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Coming-of-Age Film in the Age of Activism

Agency and Intersectionality in Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name

29 – 06 – 2018 Supervisor: Anne Salden dr. M.A.M.B. (Marie) Lous Baronian [email protected] Second Reader: student number: 11927364 dr. A.M. (Abe) Geil Master Media Studies (Film Studies) University of Amsterdam Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank Marie Baronian for her first-rate supervision and constant support. Throughout this process she inspired and encouraged me, which is why she plays an important part in the completion of my thesis.

I would also like to thank Veerle Spronck and Rosa Wevers, who proved that they are not only the best friends, but also the best academic proof-readers I could ever wish for.

Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude towards my classmate and dear friend Moon van den Broek, who was always there for me when I needed advice (or just a hug) during these months, even though she had her own thesis to write too.

Abstract

The journey of ‘coming of age’ has been an inspiring human process for writers and filmmakers for centuries long, as its narrative format demonstrates great possibilities for both pedagogy and entertainment. The transformation from the origins of the genre, the German Bildungsroman, to classic coming-of-age cinema in the 1950s and 1980s in America saw few representational changes. Classic coming-of-age films relied heavily on the traditional Bildungsroman and its restrictive cultural norms of representation. However, in the present Age of Activism recent coming-of-age films seem to break with this tendency and broaden the portrayal of identity formation by incorporating diversity in its representations. A case study of three critically acclaimed contemporary coming-of-age films Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name shows how these films diverge from the historical tradition by incorporating agency and intersectionality in their diverse representations of maturity. A comparison of the Bildungsroman’s portrayal of identity formation to the recent corpus pointed out that the included agency and intersectionality politicize the century old genre. Due to this politicization, one can witness a distinct development towards growing awareness of diversity issues in 21st century coming-of-age cinema.

Keywords: Coming-of-Age Cinema, Bildungsroman, Identity Representation, Agency, Intersectionality, Moonlight, Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name.

3 Table of Contents

Introduction 5

Part I: Theoretical Framework Chapter 1: Traditions of Growing up 10 1.1 The Bildungsroman Origins 10 1.2 Coming-of-age on Screen 13 1.3 Representation Matters 17 1.4 , Sexuality, Race, and Class 18

Part II: Analyses Chapter 2: The Agency of the Central Hero 23 2.1 Agency: A Theoretical Perspective 23 2.2 Agency in the Traditional Coming-of-age Genre 25 2.3 Agency in Recent Coming-of-age Films 27 2.4 Female Agency in Lady Bird 28 2.5 Black Masculine Agency in Moonlight 32 2.6 Queer Masculine Agency in Call Me By Your Name 35

Chapter 3: Intersectional Journeys of Maturity 39 3.1 Intersectionality: A Theoretical Perspective 39 3.2 Intersectionality in Cinema 41 3.3 Intersectionality in the Traditional Coming-of-age Genre 43 3.4 A Working-class Journey in Lady Bird 44 3.5 A Multifaceted journey in Moonlight 47 3.6 A Queer journey in Call Me By Your Name 51

Conclusion 55

Filmography 59

Works Cited 60

4 Introduction

“At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you gonna be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you.” – Juan to “Little” in Moonlight (, 2016)

“I want you to be the very best version of yourself.” “But what if this is the best version?” – Marion and Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson in Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017) “How you live your life is your business, just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once.” - Mr. Perlman to Elio in Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)

Coming of age is a human experience that is similar to birth, and eventually death: everyone goes through it at some point in their life. One finds himself rather different than before through experiences of loving and losing, seeking and settling, running and returning. We might say, that one has matured. While the specific experiences that determine one’s coming of age process differ for everyone, the fundamental notion stays universal: you live through stuff that urges you to grow up. This timeless characteristic of the coming-of-age experience explains the enduring success of the cinematic adaption. Personally, I have always enjoyed the classic American coming-of-age film genre, but somehow it has also always felt like a ‘guilty pleasure’, due to its traditional high school allure. However, with recent American releases such as Boyhood (, 2014), (, 2016), Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016), American Honey (Andrea Arnold, 2016), Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017) and Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017) I was introduced to a new approach to coming-of-age films. Not only did these films move away from the original high school environment, but they also seemed to transcend the high school sentiment through the implementation of unfamiliar characters and environments within the familiar coming-of-age genre. Due to these aforementioned recent releases one might say we are in the midst of a renaissance of the American coming-of-age genre, which last culminated in the 1980s when dominated the scene with celebrated teen films such as The Breakfast

5 Club (1985), (1984), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). While these original coming- of-age films offer insights into the rich tradition of the genre, recent films aim to shake up this tradition by broadening the scenery of coming of age. The six different titles mentioned earlier collectively focus on telling untold stories of growing up through new points of view, and in a manner that feels more realistic than the rather idealized teen films of the 1980s. This feeling of realism stems from the fact that these coming-of-age stories represent the lived and quite complex experiences of diverse people, with varying , sexualities, races, and classes. It is my hypothesis that through these non-normative portrayals, coming-of-age cinema is not only broadening its portrayal of identity formation, but also moving towards the realms of politicization by taking part in the societal debates on representation, diversity and equality within the cinematic field. Such societal participation makes sense when considering the current time, as numerous American journalists1 have argued that people live in the ‘Age of Activism’ since around 2014, and increasingly after Trump’s 2016 election win. The recent Age of Activism is centred around the youth and refers to the manner in which young activists mobilize the American nation with political marches, protests and debates demanding gun control, racial equality and gender equality. Similar to these political protesters, recent coming-of-age films seem to have started using their voice as a medium to talk about socio-political issues having to do with gender, sexuality, race, and class. All of a sudden, the everlasting teen film is becoming a medium with a politicized voice, and a medium to take seriously.

1 Some of the journalists that argue for the Age of Activism in their articles are: Blakemore, Erin. "Youth In Revolt: Five Powerful Movements Fueled By Young Activists". News.Nationalgeographic.Com, 2018, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/youth- activism-young-protesters-historic-movements/ Gabbatt, Adam. "Activism In The Age Of Trump: Meet The Leaders Of The Grassroots Resistance". , 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/19/anti-trump-activists-protest-grassroots-leaders. Pindell, James. "Welcome To America’S Golden Age Of Political Activism - The Boston Globe". Bostonglobe.Com, 2017, https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/01/24/groundgame/oB0e1onE4q6AaztzShw0PM/st ory.html. Ruiz, Rebecca. "Trump’s America Will Also Be A New Golden Age Of Activism". Mashable, 2016, https://mashable.com/2016/11/15/trump-presidency-sparks-liberal- resistance/?europe=true#cT5SNBbDMuqp Safronova, Valeriya. "Millennials And The Age Of Tumblr Activism". Nytimes.Com, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/style/millennials-and-the-age-of-tumblr-activism.html

6 Concomitantly, these contemporary coming-of-age films were also starting to get critically acknowledged for their representational value, as the efforts were rewarded by the acclaimed award shows. Boyhood was nominated for Best Film at the Oscars and won the Golden Globe for Best Film (Drama) in 2015. Two years later in 2017, another coming-of-age film was nominated at the Oscars, and even managed to win: Moonlight. This win was both an accomplishment for the longstanding critically neglected coming-of-age genre as well as for the people the film represented, being black queer men. Since the last presented us with two more nominations from the coming-of-age genre, Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name, the genre has become increasingly vital again, and therefore worthy of further investigation. One recurring element in the reviews of these ‘rejuvenated’ coming-of-age films is the frequent mentioning of the German Bildungsroman, the 18th century literary tradition from which the classic cinematic coming-of-age genre originates2. This mentioning gives the contemporary coming-of-age films a bit of historical cachet, however, I also questioned the accuracy of the Bildungsroman reference. This 18th century tradition was known for its conventional, pedagogic and peaceful nature, while in contrast, the 21st century coming-of-age films were all praised for their disruptive, complex, and divergent representations of adulthood. Additionally, the time difference of three centuries plausibly led to substantial disparities concerning the representation of identities. By observing these differences, I was prompted to look into the representation of identity formation in the recent coming-of-age releases compared to the tradition. In this thesis I will further research the recent revival of coming-of-age cinema and its connection to the historical Bildungsroman. In doing so, I aim to establish whether the affiliation to the genre’s origins are still accurate, or if it is actually more accurate to speak of a new tendency within the coming-of-age genre. In order to examine this, I will ask: How does recent coming-of-age cinema handle the representation of diversity in its portrayal of identity formation, compared to the traditional Bildungsroman? This research question will help me to critically reflect on my hypothesis

2 To be seen (amongst others) in: Bradshaw, Peter. "Boyhood Review – One Of The Great Films Of The Decade | ". The Guardian, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/10/boyhood-review-richard-linklater-film. Kelly, Nolan. " Film Festival Review: Call Me By Your Name". The Pavlovic Today, 2017, https://thepavlovictoday.com/mixed-media/new-york-film-festival-call-me-by-your-name/. Lack, Hannah, and Maisie Skidmore. "The Cultural References Behind Greta Gerwig’S Lady Bird". Another, 2018, http://www.anothermag.com/design-living/10570/the-cultural-references-behind-greta-gerwigs-lady-bird Spiegel, Josh. "Moonlight: A True Coming Of Age". Movie Mezzanine, 2016, http://moviemezzanine.com/moonlight-essay/

7 regarding the politicization of the contemporary coming-of-age genre, which I believe to have witnessed with the last few releases of the genre. The answer to the research question will be formed by looking at the three most recent and critically successful coming-of-age films: Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name. These films deliver vastly different explorations of growing up compared to the polished teen films from the 1980s and prove that there is a distinction in the influence of different makers of coming-of-age films. Whereas most of the 1980s teen films were created by white male directors (Wilkinson Wonder Girls 8), in the 2010s the field of production has diversified and consequently the films have too. By using their unique personal perspective of respectively a woman (Lady Bird ‘s Gerwig), a black man (Moonlight’s Jenkins) and a queer man (Call Me By Your Name’s Guadagnino) the recent films represent women, black and queer men. Lady Bird introduces us to a stubborn, lower-class teenage girl who fights with society, her mother and her growing maturity. Moonlight shows us how a poor, black boy struggles with his sexual identity, while he comes of age in the ghetto of Miami. Call Me By Your Name presents us to an intelligent young boy whose coming of age is synchronous to his queer sexual awakening. To thoroughly analyse these films, I will first look into the history and traditions of the Bildungsroman, as well as its merging into the cinematic coming-of-age genre in the theoretical framework (Chapter 1). I will build on theorists Franco Moretti, John Maynard, and Mikail Bakhtin and the genre’s estimated paragon, Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (1795) by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in developing an understanding of the literary Bildungsroman. I will reflect on the connections between the literary and cinematic field, as well as the characterizations of the cinematic coming-of-age genre by using two significant examples: Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), with which coming-of-age cinema started and (John Hughes, 1985), from the teen film peak in the 1980s. The theoretical framework will be developed by use of theorists Stuart Hall, Judith Butler, Kimberle Crenshaw, bell hooks and Richard Dyer, allowing me to analyse identity and representation matters in that perspective further in the following chapters In the analysis of identity and representation matters, I will centralize two concepts which I deem the most striking innovations on the level of identity representation within the coming- of-age genre: the personal agency of the central hero (Chapter 2), and the incorporation of diverse characters through an intersectional analysis (Chapter 3). Chapter two concentrates on the notion of agency on the basis of the definitions of David Bordwell and Torben Grodal. This chapter will focus on how agency is utilized differently in the historical coming-of-age tradition compared to the recent corpus by analysing Lady Bird, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name. Chapter three

8 zooms in on the concept of intersectionality by building on explanations of Kimberle Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins. This last chapter will demonstrate how diversity is employed differently in the historical coming-of-age tradition compared to the recent corpus, by analysing the films through an intersectional lens. These analyses will help me to examine in which way the identity representations in Lady Bird, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name diverge from the Bildungsroman tradition, and might lead to the politicization of the contemporary coming-of-age genre. In the end, this thesis aims to find an answer to the main question concerning recent coming-of-age cinema’s representation of diversity in the portrayal of identity formation compared to the Bildungsroman. Through this answer an evaluation will be made with regards to the politicization of the contemporary cinematic coming-of-age genre in the Age of Activism. It is not my aim to demonstrate the wrongs of the Bildungsroman tradition and the rights of the contemporary corpus. Rather it is my aspiration to offer new lenses (of agency; of intersectionality) with which one can look at these films to indicate whether there is a certain development within the genre.

