The rise and rise of the disaster bisexual

Posted on March 27, 2024 by binarythis

Move over bury your gays, there’s a new trope in town and it’s about murderous bisexual chaos. (Note: some spoilers below for Passages, Poor Things, Saltburn and Love Lies Bleeding – I’ve tried to make it obvious where I discuss each so you can skip specific films you haven’t seen).

We bisexuals are constantly trying to claim things are bi, like bob haircuts, Freddie Mercury, sitting in chairs weirdly, lemon squares, and green velvet couches.

Not long ago I was reading through my high school diaries and found an entry musing on whether I was bisexual. I was sixteen. I did not use the word of course, I simply – coded and cautiously – mentioned that I had read an article in Cosmopolitan magazine about women who also like men and women both, and “y’know, maybe that’s me”. Skip forward several decades of grappling with my sexual identity, literally writing a PhD about being queer femme, and becoming a scholar who works on queer theory and sexuality… I am (fingers crossed) finally feeling pretty at ease with calling myself bisexual.

Sure we have the least exciting flag, but a few key insights for me have been: my affinity with other bisexuals (we just get each other, we see each other); the recognition that my desire does not transcend gender, but rather, is for all the genders (so many! I love them all! So hot!); that bisexual experience is about recognising shame that goes in multiple and maybe unexpected directions (e.g. feeling bad about having heterosexual desires); that the reality of homophobia deepens biphobia as we split into camps to save ourselves, but the need to have the grace to understand these structuring forces. Of course all of the angst I have grappled with over the years is probably just because I am a millennial – it seems that Gen Z are much more comfortable with their gender and sexual fluidity.

But what of bisexual representation in these shifting times? I last reflected on this question in 2019 (“Twenty BiTeen”). Back then I concluded that negative tropes about bisexuality (of greediness, just a phase, and straight privilege) were, in a very small strand of emerging bisexual representation, starting to be reworked and resisted. In 2022 I also wrote a paper about bisexuality as “the refusal to refuse”, aka the refusal of choosing a single monosexual line of desire. In part this paper looked at the distinction between the “bury your gays” trope where homosexuality is represented as a tragedy (the gay character dies), versus straight rom coms where heterosexuality is represented as an inevitable comedy (replete with failure). I argued that in contrast bisexuality was rarely intelligible at all – neither tragedy or comedy, simply an impossibility.

But since writing these pieces, something new has emerged. Enter: the disaster bisexual.

A disaster bisexual is, just as it suggests on the can, loosely defined as a bisexual character or person who has chaotic energy or causes chaos. It seems to be a term used with some affection (“oh what a disaster bisexual!”) and often personal identification (“I’m such a disaster bisexual!” – to which everyone replies “yes”). The disaster bisexual is not your typical queer-coded villain, but rather, an anti-hero. The term seems to pleasurably press the bruise of internalised biphobia. When you cannot corral your desires into a neat monosexual storyline, this can feel chaotic.

According to the internet, the term originated from a D&D meme about sexuality in 2017, but it really took off as a concept in wider circulation in 2022/2023. I would argue that we are now seeing echoes of this discourse in representation on screen, in films like Passages, Poor Things, Saltburn and Love Lies Bleeding (and so many more I have not had the chance to see yet!). Notably in none of these representations is the word “bisexual” used, the characters are simply depicted as having sex with people of multiple genders. This continues a long trend in representation where bisexual desire is represented but not named.

However, importantly, these representations take the disaster bisexual into sinister territory. While queer publications like Them last year lauded the rise of “the nuanced bi characters we’ve been waiting for” I was somewhat perplexed by this celebratory tone. Journalist Billie Walker suggested that “It’s not that we don’t want bisexuals to do bad things on screen. We just want them to do more interesting bad things, and for more interesting reasons”. Hmmm. Let’s take a look at some examples…

I saw the French romance/drama film Passages at the Melbourne Queer Film festival in 2023. On the night it was introduced by festival curator Cerise Howard as addressing the historical gap in programming bisexual representation, to which (me included) the audience whooped and cheered. At the end of the film I turned to the person I was with and laughed “well…we wouldn’t call it positive bisexual representation would we!” In the film the main character Tomas takes a bisexual wrecking ball to his life and loves with such chaos that by the end of the film you are cheering his downfall. Walker suggests that it would be a “lazy” reading of the film to see Tomas’ bisexuality as the cause of crisis in the film, rather than look to his egotism. But sometimes surface readings are the most important to understanding how tropes congeal. The most obvious interpretation is that Tomas is a disaster bisexual, leaving a trail of emotional carnage in the lives of the monosexual characters who foolishly love him.

Similarly in science-fiction comedy/drama Poor Things, the sexual exploits of main character Bella are depicted as leaving destruction in her wake. Much of the film focuses on Bella developing a sense of self through her sexual adventures. She is a kind of Frankenstein’s monster, a gothic vehicle for representing society’s repressed desires. While she is the centre of the film, and we are essentially on Bella’s side (especially as she escapes the clutches of both wimpish and controlling men), she is also violently dangerous: unpredictably squashing, stabbing, or surgically destroying those in her path. Notably at the end we see Bella living in some kind of polyamorous bisexual utopia (albeit one with a slightly disturbing goat).

On violence, we can turn here to black comedy thriller Saltburn where our central disaster bisexual is perhaps the most ominous of all. Oliver is not simply violent, but a pathological liar and epitome of destructive Dionysian desire. Oliver lusts over the bodily and earthly – cum, blood and literal dirt – and it is at once disturbing and entertaining. Oliver is both compelling and scary. He is close to the material and earthly, and just as uncontrollable. At the end he is alone and happy, and everyone else is dead.

Finally, in romance thriller Love Lies Bleeding, our central protagonists are Lou and Jackie/Jack. While Lou is assuredly gay, and wary of sleeping with Jack in case she is just a “curious” straight, Jack notes that she likes “both” men and women. Arguably the central drama of the film is caused by a combination of Lou’s brother in law’s domestic violence, and the fact that Jack has slept with the brother in law. When Jack gets vengeance it is ambiguous as to whether she is trying to right the wrong of the brother in law’s violence, or, atone for the hurt caused by her bisexual exploits. While Jack is depicted throughout as uncontrollable, unpredictable, and totally chaotic, Lou is remarkably together and always cleaning up after her.

