The Destabilization of Homosexuality and Heterosexuality in Film - Essay Example

Lecturer The Destabilization of Homosexuality and Heterosexuality in Film New queer cinema is a term that was coined by B. Ruby Richin a 1992 magazine to define and describe a movement that touched on the queer-themed films of the 1980s. The term has even gained use in academic writings to describe lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual identity and experience. It also denotes the fluid form of sexuality, which was also thought to be subversive of the traditional understandings of the concept of sexuality (Dyer, R. 2002). A common characteristic of the queer movement movies is their rejection of heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is a body of norms of lifestyle which dictate that people fall in distinct and complementary genders (a woman and a man), and having some natural life roles. It has the assertion that heterosexuality is the only sexual norm, and that marital and sexual relations only fit between people of opposite sexes. There are however critics who argue that heteronormative attitudes are stigmatizing, marginalizing and oppressive of deviant forms of gender and sexuality. These deviant forms of sexuality include bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender and intersex people. Heteronormative culture fosters a climate in which these deviant forms of sexuality are discriminated against in the workplace, marriage and even tax codes. There has been a strong opposition to such discriminations and a lot of movements and advocacy outfits have been formed to ensure that people with such traits are treated with dignity in our societies. In the article introducing the new queer cinema, there were concerns about the rise in films that were themed on these deviant lifestyles (Gever, M. 2010). There were serious concerns that the reason such movies were trending in the 1980s was to bring out such deviant lifestyles as things that people needed to treat with contempt. The manner in which they were portrayed in certain movies was to ensure that people looked at the deviants as people who weren’t supposed to live in their midst. Such movies were seen to be radical in form, and aggressive in the manner that they presented sexual identities the conservative perception of heterosexuality. Such movies resisted promotion of gays and lesbians positively. This was in spite of the fact that there had been liberation movements and advocacies that had given a little space for those who had such deviant sexual orientations. These movies instead presented the gay, lesbian, intersex, bisex and transgender forms as outsiders and renegades from the rules that prescribed what a conventional society was. They were often cast as outlaws and fugitives. Antagonists of this view of sexuality thought that something needed to be done so that a world wasn’t built in future in which the deviant sexualities were castigated whenever they were identified. There was need to change to course. We have diversities in this world that we live. It is not possible to attain uniformity or to make everybody to think the same way on issues of sexuality. Views might be different, but that only fulfils diversity. Gays and heterosexuals are all human beings that need dignified treatment. There is need to respect whatever orientation that one chooses. The new queer cinema is just one of the measures that were in place to ensure that homonormativity wasn’t viewed as something that was out of this world. It had the view that it was a matter of choice, which should not be treated maliciously. The new queer cinema movement sought to bring out the sense that human sexuality and identity were an outcome of a mere social construction, and was hence fluid and changeable. There is the view that human sexuality is a subversive and chaotic force, which is often brutally repressed by the dominant power structures of heterosexuality. Films in this movement featured unapologetic and explicit depictions of the same sex relations. They presented same sex relationships that altered the traditional heterosexual notions of marriage and family issues. The new queer cinema films were radical, but did not identify with any political movement. All they sought to do was to subvert and challenge assumptions about gander, identity, class, family and society (Doty, A. 2000). There are two films by Almodovar, The Dark Habits of 1984, and the High Heels of 1991. In the dark habits, we have Yolanda whose husband dies and is later on offered accommodation in a convent where nuns live. At the convent, we have one nun called Mother superior, who is determined to win the trust of Yolanda. You could see it from the day Yolanda arrived at the convent. She greeted her rapturously. She is trying to do everything in her power to portray herself as the only person who deserved the attention of Yolanda. She even gives repulsive names to the other nuns so that they wouldn’t attract the admiration of Yolanda. Yolanda has issues though. She doesn’t feel the affinity with the nuns that she did with her late husband. The convent becomes cash trapped due to freezing of funds by their prime financial supporter, and things begin to change. They select to engage in idiosyncratic activities in order to while away the time. Mother superior falls deeply in love with Yolanda, who she had decided to give the best accommodation in her room. A lot happens with drug use and drug trafficking, and then Yolanda decides to desert her. She feels so much devastated and dejected after. What this film depicts is the idea that same sex relationship advances should be resisted at all cost, and those