9 Chapter 1: Traditions of Growing Up

Introduction This chapter will explore the historical and theoretical background of the coming-of-age genre and the representation of identity in media. Starting with the origins of the German Bildungsroman, I will explain the tradition by relying on the paragon Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (1795) by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I will connect the literary origins to the classic American cinematic coming-of-age field and outline the characterizations of this cinematic form by use of two significant examples. These are Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955), with which coming-of-age cinema started in America and The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), from the teen film peak in the 1980s. Through these examples I will determine the codes of the genre. Additionally, I will define a theoretical framework on the matters of identity and representation building on work of theorists such as Stuart Hall, Judith Butler, Kimberle Crenshaw, bell hooks and Richard Dyer. This will allow me to explore the norms of the coming-of-age genre further in the following chapters.

1.1 The Bildungsroman Origins Maturing, growing up, or coming of age is a human experience which has always been of high interest for various artists in the world, whether that be novel writers, poets, photographers or filmmakers. The mere idea of maturing - the transgression from being a child to becoming an adult - is in no way bound to a specific historical timeframe. Yet, as I will show, the tradition of contemplating on this transformative process of youth is, via mediums appropriate to its time. In the 18th century, authors in Europe started taking their story inspiration from maturing, the psychological journey towards moral self-awareness (Maynard 279). One of the first Western stories that embarked upon this theme is the 1795 work Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (or: Apprenticeship Years in English) by Goethe. Since this work is historically deemed important, I will use it as the main example of early self-awareness stories3. In Goethe’s story the eponymous hero, Wilhelm Meister, attempts to escape from what he sees as the empty life of a bourgeois businessman by embarking on a journey of self-realization. Through this story the novel “directs

3 However, the corpus is of course much broader, see for instance: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education (1762); Jane Austen, Emma (1815); Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847); Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), amongst others.

10 our attention to the pressing task of bringing all the potentials contained within us to full expression” (Bleicher, 365). At the time, Goethe broke with the classic hero paradigm in literature that focused on mature, adult men such as Hector and Achilles. Instead, he chose to “see youth as the most meaningful part of life” and focus on a young hero, as Franco Moretti states in his book on the Bildungs-movement in Europe (3). Hence, a paradigm shift can be witnessed in Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre, as Goethe enters a new field of literacy with a different protagonist than writers accustomed themselves to in the 18th century. Goethe’s novel marked the birth of a new genre - the European Bildungsroman - in which the youthful age became centralized as a source for meaningful lessons for our modern culture (Moretti 4). However, the renowned term Bildungsroman was actually not used until 1803 by the German critic Karl Morgenstern, making Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre from 1795 a Bildungsroman a posteriori (Maynard 279). Goethe’s work later became the archetype of this new genre, as the rules of the Bildungsroman were determined in hindsight of its inaugural work (Moretti V). Nevertheless, despite Morgenstern’s efforts, the term Bildungsroman did not come into broader use until it was adopted overseas in the English Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1910 (Maynard 280). By the 20th century, Bildungsroman had become the main term to describe the steadily developing types of novels that were concerned with the quintessential and psychological process from youth to adulthood. The name Bildungsroman was not mindlessly chosen by Morgenstern, as the word is centred around the German word Bildung, which can literally be translated to education or formation (Bleicher 364). Additionally, Bildung as a concept also refers to the German tradition of self-cultivation, or educative self-formation, a thought that emerged in Europe the 18th century (Bleicher 364). As Bleicher argues, this worldly “thought” was thus exemplified in the new genre of the Bildungsroman where we follow an individual, a Bildungsheld, in its course towards self- formation, or identity building, as we do in Goethe’s archetypical work (365). It is also in this exact definition that we find the central vision of the Bildungsroman, as its sole focus is “the growth of a particular subjectivity” (Brown 651). In other words, Bildungsroman stories tell us how a particular individual at a particular time, through educative experiences, embarks upon his journey towards self-formation. In its concentration on the youth and youthful Bildung, the roman treated the growth towards maturity, so the process of coming of age, with a never seen before “moral and historical urgency” (Brown 660). Due to the importance of education and self-formation in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre, it can be seen as a classic example of the Bildungsroman, while the genre of course encompasses many slight variations on the type. Russian literary theorist Mikail Bakhtin dissected

11 five specific types within the Bildungsroman novels in the nineteenth and twentieth century: the novel of education, the novel of human emergence, the novel of biographical emergence, the novel of didactic or pedagogic emergence and lastly, the novel of historical emergence (19, 23). Rather than contrasting kinds of Bildungsroman novels these types should be regarded as variations, or subcategories of the same sort, with coming of age as their common connector. Central in all these Bildungsroman subcategories is thus the emergence or becoming of a hero, the difference lies merely in how this process unfolds (Bakhtin 19). Alongside Goethe, other European writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen also explored the Bildungsroman narrative. Together with this new genre development of the Bildungsroman came a central vision, created through a set of genre appropriate norms. This evolvement is in line with Jacques Derrida’s vision on the law of genre, as he states in his homonymous article, that the creation of a genre creates laws concerning the allowed use of said genre and demands respect for these norms (57). Coherent to Derrida, the Bildungsroman genre’s central vision was usually expressed through a set of typical elements in the story’s structure and main character. Firstly, Bildungsroman stories usually follow a linear narrative with a centred perspective that is needed to tell the central character’s self-formative journey. Second, there is usually one protagonist, an apprentice to life, often referred to as the Bildungsheld: an individual who is yet to become morally self-aware, a kind of “tabula rasa” at the story’s inception (Beards 205; Brown 651). The third ‘law’ is that this youthful hero in the Bildungsroman will mature within the time of the story’s narrative. It is a hero “in the process of becoming” (Bakhtin 19), who we follow on his educational transformative journey regarding four crucial concerns: vocation, mating, religion, and identity (Beards 205). As a fourth marker the importance of mating can be put forward, as the Bildungsheld must always decide on a suitable mating partner by the end of the story, making the central figures in the Bildungsroman in a sense also “apprentice lovers” (Beards 207). The fifth law states that the protagonist learns his lessons and grows as a human being outside of the four walls of an institutionalised education system, as he steps into the world for his educative journey (Beards 205). As a following law, the relationship of the apprentice with his parents is often central in the story and crucial for his development, as “finding a place in society is coterminous with finding a satisfactory relationship with the father” (Millard 15). The final marker concerns the conclusion of the Bildungsroman stories, as these are commonly focused not on conflict but on the protagonist’s “participation in the Whole” (Moretti 20). The protagonist is no longer seeking, but settling, as he is integrated into society after his transformation (Brown 659). When this ‘merging’ of the hero and society has occurred, the

12 journey of the classical Bildungsroman can end, as it achieved its sole function of maturing, and there is speak of ‘closure’ (Moretti 26-27). After three decades of Bildungsroman novels, one can now recognize certain patterns, or norms, in the Bildungsroman representations. Traditionally, the Bildungsroman told a story that was about how a middle-class white man overcomes difficulties during his formative journey and finds his wife to settle within a bourgeois society (Hoagland 4). In doing so, the Bildungsroman constructed a ‘norm’ that was white, male and heterosexual and only showed the relationships and behaviours deemed appropriate within that norm (Hoagland 5). This norm appears rather limited from our contemporary world of growing awareness and diversity. Obviously, the authors at the time seemed not aware of the complexities of personal development and the diverse ways of being, concerning gender, class, ethnicity, race and sexuality (Šnircová 1). Yet, when we look back at the time and place when the Bildungsroman was conceived, namely Germany in the 18th century, this conceived norm starts to make sense. The rather obvious clarification lies in the fact that authors wrote (auto-)biographical works of maturation, and the socio-economic conditions under which the Bildungsroman arose at the time in Europe were mostly white and middle class (Brown 662). However, there are additional explanations for this norm that are more rooted deeply in our culture. These ruling Bildungsroman norms concerning representations of race, gender, sexuality and class come from long traditions of inequality matters, a topic I will turn back to later in this chapter when I further examine these particular fields. As for the Bildungsroman, however popular in dealing with the ‘problem’ that is youth in the 19th century, the literary tradition started to lose grounds by the beginning of the 20th century as the medium of film entered the stage.

1.2 Coming-of-age on Screen At the time in history when literature was moving towards more experimental narratives4 (end of the 19th, beginning of 20th century) and thus the rather straightforward, linear Bildung-narrative was losing grounds in the literary field, a new popular art form appeared which was more susceptible to traditional storytelling than the modernist novel (Brown 651-652). This new popular art form was cinema, and thus the transformative tradition made its own transition into the cinematic field, with the Bildungsfilm (Brown 652). The aforementioned transition from roman to film can be seen as an example of the longevity, or to use Walter Benjamin’s term, the “afterlife” of works of art (Benjamin 256; Brown 652). The “afterlife of art” refers to Benjamin’s

4 The 1910s literature field saw a rise in artistic experimentation in Europe and America (Modernist movement, Dadaist movement) as many writers began experimenting with given forms.

