I could rave about my newfound love for Locas all day, but I doubt that would be a very productive post. Jaime Hernandez queers the genre of graphic fiction as much as possible. Nothing goes undepicted or unsatirized – sexuality, Latina stereotypes, body image, sexual assault, feminism, music, drugs, magical realism -- even graphic novel stereotypes. For now, though, I’m interested in a few scenes that depict Hopey and Maggie’s relationship. Contrasting the scenes that appear in the beginning of the collection (ie. “Hey, Hopey!” pgs 46-48) with scenes from the second excerpt of the collection, there is one giant gap in the narrative that makes me want to read the 200+ pages I skipped: How exactly does Maggie and Hopey’s best-friendship become a relationship (more accurately, the classical “confused bisexual-girl” stereotype situation where Maggie is torn between Ray and Hopey)??
My interpretation of “Hey, Hopey” – certainly not the only possible interpretation – is that Hopey is queer, and she likes Maggie, but they don’t have a sexual relationship at that point. Maggie seems to prefer men. Although Hopey doesn’t deny that she and Maggie have a sexual relationship, she certainly doesn’t affirm it. She lets their relationship status remain ambiguous, using it as an opportunity to teach her brother: “I mean, just ‘cause me and Maggie live together and sleep in the same bed doesn’t mean anything. Just ‘cause we hold hands while walking down the street doesn’t mean shit!” (47). Hopey wants her brother to stop criticizing her preference for women – one day, she hopes, he’ll “accept things for what they are” (47) – he’ll stop trying to prove that she and Maggie are sleeping together; he’ll stop labeling her as a lesbo.
If the situation is so purposefully ambiguous, then why am I trying to prove that Maggie and Hopey aren’t having sex? Unfortunately, I’m hung up on sexual details, even though they’re supposed to be irrelevant at this point in the narrative. As I read the first 100 pages of the Locas collection, I noticed that there didn’t seem to be any sexual tension between Maggie and Hopey. This definitely isn’t because Hernandez can’t portray the sexual tension between his characters; I actually thought that was a strength of his style (case in point: bottom of page 11). I think it’s because there simply isn’t a sexual connection between them in the first 100 pages or so. For example: page 98 is a perfect opportunity to show that Hopey is really attracted to Maggie. They’re in bed together, and Maggie is topless, and instead of any visible tension, they’re both wrapped up in discussing the nights they spent passed out or in jail. Skip forward to the next excerpt (pgs 337-426), and Maggie and Hopey have clearly been in some sort of sexual relationship. Maggie has a girlfriend (Hopey) and a boyfriend (Ray), and she goes on a search for Hopey. When she and Hopey are reunited, they attempt to have a threesome with Ray’s ex-girlfriend, but Maggie balks and ends up watching Hopey have sex with the ex. This sparks a conversation about how Maggie “really got used to being normal for so long with Ray” and that she was “planning to get married and have babies someday” (421). Hopey points out her use of the word “normal” – here, Hernandez once again uses Hopey to portray a queer viewpoint, and Maggie is cast as the stereotypical mainstream confused bisexual, torn between her interest in women and her desire for a “normal” heterosexual life.
Anyway, to make an increasingly long post short, I’m extremely interested in seeing how Hernandez built the sexual relationship between Maggie and Hopey. It originally became a teaching point for queer friendships and ambiguous sexuality, and somehow evolved into a teaching point for Maggie’s somewhat stereotypical struggle with bisexuality vs. Hopey’s embrace of queerness. Above all, I’m curious about how Hernandez managed to create these complex teaching points without compromising the believability of the sexual connection between Maggie and Hopey.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Cruising Utopia and New Queer Cinema
I am only halfway through Cruising Utopia, but I already have quite a few perplexing thoughts about it.