Of course there are many other things to say about these films that are not purely about the disaster bisexuality of it all – about rage and families and vengeance and kinks – but it is telling that all of these disaster bisexual films rather unusually mix up genres of comedy/romance with drama/thriller. This speaks to bisexuality sitting at the intersection of heterosexual (comedy) and homosexual (tragedy) tropes: an uncomfortable mash. As such these films do not end in classic “tragedy”, rather, we see the bisexual emerging intact despite the rubble from which they emerge.

Yes, these films are not all “about” bisexuality but in all of these films bisexual desires are at the heart of the drama and often the cause of crisis. Many of the scenes in these films are also highly visceral, focusing on blood, sweat, vomit, cum, and the bodily, with varying levels of gore (with the exception of Passages which is simply sexy and sweaty, with great crop tops). The disaster bisexuals are the spark and conduits of this viscerality. Notably, all the disaster bisexuals are hot, really hot – and I am not just saying that because I am a bisexual attracted to everyone – I mean, alluring. We are meant to understand the appeal of the disaster bisexual, even as we are warned to be wary, if not afraid, of this seductive power.

On this note, it would be wrong, I think, to say that these representations of bisexuality are “bad”. This is probably my disaster bisexuality speaking, but it is way more fun to identify with the villain than have really happy unproblematic bisexual representation. And of course in selecting these films I have left out other key bisexual representations we have seen recently – such as in Heartstopper and Red, White and Royal Blue – where the bisexuals are not really chaotic at all, just attractive and nice.

My point is to question: should we “celebrate” representations of disaster bisexuals? I am not convinced. Rather, I think we should keep tabs on the disaster bisexual trope and how it is playing out, what this trope has to say about sexuality and desire, how these representations connect with broader sentiments and politics around sexuality, and perhaps most importantly, how these depictions make us bisexuals feel. As we watch, we should attend to whether it pleasurably presses the bruise, or, sometimes, digs a bit too far into the wound.

Barbie Review: This Barbie is Trans

Posted on July 23, 2023 by binarythis

Note: The below review contains spoilers for the Barbie (2023) film! If you’d like a discussion that is spoiler-free (recorded before the film screened), check out my chat about bimbos and Barbies on NPR’s It’s Been a Minute with Brittany Luse.

I went and saw Barbie on opening night, and walked right back in and saw it again the next day. The hype around the film has been so immense that I felt like I was holding my breath with excitement and expectation for the whole first screening. Because Barbie is essentially two movies in one mashed together (Barbie and Ken’s stories), as well as kind-of but not-quite being a musical, and definitely a technicolour spectacle, the net result of my first viewing was overwhelm. When I saw it the next day everything made more sense, I knew what to expect. It was much more enjoyable and I highly recommend seeing it twice (or more…I’ll definitely go back).

There’s also an interesting point being made here about Barbies as judgemental mean girls

Despite the long lead up to the film’s release, and literally months of speculating about its content, I found Barbie to be so unexpected, joyously unique. I guess even with all my queer hopes I still thought that the film would be more like a traditional blockbuster, with a romantic narrative, or some easy arc to follow. What it actually feels like is an indie director being given the keys (and money) to make an expansively imaginative film, which is exactly what it is! However in being bold it was also sometimes messy, mostly because it was two distinct stories running in parallel: 1) A comedy drama about Stereotypical Barbie becoming human (an inversion of the typical moral panic around Barbie that human girls will try and become like her); AND 2) A musical about Beach Ken grappling with male entitlement and an inferiority complex. Quite different stories in both message, arc, and tone. When Ken walks off in the real world (to stumble across patriarchy), the film splits into two.

Ironically, comically, I hadn’t thought about Ken, or what his storyline might have to say about gender AT ALL in the lead up. What Gerwig gives us is a very funny meditation on contemporary white masculinity and patriarchy. Honestly Ken’s line that he wasn’t that interested in patriarchy when he realised it wasn’t about horses was so funny, I’ll be laughing about this for the rest of my life. I’ve been listening to “I’m Just Ken” on repeat. Will I buy some “I am Kenough” merch? Uh, yes. Gosling’s Ken, and the whole storyline almost steals the show from under Barbie’s flat feet, but Margot Robbie is so incredibly earnest in her performance that it’s really just a two-pronged circus the whole way through. I do wish Barbie got an equally big musical number to balance it out a bit though.

What is so wonderful about all of the scenes with the Barbies and Kens is how playful they are – as in, literally so silly that it reminds me of playing with toys as a child. The whole Ken fight scene is ridiculous but I can also completely imagine setting that up as a kid, having a war of Kens, on a beach, that turns into a Grease-like dance off where the Kens also kiss. 100% accurate.

If you need a toilet break, this is the scene to do it

The bits that truly sucked in the film were everything with the humans. The parts with the Gloria/Sascha mother/daughter storyline were so two-dimensional, mere props to further the Barbie storyline. Terrible lines. The most asinine feminist speech you can imagine. Inexplicable reactions (like when Sascha first meets Barbie). And the Ruth Handler saccharine ghost stuff? Just the worst. The Mattel humans were less boring, but really because they were more like the toys of the film, silly and hammed up, part of the melodrama, rather than boring interruptions.

I’ve also seen some critiques of the film along the lines of: this Barbie is capitalist. Gerwig tries to double-play the issue of Barbie as a consumer product, with the film nodding and winking to itself the whole way through. This is such a cheap (pun) shot at the film, because what else was Gerwig supposed to do? There is no way to make this film without that critique being levelled. I do think that this hyper-concern over consumption is reserved especially for things associated with femininity though. When the Lego film came out everyone just marvelled at its unexpected communist undertones, and then went and played with Lego. They didn’t bemoan the Lego industrial complex.

Perhaps most importantly (given my projections) the real question is: how queer and feminist is the Barbie film? Well, in terms of its internally stated feminism: lacklustre. We see some lowest common denominator feminism in the dialogue, and interestingly though patriarchy is referred to throughout, the f word is rarely mentioned as an explicit antidote. If I was writing the script, I would have had Gloria the human give the Barbies some 1970s feminist books and start consciousness-raising groups to get them out of their brainwashing, but perhaps this is just my very specific taste as someone who lectures on gender (edit: as a friend pointed out, they kind of try to do this but for a general audience — but what I’m trying to say is it’s consciousness-raising lite!). In spite of this, my hope that this film could – ought to – usher in some feminist media analysis that takes femininity seriously rather than dismissing the text as postfeminist still stands. I would also like to see Ken’s arc analysed here using critical femininity studies, not simply deferring to masculinity studies as the place to explain what is represented (perhaps another post, for another time…).