13 concept concerning the survival of materiality, as he suggests that a work of art can return in a different form, in a different time once its original form has become unfamiliar to the public (Flèche 103, Brown 653). By connecting Benjamin to the Bildungsroman, we can see that the genre-specific archetypical material has survived, as the fundamental elements of the literary genre were reborn in cinema. The afterlife of the Bildungsroman starts in America in the second half of the 20th century, where after the war and economic depression a “renewed, consumer-oriented teen culture” provided a successful economic boost for the country (Goldberg 39). Due to the drive- in being one of the most successful consumer spaces for teenagers, a new genre of teen-oriented films was developed (Goldberg 39). These teen-oriented films or ‘teenpics’ can be seen as an example of the 20th century American version of the Bildungsfilm, that quickly went by the name of coming-of-age films. Similar to the literary Bildungsroman, the coming-of-age film knows many subcategories. By now we can distinguish the light teen comedies (such as Ferris Bueller’s day Off, John Hughes 1986; Mean Girls, Mark Waters 2004), the teen movie musicals (Grease, Randal Kleiser 1978; Hairspray, John Waters 1988 and Adam Shankman 2007), the road movies (Thelma & Louise, 1991; Into The Wild, Sean Penn 2007), and the more classic coming-of-age film that stays the most true to the traditional Bildungsroman (Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray 1955; The Breakfast Club, John Hughes 1985; Garden State, Zach Braff 2004). The film that is said to have helped spark the coming-of-age genre throughout America in the 20th century was Rebel Without a Cause by Nicholas Ray (1955), featuring the iconic James Dean (Goldberg 39). Due to this film’s historical impact I will take it as an archetype for a short analysis in my research, acknowledging that the corpus consists of many other coming-of-age films. Ray’s film actually has two main storylines and the first one resolves around dating, as the narrative follows a classic pattern of “boy meets girl, girl rejects boy for an established, inappropriate boy, boy gets girl through an act of daring, boy proves his moral worth through a selfless act of bravery” (Goldberg 39). However, there is also a second storyline that drives the film’s plot, which is about how the young boy Jim (James Dean’s character) struggles with his overbearing family in order to become a strong man and also a “responsible, middle-class member of society” (Goldberg 40). There exist some clear connections between the 20th century coming-of-age film Rebel Without a Cause and the 18th century Bildungsroman tradition. To start, the story of Rebel Without a Cause centres around a main character (who is the “rebel” referred to in the film’s title) that we follow in his struggles and journey towards adult-like responsibility, similar to the Bildungsheld in the Bildungsroman. Second, the central themes in the film, middle-class youth rebellion and

14 heterosexual romance, are also main elements in the Bildungsroman. Heterosexual romance was actually a principal plot focus of the whole teen-oriented genre that followed Rebel Without a Cause, and the importance of this feature can be compared to how mating and marriage was of high concern in the plot of the Bildungsroman (Goldberg 39; Beards 207). In Rebel Without a Cause, certain homo-erotic undertones can be distinguished, which is a new element to the Bildungsroman genre. However, this sexual tension between Jim and two male characters is never openly discussed, and these two characters both die during the film. Critics have claimed that these ‘tragic’ deaths point to the film’s conservatism concerning sexuality and gender relations (Goldberg 40). Accordingly, the film’s narrative and worldview still conform to the traditional Bildungsroman. A third similarity between Rebel Without a Cause and the Bildungsroman can be found in development of the young boy, who is expected to establish a “strong and balanced masculine identity”, meaning that the boy must become a man, which resembles the obligatory maturation of the Bildungsheld in the novel (Goldberg 40). As the second storyline of the film focuses on Jim’s struggles with his overbearing family, we see a connection between the crucial influence of the Bildungsheld’s relations with his parents and the parental relationship as displayed in Rebel Without a Cause. Additionally, the conclusion of Rebel Without a Cause lies in his societal acceptance, as he has grown into a responsible middle-class member of society, similar to the merging of the Bildungsheld and society in the closure of the Bildungsroman stories. Whereas Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre was one of the first European novels to focus on youthful hero’s and their problems about the essence of maturing, Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause was one of the first big American films that also showed an understanding of youthful struggles and the conflicts of growing up5. As mentioned before, Rebel Without a Cause was said to spark the teen film genre in 1955, and it paved the way for other, now classic, youth-oriented films such as The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959), (Mike Nichols, 1967) and Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols, 1971). These films took their inspiration from trailblazer Rebel Without a Cause as they all stay rather close to the traditional markers of the Bildungsroman. However, around thirty years later than the release of Nicholas Ray’s film, America saw an additional peak in the teen-genre as the 1980’s delivered some of the biggest coming-of-age films until today. Explanations for this second major wave of teen films can be found in the time’s changing infrastructure (cinema multiplexes popped up in malls across America), as well as the launch of television’s teen sensation MTV in

5 "Rebel Without A Cause". EYE, 2018, https://www.eyefilm.nl/film/rebel-without-a-cause.

15 1980 (Wilkinson Wonder Girls 11). As such, Maryn Wilkinson states in her dissertation Wonder girls: Undercurrents of resistance in the representation of teenage girls in 1980s American cinema that essentially “the consumer potential of the American teen was radically embraced by the entertainment market of the 1980s” (11), which resulted in an immense increase in teen film production during the decade. Titles like Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984), Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986), Some Kind of Wonderful (Howard Deutch, 1987) and of course the quintessential coming-of-age of the 1980’s The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985), to name a few, were all released during the 1980’s. While Rebel Without a Cause evidently followed the Bildungsroman tradition quite closely, the genre itself developed over time. Some genre-specific changes will become clear if we take a closer look at the prime example of the 1980s: John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985). The Breakfast Club is set in suburban in 1984 and portrays “the relationships and inner journeys of five suburban high school students serving a one-day detention at school” (Kaye Hokin 110-111) through a linear narrative. This suburban setting is similar to the usual middle-class societies that are portrayed in the Bildungsroman. The students have the perception that they are very different from one another, as they are all examples of prototypical adolescents: The Athlete, The Brain, The Criminal, The Basket Case, and The Princess (Kaye Hokin 110). The Breakfast Club’s focus on these characters constitutes the main difference with the traditional Bildungsroman, as there are now five central characters instead of merely one Bildungsheld. However, all five individuals have yet to become morally self-aware and they all have the same lesson to learn, thus they can be seen as different parts of one central hero. While the film unfolds, a story is shown about the search and formation of identity of this peer group, which takes place during their Saturday detention as their teacher instructs them to write an essay on the topic “Who Do You Think You Are?” (Kaye Hokin 111,115). The process of writing this essay functions as the adolescents’ transformative journey, since it makes them realize that they are all inherently similar. During this process, the characters discover how each and every one of them has to deal with either parental pressure, parental absence or parental judgement. Once again, the parental relationship proves to be of crucial importance in the formation of the teens. These identity-based discoveries make the central characters of The Breakfast Club leave the day feeling rather content, as they learned from each other and figured out they are not as different as they initially thought. The search for identity is ‘closed’, which is quite similar to the Bildungsroman. Although the film is set in a high school, which is a formal educational system, this arena does not serve to be the actual school for the students, as they learn

16 what they need to learn from each other, rather than from the institution. This coheres to the fact that the Bildungsheld is taught by the world itself, as supposed to any institutionalised educational system. A last analogy can be found in the traditional importance of mating in the Bildungsroman, as The Breakfast Club focusses on two heterosexual romance couples in its conclusion (Kaye Hokin 112). Besides the connections made on the level of content, persona and plot, we can also compare the Bildungsroman and the (1950s and 1980s) Bildungsfilm on the levels of gender, class, race and sexuality. Surely the coming-of-age film developed over time, but are the ‘norms’ of the traditional Bildungsroman still alive in the Bildungsfilms of the 1950s and 1980s? As mentioned before, the Bildungsroman ‘norm’ was white, male, heterosexual and middle-class (Hoagland 5). If we compare this to Rebel Without a Cause, we notice that the norm is still in place, as the lead character Jim is male, heterosexual, white and comes from a middle-class family. Hence, it is arguable that this ‘early’ example of the Bildungsfilm followed the Bildungsroman quite accordingly, it stayed ‘by the book’ and did not offer a more diverse representation. When we move over to The Breakfast Club from 1985, some differences can be noted. There is no longer merely one lead character, and there are two main women in the group of ‘diverse’ Bildungshelden. However, the differences amongst the depicted adolescents are still minor if we compare it to the bigger picture of diverse representation of gender, class, race and sexuality. To state that the film is about “five very different adolescents” while they are all conforming to the white, heterosexual and middle-class norm, might be a too much of an overstatement if we look back at it now (Kaye Hokin 110). Despite a thirty-year progression in film history, the resulting diversification of media representations of coming-of-age stories is still quite limited in the mid 1980s. There is a hint of progression on the level of gender, but the overall Bildungsroman norm is still very much alive. Nevertheless, by analysing the recent identity representations of another thirty years in coming- of-age film history, we can see if the contemporary coming-of-age films broaden the artistic tradition of the Bildungsroman. However, before diving into the corpus, I will first explain the concept of representation.

1.3 Representation Matters Representation is a notion that has grown to be of high importance in contemporary Western popular culture, as it is said to be a central element to producing our culture. Stuart Hall, who was a main theorist of representation studies in the 1980-1990s, explained how this fundamental process works. As he claims in his book Representation (1997), culture is all about “shared

17 meanings”, and these meanings are produced and exchanged through language, both visually and textually (Hall, xvii). This language, Hall elaborates, operates as a “representational system”, which is a structure of symbols and signs (and these can be written words, images, sounds or objects for example) that stand for our concepts, ideas and feelings, thus these symbols and signs represent concepts, ideas and feelings to other people (xvii). As such, “representation through language is central to the process by which meaning is produced in our culture” (Hall, xvii). This created meaning is what gives us a sense of who we are, of our own identity, and thus the representational system goes hand in hand with identification matters, whether that is in advertisements, novels, music or films (Hall, xix). If you identify with something that is represented, you feel connected and understood by it, which is beneficial for distributors when it concerns a consumer product (Du Gay et al. 24). Creators of media products use their identity- knowhow to their advantage and design people in their advertisements, stories or films that represent “the kinds of ideal target consumers” which are very similar to the “typical product- users”, hoping for higher sales by doing so (Du Gay et al. 24). A norm is created that leaves out the actual and potential range of users which are far broader and far more varied than the constructed identities in media representations (Du Gay et al. 38). Thus, to specify this to my research focus, the representations in coming-of-age films until the 1980s did not reflect all the diverse cultural identities that existed, but rather the idealized – and thus constructed - identity of the aforementioned white, male, middle-class, heterosexual Bildungsheld (Hoagland 5). Problems occurred as the underrepresented people were left feeling misunderstood and undervalued as human beings in society. Therefore, media bear a certain representational power, as Hall argues that “we give things meaning by how we represent them” (xix). Representation has the power to reinforce cultural norms which makes the notion rather influential. From the Bildungsroman norm, four main categories of analysis can be drawn: gender, sexuality, race, and class. These categories are all individually important fields in the process of maturing, but they are also closely intertwined as they have an influence on each other, and thus need to be investigated together in order to come to a complete analysis of the coming- of-age genre6.

1.4 Gender, Sexuality, Race, and Class As mentioned before, gender, sexuality, race, and class are all independently rather extensive topics, but for the sake of this research I will try to pinpoint the fundaments of each. Although

6 The notion of intersectionality (coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in the 1980s) explores the intersections of the four identity-categories and will be examined further in the third chapter of this thesis.