who propose such should be made to feel all alone and odd. They are meant to be rejected and to feel miserable. Mother superior, despite her attempts to engage in illicit drug dealing in order to save the convent from crumbling due to lack of finances, through drug trade, but due to her deviant sexual attraction toward Yolanda, she ends up hurt and miserable. Nobody even thanks her for whatever she did to keep the convent going before its dissolution was announced. In high heels, there is an interesting plot of people engaging in love triangles and same sex relationship tendencies. We have love triangle involving Becky, Rebecca (Becky’s daughter) and Manuel. Manuel had been Becky’s boyfriend in the past before she went to Mexico to pursue a career in music. When she left, she had abandoned her daughter Rebecca at a very young age. Rebecca grows up in her mother’s absence and has no idea that Manuel once dated her mother. Even Manuel seems not to know that Rebecca is the daughter of a woman he once dated many years before. He marries Rebecca and they stay together for a while. Rebecca opts to return home to link up with her daughter, whom she has no idea is married to her one time boyfriend. Even after she links up with them, and knows that Manuel is married to her daughter, she decides to fall in love with him and even ends up having sex with him. Rebecca engages in an extramarital affair upon realizing that Manuel is seeing her mother. Manuel doesn’t stop at Becky. He has a chain of mistresses, which Becky discovers and wants to quit the relationship. Rebecca is pregnant for Letal, the man she had sex with after stopping to love Manuel for falling in love with her mother. What the film tries to bring out is the sinful picture of a man who loves many women. He is made to go through a lot of distress, and ends up dead. These are some of the issues the new queer cinema sought to address. High heels theme is that people who engage in multiple affairs should be made to lose it all. Manuel went through frustration, having to lose his wife whom he had ceased to love when he fell in love with her mother. This makes him jump from one woman to another, deepening his frustrations. This according to the new queer cinema is the result of some conventional perception of marriage and family, in which a man is tied to a single woman. He is not allowed by the conventional perceptions of marriage to see anyone outside of it. Worst of all, death happens in the end and this can only sadden people more. New queer movie allows for liberalistic view of issues touching on identity, relationship and sexuality. Everyone defines those terms in the manner that they wish to without necessarily being tied to certain conventional perceptions. If one wishes to have more than a single woman, they should be allowed to pursue it without being bothered for it. The case of high heels is the worst because it is Rebecca who murders Manuel, and she forgets that even she had decided to make love with Letal, ending up pregnant for him while Manuel still lived. This is the kind of selfishness that new queer cinema begrudges. Heterosexuality or any other sexual orientation is supposed to be viewed from an angle that one wishes. They all should be treated with equal sense of importance and none should be taken to be holier than another. One should prescribe the direction they want to take with their sexual life without regard to whether anyone else loved it. One should not tie him/herself to a certain perception because they look to impress others who may prove hard to impress after all. It would be really hard to please everyone who cares for you with everything you do and with the opinions that you hold on certain things in life. There is a big problem if people are to be made to think along some norms. Times change and people free up and begin to be independent in the way that they think and perceive things in life. Human sexuality matters are the most complex things that should not treated as some static and unidirectional affair. Nobody should be reprimanded for being what they want to be, and for choosing a given kind of orientation. People who want to be gay, lesbian or bisexual should be let be. They should be loved for what they select to do with their lives and for what they choose to be. Sex hierarchies that have existed among us and have done nothing better than gradate sexual practices into what is good or bad sex morally should be terminated. They place monogamous sex between committed heterosexuals as good, and any sexual engagements and the individuals who fall short of this standard are categorized under bad sex. Gay relationships are said to be socially deviant, which shouldn’t be the case according to new queer cinema. It leads to the worst kind of discrimination, with employers applying some standards to ensure that non-heterosexuals do get jobs in their companies. This greatly punishes people for things that naturally happen to them. One decides to be gay or lesbian just as another selects to be heterosexual (Butler, J. 2006). At the end of the day, they are all human beings who need to be loved unconditionally. They all have needs and feelings. Those feelings shouldn’t be hurt. Their needs need to be fulfilled just like the needs of the perceived straight people. Bibliography Butler, J. (2006) Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Doty, A. (2000) Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Cannon. London, Routledge. Dyer, R. (2002) Now You See It. Studies on lesbian and gay film, Routledge, London. Gever, M. et al (2010) Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay film and video, London: Routledge Read More