Barbie has to want to know the truth: that she’s gay

The queerness of the film is stitched into its very fabric, and not just because loads of the cast are LGBTQ+. Though Stereotypical Barbie doesn’t get to make out with any other Barbies (I would have appreciated at least ONE scissoring joke) the implication is certainly that she is queer, because she is queer-coded. From Birkenstocks, to listening to Indigo Girls, to not being interested in Ken, to identifying with “Weird” Barbie, and the Barbie cinema playing Wizard of Oz (all Barbies are “friends of Dorothy”?), the strong hint is that Barbie is not straight. “Weird” Barbie is clearly a euphemism for Queer Barbie, not least because she is played by the famously gay Kate McKinnon, and the rag-tag team she assembles in her house when patriarchy takes over Barbie land also indicates that they are a queer bunch. From Allan (Ken’s “friend”) to Magic Earring Ken and Video (aka Cyborg) Barbie, these are the queer crew, discontinued by Mattel. By the end of the film, after their power-to-patriarchy-and-back-again journey the vibe seems to be that all of the Barbies are “weird”.

You’re telling me this is a group of straight Barbies? Ah, no.

Yet it is also the transness of Barbie that comes to the fore at the very end when she realises her humanness, rather than (as Ruth tells her) having to “want” or “ask” for it. I read this as a trans allegory, where Barbie’s true self is not something she “identifies” as, but something she affirms: she just is. That the last scene involves her visiting a gynaecologist furthers this reading. We don’t know how or when Barbie got a vagina, but she’s so pleased to have one. This doesn’t seem to be a regressive suggestion, that all women ought to have certain biology – and the fact that we learn Ruth had a double mastectomy seems relevant here – but that Barbie realised she was a woman, and wanted certain genitals, which she got. I truly hope this sends the trans-exclusionary activists out there into a tailspin.

Five stars, plenty of notes, but a film I will absolutely cherish forever.

Bimbo Feminism: Why I’m Excited About the Barbie Movie

Posted on April 6, 2023 by binarythis

If you (somehow??) haven’t heard, there’s a live action Barbie film coming out in July this year, and it looks incredible.

The film has Greta Gerwig at the helm, who brought us previous meditations on femininity including Frances Ha, Lady Bird, and Little Women (seriously someone come do a PhD with me on her oeuvre). Plus it’s co-written with her partner Noah Baumbach who brought us exceedingly depressing reflections on the precarity of the nuclear family with The Squid and the Whale and Marriage Story. With this indie pair in charge you know Barbie is going to be magic.

But the reason I’m most excited isn’t just because it involves two of my favourite filmmakers, and an all-star cast. It’s because I genuinely hope that this film ushers in a new era of critical feminist analysis that takes femininity seriously as a point of theorisation, not so easily written off as “postfeminism”. Maybe we’ll call it “bimbo feminism”. I’ll explain.

Barbie is one of those fraught icons of hyperfemininity. I’m sure I’m not the only one whose caregivers were reluctant about Barbies. I get it. I’ve written recently about how kids clothes are gendered in absurd ways and “for girls” often becomes code for “impractical”. As an icon of girl culture Barbie can get caught up in this. My grandmother gave me a Barbie card for my seventh birthday, and inside there was a message along the lines of “I didn’t get you one because Barbies are sexist” (I’m not joking).

Eventually someone got me a Barbie (“Lights and Lace” Barbie), and I also procured some from an op-shop. I cut Lights and Lace Barbie’s hair short and she lived with her girlfriend in a suitcase apartment with their Barbie cat, and a Ken doll (who was also gay). Do straight Barbies even exist?

On the one hand, Barbie has been abundantly critiqued as an emblem of unrealistic and patriarchal beauty standards. On the other, people have pointed out that she’s done every occupation, and is the ultimate girlboss (eww). On the third, and much more interesting hand, the way people have actually played with Barbies, remixing their hair, outfits, personas and sexualities, reveals Barbie as the GOAT bimbo icon: a blank slate, a fantasy of femininity. She is spectacular plastic with nothing, and thereby everything, to say.

Since the 1990s, feminist critique in the academy has become dominated by dubbing things “postfeminist”. It’s a debated term, but essentially refers to media depictions (or what Ros Gill calls a “sensibility”) that depict feminism as done-and-dusted, within a broader cultural context of backlash against feminism. A LOT of early discussions of postfeminism focused on sex-interested or hyper-feminine female characters as evidencing post-feminism (e.g. via films like Bridget Jones’ Diary or Legally Blonde). Because of the rise of popular feminism in the 2010s, postfeminism is now used a little more expansively to describe an ideology that circulates in popular culture that undermines feminist gains, or is regressive in some way. Problem is, what is dubbed postfeminist/regressive can’t shake the hang up on sexiness and femininity.

Since the 2010s there has also been a parallel development in academia called Critical Femininities (CF). The idea of this field is to give serious attention to studying femininities (in much the same way that masculinity studies has become a proper field), critically but not dismissing femininity as merely, easily, or only patriarchal. CF has been championed largely by queer femme scholars, by people who know what it feels like to be perceived as straight-conforming or not “queer enough” simply because of their feminine gender expression. I have been so excited to see recent CF analyses revisiting “postfeminist” texts like Legally Blonde and the Spice Girls, and arguing for the radical elements of the spectacular femininity therein. For example (and I could quote the whole paper here), Maya Padan’s (2023) close reading of the Spice Girls as pseudo drag queens argues:

The band underscores the performativity of femme embodiments, while using the spices to enable a self-aware inquiry of femininity as a choice, rather than patriarchal coercion. In doing so, the Spice Girls stress how meaningful playfulness is to the construction of gender and how gender can be an arena of exploration (2023, p.13).

Similarly, as Sarah Kornfield and Chloe Long (2023) suggest in their analysis of The Bold Type TV show, “patriarchal and capitalist pressures work to devalue and regulate femininity and to commodify and objectify fem(me)inine people”. In response, they offer “femme analysis [that] resists patriarchy and its interlocking oppressions without positioning women, femmes, or spectacular femininity as patriarchy’s dupes” (2023, p.13).

I love these analyses because they don’t dismiss the rubric of postfeminism as useful, but also offer other ways to engage with spectacular femininity, namely from queer perspectives. One limitation of these account is that they sometimes fly a little too close to “choice feminism” for me, through emphasising “femininity as choice”. The problem with choice feminism is that in responding to the “dupes” argument, it can bend the stick too far in the other direction (I am often guilty of this).

This is where I think bimbo feminism could come in.