18 the studies on the topics of sexuality and gender actually had their main academic peak in the 1990’s, recently awareness of these issues and their academic fields has been raising again. In the current appointed Age of Activism (as stated in the introduction) many societal protests, marches and discussions centralize issues of gender and sexuality. #MeToo, The Women’s March and #TimesUp are only a few current examples of the women-lead protest-initiatives in America that focus on equal rights and call an end to the sexist mistreatment of women. Film, and especially coming-of-age film, seems to sometimes place itself in the midst of these discussions, as we see a range of recent coming-of-age films that engage more and more with the political concepts of gender, sexuality, race, and class that also occur in the public debate. The reason why such societal messages are shared via the genre of coming-of-age film, lies in the genre’s recognition for the “potential influence of these films on adolescent audience members” (Behm-Morawitz and Mastro 143). As the main target group of coming-of-age cinema are the youngsters they find themselves in the similar unique phase of identity development as the portrayed hero’s. Social studies have showed that for young spectators this phase is an influential time, during which media messages can serve as a meaningful source for the acquisition of knowledge and expectations on the levels of gender, sexuality, race, and class (Behm-Morawitz and Mastro 132). Through monitoring the representations of their equals on screen and the perception of the way in which the characters deal with issues concerning the aforementioned fields, individuals can adopt certain social behaviour as they view it to be appropriate. Thus, representations in coming-of-age films play a role in young viewers’ perception and experience regarding their identity and the identity of others (Behm-Morawitz and Mastro 132). Additionally, as argued by the journalists who coined the Age of Activism7, it is also mostly the young people who participate in the current political protests. To address these politically engaged youngsters, it makes sense to politicize the ‘youth’ genre in order to make sure that it fits their current principles. Judith Butler, one of the main scholars in the field of Gender Studies, has stated in her book Gender Trouble (1990) that there is a clear distinction between sex and gender, as sex is

7 This argument is to be seen in for instance: Blakemore, Erin. "Youth In Revolt: Five Powerful Movements Fueled By Young Activists". News.Nationalgeographic.Com, 2018, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/youth- activism-young-protesters-historic-movements/ Gabbatt, Adam. "Activism In The Age Of Trump: Meet The Leaders Of The Grassroots Resistance". The Guardian, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/19/anti-trump-activists-protest-grassroots-leaders. Safronova, Valeriya. "Millennials And The Age Of Tumblr Activism". Nytimes.Com, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/style/millennials-and-the-age-of-tumblr-activism.html

19 inherently biological but gender is culturally constructed (8). Hence, she argues that “gender is neither the causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex” (Butler 8). With this theory, Butler elaborates on Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas about the construction of gender, who in her 1949 work The Second Sex, stated that “one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one” (301). The cultural construct that is gender has significant implications for the way people live their lives, as a gendered life comes with certain norms that govern “gender normativity” (Butler xxi). According to Butler, such norms are highly heterosexually orientated – akin to the Bildungsroman tradition - and dictate for example what we consider to be a man or a woman and which expressions, relations, bodies and behaviours are deemed proper or improper for these confined gender norms (xi, xii, xxiv). By behaving ‘properly’ according to the culturally constructed image of gender, we are actually “performing” our gender in society almost as a ritual, and in doing so we secure the hierarchy of and of gender as a whole system (Butler xii, xv). After the Bildungsroman, many representations in coming-of-age’s film history conformed to this heterosexist construct as they were influenced by the ruling norms on sexuality within society at the time. We see this for example in Rebel Without a Cause and The Breakfast Club, where the only depiction of sexuality is heterosexuality, leading to a limited representation. As Butler adds to this, “sexuality is always constructed within the terms of discourse and power”, and this power is often understood in terms of “heterosexual and phallic cultural conventions” (41). This means that the man is favoured over the woman in the hierarchy of gender and that representations of , lesbianism and bi- as well as trans* or non-binary representations of gender, are ignored or are a vast minority in coming-of-age cinema, as they were not seen as a legitimate part of culture for a long time (Russo xii). Butler therefore argues that a sexuality freed from heterosexual constructs would be a utopian notion, as the ones holding the power in society are usually heterosexual men who are not eager to give up their powerful position (41). The heterosexual norm has been dominant for centuries, originating in the esteemed first two mating partners of earth, Adam and Eve, who were created by God himself to reproduce and populate the earth. As the Church has been a central organ in Western society for a long time it makes sense that this idea of heterosexual love and reproduction is still present in today’s society and representations, although there exists now more awareness of other forms of sexuality. By analysing how Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird, I will further explore whether these films keep the constructed rituals alive, or if they try to bring more ambiguity in their representations through a breakdown of gender and sexuality binaries.

20 When the discussion is shifted towards the role of race and class, cultural theorist Richard Dyer has some relevant insights concerning the whiteness of the Bildungsheld. In his book of collected essays on the topic, White (1997)8, Dyer looks closely at the culturally constructed category of whiteness. Dyer argues that although we are supposedly now living in “a world of multiple identities and fragmentation”, where the old unified identities of class, gender, race, and sexuality are breaking up, we still have not reached a situation in which whiteness is no longer the norm (White 3). Throughout our history, white has never been seen as a race and this is a big part of the problem concerning ruling racial norms (Dyer White 3). “As long as race is something only applied to non-white peoples, then they/we function as a human norm” he states (Dyer White 1). The fact that only other people are racialized, and white people are considered to be just human, is problematic as that comes with a position of great power (Dyer White 2). As a result, representation of whiteness is “overwhelmingly and disproportionately predominant” not only in coming-of-age films, but also in any other media outlets, ergo: whites are everywhere in representation (Dyer White 3). This provides important insights through which we can understand the position of the Bildungsheld, as well as the more diverse contemporary heroes. However, it does not end there since the dilemma’s surrounding race are inherently intertwined with class. As social activist and cultural theorist bell hooks argued a few years after Dyer: “It is impossible to talk meaningfully about ending racism without talking about class” (Class Matters 7). In her book Where We Stand: Class Matters (2012), hooks defined the central problem as such: the face of poverty in America is a black face, even though most poor American people are white (Class Matters 3). This statement teaches us two things; first that the identity aspects of race and class are closely connected, and second, that these social categories are also very much connected to power. In a schematic manner it can be explained that the ones who hold the power within a culture (in this case white people), also have the ability to control the representations within that culture9. Consequently, the black representation of poverty reinforces the cultural notion of “poverty” as established by the more powerful people. While this representation might be false (as hooks points out) the people who have to endure these portrayals do not have the power to change it, due to their marginalised position within society.

8 Richard Dyer original essay “White” was published in 1988, but I am referring to his book White of 1997, in which he further explored the topic of whiteness. The original essay can be found at: Dyer, Richard. "White". Screen, vol 29, no. 4, 1988, pp. 44-65. Oxford University Press (OUP), doi:10.1093/screen/29.4.44. 9 I will come back to cultural constructs and the possession of power within a culture in the second chapter of this thesis when I explore the topic of agency.

21 Feminist postcolonial critic Gayatri Spivak adds to this sentiment that the most inferior position of all in the Western world is that of the poor, black woman, as in that case “you get it in three ways” which emphasizes the existence of more powerful and more marginalised positions within our society (90). Both hooks’ and Spivak’s arguments stress the interlinked connections between the individual social categories of sexuality, gender, race and class, to which I will come back to in my forthcoming chapters. In essence, an analysis on the treatment of race and class, gender, and sexuality in the filmic corpus Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird could serve well to give insights on the development of identity representations in coming-of-age film.

Conclusion As I have argued in this chapter, the Bildungsroman and following Bildungsfilm or coming-of- age film have a narrative format that demonstrates great possibilities for both pedagogy and entertainment. Actually, it was hooks who articulated the pedagogic role of film in an immaculate manner, as she explained:

Movies do not only provide a narrative for specific discourses of race, sex, and class, they provide a shared experience, a common from which diverse audiences can dialogue about these charged issues (Reel to Real 3).

Through varying narratives of youthful development, coming-of-age films can namely function as a reflection on the representations and problematic constructs we see in society at large. Considering the current activist environment in America, and the genre’s young target group, coming-of-age films form a perfect vehicle to teach or engage with young spectators about the aforementioned “charged issues” (sexuality, gender, race and class). However, as demonstrated in this chapter, traditionally the stories of growing up have been told from rather limited perspectives, offering a one-sided view on maturing to the target group as the stories were mainly about white, heterosexual, middle-class men. As the Western world in the 21st century is a world of engagement filled with activism in the form of equality protests and debates on the levels of identity and representation, it seems appropriate to analyse in which way recent coming-of-age films participate in these discussions by politicizing their films. This is why I will examine how the recent coming-of-age films use their ‘representative power’ to educate spectators about issues of equality and diversity. Therefore, I hope to find an answer to these questions by closely analysing the three recent coming-of-age films Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight in the following chapters.

22 Chapter 2: The Agency of the Central Hero

Introduction In the previous chapter I have revealed both the longstanding connection between the literary Bildungsroman and the genre of coming-of-age film, and the dominant norms within said traditions regarding representations of identity. In this chapter I will discuss recent coming-of-age cinema (the corpus stems from 2016 to 2017) from the perspective of the concept of ‘agency’ and investigate how the role of agency in the historical coming-of-age tradition differs from the recent corpus. I will analyse the films Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017), Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016) and Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017) by looking at the specific forms of agency in these films: female agency, black agency and queer agency, using theories of Judith Butler, bell hooks, Michael Kimmel, Maryn Wilkinson, Richard Dyer and Laura Mulvey. Through the following close-reading I aim to show that agency can lead towards a politicization of the coming-of-age genre.

2.1 Agency: A Theoretical Perspective In order to investigate the politicization of the coming-of-age genre, I will first delve into the personal agency of the central character. As the word ‘agency’ stems from the Latin ‘agentia’ which translates to “doing”, having agency can be interpreted as an agent’s possession of the ability to take action in our world (Oxford dictionary, Eichner 21). Agency is thus inherently connected to obtaining and exerting power, as the term explains how any individual perceives him- or herself as being an empowered subject (Eichner 11). In this chapter I will argue that agency, or the ability to have power and take control over one’s own life, is a central aspect of the characters in the coming-of-age films Lady Bird, Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name, and introduces a political flavour to the genre. I will argue that these recent coming-of-age films diverge from the classical Bildungsroman because they, each in their own way, focus on how their heroes powerfully take control of their own history while fighting certain norms or social barriers, which is opposed to the century old tradition that puts the focus on a peaceful and passive merging of the central hero within society. In order to make this claim, the concept of cinematic agency needs some elaboration. Media and agency author Susanne Eichner pointed out in her book Agency and Media Reception (2013) that the most fundamental form of agency, both in the real world and in media experiences such as film, is the sense of personal agency (163). With personal agency Eichner intends to point towards the agency of an individual person or character, and how this individual exerts their

