it is regimented and you are told what to do), resulted in a repression of his homosexuality, while Lester’s refusal to be told what to do eventually caused the end to his repression and his pursuit of Angela. Indeed, Lester tells us that he felt like he “woke up” with his attraction to Angela, where before he felt sedated.

What message could this movie be interpreted to have about queerness? One of the refrains repeated in the movie, first told to us by Angela, is that there is “nothing worse in life than being ordinary.” This tells us that what the movie’s characters all share in common is a desire to not be ordinary, but with the irony that by and large, and especially Angela and Carolyn, they are extremely ordinary. Angela, because she exhibits all the typical behaviors of a suburban teen, and Carolyn because she is a realtor who has lost her happiness. These characters have the least power in the movie. On the other hand, Lester, who makes a successful attempt to avoid being ordinary, in the form of disregarding institutionalized forms of authority, like his job or his marriage. Ricky is of course, the most unique character in the movie, who ordinary Angela deems a “psycho” but it is he in fact, who is confident, while Angela is insecure. He is queer because he gives in to his eccentricities, as with his desire to videotape as much as he can in order to remember things, rather than his sexuality. He is our ideal character in the movie, able to see beauty in the world and be happy living life his own way, something Lester imitates. This movie places value on not being ordinary, and as a result, its queerest characters are its happiest.

-Ziev

Bersani's Last Paragraph

I’m going to try to interpret the last paragraph in Bersani’s “Is the Rectum a Grave” line by line and try to establish a meaning.

“That judgment, as I have been suggesting, is grounded in the sacrosanct value of selfhood, a value that accounts for human beings’ extraordinary willingness to kill in order to protect the seriousness of their statements.”

I believe most of this paragraph has to do with the human need for a unique identity and feeling of selfhood. This identity allows us to function in society. It leads to a willingness to kill because if identity is destroyed, one can no longer function as effectively in society, and this is as good as death. Identity must be defended with violence because by attacking or invalidating an identity, the person whose identity is being violated will be inadvertently killed in any case.

“The self is a practical convenience; promoted to the status of an ethical ideal, it is a sanction for violence. If sexuality is socially dysfunctional in that it brings people together only to plunge them into a self-shattering and solipsistic jouissance that drives them apart, it could also be thought of as our primary hygienic practice of nonviolence.”

I believe that nonviolence is described as “hygienic” because as good hygiene leads to a more attractive body, nonviolence, which must take some effort, as hygiene does, leads to a more attractive society. A society that requires upkeep functions more smoothly, without the need for bloodshed. I have trouble interpreting the line about sexuality. Perhaps he means that sexuality is another channel for violent energy that allows society to function.

“Gay men’s ‘obsession’ with sex, far from being denied, should be celebrated—not because of its communal virtues, not because of its subversive potential for parodies of machismo, not because it offers a model of genuine pluralism to a society that at once celebrates and punishes pluralism, but rather because it never stops re-representing the internalized phallic male as an infinitely loved object of sacrifice.”

This description of the internalized phallic male as an infinitely loved object of sacrifice immediately makes me think of Freudian morning. By allowing a repeated sacrifice of this “phallic male”, Gay males, according to Bersani, can continuously mourn this male ideal and incorporate aspects of it into the ego. As we know, mourning is cathartic. I find it strange that Bersani talks about “Gay men’s ‘obsession’ with sex.” I assume he is talking about a perceived obsession, which is why there are quotes around the word. There is also a critique of society within this section, suggesting the hypocrisy of preaching pluralism while looking down upon examples of it, such as homosexuality.

“Male homosexuality advertises the risk of the sexual itself as the risk of self-dismissal, of losing sight of the self, and in so doing it proposes and dangerously represents jouissance as a mode of ascesis.”

Is Bersani suggesting that male homosexuality is an example of what happens when one loses sight of oneself? Is he saying that sexuality among homosexuals is an act of self-denial, as suggested by the word, “ascesis?” If so, this seems like a simplistic view of homosexuality. I would be very interested in seeing Bersani’s theories put against, or with, anthropological ones regarding homosexuality.

Embodiment in Lars and the Real Girl

Lars and the Real Girl proved to be a slow, but captivating movie. We begin with seeing Lars standing behind his door, refusing his sister-in-law’s breakfast invitation motivated by her concern for his spending so much time alone. We then find out that Lars has purchased a sex doll and in delusion believes that she is a new human girlfriend named Bianca. By the end of the film, what is made clear is that Lars used the doll in order to protect himself and project all of the issues stemming from his childhood and the death of his parents. It seems like this event created a fear of intimacy in Lars to the degree that he doesn’t allow himself to even speak to his coworker that has been making romantic advances. With the first reaction of disgust from his brother, to the gradual accepting of Lars’ intimacy with the doll towards the end of the film, it is clear that this movie has an agenda. It begs us to question why we think this is so weird, this being a man’s infatuation with a doll. I won’t be talking about this message here though; I will instead be talking about examples of embodiment within the film.

The first, and most obvious example is the doll itself. Lars gives this inanimate object an embodiment of himself and his psychological traumas, putting his fear of intimacy and sense of alienation into the doll. This also makes Bianca the physical embodiment of a typically female social role, relying upon Lars for everything so that he can feel a sense of confidence and masculine authority. Authority over her.