Since 2020, interest in bimbo-ism has gained traction via TikTok. There are endless explainers you can look up, but essentially the bimbo movement has been about: embracing styles otherwise derided as hyperfeminine, hypersexual, and/or girly, and emphasising vapidity, that is, feeling over thinking. In other words, celebrating oneself as “hot and dumb”, and encouraging pleasure and leisure over uneven heterosexual relationships and the girlboss grind. Despite their professed anti-thinking attitude, the bimbos of TikTok offer explicit critiques of capitalism, right-wing politics, heteronormativity, white feminism and trans-exclusionary feminism. This is bimbo feminism.

Of course until recently “bimbo” has almost always been used as a pejorative, that’s really the whole point of the reclamation. Some aren’t convinced by the politics of the new bimbo-ism. This morning Jessica DeFino – ex-beauty influencer turned anti-beauty blogger – wrote in her newsletter “From what I’ve seen, the reclamation of ‘bimbo’ by cisgender women essentially means using your words to promote the values of the political left while using your aesthetics to promote the excess of capitalism”. I can (and will) write a whole book about the limits of DeFino’s straight-gaze anti-beauty critique, but her take down of bimbos really misses the (radical) forest for the (pink) trees. For DeFino, hyperfeminine aesthetics “taint” the possibility of real politics. Since when is “using your words to promote the values of the political left” a bad thing just because you’ve got a full face of makeup? And why is spectacular femininity the ultimate signifier of “the excess of capitalism”?

CFS scholar Rhea Ashley Hoskin has written extensively about how intensely femininity is policed, so that it is not “too much”. Femininity is systematically devalued, it is seen as synonymous with “subordination”. Femininity is always seen as being done “for men”. This is, Hoksin argues, “femmephobia”.

As she suggests: “femininity is not taken seriously, it is trivialized, it is considered not very credible, false, untrustworthy, with ulterior motives, anti-feminist and not very intelligent”.

The negative use of the term “bimbo” is after all wielded in such a way to take down people who are perceived as too feminine, too sexual, too vapid, too excessive in their gender presentation.

I’m sure that scholars in the 2000s would look at bimbo feminism and call it “postfeminism” but for me the term has reached saturation. I’m post-postfeminism, I want what’s next.

I feel like the Barbie movie is going to deliver the goods. It’s going to take femininity seriously. Based on the trailers I’m fully expecting a queer critique of capitalism and heteronormativity while dressed in pink glitter.

That’s bimbo feminism.

McQueen: Imagining Another World Through Fashion

Posted on August 19, 2018 by binarythis

This is a version of a speech I gave at the 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), in response to the documentary film McQueen (directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui). This speech doesn’t include any spoilers per se, but does include a reflection on some of the themes raised in the film and on McQueen as a designer more broadly.

As feminist theorist Susan Brownmiller is often quoted, “To care about feminine fashion, and do it well, is to be obsessively involved in inconsequential details on a serious basis”. Many feminists like Brownmiller have rightly condemned the dictates of the fashion industry for enrolling women in a world of consumption, gendered styles, and bodily obsession.

Yet, Lee Alexander McQueen’s vision of the possibilities of fashion to affect us on a profound emotional level juxtaposes such critiques. Tracking the autobiographical aspects of McQueen’s design, this documentary offers us a sense of artistry that cuts through ordinary understandings of fashion in terms of trends, mass production, and surface.

McQueen’s early work was seen by many as explicitly misogynistic, as he explored themes of sexual violence, rape, and genocide through fashion. Yet, as we see in the documentary, McQueen explores his own fragility through the collections – the vulnerability and strength of femininity, the power of masquerade, and the armor of clothing. As he once suggested, “I want people to be afraid of the women I dress”.

However, this empowered vision of femininity that McQueen offers does not simply recover the fashion industry from critique. As we see in the narrative of McQueen’s life, the edgy and artistic possibilities of fashion are limited by broader economic machinations.

McQueen described his shows as “what’s buried in people’s psyches”. One of the things that I love most about this documentary is the use of home footage from McQueen himself, which offers us an intensely intimate glimpse of the designer. We not only get a sense of McQueen’s mind – and his obsession with death, life, and beauty – most importantly I think, we get to see the tyranny of maintaining creativity despite the stifling economics of fashion.

As feminist fashion theorist Elizabeth Wilson suggests, “Capitalism maims, kills, appropriates, lays waste. It also creates great wealth and beauty, together with a yearning for lives and opportunities that remain just beyond our reach. It manufactures dreams and images as well as things, and fashion is as much a part of the dream world of capitalism as of its economy”.

McQueen struggled to fit in to the “posh” world of fashion, and to find the funds to finance his collections. The documentary also reveals the extreme pressure to produce, and how boundless creativity is funneled into measurable output.

McQueen once said, “My sister is an amazing artist. My brother is an amazing artist. Amazing. Much better than I am. The difference is, they thought they had no chance but to do a manual job. That really upsets me”. To survive as a designer early in his career, McQueen had to live on almost nothing, and hide his fashion work from the dole office so that he could continue receiving benefits.

We might imagine a world where everyone is supported to push the boundaries of their creative potential. More broadly than this, we might think about what fashion could look like if freed from the structures of mass production needed to finance couture collections that only the most elite in society can adorn themselves in.

But, importantly, McQueen is not a story of being a victim to fashion. While this film depicts how McQueen endured immense pressure to produce fashion for profit, we also see his interminable resistance to the distortions of the fashion world. Amid his intricate tailoring, he offered garments that were the antithesis of “ready to wear” that could only exist as they were embodied in the production of the collection shows – such as a dress of fresh flowers literally decaying on the runway. His fashion stages became theatres for musing on and digesting the cruelty of the world, with rain and snow bearing down on models, padded walls, and piles of fashion “junk” collected on stage in dramatic heaps.

To quote Elizabeth Wilson again, “Out of the cracks in the pavements of cities grow the weeds that begin to rot the fabric”. In other words, while we might hold reasonable ambivalence about the nature of fashion in terms of the expectations and norms that it reproduces, fashion can also provide an experimental and resistant space for a creative reimagining of identity that “rot[s] the fabric” of these same rules.

Certainly this documentary paints a picture of McQueen as an unstoppable creative force emerging through the cracks in the otherwise cloistered world of fashion.

McQueen’s fashion cuts to the quick of our worst fears, but hints at imagining another world, another way of seeing, the romance of what lays beneath the skin. McQueen ultimately offers us an invitation to resist, to look directly at the world in all its ugliness so that we might light up the beauty at the heart of it all.