23 power in a certain world. She continues by explaining how this sense of personal agency can unfold over different strategies, namely: “through mastering narrative, mastering choice, mastering action, and mastering space” (Eichner 163). In film, these strategies translate into four main tendencies: the way a character has control over a storyline or development; to what level the character makes their own decisions; how the character steers the drama and the plot in a chosen direction; and, lastly, in which way the spaces within the film are controlled by the character (Eichner 163). Since having personal agency is associated with the ‘mastering’ of action, choice, space and stories, the concept is unavoidably connected to control, power and performance. Film scholar Torben Grodal similarly explains in his book chapter Agency in Film Filmmaking, and Reception (2005) how agency is a common symbol for “action and performance” both in film and in a non-mediated world (17, 25). For Grodal, agency typically implies that a body is pervaded with a possession of ‘abilities’: “the ability to perceive, to be conscious, to have thoughts and emotions, to have specific traits, and tot have the ability to intend and act” (15). These abilities represent power, and thus the experience of agency in a space is inherently connected to someone’s ability to obtain and exert power within a space. Grodal argues that viewers generally perceive filmic worlds as natural worlds, both in which agency unfolds similarly. Thus, when viewing films, spectators try to detect agencies – the aforementioned abilities – because those are the source of meaning and power within the depicted world (17). As these abilities are connected to human bodies, the prime agents in film are therefore characters. This is why it is valuable to take notice of the characters and their given abilities since we are given information regarding the film’s greater message through the character’s depicted agency. Before Grodal’s ‘agency abilities’, film critic David Bordwell had already elaborated on the characteristics of human agency in his book Making Meaning (1989). In Making Meaning, Bordwell explains how filmic characters may be perceived as living agents, thus what it specifically means to be perceived as a person, creating a set of characteristics that together make up for what he coins personification (152). These features are similar to Grodal’s “abilities”, and they include: “a human body, perceptual activity (including self-awareness), thoughts (including beliefs), feelings or emotions, traits, and the capacity for self-impelled actions (such as communication, goal formation and achievement)” (Bordwell 152). A person or character transforms into a personified agent once endowed with and acting upon their bodies, thoughts, traits, actions and feelings. As Bordwell argues that a film makes meaning “by making persons”, the presented agency of the created characters can give viewers a great deal of information regarding the message of a movie (152).

24 By drawing on this set of personification heuristics, I want to argue that these features, being looking, thinking, feeling, believing, talking, and acting, are also the fundamental elements of a hero or heroine’s acquired agency within a coming-of-age film. Especially the visual activity of looking has long been regarded by critics as a valuable interpretive cue, ever since the Kuleshov effect from 1918 alerted people to the character meaningful gazes and glances of characters (Bordwell 155). In the period that followed, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault built the foundation for theories on the relation between power and the act of looking and film critics followed the lead by deliberately focusing on the look (Bordwell 155). Film theory in the 1970s and 1980s therefore saw an emergence of multiple positions considering ‘the look’ and its designated meaning. Thomas Elsaesser explains in his chapter “Cinema as Eye” from the book Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses (2010) that in this ‘look’-perspective, the eye itself becomes the “privileged point of convergence for various structures of visibility and looks”, which can be traced back in film in the shots, framing and montage (83). Thus, by following a character’s look (or: “looking for the look”) through the shots, framing and montage of a film, we as viewers get a sense of who is looking and what they are looking at, and as such we can examine the power structures within the given world. In addition to looking for the look it is equally relevant for film analysis to focus on Bordwell’s aspects of thinking, feeling and believing as indications for a character’s agency. In essence, an analysis of the appointed shared perspective – thus which character’s mind we follow - through shots, framing and montage can indicate who holds the agency in the film. Furthermore, it is valuable to analyse how much the central character steers the plot and controls the drama within the film, by use of his or her talking, acting and decision-making.

2.2 Agency in the Traditional Coming-of-age Genre In order to fully make my claim I will delineate briefly how the concept of agency was presented in the Bildungsroman and following cinematic coming-of-age tradition. As established by many experts of the literary genre, such as Franco Moretti, John R. Maynard, and François Jost, the classical Bildungsroman stories featured mainly passive men in its inception, meaning that these Bildungshelden did not possess much personal agency (Maynard 283; Moretti 21; Jost 128). Maynard argued that this passive identity of the standard Bildungsheld was very much in line with the role of the German bourgeoisie of the time, as in the eighteenth-century society they were attributed with little civil power (280). A clear example of such passivity is to be witnessed in the paragon of the Bildungsroman genre: Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Bildungsheld has no control over the plot as Wilhelm does not actively create or decide on situations, but

25 rather passively confronts or endures them in his process of maturation (Jost 128). As such, the pliant personality of Wilhelm Meister makes him a necessary yet not an important character for the Bildungsroman, creating quite a paradoxical central character. Moretti elaborates on this sentiment by asserting that Wilhelm’s necessity lies in his representation of being the exemplar Bildungsheld, however as he leaves to others the task of shaping his life Wilhelm is not active, nor a potential cause of plot, and thus eventually not a very important character within the story (21). As such, the character central to the story is not the character central to the action within the story. When we take a closer look at the conclusion of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, an argument can be made with regards to the passive aspect of the classic Bildungsroman ending. As argued in the previous chapter, Goethe’s story (and many others within the genre) ends with the protagonist’s “participation in the Whole”, meaning that the central hero integrates into society rather peacefully after his journey (Moretti 20; Brown 659). From this recurring narrative element, we can conclude that while the focus of the Bildungsroman is maturation, the sole function of maturation in this tradition is merging or settling of the central hero. Only when Wilhelm forfeits his personal quest - and thus in a way his personal agency - for the greater good of integration in society, the story finds closure (Moretti 26-27). The reason for the passivity of Wilhelm’s character can be found in the authors intention, as Goethe’s roman is highly didactic. The pedagogical lessons overrule Wilhelm’s agency in the story, causing Wilhelm to be “a rather passive hero as he is guided by the educative power of his surroundings” (Jost 128). For Goethe, it was most important that his readers would regard Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre as a docile story, which explains why he created a Bildungsheld that embodied exemplary behaviour to convey the necessary lessons within the story. However, when it is more important for a character to be pedagogical than to be truly individual, one loses his personal agency along the way. As I have established in the previous chapter, there is a strong connection between the literary Bildungsroman tradition and the cinematic coming-of-age field, which explains why we similarly witness this passive central character in the early genre films such as Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955) and The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985). In the coming-of-age archetype Rebel Without a Cause we see how central character Jim experiences a partly similar journey to Wilhelm, as Jim generally responds to what happens to him without steering the plot into his desired direction. When he does undertake action to claim his agency it is rather functional, as it serves to underscore Jim’s bad character, his apparent ‘teenage terror’, in order to shape the moralistic character of the film. Director Ray similarly favoured a didactic central character over an

26 individualistic hero with agency. Additionally, the conclusion of Rebel Without a Cause lies in Jim’s acceptance by society, as he has grown into a responsible middle-class member of society, similar to the rather passive merging of the Bildungsheld and society in the closure of the Bildungsroman stories. In doing so, the film paints quite a negative picture of agency, as taking control over one’s life is strongly connected to being bad, while being passive is connected to being good. The Breakfast Club, equally shows us the merits of personal passivity, that can be found in securing one’s affirmed position within society and free from any disturbances. After the five distinct peers in Hughes’ film spend a Saturday together in detention they grow to like each other fondly, however their glaring awareness of high school hierarchy makes their friendships short- term, as they fear that their new friendship might disrupt the school’s pecking order on Monday. We can generally say that in the ‘traditional’ coming-of-age genre, it was more important to deliver didactic stories whilst keeping social hierarchies in order, than claiming personal agency. Moreover, agency was seen and depicted as something that was rather fearful, and possibly dangerous, due to its incorporated power.

2.3 Agency in Recent Coming-of-age Films When examining the incorporated agency of the central characters in the recent coming-of-age films Lady Bird, Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name it quickly becomes clear that the central characters in these films first and foremost give power to the people they stand for in society, through the act of representation. This is because the central characters in the aforementioned films are respectively a lower-class white woman, a lower-class black gay man and a higher-class white gay man, which makes them diverge from the dominant depiction of the white, heterosexual, middle-class male Bildungsroman hero (Hoagland 4). Additional to diverging from the norm, these characters also have a long history of mis-and under representation in media. In 1990, Judith Butler argued in her book Gender Trouble, that there was a “pervasive cultural condition in which women’s lives were either misrepresented or not represented at all” (4). The same was true for gay people, as Richard Dyer argued in 1983 that although someone’s gayness is invisible to the human eye, problematic typification seemed a near necessity for the representation of homosexuality on screen (“Seen To Be Believed” 2). In a similar manner, bell hooks stated in 1992 in her book Black Looks that there was little change in the area of representation of the black community, compared to the relative progress that African Americans were making in the fields of education and employment (Black Looks 1).

27 A tradition of mis- and underrepresentation was established in society, and Sarah Eschholz, Jana Bufkin and Jenny Long echoed in their article Women and Racial/Ethnic Minorities in Modern Film (2002) that it is still very typical for media to treat women and minorities as such. By either utilizing stereotypes that belittle women and minorities and perpetuate dominant myths concerning their role in society, or systematically excluding women and minorities from their representations completely, modern film sends out a message that it regards members of these groups to occupy no significant social space (Eschholz et al. 300). As Eschholz et al. assert, these representations are crucial since they play a large role in the general public’s social construction of ‘reality’ and therefore condoning women and minorities to those aforementioned two options may perpetuate racism and sexism on a larger scale (300). This larger connection between representations in media and people’s perception of reality shows the urgency of challenging such limited portrayals. By subverting these dominant utilizations of women and minorities in media representations, and by creating central characters that traditionally have not been represented in mainstream media or that stayed on the story side line - within the problematic realms of stereotypical depictions - Lady Bird, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name do give agency to women, sexual, and ethnic/racial minorities. Additionally, by ascribing power to their central characters (as I will discuss shortly), directors Gerwig, Jenkins, and Guadagnino give much needed agency to the people who the characters represent. Viewers are made aware of the fact that generally, individual agency and the power that comes with it is not distributed equally amongst people as it is dependent on accessibility (Eichner 12). Thus, by representing women and minorities as central characters with agency, the central characters are made powerful and meaningful in the films.

2.4 Female Agency in Lady Bird Greta Gerwig’s writing and directorial solo debut, Lady Bird tells the personal and loosely autobiographical story of a seventeen-year-old white girl named Christine, who prefers to be called by the self-chosen name of “Lady Bird”, growing up in Sacramento in the year of 2002- 2003. As we follow a year in Christine’s life, we witness her finishing up her last phase of her Christian High school in California and preparing for a college life outside of Sacramento. It is clear that Christine insists on asserting her own individuality, even when she is not quite sure yet what that means or who she might hurt doing so. The emotional core of the film is the difficult mother-daughter relationship of Marion McPherson () and Christine McPherson ().

