Representations of gender and sexuality in films

Résumé du document

‘The street's getting worse everyday here. The whores were bad enough but the drags are wiping us out. I can't stand the drags. (…). They confuse transvestism with a circus. Worse, with mime'. In All About My Mother (Almodovar; 1999), the character Agrado stresses the importance of distinction between cross-dressing, transvestism, and drag. Indeed, Bruzzi (1997 :147) defines cross-dressing as ‘the questioning and blurring of gender identities that occurs when characters do not wear the clothes deemed socially appropriate to their sex' while Stoller argues that ‘transvestism should only refer to fetishist cross-dressing' and ‘drag' is exclusively applied to cross-dressing as theatrical performance' (1985 :176 in Bruzzi ; 1997 : 149). In the mainstream cross-dressing comedy, the male dresses as a woman to generate comic effect based on the ridicule, whereas in the French film Ma Vie en Rose (Berliner; 1997), the implications of a little boy thinking he is a girl are explored, while All About my Mother provides us with a more accurate representation of the world of transvestites and transsexuals.

Extraits

[...] Or very rarely ' and Ludo answers I'll be a girl!' Ludo's search has a profound effect on his family. Indeed, as Bolin (1988:94 in Lorber 1994: 85) expresses, The family is a significant battleground on which a symbolic identity war is waged Because an individual can only be a son or daughter (in Western societies), conferral of daughterhood by a mother is a statement of the death of a son. When his mother finally cuts his hair and declares ‘poofters are boys who like boys. [...]

[...] Everything you always wanted to know about sex* but were afraid to ask by Woody Allen. Haskell, M From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 116-117. Hill, Church Gibson, P. (Eds) 1998. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press Lorber, J Paradoxes of Gender. Yale: Yale University Press, p Macaulay, S Boys are Back in Gowns' in The Times 14 October 2004, p.14. [...]

[...] He'd put on tits that were bigger than hers'. Smith(2000 : 87) argues that seems unlikely that Almodovar has a great interest in transsexuals per se ; rather he is concerned with suspending that distinction between artifice and truth which has so oppressed sexual dissidents of all kinds' .He puts this distinction in the same sentence when Agrado declares, I have that's real are my feelings and the pints of silicone that weigh a ton' .Feelings and silicone are so different, as the truth in feelings and the artifice of silicone have nothing in common, but he juxtaposes them. [...]

[...] When his father begins to accept it, the source of conflict is removed and Ludo is ‘better'. When his father blames himself for Ludo's doubts, he offers to spend more time with him, playing football. The masculinity of his brothers is then contradicted as they leave Ludo to be bullied after a football match. The family is affected by Ludo's search and while his father gradually accepts it, his mother begins to blame him for all their troubles. He will then leave the family to move with his grandmother, said that ‘brother or sister. [...]

[...] He also tells Ludo that his marrying him depends on ‘what kind of girl you'll be', which points out to his fear of transsexuals and artificiality, an issue which is explored in Almodovar's All About my Mother. Indeed, Almodovar represents the realities of transvestites and transsexuals in contemporary Spain in a crude way, yet theatrical way. Smith (2000:191) points out that ‘there are some pitiless close-ups of transsexual (Antonia) San Juan and diva (Marisa) Paredes, which reveal the trace of time in a ravaged face, however theatrically it is preserved'. [...]