Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Kendall

30 Oct 07

Julia Zay

Concept Rhyming Paper II

Gender: To be produced, come into being. (O.E.D.)

Female: Womanish; effeminate; weakly. (O.E.D.)

Male: Chiefly… expressed or implied antithesis with female (O.E.D.)

The opening sequence of the film Southern Comfort produced and directed by Kate Davis gives away little of the films important social commentray. We see a man sitting in a lawn chair, he has a mustache, long sideburns and a rough face that is telling of his age. He is wearing sunglasses and a cowboy hat. He talks about the contribution of others to his death, and coming to terms with such a fact. The statements do not point to the larger social implications that have contributed to his dying, though it is soon made clear that the dominant culture’s discourses on gender have created a space for such a needless tragedy to take place. Robert Eads is the man that we see, the film is a documentary film about the last year of his life. Robert is a female to male transgender who is dying of cervical and ovarian cancer. As much as the last year of Robert’s life is the subject of the film, gender goes hand in hand with such a story.

Teresa DeLauretis discusses in her article Technologies of Gender the idea of gender as sexual difference. She says that “sexual difference is in the first and last instance a difference of women from men, female from male, and even the more abstract notion of ‘sexual difference’ resulting not from biology or socialization but from signification and discursive effects…” The idea of sexual difference being the same as gender and based solely on one’s physical sex is far too narrow an understanding of all that is gender. That ones gender may need to change, that it may not match the genitalia that one was born with, or that one may choose to not identify as having a gender is for many, difficult to understand. The “abstract notion” that gender is based on society’s discourses and is signified rather than based in biology isn‘t something that is considered by those who‘s sex and gender match up nicely. The discourses that go on everywhere today that are responsible for creating gender itself are normative and don’t leave room, or use language, to include any “deviations.” It is generally thought that gender is natural, that someone’s gender is their sex, and nothing more.

The construction of gender is complicated, yet goes on everywhere unnoticed by those not seeking it. Gender is not inherently part of a person, it is the “product of various social technologies, such as cinema, and of institutionalized discourses… as well as practices of everyday life“. Gender is a product of the society that we live in, the discourses that we are continually involved in and the institutions that we operate within. The technologies that construct gender are so powerful and subtle that the idea of gender binaries, and sex as gender is hardly questioned. Rather than perpetuate and reiterate the ideas of gender that are harmful to some, we need a new notion of gender that is not so entangled with the idea of sexuality that they are considered one and the same. The construction of the gender binaries that are prevalent in our culture goes on still today, and everywhere. Gender does nothing more than structure our relations with other people and “constitute concrete individuals as men and women.”

This construction of men and women as their genders is accepted and absorbed, so gender becomes “real even though it is in fact, imaginary.” One of the most visible, and technologies easiest to point at as a site of the construction of gender is that of the cinema. DeLauretis points out the cinema several times throughout her essay as a technology of gender that is responsible for its construction. She says that in cinema the female body is seen as a “primary site for sexuality and visual pleasure,” and is also made the subject of the “spectator’s voyeuristic gaze.” Women’s gender is seen in relation to man’s, therefore cinema is reiterating and constructing male gender just as actively as female gender. Gender is not only constructed on the screen in the characters that we observe through the length of a film, but is also being constructed subtly within the viewer.

In the case of the film Southern Comfort the technologies of gender at work in cinema are not displaced by the films content. Gender is constructed in this film, in various ways; such as the “cinematic techniques of lighting, framing, editing, etc. and the specific cinematic codes (the system of the look) that construct women as image.” It seems that in such a film, where gender is a main focus, that the usual cinematic techniques that construct gender would not be used as they usually are. It seems these techniques may be so engrained, rather than being seen as ways of constructing gender, they are used without the director/editor realizing that they are participating in gender construction.

Lola is the leading lady in Southern Comfort. We first glimpse her through the window of a car as a mysterious being that is Robert‘s “other half“. When she is fully presented to the viewer it is through a slow pan from her high heeled shoes, up her long legs and torso until we are finally granted a view of her face. Through the film we are told about Lola’s character through her interactions with others and other’s dialog about her. She is described as domestic, ditsy, and beautiful, she refers to Robert (jokingly) as “the boss,” and we are told that she is all of the “guys’ wet dream.” Many of the descriptions applied to Lola both by other’s and by herself throughout the film can be seen as reinforcing the idea of the archetypal Woman- she has those attributes that are natural and inherent in every woman stereotypically. ’Though Lola is seen as a Woman in the film, the truth is that many people would not consider Lola a woman, as she herself does. Lola is a male to female transgender.

Gender roles are faithfully acted out by all of the transgender individuals throughout the film, thereby constructing gender itself. Cass, Max and Robert are the three main males portrayed throughout the film. We see photos of Robert with his gun, watch Cass and Max polishing their boots, and Cass putting up a birdhouse for his wife as she stands by and watches. Lola and Corey, Max’s girlfriend, are the two females that we see throughout the film faithfully performing their gender as they have been taught to. We see both of them getting ready for a night of dancing at the Trans convention Southern Comfort through the reflections of their mirrors. We see them kissing and cuddling with their significant others and looking to them for guidance and reassurance. Since they began identifying as women they ”have become engendered as women.”

Even though in the film, and the trans community, gender is not seen as deriving unproblematically from sex the dominant cultures idea of gender is enacted faithfully in each individual’s chosen gender. The social representation of the male gender, or female gender, has been “accepted and absorbed by the individual as her (or his) own representation.” DeLauretis talks about this absorption of gender norms with the example of check boxes on forms marked f for female and m for male. The choosing of which box to check signals the entrance into the sex-gender system and as much as that box is marked by an individual so is that individual marked by that box. Lola and Corey both chose to check the box marked F even though dominant culture would have had them mark M.

Femininity for a woman is highly prized attribute because of the discourses perpetuated on gender. When one asks “what is feminine?” The idea of long manicured nails, dresses, soft voices and subdued sexuality come to mind. This is because of the discourse that is prevalent in our society that tells us that this is what those who are female stereotypically do. What is masculine? Trucks, playing sports, men‘s rough work-worn hands, strong deep voices and strength. Again, these are what is signified in the dominant culture of our society as being (stereotypically) masculine and feminine. DeLauretis says that “femininity is purely a representation, a positionality within the phallic model of desire and signification; it is not a quality or property of women.“ The idea of femininity NOT being a property of women is very fitting with Southern Comfort. Femininity is abandoned by Cass, Max and Robert and taken up by Corey and Lola. Their sex has nothing to do with their gender, or how they’ve represented their gender to the rest of the world. To think of gender as sexual difference keeps us bound in the same mode of thinking, and perpetuates the discourses that have formed these misinformed notions.

These misinformed notions lead to the death of Robert Eads. Because Robert was a transgender male he could not easily find a doctor, or hospital, to treat his remaining female organs that were killing him. The lack of understanding on the part of the larger community of what transgender is, and the unwillingness to accept those that are different are just two of the problems that lead to Robert’s death. A change in the construction of gender that is going on all around us at this very moment needs to take place in order to avoid repetition of such needless suffering of another human, regardless of their gender.