28 Lady Bird concentrates on many personal decisions of main character Christine. The very fact that the main character calls herself “Lady Bird” (and demands that everyone does so too) instead of her given name “Christine” is very insightful. This act indicates that Christine is trying and daring to define herself through the act of giving herself a name, instead of living by the name she was given by her parents. Maryn Wilkinson argued in a recent interview that viewers are made conscious of Lady Bird’s own awareness of her agency as a woman through this act (Wilkinson Interview). Wilkinson continues her argument by saying that Lady Bird defines herself and writes her own story, quite literally as she writes up her own name, without being defined by anything from outside (Wilkinson Interview). In this small moment of picking a name, we can distinguish a larger message of Lady Bird’s unwillingness to simply accept established cultural norms, as she claims her agency in her journey of self-discovery. By choosing her own name and thus in a sense writing her own story, Christine takes control over the course of events in her life. By recognizing that her own name was merely given to her but does not define her, Christine rethinks and deconstructs the concept of identity as something that is generated and moving, and thus not locked for eternity. This reflection is in line with Judith Butler’s conclusion in the book Gender Trouble, as she argues that the reconceptualization of identity as a produced effect opens up possibilities of agency which were previously inaccessible due to the general understanding of “identity categories as foundational and fixed” (187). This particular form of agency, in which identity is seen as more flexible, is to be witnessed elsewhere in Lady Bird too. Within feminist discourses, the notion of ‘gender construction’ is broadly discussed10. It refers to the cultural, social and psychological attributes that make up for one’s gender, which was discussed in the previous chapter. As Linda Lindsey stated in her book Gender Roles: A Sociological Perspective (2015): “sex makes us male or female; gender makes us masculine or feminine”, which is how she explains that in life we learn how to appropriately become our gender through social contexts (4). This social construction then leads to the conceptual understanding which Butler coined and criticized as “gender performativity” (Gender Trouble, 1990), referring to the binary set of limiting acts that together make up for what it means to be a man or woman (25). Heavily influenced by these dominant gender norms, people constitute their personal identity accordingly. However, as Butler argued and as Lady Bird shows, identity construction can also be the very site of personal agency, especially when the dominant norms are contested (187-188).

10 See for instance: Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1973); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990); Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter (1993); Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (2004); bell hooks Black Looks (1992); bell hooks We Real Cool (2004).

29 Heroine Christine takes control over her identity through her behaviour, expressions, as well as her body during her self-empowered journey towards maturity. Firstly, through her badly dyed hair and distinct clothing style it is vocalized that she dresses for herself more than for anyone else, in a style that is more personal than it is conventional. Second, through the dynamic between Christine and ultra-feminine popular girl Jenna, viewers are made aware of the tension between their femininity and consequently their personal agency. Whereas Jenna confines to the societal norms on essentially every level, Christine is different and most importantly: she wants to be different than what society expects from her as a woman. As a third point, there are many moments in Lady Bird when Christine takes control over a situation by using her strong voice. For example, when her school organizes an anti-abortion assembly, Christine is the only woman who uses her voice to speak up about the situation, to the disgrace of many other girls present. By subverting several dominant gender norms, Christine uses her agency to perform her own identity, instead of passively adhering to societal gender norms. In doing so, director Gerwig created a central character that does away with idealistic and belittling representations of teenage girls but aims to break social barriers in order to claim female power. Another social barrier Gerwig aimed to break with Lady Bird is the focus on heterosexual love and its connection to the central character’s self-worth in the conclusion of coming-of-age stories. While traditionally heterosexual love is a core element of maturity in both the Bildungsroman and coming-of-age films, Lady Bird is essentially more an ode to amicable and parental love than it is an ode to romantic love. The film focusses on how the heroine makes amends with the women in her life, leading Wilkinson to argue that Lady Bird above all is a love story between women, in which Christine’s self-worth is not determined by her success at getting a boyfriend, opposed to many other American teen films (Wilkinson Interview). Thus, in Lady Bird we see how Gerwig tried to empower her heroine by putting less emphasis on the connection between heterosexual love and finding happiness as a woman in the conclusion of the film. Furthermore, Lady Bird does not only move beyond conservative gender norms on its content level, but also through the film’s form. According to Bordwell’s theory, cinematic agency is commonly established through an analysis of the look, and in feminist studies Laura Mulvey’s canonical article ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975) opened our eyes to ’s gendered gazes. Mulvey constructed how Hollywood reflected the world’s sexual imbalance by interpreting the active man as the bearer of the look, and the passive woman as an image, and as such a woman’s objectified “to-be-looked-at-ness” (6, 11). By relying on Wilkinson’s argument that Mulvey’s construction of active/male and passive/female gazes not only applies to Classical

30 cinema but also to the representation of teenage girls in 1980s teen film (Wonder Girls 57), I will analyse the gazes present in Lady Bird. It becomes apparent in Wilkinson’s extensive study that although the 1980s teen films (i.a. The Breakfast Club) presented teenage girls as rather passive, controlled, objectified subjects - thereby reinforcing traditional and conservative gender norms - there were also some opportunities for “teen girl looking and gazing” (Wilkinson Wonder Girls 20, 74). Whereas Wilkinson addresses the minor moments when a teenage girl looks back at an already gazing boy, Lady Bird handles the agency rather differently, as we see how heroine Christine holds an active gaze during the entire film. In every scene that is connected to Christine and her object of infatuation, she has the power as she is the active viewer from start to finish. For example, when Christine sees Danny (her first boyfriend) for the first time we first see him and then cut to a shot of her looking at him. As these shots continue to alternate, we see how Christine’s interest grows as her active look intensifies while Danny is merely a passive subject unaware that he is being looked at. This development is additionally enhanced by the film’s sound design: the music fades into the background when Christine’s look intensifies. Here, and in many other moments in the film, Christine clearly demonstrates the active teen girl gaze that is directed at boys and filled with desire, as established by Wilkinson in her study (Wonder Girls 20). The only scene where Christine conforms to the notion of a woman’s to-be-looked-at- ness is when she is performing in a play on stage. However, when the camera moves to the audience we only exchange gazes with her family who is looking at her. In this moment Christine is both completely aware that she is being looked at, and as the camera suggests, is only looked at from a parental gaze, not a heterosexual male gaze. Via these moments, viewers are appointed to the agency of Christine through Lady Bird’s reversal of Mulvey’s gendered gaze construction. As such, it becomes evident that there is a development to be witnessed in recent coming-of-age cinema compared to the genre’s films in 1980s. In Lady Bird, the moments of female opportunity and resistance have turned into a complete visualization of teenage girl resistance. Additionally, Christine’s agency is enhanced in Lady Bird through medium-specific features such as the camera movements and the montage of the film. In the film, we get our information through Christine’s character as the camera follows her, meaning that we see what she sees through point of view-shots, often after she has seen it already. During a scene where Christine is working we see her looking outside but we are unsure of what she sees. The camera then follows her through a point-of-view shot as she walks towards a glass door when it is finally revealed to us what she is gazing at: Kyle (her second love interest) sitting outside. When the camera then cuts to a close-up of Kyle, and then back at Christine behind the window desirably

31 looking at him, we get a good sense of Lady Bird’s reversal of Mulvey’s voyeuristic look (and possibly a gender-reversed reference to Hitchcock’s from 1954). A last observation on Christine’s presented agency in the film’s form is to be made on Lady Bird’s montage. By means of the editing, it is expressed clearly to the spectators that Christine is the one in control of what we see and how we see it as we experience the story through her. When Christine discovers Danny kissing another boy in bathroom stall, there is a hard cut from the scene and we move to Christine and friend Julie sitting and crying in the car. Both in the rhythm and the transition of the scenes, the film communicates that it is more important that we experience how Christine responds to the situation than that we witness the complete situation. So even when her character is losing control, the film gives her power through visuality.

2.5 Black Masculine Agency in Moonlight Moonlight tells the story of Chiron, a fearful and sensitive black boy who grew up in the Liberty City projects in Miami, Florida during the war on drugs era of the 1980s. Chiron’s life is presented to us in three different stages; the kid (Alex Hibbert), the teen (), and the adult (Trevante Rhodes). From the film we can take that he had to deal with a drug-addicted mother, an absent father, a confusing sexuality, and tyrants on every street corner all the while figuring out who he actually really is. Over the course of the three-fold story we see how Chiron learns to find his own way to deal with his hostile surroundings which covers up the quest for Chiron’s identity and (self-)acceptance. On a content level Moonlight exposes how agency is connected to the process of growing up, as hero Chiron’s journey towards maturity is simultaneous the process of Chiron claiming his personal agency. Contrary to Lady Bird’s Christine, Chiron is not born with a strong voice and powerful mind. Rather, infused with fear for others when he was a child, he was bullied and he let his bullies call him “Little” instead of his real name. His adolescence does not solve the situation easily, and it is not until he has been beaten up severely by an enduring bully that he decides to step up and claim his agency. In line with Grodal’s earlier statement on action being a symbol for agency, Moonlight shows us how Chiron’s claiming of his personal agency goes hand in hand with taking action, as he finally takes control and confronts his bully (rather aggressively) at the end of the second part of the film. Again, following Grodal, we see in Moonlight how the act of performance can function as a symbol for agency, when we witness Chiron constructing and performing a new identity when he takes control over his life. In the previous section we saw how Butler argued that identity

32 construction can also be the site of personal agency, which is coherent to what we witness in Moonlight. In the third part Chiron reinvented himself as “Black”, an almost unrecognizably tough guy with muscles, money, and expensive cars who is the drug lord on the streets of Atlanta. What is most important here for my reading of the film is that Chiron has taken control over his own life and evidently is the one that holds the power now, something that he achieved by using as a shield, as he speaks of that he “built himself hard” (Jenkins, 2016). Chiron needed to construct his identity through his masculinity to survive in his environment. Turning to sociologist Michael Kimmel, we can understand why masculinity in this and most other contexts translates to toughness. Kimmel explored the construct of masculinity and claims that there is a dominant masculinity code that men are expected to follow which he called “The Guy Code” (44). He composed a set of ‘rules’ on what it would mean to be a man according to masculine culture, of which “the unifying emotional subtext of these aphorisms involves never showing emotions or admitting to weakness”, fuelled by the deep fear of (Kimmel 44, 48). Claiming one’s agency via the exertion of masculinity is particularly important to examine when it concerns black agency. Namely, within black culture, there are rules in place that teach young black boys growing up that they have to be much better, stronger, and more masculine than their white counterparts and generally have to be the most dominant force in the room, to compensate for their marginalised position within society (Lee). As bell hooks argued in her book Black Looks (1992), the image of black masculinity as extremely hardworking, responsible men emerged from the slave narratives and was developed so black men could be recognized as real patriarchs, even by their white counterparts (Black Looks 90 - 92). Furthermore, hooks claimed that many black men have absorbed “white supremacist patriarchal definitions of masculinity” in order to be seen as a powerful man (Black Looks 93). In line with Foucault’s work on power relations, black men mirrored the ones who obtained the most power in American society: the white supremacists, all in the hope that they would become equally powerful. However, this equality is far from attainable as long as only white people are considered to be just human, and other people are raced, as Richard Dyer pointed out (White 2). Consequently, black men grew to be sexist, with rather relative forms of power, but it was power nonetheless, and they were not going to surrender that in a world where they may otherwise feel rather powerless (hooks Black Looks 108). From this perspective we can interpret Chiron performing his masculinity in the third part of Moonlight as a black man claiming his agency and taking control over his place within society, to finally be seen and treated as an equal counterpart. Nevertheless, as the third part ends with Chiron taking the initiative to reunite with his high school romance Kevin, there is an opportunity for a different kind of personal agency in

