ATP330 Module Title

Academy of Music & Theatre Arts Falmouth University Theatre Department 2020-21 BA (Hons) Acting Module: ATP330 Module Title: The Thinking Practitioner, Student-Led Research Submission: Extended Essay, 6000 words Student Name: Olivia Longbone Essay Title: THE ETHICAL REPRESENTATION OF LESBIANISM ON SCREEN AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LGBTQ+ FEMALE ARTISTS IN THE CREATIVE PROCESS. Supervisor: Ciaran Clarke Statement of Authorship: by making this submission I declare myself the sole author of this essay and confirm that I have not used any source material other than that cited in the text and detailed in the list of references/bibliography. This essay is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the award of BA (hons) Acting. I confirm that, except where other sources are acknowledged, this project is my own unaided work and that its length is 6,562 words. Table of contents Introduction: p1 Chapter 1: Pervasive tropes of lesbianism in mainstream cinema – p4 • The “luscious lesbian” and her stone-butch antithesis – p5 • The “predatory lesbian” and her conversion narrative – p7 • The “apparitional lesbian” and her ambiguous sexuality – p9 • “Bury Your Gays” or “Dead Lesbian Syndrome” and the tragic tale of homosexuality – p11 Chapter 2: Ethical representations of lesbianism in cinema – p14 • Lesbianism in Art House and non-narrative cinema – p15 • A dissection of ethical representation in mainstream cinema – p18 Conclusion: p22 Bibliography: p24 With thanks to Ciaran Clarke for coaching me through this process, guiding my writing and being an incredible support, to those who endured my rantings as I discovered more inequalities and tropes than I thought possible, and to my girlfriend and my mum for encouraging and supporting me. Finally, my thanks go to the incredible LGBTQ+ women who have paved the way in the industry for me and so many others – may our efforts for ethical representation and diversity never cease. 1 THE ETHICAL REPRESENTATION OF LESBIANISM ON SCREEN AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LGBTQ+ FEMALE ARTISTS IN THE CREATIVE PROCESS. The presence of LGBTQ+ female creatives is perhaps the most important aspect of constructing stories on screen which ethically depict the lesbian experience. However, many films that centre around lesbianism or involve major characters that identify as lesbians are directed and written by heterosexual men. Indeed, plenty of mainstream films that are highly regarded as lesbian cinema from the past decade have been directed by men, namely: Room in Rome, The Heiresses, Blue is the Warmest Colour, The Duke of Burgundy, Carol, Disobedience, Battle of the Sexes, The Misandrists, Collette and The Favourite (Cinema Paradiso 2020). While these films have been met with varying degrees of success and criticism, they share the influence of the male gaze. What role should men, particularly heterosexual men, play in the creation of lesbian stories, especially considering that the core of the identity being presented does not involve a male presence in any way? A further issue stems from the choice to cast straight actors to play lesbians. Despite any tact or sensitivity in the performance, it is arguable that the exclusion of gay female actors by replacing them with their heterosexual counterparts is damaging and reduces what could be a nuanced creation to simply a performance of gayness. As of 2018, 61 heterosexual actors have been nominated for an Academy Award since the foundation of the Oscars for their performance of an LGBTQ+ character (Baur 2018). This effectively represses the voices of the LGBTQ+ community by having their stories portrayed by people who do not have to deal with the ramifications of a gay identity in reality. For the purpose of this essay, the term “ethical representation” will be utilised with regard to the exemplification of lesbian characters that are accurate, not damaging to the 2 community they depict, avoid the use of harmful tropes (examined later in this essay) and that have been crafted with pure intentions. The expression “creative process” will regard those in explicitly narrative roles such as writers, directors and actors, that predominantly sculpt the portrayal on screen. My thesis stands that ethical representation of lesbianism in film is entirely dependent on an LGBTQ+ presence in the creative process. Is there an intrinsic issue with heterosexual male directors attempting to portray lesbians on screen? In actuality, there may not be as long as the film is not inaccurate, derogatory or damaging to the communities that it portrays. The issue stands however, that heterosexual men are unable to convey the lesbian experience with full accuracy as it is not a part of their lived experience, no matter how much respect and research is applied. “For all our lives, we’ve always … seen ourselves refracted through other people’s prisms. We’ve always heard people analyse us, describe what our feelings are, what our