Film Review: First Girl I Loved

Posted on June 30, 2017 by binarythis

When you are a teenager, having a crush can be truly agonising and all-consuming. It’s equal parts thrill and terror when your feelings are reciprocated, as you innocently try to work out how to turn those feelings into a relationship. But, if you happen to be a heterosexual couple while you’re navigating all this, there are endless guides on how you should act and your partnership is symbolically celebrated every day in songs, TV shows and movies. That’s why a First Girl I Loved is unusual, and so very welcome. Unlike 99.9% of films produced on the topic of love, it is unashamedly gay, even as it works through how shame feels if you are gay.

Written and directed by Kerem Sanga, First Girl I Loved is a smart, affirming film about teenage love. Dylan Gelula plays Anne, who has fallen for senior cool-girl/softball star Sasha, played by Brianna Hildebrand. We follow Anne and Sasha as they try and figure out what the unspoken spark between them might mean, and what it could possibly lead to. Anne’s best friend Clifton, played by Mateo Arias, complicates the story with his own feelings for Anne spilling out in dangerous ways.

While the closure of the film was a little clunky (and I wondered if they actually had a few different endings in mind), overall First Girl I Loved is utterly engrossing. The opening scenes are framed tightly and closely around the protagonists, and we remain at eye level, almost as if we are right there with them – behind the softball fence, lingering at the doorway to the bedroom, walking down the street sipping $4 wine. We’re next to them all the way, not as a voyeur, but as a friend along for the ride.

Gelula’s performance is very commendable. She strikes a delicate balance between unbearable apathetic teen, and captivating hero that we want to succeed. Through Anne we see just how brilliant and strong teens can be, even if they’re totally clueless. Teens are often denigrated by society writ-large for being naive, but First Girl I Loved shows the pain and beauty of fumbling through, the intelligence involved in not knowing but pushing on nonetheless. The awkward innocence of Anne and Sasha’s interactions is wonderfully executed, and there was something so familiar about their veiled giggling banter that I felt like I was watching my young self up on screen.

As I sat watching the film unfold, I found myself desperately wanting things to work out for the characters. I wanted it to end happily not only because I was so engrossed in the story, but because happy endings for gay characters are so few and far between. It’s been great to see more films coming out that address romance between women, like Lovesong in 2016 or Carol in 2015, but many remain stories about tortured, impossible love, or a love that’s always on the horizon that we never get to see fully flourish. That’s why Imagine Me & You from 2005 is still one of the greatest lesbian romance films – not only does it relish in the genre of romcom rather than locating gayness in the seriousness of arthouse, but it moves through unspoken desire to love shouted from the rooftops.

While I can imagine some queer theorists arguing that the lack of traditionally happy endings for gay films is welcome, because who wants to live up to that heteronormative expectation anyway, it’s also pretty shit to constantly have popular culture either ignore your relationship or portray it is an inevitably difficult affair. While there is something to be said for representing the reality of homophobia and the difficulty of queer life, it is a pain that everyone else gets the option of fantasy (because let’s be real it’s not like heterosexual life really ends happily for everyone) except for gays who must remain proper realists.

First Girl I Loved is no romcom, and it is serious. But it does manage to deal with difficult issues and give us a sense of both catharsis and hope, even as it leaves many things unresolved. It doesn’t make the empty promise that so many teens are barraged with that “it gets better”, but it does suggest that queer kin can be found and that inner strength is possible while traversing difficult and unknown terrain. First Girl I Loved gifts its audience a small beam of light for navigating this path, and for that it should be celebrated.

Feminist Utopias and Battling Cruel Optimism in Ghostbusters

Posted on July 29, 2016 by binarythis

This is not a drill

When I first heard about the new Ghostbusters, I was bursting with anticipation. But when the trailers started coming I quickly tuned out. Like a child who has peeked at their Christmas presents before the big day, I needed to hold the excitement in. It all seemed too good to be true. So when the lights went down at the cinema last night, I turned to my girlfriend and said “holy crap—they really made this film!”

By way of review, the film itself is highly enjoyable but clunky at times.

Hands up who wants to go get a science degree after seeing this film

Don’t get me wrong, I was still hanging on every word out of Melissa McCarthy’s mouth, but the direction and editing needed some tightening up. It was probably a three star affair. But the film more than makes up for its pacing and logic problems with its sharp ideas and cast who pull it right through.

Whether this was a great filmic success is not really the point. The point is that they made a movie dominated by smart and funny female leads, who explore issues of gender and race inequality, with large hints of queer sexuality. It feels like a miracle in a world otherwise saturated with films epically failing the Bechdel Test.

Outside of the film however, cruel optimism is arguably still going strong

However, the irony in celebrating this bastion of female representation is that I spend much of my academic time critiquing the idea that we should focus on representational politics. I often argue that our focus on getting diversity in film and television obscures the material inequalities that underlie the lack of diversity in the popular realm in the first place. When we are presented with images of “successful” characters from ordinarily marginalised groups, this can help to present a false sense that “anyone can make it” despite the odds stacked against them. This connects up with cultural theorist Lauren Berlant’s idea of “cruel optimism”, which refers to those fantasies we hold onto (like “The American Dream”) that are actually cruel promises destined to fail. Berlant writes:

“Fantasy is the means by which people hoard idealising theories and tableaux about how they and the world ‘add up to something’. What happens when those fantasies start to fray—depression, dissociation, pragmatism, cynicism, optimism activism, or an incoherent mash?” (2011, 2).

Cruel optimism operates where there is a desire and attachment to a kind of projected future, but where this possibility is either impossible or “toxic”. Berlant warns against investing in these projections, because when they fail, it can lead to serious disaffection and demoralisation (or, an unhelpful continuation of false positivity).

The film doesn’t hold back about the discrimination women experience

So, I have to admit that I was worried that the all-female Ghostbusters might be doing its part to contribute to a cruel optimism about gender equality, to say “don’t worry, women can make it too!”, despite the real-life discrimination, harassment and assault experienced by a diversity of women on a daily basis (and on that note, the Ghostbusters cast). But the beautiful thing about this film is that it owns this reality, and runs with it. The film is surprisingly open about gender issues, directly representing the ways that women are systematically dismissed and derided.

When the characters are thrown out of their academic institutions, it is biting commentary on the historic sexist assumption that women pursue the “irrational” (here represented by an interest in the paranormal). When they are dismissed by the authorities and the “men in charge” it is a reminder of the fact that when women report abuse (here represented by the violent male mastermind) there is a practice of active disbelief. When they are vilified online and represented by the media as liars, it is a reflection of the abuse that women experience in these realms.