33 Moonlight. As mentioned, this is the part in the film where Chiron has constructed his masculine persona to fit into his culture and environment. This has made the acknowledgement of his homosexual nature rather problematic. However, in this moment Chiron takes control of his life by choosing to be with Kevin, while he fights the dominant societal norms of his adapted culture. In doing so, he acknowledges the faults of the overtly masculine sphere and claims his personal agency as a black gay man in 1980s Miami, something that was (and in some places still is) strongly tabooed. Through this narrative, director Jenkins was able to portray masculinity as “both a necessity and a weakness for his characters” as film critic Amrou Al-Kadhi stated (Al- Kadhi). When Chiron lets down his guard and takes control through his vulnerability in the last scenes of the film, viewers are left with a sense of hope for him, which is important for the black community Moonlight represents at large. There are also several cinematic elements in the form of Moonlight that add to why the viewers are rooting for Chiron’s character. The film is set up to be experienced from his perspective. Chiron is the instigator of an active gaze throughout most of the film, which gives viewers information about his agency and his thoughts, which is necessary as Chiron is not very talkative. For instance, the second part of the film in which Chiron is a teenager, opens with a close-up of another boy’s lips, followed by a close-up of Chiron actively gazing in that same direction, and licking his lips. As spectators have not received any information regarding Chiron’s sexuality yet at this point, these shots give important insights about his desire through his active gaze, and the subjectification of the boy Chiron looks at. As such, a greater message about the ruling power dynamics between characters is to be dissected from ‘looking for the look’ in Moonlight. Another cinematic element that underlines Chiron’s agency in the film is the sharing of perspective with the audience. This occurs in different forms, an important feature being the point-of-view shots as they allow us to see what Chiron sees. In the second part of the film, we see what teenage Chiron dreams, which is a rather literal way of getting into his mind and understanding what the central character thinks about. In another scene of the film there is a moment when Chiron looks through a wired fence towards his bullies in the distance, and spectators get a shot of the same view as Chiron, as we similarly look ‘through’ the fence. We see what he sees, and as a result feel what he feels, trapped behind the fence. This experience, of feeling what central character Chiron feels due to cinematography, can be traced back elsewhere in Moonlight too. When little Chiron gets swimming lessons from his mentor Juan in the first part of the film, the camera is placed in the water, making the images very tactile. While Chiron is learning to swim, afraid of drowning, the viewers similarly experience the power of the water, and

34 when the water splashes in his face it also overflows our screen. Such tactility results not only in the viewers tagging along in Chiron’s experience as equals, but also in them becoming aware of the abilities of the central character at this point.

2.6 Queer Masculine Agency Call Me By Your Name Call My By Your Name brings us to a paradise-like home “Somewhere in Northern Italy” (as told by the opening credits), where a young intelligent boy called Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet) vacations with his multilingual Jewish family in the summer of 1983, as they do every year. Similarly, every summer Elio’s father, a professor in classical archaeology, requires an assistant, and this year’s choice is the American graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer). Oliver will stay with the Perlman family for six weeks, and what follows is the story of how Elio comes of age while he and Oliver grow together, fall in love, and break apart. The slow feeling of an Italian summer simmers through the whole of Call My By Your Name, which explains why it is not a film that contains many moments of power. However, a closer look at the film and main character Elio does bring important moments of agency to light. The first element I would like to address is the way Elio lets himself be guided purely by his own intuition regarding his feelings throughout the story, without being held back by any societal norms or barriers concerning his sexuality. Although Elio is unsure of what happens to him as his feelings for Oliver grow, he never reads his developing gay desire as something negative or something to be ashamed of. On the contrary, Elio merely worries whether Oliver would be interested in him too and takes control of his increasing infatuation by showing initiative towards Oliver. By actively following his intuition Elio claims his personal agency as a young gay man. Here we can remark a break with the stereotype of the rather passive “sad young gay man” which was a frequent recurrence in media, as established by Richard Dyer in his book The Culture of Queers (2002). Additionally, this portrayal is in line with what Dyer coined “radical gay culture”, as Call My By Your Name actively centralizes the gay experience rather than present one passive character of a bunch that is gay (Culture of Queers 23). Through this significant utilization of Elio’s personal agency, the humanity of gay people is emphasized, and as a result, viewers obtain the opportunity to identify with a central gay hero (Dyer Culture of Queers 27). While Elio undeniably opposes the stereotypical portrayal of a sad young gay man, he does depict an unconventionally emotional man. Thinking back of Kimmel, within masculine culture, showing emotions or admitting to weakness is traditionally rather ‘unacceptable’ (Kimmel 44). Aside from a few exceptions, Hollywood films have generally had a tendency to merely reaffirm our culture’s restrictive archetypes of manhood, resulting in many representations

35 of a rather tough and as such toxic masculinity. However, in Call My By Your Name main character Elio claims his agency as a vulnerable man as we see him admitting to his weaknesses, his insecurities and his lacking courage in several core moments, both to Oliver and to his parents. Similarly, as his love for Oliver grows, Elio’s emotional state evolves too, and viewers notice a frequency in the recurrence of Elio’s tears. As such, Elio takes control over his life by constructing his own identity while contesting the dominant societal norms that surround the performativity of masculinity. This is in line with Butler’s earlier mentioned argument regarding identity construction, supporting the argument that Elio uses his personal agency to construct a vulnerable masculine identity (187-188). A last remark I want to make on the content level of Call My By Your Name regarding the display of hero Elio’s agency has to do with his vast interest in culture. In the film, we witness Elio transcribing and playing classical music (on the guitar and ), reading novels, speaking French, Italian, and English fluently while also having an impressive knowledge of urban history. A connection can be at place between this interest in culture, Elio’s sexuality, and his agency (Dyer Culture of Queers 19). As Dyer explains, culture seemed to be the place where you were allowed to be gay, because similar to queerness culture translated to something peculiar or different, which is why it was (and is) often used as an escape by people (Culture of Queers 19-20). He argues that by immersing themselves into culture, gay people felt like they had a defence against the masculine society around them, because due to their queerness they obtained an artistic sensitivity that they could be proud of (Dyer Culture of Queers 20). Elio’s immersion into culture as a queer person in Call My By Your Name can be seen from another perspective as the argument can be made that he uses his artistic sensitivity to exert personal power and claim his place in the world. From the cinematography of Call My By Your Name it is clear that Elio is the one that holds and exerts the power in the film. During their first joint breakfast we see a close-up of Elio gazing in a direction, and in the next shot it is revealed to us what he is looking at: Oliver’s chest, which holds a David star necklace. From this moment onwards, the impression is given that Elio is the active character in power, and Oliver is his rather passive subject of interest. This feeling is emphasized by the timing of the gazing shots, evident later in the film during a night scene at the disco. This moment starts with a shot of Elio gazing that lasts up to twenty seconds, and while we have not yet explicitly seen what he is looking at, between Elio and his friends is about Oliver on the dancefloor, hence viewers have a suspicion. After this long shot we indeed see Oliver dancing, and then the long gazing shots of Elio and the shorter dance shots of Oliver keep alternating at least three times. From this scene it is expressed to viewers that Elio is

36 the character that holds control over the image and the story at large. Additionally, due to the sheer timing and editing of the shots we are made aware that it is Elio’s experience that we need to focus on, rather than on the exact situation, something we also saw in Lady Bird’s cinematography. The fact that Elio’s agency and experience is central to the story of Call My By Your Name is also expressed through the utilization of point-of-view shots. Elio’s active gaze is established from the first scene when Oliver arrives at the Perlman household. However, it is also Elio’s perspective from which we are introduced to Oliver. Elio looks down from his room to the courtyard where Oliver arrives by car, a scene that we witness from ‘up above’ too. Following this introduction, every image we see of Oliver is from a perspective that Elio holds or could hold due to the shot’s angle, height and distance. As we merely see Oliver throughout the film from the perspective of Elio, it is made clear to us that it is Elio who is in control, and Elio’s feelings which we need to focus on. As such, Elio’s gay-erotic gaze and queer agency are equally centralized in the content and cinematography of Call My By Your Name.

Conclusion In this chapter I have looked at the concept of agency, which enabled me to analyse the power structures between characters. What became evident is that the traditional Bildungsroman and subsequent cinematic modes did not place much emphasis on the personal agency of their central characters, because their stories favoured a peaceful and conservative integration within society. Examining Lady Bird, Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name with an analytical focus on agency, it becomes clear that these recent coming-of-age films actually do centralise their hero’s personal agency, both through content and form. Lady Bird breaks with traditional depictions of teen girls by showing the workings of subversive female agency. Through its portrayal Moonlight sheds light on the tradition of black agency while giving personal power to a boy who feels like he has none. Call Me By Your Name opens up possibilities of agency for the traditional powerless queer characters. Doing so, a dissimilarity between the traditional genre and the contemporary coming- of-age examples can be disclosed. Through the dual workings of agency in these films – empowered characters and empowering the people these portrayals represent – there is a rise of influential heroes within the coming-of-age genre. The crucial function that the possession of power holds in our society is thus not only recognized by these contemporary coming-of-age examples, but also emphasized through their empowerment of traditionally marginalised people. Consequently, the act of presenting these empowered marginalised identities can be regarded as an act of politicization in this era of activism. By actively breaking with dominant constructs and creating mainstream coming-of-age stories that are more diverse in their representations, these

37 films are using their medium-specific power to broaden people’s perspectives and entice societal debates. As a result, there is not only a break with the conservative Bildungsroman tradition as well as a move towards politicization within the genre.

38 Chapter 3: Intersectional Journeys of Maturity

Introduction In the previous chapter I focused on the integration of personal agency in the coming-of-age genre, which has increased within recent films of the genre has. By allowing their central characters to claim their agency, these coming-of-age films empower traditionally marginalised people, and by doing so the coming-of-age genre can become more politicized. This chapter will examine the presence of a diversity of characters by performing an intersectional analysis on the recent coming-of-age genre versus the genre’s origins. I will define intersectionality drawing from the work of theorists Kimberle Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, and Vivian M. May before I will analyse Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2018), Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016) and Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017). I will focus on the specific intersectional identities on display in these films to evaluate in which way the presence of non-normative (or: more diverse) identities can lead towards the politicization of the coming-of-age genre.

3.1 Intersectionality: A Theoretical Perspective For this second step in my analysis of the politicization of the coming-of-age genre, I want to explore the character’s intersectionality, that is the interaction of the multiple intersecting dimensions within a character’s identity. Depending on the particular interaction between the social categories sexuality, gender, class and race that altogether are constitutive of one’s identity, people can have different experiences. The theory of intersectionality states that these identity categories interact together to produce a specific social position that expresses either privilege, mobility, exclusion, or marginality (K. Davis 68). Even though feminist scholars have interpreted social divisions such as sexuality, gender, race, and class through the lens of intersectionality for at least two or three decades now11, this approach has only recently secured a more primary place in wider academic and political fields (Anthias 3). In this chapter I want to claim that the inclusion of diverse identities has grown to be more important in recent coming-of-age films Lady Bird, Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name,

11 Here I am referring to some prominent feminist scholars and their works, for instance: Angela Davis, Women, Race, & Class (1983); Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (1990); Kimberle Crenshaw, "Mapping The Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, And Violence Against Women Of Color" (1991); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism And The Subversion Of Identity (1990); Vivian M. May, Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries (2015), and many more.