thoughts are” (Feinberg 1993), this is a sentiment widely held in the LGBTQ+ community which historically has had minimal command over their portrayal across media. The fact that the majority of gay media, in the mainstream at least, is created and shaped by heterosexual men only intensifies this feeling. Heterosexual male directors’ creations will also be essentially implicated by the male gaze as posited by Laura Mulvey in her seminal essay, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975), which argued that intrinsically “Film only serves to perpetuate a type of male-driven patriarchal language that facilitates male visual pleasure” (Royer 2019: 8). Furthermore, male directors claiming ownership over lesbian media are, at the core of their thinking, asserting that they have a superior ability to translate stories that are not their own to the screen. Even male directors with the purest intentions are 3 unconsciously subscribing to this notion and taking an opportunity away from a gay female director in the process. Maybe one day we will see a woman as a Member of Congress, a gypsy actor in the role of the General Manager of the Bank of Spain and a black girl following the yellow brick road to talk to a homosexual Wizard of OZ without shocking anyone. But most of all, maybe no one will ask themselves what it would have been like to have that story told by a white, heterosexual, man, because that would only be one way of telling a story. (Bollaín 1998: 389) This point that Bollaín eloquently communicates in her essay Cinema with Tits, is applicable to the portrayal of a male director’s vision as well as a commentary on the types of stories that we see most frequently in narrative cinema. With Bollaín’s insight, it becomes clear that the root of the issue with male directors controlling cinema, including lesbian cinema, is that it is simply the default. In order for cinema to progress, alternative viewpoints are necessary. Repeating the visions of heterosexual, cisgender, white men does little to further the artistic scope of the film industry. We are at a point of limbo in history where there is a flourishing community of gay female actors, directors and writers that need embracing by the industry, ensuring that the future of film is not simply a repetition of the past 100 years. The film industry has always had a hidden community fuelling it. There are a multitude of reasons why the LGBTQ+ community has suffered in the industry, one of the most prevalent being The Motion Picture Production Code. More commonly known as The Hays Code, it stated that “Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden.” (Hays 1930), effectively outlawing showing gay characters and storylines in films from 1934 until 1968. While the Hays Code occupied the consumer’s view of Hollywood, 4 “lavender cover-ups” and “twilight tandems” (White 1999) protected the homosexual identities of some of the best and brightest in the film industry. These relationships included the union of a lesbian and a gay man in marriage to avoid suspicion by the general public and authorities (Woods 2016). The sheer quantity of suspected gay individuals involved in every aspect of Hollywood from set, to costume, directing, composing, writing and acting left some breadcrumbs for audiences to pick up on if they were in search of gay symbolism. The building blocks of the film industry were carried on the backs of homosexuals. The reluctance of the Hollywood system to temper its consistently hostile representation of homosexuality for most of the 21st century shows that the considerable collective power so many individuals had was ceded to them under strict conditions. (Woods 2016: 286) Evidentially, the suppression of gay storylines, creators and women in general, paved the way for the massive inequalities that we see today in the film industry. In the 118 films from major studios counted in the 2020 Studio Responsibility Index, only 18% (22 films in total) contained characters that identified as LGBTQ+, out of which a mere 36% were lesbians, giving a total of 8 lesbian characters (GLAAD 2020). Due to the sheer lack of lesbian representation in mainstream cinema, the majority of which does not involve LGBTQ+ women in the narrative creative process, it is no surprise that many of these films perpetuate negative and uninformed tropes. Pervasive tropes of lesbianism in mainstream cinema There are several recurring and damaging themes in the portrayal of lesbians on screen that this essay will dissect. Firstly, the hypersexualised femme lesbian, secondly the 5 lesbian as a predatory presence, thirdly the lack of obvious lesbian identity on screen, and finally the issue of disproportionate lesbian death in mainstream film. All of these issues combine to create a filmic landscape which denies lesbians an unfettered existence. They are rarely allowed to simply exist on screen in the capacity that heterosexual characters are able to.

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