First, a thought left over from last week: I’m not sure that Go Fish fits anywhere into Munoz’s idea of a staged utopia. Go Fish, to me, fits into so many of the lesbian stereotypes that I’ve seen on The L Word. The women freak out when a "lesbian" sleeps with a man – there isn’t much room for fluid sexuality. Contrived conversations about pressing lesbian issues also seem to prescribe too much to mainstream culture rather than suggest any kind of queer futurity. For example, Max complains that cutting her hair would make it seem as if she’s trying too hard to be a lesbian, but not cutting her hair means that she isn’t doing what she wants to do because she’s afraid of being stereotyped. Where’s the glimpse of queer futurity in that dilemma? I wonder how Munoz would analyze this film, which is supposed to be an example of the New Queer Cinema movement.
Second, I’m interested in two of the comments that Munoz makes at the beginning of Chapter 6 (“Stages”). He mentions that queer people, especially when they choose to not have biological children, do not have a future in the eyes of the dominant culture (98). I feel that there are many heterosexual people who “do not have a future” because they cannot biologically reproduce. Also, I wonder if there are other possible definitions of straight futurity.
The second concept in “Stages” that stood out to me was that “the real force of performance is its ability to generate a modality of knowing and recognition among audiences and groups that facilitates modes of belonging, especially minoritarian belonging” (99). This comment seems to be much closer to the characteristics that Michele Aaron lists in her introduction to New Queer Cinema. Although Munoz writes an entire book about how queer art points toward utopic queer futurity, I am not entirely convinced. I wish that I knew more about the artists that he discusses at great length, but I’m not sure how many of the queer artists we have studied in class are consciously calling for the queer, pacifistic, communal utopia that Munoz describes. I think, overall, that Cruising Utopia is far too theoretical for my liking. I prefer the characteristics of NQC that Aaron listed:
- NQC gives voice to the sub-groups contained within the lesbian and gay community.
- “[T]he films are unapologetic about their characters’ faults… they eschew positive imagery.”
- They “defy the sanctity of the past” by portraying queerness in historical settings.
- They “defy cinematic convention in terms of form, content and genre.”
- These films sometimes “defy death” (5).
This criterion for what makes a film “queer” are much more conservative than Munoz’s theories about queer futurity, but I think I have found most of Aaron’s criteria in every book/film we read/watched for class.
First, a thought left over from last week: I’m not sure that Go Fish fits anywhere into Munoz’s idea of a staged utopia. Go Fish, to me, fits into so many of the lesbian stereotypes that I’ve seen on The L Word. The women freak out when a "lesbian" sleeps with a man – there isn’t much room for fluid sexuality. Contrived conversations about pressing lesbian issues also seem to prescribe too much to mainstream culture rather than suggest any kind of queer futurity. For example, Max complains that cutting her hair would make it seem as if she’s trying too hard to be a lesbian, but not cutting her hair means that she isn’t doing what she wants to do because she’s afraid of being stereotyped. Where’s the glimpse of queer futurity in that dilemma? I wonder how Munoz would analyze this film, which is supposed to be an example of the New Queer Cinema movement.
Second, I’m interested in two of the comments that Munoz makes at the beginning of Chapter 6 (“Stages”). He mentions that queer people, especially when they choose to not have biological children, do not have a future in the eyes of the dominant culture (98). I feel that there are many heterosexual people who “do not have a future” because they cannot biologically reproduce. Also, I wonder if there are other possible definitions of straight futurity.
The second concept in “Stages” that stood out to me was that “the real force of performance is its ability to generate a modality of knowing and recognition among audiences and groups that facilitates modes of belonging, especially minoritarian belonging” (99). This comment seems to be much closer to the characteristics that Michele Aaron lists in her introduction to New Queer Cinema. Although Munoz writes an entire book about how queer art points toward utopic queer futurity, I am not entirely convinced. I wish that I knew more about the artists that he discusses at great length, but I’m not sure how many of the queer artists we have studied in class are consciously calling for the queer, pacifistic, communal utopia that Munoz describes. I think, overall, that Cruising Utopia is far too theoretical for my liking. I prefer the characteristics of NQC that Aaron listed:
- NQC gives voice to the sub-groups contained within the lesbian and gay community.
