Speaking of feminizing the masculine...

[malsperanza]

Back in April when I started this LJ, I wrote something about my friend X, the hero (hero? Is that what he is?) of my own little writing project. (Yeah, the one that is never going to get anywhere, especially if I keep spending all my time here.)

Went looking for it because of this and this and of course this and this. Oh, and especially this and this.

Yah, OK, could go on like that all night. But here's what I wrote:

So the hero who is empty of identity, and is all things to all people, the pure perfect object of desire (poor sod), can transform himself into everything--masculine man, feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, etc.--and keeps on doing so, over and over, until he finds himself at the end of his quest, and locates his identity in his own body. Until then, he is in a constant state of polyjuice intoxication.

I keep coming back to Dionysus (the androgynous, cross-dressing, mask-wearing, theater-loving, dangerous, beautiful Oriental god) and Pentheus, the king who dresses as a bacchante to spy on the women, and ends up spilling his own sacrificial seed and blood in consequence. Talk about hero torture. I still can't tell if my friend X is a hero or not. Probably not a successful one, and (so far) singularly free of suffering or scars.

Hm. Now I know I have to go see that pirate movie again. Because even in a trivial summer entertainment, a really good actor like Depp can make this happen. Captain Jack Sparrow has only one goal in life, and that's to get his ship back. Without his ship he is no Captain, and if he is not a Captain, he is nothing. Just some nameless fool.

Cassio: Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!

And why does he want his ship so badly? Because the other thing he really cares about is freedom. Over and over in the movie poor mad Jack gets tossed in the clink. He spends an amazing amount of time locked up, shackled, behind bars, and/or with a rope around his neck. And it's the one thing he can't bear. A desert island, even with a lovely girl and a lot of rum on hand is still a prison to him. Let saner, more normal guys get the girl. Jack is quite happy--and romantically satisfied--if he has his ship.

Which is why it is so brilliant that Depp plays him as androgynous, sexy, pretty, decorative, extravagantly costumed. Half-male, half-female, and not really all that interested in fucking other people: what he really wants is his hat. Like Dionysios, the stranger who arrives from afar, filled with spirit, mad, seductive, charming, he is essentially alone.

And the performance shows Depp's talent for Shakespeare (as did Edward Scissorhands): the Wonderful Fool. Edward was the naive innocent fool, like Candide, or Miranda. Jack Sparrow is a little sharper-edged, more like Jaques, Touchstone, even Tom o'Bedlam: Shakespeare's more dangerous Fools, dressed in their gay motley, all their pretty colors, drunk and sexy and ambiguous. Here's Jaques, inAs You Like It:

... And in his brain,
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit
After a voyage, he hath strange places crammed
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms...

And describing the ages of man, he speaks of the soldier:

Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.

All of Shakespeare's Fools are a little mysterious; mad and clever, or perhaps only drunk. The sexual ambiguity is an essential part of Jack's character. It is the thing that makes him "all things to all people, the pure perfect object of desire[who] can transform himself into everything."

I would like to pause and acknowledge a really witty screenplay, brought to us by the same team that wrote "Shrek." Still, though, those guys also wrote "The Mask of Zorro," which should have been wonderful, but was painfully flatfooted, despite Anthony Hopkins. It show what a difference one really good actor can make, as opposed to a truly atrocious incompetent like Antonio Banderas.



Yah, motley's the only wear, for sure.

Comments

[blackholly.livejournal.com]

Sorry for hijacking your post for my own devious purposes, but what do you think of masculinizing the feminine? Do we get to the same place? What would be your recommended models for that?

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Hey, I could talk about this all night. :-)

I love masculinizing the feminine, and yes, I think it does exactly the same thing. It's possible that we are--as a culture--less willing to accept it (Scary Strong Woman etc.), so it is a little less visible. And now it has become such an icon of feminism that it's gotten a little boring, perhaps. And at the same time, the cross-dressing woman is not nearly as radical and transgressive as the cross-dressing man--after all, women wear trousers (even leather ones ;-)) without causing outrage.

I haven't thought about it as much as the male version, though(but I should, actually...).

Hm, models...

My favorite, I think, is Viola in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." She is the best of those Shakespeare women who dress as a man and becomes the object of *everyone's* desire--men, women, everyone. It's fascinating and not easy to untangle. (After all, the subtitle of the play is "What You Will.")

There are some good models in the old movies of the 1930s and 1940s, all of which are worth renting. I can't find good stills on the internet, but:

--Marlene Dietrich in "Morocco" plays a nightclub chanteuse who wears a top hat and tails ...

http://home.snafu.de/fright.night/marlene-dietrich-movies.html# (scroll down)

...sings a sexy song, and kisses a woman in the audience square on the mouth. One of the most all-around erotic scenes in the movies. Why? Well, I think it is totally empowering for everyone who watches it--male and female. It's so shocking and transgressive that you just kind of let it happen and barely register it. But the viewer of the movie is essentially equated with the woman in the nightclub audience who's being kissed. Great fun. And it doesn't hurt that the leading man, Gary Cooper, has his own sexually ambiguous aura:

http://www.movieposter.de/html/morocco_8.html


More recent movies have tried to do this (Lena Olin in a bowler hat in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is pretty fine), but they don't quite get the style right.

A lot of it is about style, no?

--Katharine Hepburn in "Woman of the Year"--this is just a couple of scenes where she wears a man's smoking jacket and trousers, and men fall all over themselves. And there is a very funny scene on a sofa where she kisses Spencer Tracy (husband), who is upset because she didn't notice he'd bought a new hat.

--Greta Garbo in "Queen Christina"

The character of Eowyn in LOTR is pretty good, I think.

But there is no female figure quite like Dionysios, unfortunately.