Ghostbusters doesn’t present cruel optimism: it reflects the true cruelty of the present. There is not a sense that this can be easily overcome, rather, a mass-scale battle led by a vanguard of ass-kicking diverse women is partly what is needed to make any ground.

Kate McKinnon, the openly gay dreamboat, plays Jillian

The other thing that Ghostbusters does so well, is show us glimpses of the revolutionary future on the horizon. This is reminiscent of the late José Esteban Muñoz‘s work on queer utopias. Muñoz argues that there is a queer future that we are able to glimpse even in the darkest of moments, where oppressive norms of gender and sexuality have been undone:

“Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present” (2009, 1).

In Ghostbusters we catch sight of this queer future in the team’s workroom. Here there is no hierarchy (they are all leaders), much empathy (like when Patty cares about Abby’s blood sugar levels), endless patience (even for Kevin who is terrible at answering the phone), and a deep but balanced engagement with questions of science (they make cool stuff) and humanity (like Jillian’s speech to Abby about love). The film is always on the verge of showing us out-and-out queer love, with a complicated triangle between Abby and Erin (past lovers?) and Abby and Jillian (present lovers?), only slightly ameliorated by Erin’s attraction to Kevin. There is also a diversity of bodies, backgrounds, skin colour, and sexuality. Ghostbusters doesn’t shy away from how difficult gender relations are in the present, but it does show us a hint of a future where things could be different.

They ain’t afraid of no Men’s Rights Activists

There are times of “reverse sexism” within the movie, and I think that kicking a ghost in the groin is probably a bit unnecessary, but largely these moments are used to reflect on the standards that women experience today. The treatment of the assistant Kevin for example, explicitly functions as commentary on the sexual harassment women can expect in most workplaces.

It is no wonder that the MRAs of the Internet are up in arms about this insta feminist-cult-classic. While the sexist and racist hate directed toward the movie serves as a reminder of how far we have to go, it also reveals how challenging this film truly is. As they always say, the feminist proof is in the sexist-reaction pudding.

Scourge of the Girl Crush: 7 Nearly-Gay Movies

Posted on November 30, 2014 by binarythis

Sam Frost and Lisa Hyde 4EVA

I have this habit of erasing straightness from movies and TV shows, to the extent that I often remember things as explicitly gay, when really there’s heteroromance as a main focus. For example, in this year’s series of The Bachelor on Australian television, I was convinced that the main man Blake was gay, and that his top two women left at the end – Sam and Lisa – were in love (I still stalk their Instagram accounts and hold to this theory). When it all went to crap, I couldn’t help thinking it was probably because everyone was gay, and the new girl Blake picked was just the only one willing to be his beard.

It’s like this see

I was recently asked by a friend why I was so insistent on seeing queerness in straight romances, like, isn’t this some kind of reverse homophobia?! I answered that there are is so little queerness represented in the mainstream that by default I see queer storylines in some kind of attempt to open up space. As Jill Mackey writes about seeing the gay in the straight:

Despite [the] dearth of honest representations of ourselves and our lives, lesbians continue to see mainstream films, and we make up for the lack of representation of ourselves by “reading against the grain” for representations of women that we might appropriate and interpret as signs of lesbian love and desire

But I’ll save the queer reading of Princess Bride for another time

Of course I don’t see every romance this way and there are some “straight” partnerships I definitely love – Buttercup and Wesley, Elizabeth and Darcy and all of Love Actually, for example. But in many movies, I just can’t help seeing epic romances between the female characters, which leaves me in a state of perpetual disappointment and/or simply mis-remembering the endings (always tricking myself that the fanfic in my head actually happened). Adding to my angst is the fact that many films try and pass off any possible queer vibes as simple non-threatening “girl crushes” instead. This makes me pretty mad, because it suggests that there is a “safe” way for women to be nearly-queer, while still asserting an explicitly “no-homo” sentiment (many “bromances” also promote the message of safely-not-gay).

So, entertaining a mix of both delight and disappointment, here’s a rundown of my top seven nearly-gay-girl-couples (spoilers ahead):

“We got played by the same guy… do you want vodka or tequila?”

7. Carly and Kate, The Other Woman
The Other Woman has an interesting premise – when Carly finds out that she’s actually the mistress of the man she’s been dating, she becomes unlikely friends with his wife Kate (and they team up to do awful things to him). The movie explores their burgeoning friendship and (if you ask me) there is a great deal of homoeroticism in their unintended ménage à trois, particularly when they discuss their desire to still have sex with the cheating guy, yet “withhold” for each other. All I’m saying is that there is a lot of sexual tension, drunken rollicking and under-wedding-skirt action. But really for me the unacknowledged love between the two women is cemented when Carly “falls” for Kate’s handsome yet fairly two-dimensional brother. It’s like seeing her choose to take the second prize in a raffle. The bro don’t cut it.

“You are more beautiful than Cinderella! You smell like pine needles, and have a face like sunshine”

6. Rita and Becca, Bridesmaids
This one’s not quite as painful, because really the lesbian themes are pretty overt, so it’s not so much about reading into things as celebrating a minor storyline. These guys have a serious crush on each other, and the femme-on-femme action couldn’t be better. In fact I love them so much I can’t even remember how this storyline ends, despite seeing the film several times. I think they go back to their husbands, but in my head they get shacked up in Vegas. My only wish is that there was a lot more of the film dedicated to them and I’m still hoping for a gay wedding spin-off.

“A woman’s touch can quickly fill the empty flower boxes on a window sill. One smile from her and zoom, little buds begin to bloom”

5. Katie and Calamity, Calamity Jane
What can I say about these two? They move to a hut in the wilderness and dance around singing a song called “A Woman’s Touch”. About how good the touch of a woman is. Yeah. At the end the Hollywood producers stick a weird double wedding scene in there where Katie and Calam marry some forgettable guys, but it’s pretty hard to believe. Did I mention that Calamity also sings at length about her “Secret Love“? Mmm.

“It’s time to see what I can do. To test the limits and break through. No right, no wrong, no rules for me I’m free!”

4. Anna and Elsa, Frozen
Okay, stay with me on this one. I *get* that Elsa and Anna are sisters, but the queer themes here are out of control. I mean it’s really nice to see sisterly love represented as “true love” instead of romantic love, but it’s hard to overlook the intensely gay themes of the film. Funnily enough, when Frozen came out and was lambasted by a bunch of right-wing religious nut jobs, I agreed with their readings of the film as super gay (but obviously disagreed with the conclusion that this was a bad thing). The way I see it, there was some serious Freudian taboo stuff represented at the beginning when Anna gets “touched” by Elsa (representative of the sexual exploration that children do), but then Elsa is forced to hide her queer touch. When she runs away to the mountains and sings “Let it Go” it definitely smacks of coming out of the closet (plus she femmes up like a super high femme of excellence). Olaf the camp snowman is like a concrete manifestation of her queer desire, and not surprisingly turns up at the beginning, but doesn’t come to life until Elsa “comes out”.