- “[T]he films are unapologetic about their characters’ faults… they eschew positive imagery.”
- They “defy the sanctity of the past” by portraying queerness in historical settings.
- They “defy cinematic convention in terms of form, content and genre.”
- These films sometimes “defy death” (5).
This criterion for what makes a film “queer” are much more conservative than Munoz’s theories about queer futurity, but I think I have found most of Aaron’s criteria in every book/film we read/watched for class.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Swoon as metaphor to AIDS crisis?
In “Aids and New Queer Cinema,” Monica B. Pearl analyzes Swoon as a film that subtly comments on AIDS. At the surface, Swoon portrays Leopold and Loeb’s murder of a little boy in 1924, specifically emphasizing the queer relationship between the murderers. On a deeper symbolic level, Pearl claims, the film is about control over death (31). It tries to make a “senseless” murder seem beautiful. Most importantly, the film is “a meditation on responsibility” (32) – Leopold and Loeb are “unashamed and unapologetic” for their premeditated murder; the murder might seem senseless to the viewer, but it makes perfect sense to them. The anachronisms interspersed throughout the film – Pearl cites a walkman and a telephone – make the film ahistorical, and therefore relevant to today. From these few points, Pearl concludes that Swoon is an AIDS film.
Tom Kalin, Swoon’s director, is no stranger to AIDS activism – he was a member of both ACT UP and Gran Fury. It is safe to assume that this film was directed by someone conscious of AIDS issues over responsibility. I am not convinced, however, that people with AIDS should ever be symbolically compared to psychopathic murderers. In addition, I don’t think the murder of a small boy has the same metaphorical implications of transmitting HIV.
If I assume that the film can be taken as a “meditation on responsibility,” then what exactly does Kalin suggest about responsibility? Loeb and Leopold are aware that they are committing a crime, and that the little boy they choose to murder is entirely innocent. The murderers would be most accurately compared, then, to HIV positive people who continue to have unprotected sex with other (innocent, unknowing) men, even though they know they’re transmitting a deadly disease. If HIV positive people who knowingly commit that indirect murder are “unashamed and unapologetic” for that murder, then does that make the sex artistic? Is that “exerting control” over death? What about the little boy, who symbolizes the person who unknowingly becomes HIV positive – where is his control over his own death? Does admitting responsibility for knowingly transmitting HIV make the crime alright?
I'm definitely failing to understand what this film is trying to say about AIDS. This makes me question Pearl’s analysis of Swoon as a critique of the AIDS crisis. To what extent does Tom Kalin consciously construct the Loeb and Leopold murder case as parallel to the AIDS crisis?
Tom Kalin, Swoon’s director, is no stranger to AIDS activism – he was a member of both ACT UP and Gran Fury. It is safe to assume that this film was directed by someone conscious of AIDS issues over responsibility. I am not convinced, however, that people with AIDS should ever be symbolically compared to psychopathic murderers. In addition, I don’t think the murder of a small boy has the same metaphorical implications of transmitting HIV.
If I assume that the film can be taken as a “meditation on responsibility,” then what exactly does Kalin suggest about responsibility? Loeb and Leopold are aware that they are committing a crime, and that the little boy they choose to murder is entirely innocent. The murderers would be most accurately compared, then, to HIV positive people who continue to have unprotected sex with other (innocent, unknowing) men, even though they know they’re transmitting a deadly disease. If HIV positive people who knowingly commit that indirect murder are “unashamed and unapologetic” for that murder, then does that make the sex artistic? Is that “exerting control” over death? What about the little boy, who symbolizes the person who unknowingly becomes HIV positive – where is his control over his own death? Does admitting responsibility for knowingly transmitting HIV make the crime alright?
I'm definitely failing to understand what this film is trying to say about AIDS. This makes me question Pearl’s analysis of Swoon as a critique of the AIDS crisis. To what extent does Tom Kalin consciously construct the Loeb and Leopold murder case as parallel to the AIDS crisis?
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