Dead RIngers

     This movie was just plain weird. I definitely see the artistry in the Jeremy Iron’s dual-role acting job, and the plot is an interesting idea. But it got weird.

     This is the second time I’ve seen Irons play dual roles. The first was in a video of Ohio, Impromptu by Samuel Beckett. He definitely has a knack for capturing the different nuances of a character, even twins.

      I noticed the odd instruments in the opening credits, they looked claw like or medieval, but they turned out to be Beverly’s creations in the film. This film definitely explores queer theory in the sense that Elliott and Beverly are so close that the viewer is left wondering if their relationship is indeed incestual. Their bond is hinted at lightly at first. E: “You should’ve been there” B: “I was”.  However, those lines get blurred very fast. When Beverly is nervous about performing with Claire for the first time, Elliot says, “You’ll be alright, just do me.” It might be that he is implying that Bev once again adopt Eliott’s persona, since they have clearly traded partners for years. But this suggests that Bev imagine Claire to be Elliot when the two have sex, and that connotates a whole other scenario.

     Claire is an interesting character. I like that she is an actress and she appears vulnerable at first, but ends up being independent and caring for Beverly. I was surprised that she was upset to find out she had been sleeping with both brothers since she herself said she had been very promiscuous in hopes of becoming pregnant. Gender roles were still very much cut and dry when this movie was made, as Claire laments that she will never have even been a woman if she cannot give birth. In those days, femininity and womanhood were very much tied to not only being a mother but being pregnant and carrying a child. Adoption and things of that nature were still very low key and secretive in the 1980s.

      It was very interesting to see the flip in Elliot and Beverly. At the start, Beverly seemed grounded and Elliott was more debonair and cool. Yes, Beverly was sensitive and vulnerable, but he turned into a drug addict, which I didn’t see coming at all. It was during one of Beverly’s binges that Elliott was feeling their bond tear. When Elliott hired the escorts and told one to call him Elly and one to call him Bev, that was really creepy. And when Elliott had his girlfriend dance with a forlorn Beverly, only to dance with them and hint at a three-way. Their relationship was intense and I am still trying to wrap my head around it.

            The separation scene (nightmare) was so gross, and I think that is what sparked Bev’s descent. When Claire had questioned his manhood it sent him on an internal search of what exactly his brother means to him and what that means for him. It was sad to see them ruin themselves but at the same time it was prophetic and poetic. They will never have to be separated.

To be queer or not to be queer?

     Although our assigned reading of the introduction and first chapter of Nick Davis' The Desiring Image: Gille Deleuze and Contemporary Queer Cinema was very wordy and, at times, hard to follow, I do have a good start on understanding Queer Cinema. I consider myself a cinephile yet I had no idea that films were identified as queer. I thought that was a politically incorrect term, and even though in this book it is not, it still feels wrong to use the term 'queer' to me. Although scholars and activists embrace the word, as a heterosexual, it still has a derogatory connotation and I feel uncomfortable with its use. I want to learn more, as I'm sure I will through this book and course, but at this point it is parallel with rappers using the 'n' word in my mind--reclaiming a negative word used against you and holding the power of it.

    Another confusion for me thus far is in Davis's method of dubbing films such as Silence of the Lambs or Fried Green Tomatoes as queer. To quote: "...I saw movies ranging from My Own Private Idaho to Naked Lunch to the crypto-lesbian Fried Green Tomatoes to the queer-baiting yest so very queer Silence of the Lambs. Out of these four films I have seen the latter two and I do not full understand Davis's assertion. It's been a while since my viewing of Fried Green Tomatoes, but I remember it as a beautiful story about friendship between two women. Just because one of the characters was a tomboy and had a hard time when the other left to marry, doesn't mean they were lesbians. I am a proponent of equal rights and support the LGBT community but I am also a feminist. I have a handful of female friends that I am very close with and none of us have any physical inclinations towards one another. I love them fiercely and yes, although it is sad, I love my girlfriends more than I have loved some boyfriends, yet still not in a sexual way.

    Second, yes Hannibal Lecter is a gay man in Silence of the Lambs, and yes, Buffalo Bill is really strange and wears the skin of women he kills and tucks his penis in as a cross dresser, but do we categorize the film as queer? Those aspects are not the centerpieces of the film, they are secondary characteristics of two sadistic serial killers. Tom Hanks plays an AIDS-afflicted man in Philadelphia, so is that considered a queer film? What exactly are the qualifications?

     If I were to name films that I would consider queer, I might include Hedwig and the Angry Inch, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, or even Hairspray (where the character of Edna Turnblad has always been played by a man). Maybe I am being stereotypical in my opinion, but if I had those three films listed along with the two I've mentioned, they would not even be in the same categories. It has to do with the story as a whole, so I don't think that a film cane be classified as queer simply by characters alluding to something that is misconstrued or because of a characteristic of a person instead of the actions, which are the point of a story or film. Sexuality is one characteristic of anyone, one part of us that, with other parts, make us up as a whole. As writers, storytellers, or even as viewers, we cannot take one trait or aspect of a character and have that overshadow the plot of the story.

      I can understand why Davis and others classify Dead Ringers as a queer film. I haven't seen it yet, but by the extensive descriptions it is understandable. The twins, Beverly and Elliot, share an undeniable bond and there are questions as to their sexual relationship. And then, with the introduction of Claire into their lives and her three-chambered uterus, the story seems full of a lot of alluding yet also a lot of blatant signs that there is more than just brotherhood between the Mantle men.