“I just wanna meet I guy I like as much as you”

3. Paige and Sasha, Life Partners
This movie is painful because it follows the story of Sasha, an openly lesbian woman (representation – tick), who is best friends with a straight woman Paige. When Paige gets a really straight boyfriend and stops hanging out with Sasha, everyone has a bad time, particularly anyone in the audience hoping the women would get together. Apparently this film was trying to push boundaries by representing this kind of relationship (and is based on a true story/ directed by the real-life Paige). But what you end up with is wondering why Paige stays with her super clean cut man, when Sasha is about a zillion times more interesting and dashing in every way. It’s like the film is an ad for homosexuality through painting a picture of a monotonous and droll heterosexual world. It’s very confusing.

“That’s my jam. It’s my lady jam.”

2. Beca and Chloe, Pitch Perfect
Oh Beca and Chloe! Or, as Tumblr kids refer to them, “Bechloe“. Pitch Perfect is one of my favourite movies (I would watch it as frequently as I watch Mean Girls, but I can’t deal with all the vomiting), but the non-eventuating Bechloe storyline is a killer. They have so much chemistry, they are pretty much literally on fire for each other. The shower scene! The party scene! The finals scene! OMG it’s a Bechloe love-fest! Except that it’s not, and when I re-watch I am continually reminded that there is some dude that Beca gets with at the end. I’m sorry but getting sentimental over Breakfast Club? Whatever. I’m sure Bechloe will live on in Pitch Perfect 2. And in my heart.

“I’m with Muriel”

1. Muriel and Rhonda, Muriel’s Wedding
I re-watched Muriel’s Wedding on TV the other night, and was delighted to see the glaringly obvious gay themes in there that I’d never noticed as a kid. Not only does the film indulge in an uber-kitsch camp aesthetic, but it seriously challenges the institution of heterosexual marriage by mocking it at every turn. Rhonda sweeps in and transforms Muriel’s life, and the two are miserable when they part. There is also the scene where Rhonda discovers Muriel’s book of fake wedding pictures and is utterly distraught, and when Muriel finally does get (sham) married, Rhonda sits like an outcast at the back. But your heart skips a beat when they look at each other leaving Porpoise Spit at the end – practically on the verge of kissing at every moment.

There it is, my depressing/delusionally heartening list that would make for a super marathon of film watching. If you have any other films with similar not-yet-queer themes, let me know in the comments below!

Worst Lesbian Date Movie Ever

Posted on July 5, 2014 by binarythis

Fact: If you see this film, you’re going to have a bad time

Not long ago my girlfriend and I went out to the movies together for a first date. We’d been seeing each other for a little while, but hadn’t had an “official” outing together, and a movie seemed liked a sweet pick. Now my girlfriend’s taste in film can be summed up thus: storyline about food/cooking, attractive older women (e.g. Helen Mirren), slightly progressive tone, feel good transformation of some kind, romantic. But with a dearth of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel on offer, we had to settle for the romance factor promised by Adam Sandler’s new flick, Blended. Having not read even a single blurb about the film, our exact decision making process was Drew Barrymore? Yes.

We were quite prepared for the heterosexual focus of the film – after all it is very unusual to find a mainstream romantic comedy that even includes LGBT side characters let alone central ones. We were not however, prepared for the barrage of homophobic insults included in the dialogue, the central messages of which were: it’s not okay to be a lesbian and it’s certainly not okay to be gendered differently. I guess that whole Adam Sandler continually making gender offensive films should have been a dead giveaway, but alas.

A distinct lack of chemistry

If you look up rundown of the film, you’ll get descriptions like this:
After a bad blind date, a man and woman find themselves stuck together at a resort for families, where their attraction grows as their respective kids benefit from the burgeoning relationship.

Jim positively ruins his girls by dressing them in comfortable gym gear, etc

But an honest description would go like this:
A divorced woman with two boys and a widower with three girls are not very attracted to each other. They decide to shack up when they learn that they can actually teach each other’s children how to be appropriately gendered in society. The divorcee who cannot manage to control the freudian sexual impulses of her own boys, finds solace in applying makeup and hair extensions to the girl children. The widower who has managed to raise girls that are very successful at basketball and that dress in comfortable clothes, learns that he is also good at teaching boys how to “be a man” through sport and activity. They come together at a special camp for people struggling to learn how to build a normal family.

Sounds bad? It was. And that’s not to even mention the overtly racist tones in the “Africa” (country not specified) scenes, where dark skin = dim-witted servant status at the resort they find themselves at. As per usual the darker skinned men in the film were also overtly sexualised (that old trope where racist assumptions represent certain groups as closer to “nature”, “the body” and therefore sex).

Before: sporty, short hair, unhappy

After: shacked up, long hair, happy

The hardest thing for me was listening to the audience laugh at the openly anti-queer jokes, such as when Lauren (Barrymore) and her coworker are caught hugging and then make a series of funnies about how they’re not lesbians (not to mention they work at a wardrobe-sorting business called “Closet Queens” – hilarious). And then there was this beautiful scene, where Lauren approaches Jim’s (Sandler) eldest daughter who is staring wistfully at a boy that won’t acknowledge her existence:

Lauren: Maybe you should just go talk to him.
Hilary: Oh, no, no, I can’t.
Lauren: Have you ever considered changing your hairstyle?

Without blinking, the film gives Hilary a makeover from her “bad lesbian haircut” (as it is referred to) and she instantly gets the guy. Meanwhile Lauren teaches the six year old in the film how to apply makeup properly (unlike her father’s attempt, which makes her “look like the walking dead”) and Jim shows the boys how they can channel their sexual frustration into competitive sports such as boxing and throwing cricket balls at people’s crotches.

It was so unbearable that we were both quite hysterical with disbelief that such a film could still legitimately exist.

But what actually really worked for this film, was that it was so overt in its sexual and gender stereotyping, you could use it in any GEND1001 course as an exemplar par excellence of how heteronormativity functions in society. For example, here’s a few things I picked up from my viewing of Blended:

TBH you literally have to learn how to even touch each other

1. You have to work really hard at being heterosexual and monogamous. Most of the time people fail and become single, on the brink of slipping into gayness. In fact, most heterosexual couples have to go on training camps to really get their act together and make it work. If you don’t try hard enough as a woman, you might find yourself rejecting men altogether and spending too much time with your supportive best friend.

