Campy Conclusions: Examining the Subversion of Heteronormative Relationship
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Campy Conclusions: Examining the Subversion of Heteronormative Relationship Sanctions in American Film Musicals A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Steffi A. Shook December 2013 © 2013 Steffi A. Shook. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled Campy Conclusions: Examining the Subversion of Heteronormative Relationship Sanctions in American Film Musicals by STEFFI A. SHOOK has been approved for the School of Film and the College of Fine Arts by Louis-Georges Schwartz Associate Professor of Film Studies Margaret Kennedy-Dygas Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT SHOOK, STEFFI A., M.A., December 2013, Film Studies Campy Conclusions: Examining the Subversion of Heteronormative Relationship Sanctions in American Film Musicals ( pp.101) Director of Thesis: Louis-Georges Schwartz The heteronormative endings that conclude American film musicals can be read as camp or ironic in light of the subversion of hegemonic relationship sanctions that proves consistent throughout the genre. In order to understand the reading of camp into these endings one must examine the ways in which American film musicals subvert hegemonic relationship sanctions. This subversion takes place through the allowance of female agency via musical performance, the abundance of gender play, the presentation of alternative family structures specifically through the glorification of communal living, and the possibility for alternative masculinities. While these endings make the films available to camp readings, this thesis focuses on their ironic function in that they constitute a marked reversal of the films’ subversive tropes. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………3 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1: "I can do, without you": Female Agency through Musical Performance in the American Film Musical ...................................................................... 20 Chapter 2: "I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey": Gender Play in the American Film Musical ...................................................................... 42 Chapter 3: "The farmer and the cowman should be friends": The Glorification of Alternative Family Structures in the American Film Musical……………....55 Chapter 4: "So, are you as good in bed as you are on that dance floor?": Masculinity and Male Bodies in the American Film Musical ........................................... 71 Conclusion…… ................................................................................................................ 90 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................... 95 Filmography .................................................................................................................... 100 5 INTRODUCTION The heteronormative endings that conclude American film musicals can be read as camp or ironic in light of the subversion of hegemonic relationship sanctions that proves consistent throughout the genre. In order to understand the reading of camp into these endings one must examine the ways in which American film musicals subvert hegemonic relationship sanctions. This subversion takes place through the allowance of female agency via musical performance, the abundance of gender play, the presentation of alternative family structures specifically through the glorification of communal living, and the possibility for alternative masculinities. While these endings make the films available to camp readings, this thesis focuses on their ironic function in that they constitute a marked reversal of the films’ subversive tropes. American film musicals are clearly ‘campy’ productions. Many of our world’s rules fly out the window as characters begin dancing on ceilings and singing in supermarkets. Musical performances allow characters boundless expression. While this freedom does result in belting out show tunes and tapping during business meetings, it also allows for more important manifestations. Musical characters are less bound by rules of being. Musical men can wear glitter and display vulnerability while musical women can make their own decisions and run the show. In musicals, characters experience some freedom from hegemonic relationship sanctions. While musicals offer characters new possibilities for expression and gender play, they conclude with traditional heteronormative unions. These endings depict marriages, child-rearing, silent women, and active men. Rick Altman sees the happy conclusions as 6 enforcing heteronormative restrictions and thus undoing any challenges to the gender system that occurred in the film prior to its ending. Altman states: “The ecstatic, uplifting quality of the musical’s final scene permits no doubt about the permanence both of the couple and of the cultural values which the couple simultaneously guarantees and incarnates.”1 What Altman fails to make note of is the enormous discrepancy between these traditional endings and the subversive tropes that exist throughout American film musicals. These endings do not undo the expressive possibilities found in the films but rather exist as a farce of traditional, heteronormative unions in the face of the genre’s subversive qualities. These endings can therefore be read as ironic- as a campy parody of the hegemonic relationship sanctions that the films work against throughout their durations. Review of Literature: Constituting Camp Camp exists as a highly contested term both in and out of academic considerations. From an aestheticism to a lifestyle the term continually cross-dresses between definitions and parts of speech. Andy Medhurst likens trying to define camp as attempting to sit in the corner of a circular room.2 This fluctuating quality of the term may make tracking its trajectory difficult but these variances also translate into utility. Through consistent metamorphosis camp exists as an adaptive and layered term. One can 1 Altman, Rick. The American Film Musical. p. 51 2 Medhurst, Andy. “Batman, Deviance and Camp.” p. 154. 7 apply the term’s multiple facets in many ways to recognize resistance to marginalization through artistic expression. Camp has been referred to as a style, aesthetic, taste, sensibility, etc. Labeled as both political and apolitical depending on the historical moment, camp boasts a slippery etymology along with its convoluted definition. Said to derive from both French and Italian, even the origin of the word remains contested. Fabio Cleto describes camp’s history as a “queer” one. The term can slip between all parts of speech, is sometimes capitalized and sometimes not, and “masquerades” around its various uses.3 Lauren Ross aptly describes the term’s multiple roles as “cross-dressing”.4 The camp cannon traditionally does not begin in the world of theory but rather in the realm of literature. In 1954 Christopher Isherwood published a novel entitled The World in the Evening in which his characters give serious consideration to camp. The novel’s main character Stephen attempts self-discovery after the end of his marriage through the awakening of his dormant bisexuality. The consideration of camp occurs during a conversation between the main character Stephen and his friend Charles. Charles inquires if Stephen has heard the term camp and he admits coming across the term in nightclubs. Charles is concerned with “high” camp and considers camping in queer circles an “utterly debased form.”5 He considers high camp as a serious consideration and therefore sees the process as “making fun out of” rather than “making fun of” the subject of ridicule. Isherwood’s model clearly 3 Cleto, Fabio. “Queering the Camp.” p. 2. 4 Ross, Lauren. “Camp It Up: Camp in the Portrait Photography of Daniela Rossell and Pierre et Gilles.” p. 43. 5 Isherwood, Christopher. “From The World in the Evening.” p. 51. 8 ties camp and its implementation to an expression reserved for homosexual males. This exclusivity remains one of the many contested issues surrounding the term. Camp made its academic debut a decade later in Susan Sontag’s, now (in)famous, “Notes on Camp”. Sontag’s highly-stylized essay consists of short notes each of which attempts to illuminate the components of the aestheticism. According to Sontag, camp navigates in an overtly stylized manner and it judges based not on a standard a beauty but by the ability of something to successfully display an implicit degree of artifice.6 Camp forefronts style over substance and Sontag references works from literature, theatre, and film to define the stylings that constitute camp. Camp transforms the serious into the frivolous and, in Sontag’s opinion, exists as an apolitical means of expression.7 In the vein of Isherwood’s novel, Sontag also makes a distinction between ‘types’ of camps. Sontag identifies “deliberate” camp as camp which knows itself to be camp. This type of camp, which can be aligned with Isherwood’s low camp, revolves around a sense of trying too hard whereas pure camp results from a failed seriousness. According to Sontag, naïve or pure camp proves much more successful and enjoyable.8 Sontag’s parameters prove confounding since they raise the question of intent. Sontag states that intent to be campy is probably always harmful yet labels an Art Nouveau craftsman’s assertion of his work as camp as pure. It