I’m not sure if this gives the film a positive or sinister message concerning the role of women to men. It suggests that they are there to nurture them and allow them to superior, serving them, in a way. Lars’ sister in law plays a similar role, being the person most concerned about him from the movies outset, and also coincidentally a pregnant maternal figure. Lars feels sentimental toward his mother and compares the doll to her at one point. Lars depends on women in order to feel at ease. Does this mean that Lars becomes the embodiment of masculine authority through his interaction with this doll that is the embodiment of feminine servility? He becomes angered when various members of the community take the doll to do activities without him. Eventually he is only able to overcome his traumas by distancing himself and the doll’s death. Perhaps the film is suggesting that men must be rid of their need to feel masculine superiority in order to truly be comforted in one’s self.

Misfortune and Intersex Births

Through our discussion in class, I began to think of the ways in which Rose’s life in Misfortune has parallels to what has occurred more recently when children are born with an indeterminate sex, termed as “intersex.” When this happens, the common practice among doctors has been to quickly perform surgery on the baby’s genitalia in order to make the infant visually male or female. This procedure was experimental, the long-term results of which were never observed. It’s quite easy to see how problems can arise later in life if the baby’s biological sex does not match its physical appearance.

I should clarify in regards to where I am drawing my parallels. Clearly, Rose was not born with ambiguous genitalia. She is physiologically and biologically male. The similarity between Rose and intersexed babies lies in the consequences of raising a physiologically male baby as female like Rose was raised (and vice versa), and the psychological effects that this can have later in life. Though the evidence is anecdotal, according to this article from Slate, the gender confusion that results from raising a baby as the opposite sex from what they are biologically (gender confusion: a consequence in itself) can lead to “rage at the destruction of sexual function, to conflicts in school and relationships, to depression and attempts at suicide.”

In the chapter from Understanding Human Sexuality which was passed out in class, we see a real example of this anger manifesting itself. The baby in question, Chris, was born with XY chromosomes, making her biologically male. Due to her malformed genitals however, which were halfway between the length of an average newborn’s clitoris and the length of an average newborn’s penis, the doctors decided to surgically give the baby female parts. In the text we learn that at 27 years old she felt anger at what she considered to be a mutilation of her genitals.

In Rose’s discovery of her true sex we see how her reaction could be similar to that of a person of intersexed birth who was given the wrong sex. “I wasn’t a woman, but I wasn’t yet a man…I hated myself.” She later claws at her genitals in self-loathing. In addition to this, I think it is safe to assume that Rose’s illness immediately following her self-discovery was psychosomatic. Unlike Chris, Rose’s genitals remained intact, and this obviously makes her case different.

I think that where Chris’s dilemma probably stems from both the physical harm done to her body and the resulting confusion, Rose’s stems (no pun intended) from the psychological harm done to her. Where they are alike is that as infants, neither Chris nor Rose was given a choice in the determination of their gender. The ensuing damage comes from the incorrectness of the gender they were given and the way in which this determination made both infants begin their lives with a certain disempowerment.

This makes me think about what Judith Butler says in Gender Trouble regarding the “unnaturalness” of gender. If she is correct, perhaps Chris and Rose shouldn’t feel angry for being raised as the opposite sex since, according to Butler, both determinations of gender would be incorrect. But I think I’ll save opening that can of worms for another time.

Mother Camp: Outdated

Esther Newton’s Mother Camp explores homosexuality in America. Her writing seems to be trying to bring to light a subculture that many do not understand, the homosexual subculture (today we would probably say “queer culture”), and explain it to a broader audience. I enjoyed reading Newton’s explanation of drag culture especially. As I was reading this text though I had a problem: it was first published in 1972.

I was born in 1990. Most of my knowledge regarding queer culture comes from personal experience, portrayal of homosexuality in the media, and this course. Thus, reading Mother Camp was valuable because it allowed me to catch a glimpse of what queer culture was like during a time when I was not living. While reading I found myself wondering if any aspects of the subculture described in Newton’s report have changed since the 1970’s, and to what degree.

What drew most of my attention were a couple lines on page 2. Here Newton says, “Since male-female sexual relations are the only ‘natural’ mode of sexuality, at least one of the men of a homosexual pair must, then, be ‘acting’ the woman: passive, powerless, and unmanly.” In other words, Newton observed that in same sex couples, someone is always playing the man while the other plays the woman, with the man being dominant.

I don’t think that Newton actually believes that male-female sexual relations are the only “natural” mode of sexuality due to her use of quotes, but she asserts that this assumption is part of homosexual subculture. I’m not sure how strongly this applies today. Though I have encountered same-sex couples in which one person was dominant, I don’t think it necessarily means that they are playing the part of man and woman. I think that in most relationships between people, one person is often more dominant. This doesn’t just apply to romantic relationships; it is true for friendship, family, and in business as well. What I am trying to get at is that when two or more humans are placed together, a pecking order is usually established. In the context of homosexuality, this would mean that even though one person is dominant in the relationship, this is a result of human-human sexual relations rather than male-female sexual relations. I also believe that there are male-female sexual relations in which the female is dominant, and same-sex relationships in which neither partner is dominant.

I think these assertions that Newton presents reflect the values and perceptions of the time. It’s not hard to see that trying to explain same-sex relations by using male-female relations as a reference point would be helpful to those without much knowledge of homosexuality, though it would be an incorrect method of doing so. I read Mother Camp as a glimpse into the perceptions held by 1970’s America regarding homosexuality. I’m not sure how useful the text would be in explaining queer culture today.

-Ziev