Everyone is a *lot* happier when they look like normal girls

Everyone is a *lot* happier when they look like a normal girl

2. Being appropriately gendered is something you have to learn. One is certainly not born a woman and there are many skills about self-presentation you will need to acquire. Having short hair is not going to cut it for getting a man. Ditto being good at sport or wearing comfortable shoes. Similarly, makeup is not something to play around with, it is serious. If you use too much everyone will see your gender efforts, so hold back. Once you’ve got the skills down, they can be handed from generation to generation via same-sex familial relations.

Stick it out for the good of humanity

3. To avoid everyone being queer, different or interesting in any way, every family needs a mother and father. The only way to keep a lid on everyone’s non-normative gender and sexual expressions is to keep the family unit together. Sure there might not be much attraction between the mother and the father, but at the end of the day they’re going to have to close their eyes and go in for the kiss for the good of the family, and for the good of the straight world as a whole. It’s a small price to pay to make sure that we don’t get queerly gendered and sexed kids running all over the shop.

So as horrendous as it was, the takeaway from the film is that it is a parody of itself. For all you queer kids out there, let this be something to hold on to: this film reveals the truly laborious and unnatural task that it is to be “normal”.

Because life ends at marriage?

Posted on July 15, 2012 by binarythis

Everyone loves a good wedding (BBC’s Pride and Prejudice)

I went to the movies this evening and saw what was a funny but pretty middle of the road comedy. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but let’s just say it was your normal Hollywood light entertainment piece (*talking bear cough*). The film was actually quite enjoyable, but had the most predictable and un-funny ending ever. You guessed it, a wedding.

I left the theatre wondering why it is that we don’t seem to be able to get past this neat little plot device. Maybe it’s just the easiest way to spell out “all’s well that ends well”. After all, Shakespeare’s comedies always finished with giant group weddings and frivolity. But you’d think that in this era of increasing divorce rates, surely we’d be imagining some alternate models for spelling out happiness? Much like the beloved Bechdel test, I feel like we need a rating system for romantic comedies that don’t equate true love with a wedding fest.

But then, when I tried to think of romantic comedies that did (or didn’t) end in weddings, I could only think of the most obvious ones – The Wedding Singer, Four Weddings and a Funeral, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Bridesmaids…

From Miranda July’s ‘The Future’

Then I came across this excellent list of romcoms that are not your typical Hollywood fare but have done well nonetheless, and there’s not that much weddingery in sight. Films listed include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Vicki Cristina Barcelona, Before Sunset… But what’s interesting about many of the pics on this list is that the “happy factor” at the end is debatable. Most of them have a sense of hope mixed with bittersweet realism and often just plain old sadness and loss.

In the end I say give me emotional realism over fantasy wedding bonanzas any day. I’d rather leave the cinema feeling a little heartbroken, than walk away and forget the film in much the same way that one passes apple juice- quickly and with little to digest.

Brain love and tear drops: the science of emotion

Posted on February 23, 2012 by binarythis

I came across Brent Hoff’s mini-documentary The Love Competition yesterday. Hoff, in conjunction with a bunch of Stanford University neuroscientists, ran and filmed a contest to see who could [neurochemically] love the most. It’s beautifully filmed, and Hoff approaches each individual that is interviewed with a gentle curiosity.

So how does one measure love? Aside from the general arm-span-width measure (“I love you this much!“), one might think that there’s not much concrete to go by. Hoff and his science buddies beg to differ. The love experiment placed contestants in an fMRI machine while they focused on their “love” emotion (and the object of their love). After the scanning was complete, the scientists measured activity levels in the brain regions most commonly associated with love.

But, despite the friendly and somewhat heartwarming nature of this doco, I can’t help feeling a bit dismayed by the whole notion that love is located in the brain. For one, love is abstract. Reducing it down to three brain pathways seems incredibly erroneous. I feel like trying to measure love with an fMRI machine is akin to attempting to understanding the ocean through examining some grains of sand on the beach- misguided.

Second, love is complex and diverse. What’s fantastic about the group of people selected for The Love Competition is that they all have extremely different notions of love, and focus on a vast array of love “objects” when they are in the machine. I particularly like the woman who decides to focus on love as internal and generated through chakra meditation- how interesting!

Third, I’m not sure how neuroscientists actually get to a point where they go, “yep, these are the love pathways“. The process of thinking love/ measuring thinking love/ ascertaining love areas/ getting someone else to think love/ measuring them against love areas- well, the whole thing seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. What gets missed in this process?

Lastly, locating social concepts such as love in the brain can never end well. What if someone was put in the machine that could never produce any “love” activity- would we label them a sociopath? Does the woman crying at the end love her husband of 50 years less than he loves her?

Like Ron Burgundy reminds us, “You’re just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of ours. It’s science“.

It’s interesting to contrast The Love Competition with Hoff’s earlier work, The Crying Competition (don’t ask me why all these emotions have to involve competing, but whatever). In this, four men struggle so hard to produce a single teardrop that they quit after half an hour. When a woman sits down at the end, it takes just 20 seconds to deliver the salty goods. I think it’s easy to walk away from this video with a strong contention that men don’t [or can’t] cry. Certainly biological elements may factor into this (fluctuating levels of hormones certainly seem to make me tear up at some stages on the calendar). But what else might be going on?

Well, listening to the commentary from the men in the video almost seems to reveal an uncertainty about how to “get in touch” with emotions that lead to tears. I can’t help but wonder how much of this is a product of socialisation- a deep internalisation of the norm that men do not cry. But if we leave The Crying Competition video promulgating it as “proof” that men don’t cry, we perpetuate the very sentiment.

I think that at the end of the day, what the Crying and Love competitions reveal, is that human expression about feelings is far more interesting than any scientific “measures” of emotion. One man in Crying even states that he is almost crying watching himself unable to cry- perhaps mourning the abstraction between masculinity and tears that his body has incorporated. Similarly, the disparate views expressed in Love reveal that there is a plethora of human experiences that we might call love.

The fact that the brain scans couldn’t adequately reflect these different experiences of “love” as relevant brain activity, shows us that such a neurochemical interpretation of love is flawed in the first place.

BINARYTHIS

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT GENDER BUT WERE TOO AFRAID TO ASK

Tag Archives: film