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.