39 compared to the Bildungsroman tradition. By use of these three recent examples I will do an intersectional analysis to demonstrate in which way contemporary coming-of-age cinema includes more diverse characters. Additionally, I will look at how these non-normative identities portray more realistic stories of growing up compared to traditional conventions. I want to argue that representing marginalised identities in individual coming-of-age films can contribute to the politicization of the genre at large. However, before I can investigate this, I first need to expand on the concept of intersectionality and its utilization within the cinematic field. The term intersectionality was coined in the 1990s by Kimberle Crenshaw. In her article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Colour” she established the method that explains the interconnections between several individual aspects of identity, being sexuality, gender, race and class (Crenshaw 1241). Crenshaw argued that these aspects interact and shape the multiple dimensions of one’s position in society and experience of privilege and/or marginalization. For instance, due to one’s “intersectional identity as both women and of colour within discourses that are shaped to respond to one or the other, women of colour are marginalised within both.” (Crenshaw 1244). With the term intersectionality, Crenshaw thus aimed to explain the multiple layers of one’s identity, and the cumulative way in which forms of racism, sexism and classism can overlap, or intersect when those ‘layers’ are considered different from the dominant societal norm (1299). Before Crenshaw there were several other feminist theorists who explored the interconnections between the separate fields of race, gender, class and sexuality in the 1980s (Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks to name a few), influenced by the third wave of feminism. As Patricia Hill Collins explained in her book Black Feminist Thought (1990), these were mostly African-American scholar-activists who called for a new, more heterogenous approach to analysing black women’s experiences by acknowledging that such experiences were shaped not only by race, but also by gender, sexuality and class (18, 28). Though the origins of intersectionality lie evidently in black culture, Collins states that this does not imply that the Black feminist thought of the notion only has relevance for African-American women. There is a universality in the black experience; by “advocating, refining, and disseminating Black feminist thought” individuals from other marginalised groups can similarly connect with their personal experiences of marginalisation and continue further social justice projects (Collins 37). Many other intersectionality scholars agree with this viewpoint, (see Berger and Guidroz 2010; Taylor, Yvette et al 2010; Vivian M. May 2015), which means that the theory of intersectionality conceived African-American women as a central frame of reference but can be

40 applied in a broader sense. Consequently, it becomes a new way of thinking about identity, or as Vivian M. May puts in her book Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries; “an intersectional, layered approach to interrogating and unsettling dominant ways of thinking” (65). May elaborates on this statement by asserting that we are often forced to think within the confines of established frameworks when it comes to the identity of other people, neglecting the many different dimensions of one’s identity (67). These identity frameworks can be limited as complexity is often denied, leading to the problematic cultural construction of stereotypes. In order to break with prevailing stereotypes and the ruling societal norms at large, it is important to consider the multiple layers of someone’s identity, and one strategy to do so is thinking in terms of intersectionality. Since this way of approaching identity seems both generative and necessary to break through dominant norms, and as such rather universal, May doubts whether the topic of intersectionality will ever be outdated (65). This explains why I will rely on the perspective of intersectionality to review the presence of marginalised identities in the recent corpus.

3.2 Intersectionality in Cinema The generative and necessary understanding of intersectionality is in line with Eun-Kyoung

Othelia Lee and Mary Ann Priester’s view on the pedagogic power of intersectionality (93). As they argue in their article “Who Is The Help? Use of Film to Explore Diversity”, it is possible to gain insight into the socio-political and cultural characteristics of marginalised groups through an analysis of the intersection of gender, class, race and sexuality in their lives and experiences (Lee and Priester 93). Furthermore, Lee and Priester add that fiction films that include non-normative characters prove to be a beneficial instrument to educate individuals about socio-political and cultural characteristics of marginalised groups. Due to the medium’s capability to expose the intersectional identities of non-majority groups, fiction film can shed a light on the impact of racism, sexism, and classism and thus educate individuals about diversity issues (Lee and Priester 100). As seen in the previous chapter, the Bildungsroman genre has always had a strong pedagogic tradition, although the didactic messages in those stories were mostly inclined to teach readers quite one-sidedly about good versus bad behaviour. By incorporating more diverse characters in contemporary coming-of-age cinema, both the genre’s representations as well as its pedagogic objectives become diversified. Fiction films can thus make marginalised identities explicit through representation, and by doing this the medium can illustrate the heterogenous complexities of the world and the many people who inhabit it. By depicting diverse characters that break with problematic or idealized stereotypes, contemporary coming-of-age films seem to favour “realism” over “imagination”. By

41 including non-normative identities in coming-of-age stories (which are essentially about identity formation), fiction film actually moves more towards portraying the real world instead of the traditional cinematic imagined world. This statement directly opposes Bill Nichols traditional view on fiction film versus documentary, as he claims in his book Introduction to Documentary (2010) that “documentaries address the world in which we live rather than a world imagined by the (fiction) filmmaker” and that “the documentary tradition relies heavily on being able to convey an impression of authenticity” (xi, xiii). From these statements we can dissect that notions of authenticity and realism are traditionally confined to the realms of documentary rather than fiction film. However, taking into consideration that recent coming-of-age cinema breaks with idealized and conventional norms through the incorporation of more diverse characters, I would argue that this non-normative character inclusion can lead to a more straightforward and genuine approach to fiction film, as it shows more of the ‘lived in’ world. Additionally, since fictional coming-of-age genre has always aimed to be didactic in nature, it can be argued that fictional coming-of-age film similarly relies on being able to convey an impression of authenticity, otherwise its pedagogic power would be lost. Furthermore, Nichols mentions that the exploration of social justice issues is a specific documentary convention, which I also will contest in this chapter (xiv). As stated before by Lee and Priester, an intersectional lens can evidently shed light on the socio-political and cultural characteristics of marginalised groups as well as their endured racism, sexism, and classism. Consequently, though perhaps not as obvious as in documentary film’s format, fiction film too can explore social justice issues, through the inclusion of non-normative characters. Obviously, we do need to be aware that we are looking at fiction film, and that even though these diverse characters are less likely to fall into traditional (stereo)types, they are still constructed in a similar manner12. However, although constructed, I want to claim that these non-normative characters have more dimensions, resulting in more embedded realism than the normative and stereotypical characters, a sentiment which was equally vocalized by many of the raving reviews13 of Lady Bird, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name.

12 See also Steve Neale, “The Same Old Story: Stereotypes and Difference” (1979) for more insights on this specific topic. 13 To be seen amongst others in: Jacobs, Matthew. "Greta Gerwig's 'Lady Bird' Is One Of Film's Best Coming-Of-Age Stories". Huffpost UK, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lady-bird-review-greta- gerwig_us_59f4cdc4e4b077d8dfc9fe54. Lee, Benjamin. "Moonlight Review – Devastating Drama Is Vital Portrait Of Black Gay

42 3.3 Intersectionality in the Traditional Coming-of-age Genre Before exploring the contemporary corpus, it is valuable to first look into the historical background of the coming-of-age genre and its relationship with the notion of intersectionality. Intersectionality as a method of analysis was only theorized in the second half of the 20th century, but it is still valuable to see how the origins of the coming-of-age genre depicted inequalities. The Bildungsroman traditionally told a story about a middle-class white man overcoming difficulties during his formative journey and finding his spouse to settle with in a bourgeois society (Hoagland 4). This character grew to be the main character of the genre, he became a repetitive type. From an intersectional perspective it becomes clear that the Bildungsroman thus constructed a ‘norm’ that was white, male and heterosexual. This clearly demonstrates that the Bildungsheld was no minority whatsoever, as his race, sexuality, gender and class were all confined to the ruling societal norm (Hoagland 5). As a result, traditional coming of age stories excluded the experience of racism, sexism, or classism because the intersection of the Bildungsheld identity categories creates a position of privilege rather than one of exclusion and inequality, being a white heterosexual middle-class man. When it comes to the level of realism in the tradition it is valuable to turn back to the paragon of the genre one last time. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjare (1795), while having great historical importance, is also deemed flawed in its depiction of reality. Many critics14 have pointed out how the novel presents rather unrealistic characters and an unusual plot ruled by unthinkable coincidences. Thus, the conventional Bildungsroman was not so much concerned with the portrayal of more authentic ‘lived’ experiences. As a result, Bildungsroman authors delivered stories which did not represent the reality for many people, but rather an idealized world or even a fairy-tale.

Masculinity In America". The Guardian, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/sep/03/moonlight-review-devastating-drama-is-vital-portrait-of- black-gay-masculinity-in-america Dargis, Manohla. "Review: A Boy’s Own Desire In ‘Call Me By Your Name’". Nytimes.Com, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/movies/call-me-by-your-name-review-armie-hammer.html. 14 These critiques are to be found amongst others in: Joo, Ill-Sun. Goethes Dilenttantismus-Kritik: Wilhelm Miesters Lehrjahre im Lichte einer ästhetischen Kategorie der Moderne, Frankfurt a.M: Peter Lang, 1999 Eichner, Hans. ‘Zur Deutung von “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjaren” in John Blair, Tracing Subversive Currents in Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship’, Columbus, SC 1997 Eigler, Friedrike. ‘Wer hat “Wilhelm Schüler” zum “Wilhelm Meister” gebildet? Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre und die Aussparungen einer hermeneutischen Verstehens-und Bildungspraxis’, GoetheYb, 3 1986.

43 As discussed, the 20th century coming-of-age films held onto many of these representational norms, as they almost exclusively focused on “heterosexual relationships based in suburban schools with predominantly white students” (Meyer 231). This resulted in a perpetuation of the dominance of suburban white heterosexual experiences as the ideal type through early coming-of-age cinema, as to be witnessed in Rebel without a Cause and The Breakfast Club. Thus, early coming-of-age cinema offered a representation of identities with a privileged position, similar to the Bildungsroman. This observation also adds to Timothy Shary’s argument considering the general depiction of types of school characters in his book Generation Multiplex (2002), as he argued that these were predominantly singular teen types (30). This genre convention is rather clearly exhibited in The Breakfast Club of which the cast consists of merely singular teen types such as “the jock” and “the princess”. Once again, this confirms the unawareness of early coming-of-age cinema to portray multi-layered identities.

3.4 A Working-class Journey in Lady Bird In Gerwig’s Lady Bird we follow main character Christine who is female, heterosexual, white and working-class, in her journey towards maturity. The film centralises the tension between gender and class in the early which brings to life the very ‘real’ lived experiences of a working-class teenage girl in America. Additionally, by portraying a multi-layered character, Lady Bird moves away from the apparent teen film tradition of depicting singular types. Due to this, Lady Bird is a coming-of-age film that focuses on “everyday struggles and small triumphs” rather than on an idealized adolescence (Haslop 314). Right from the start of the film it becomes clear that Lady Bird breaks with the traditional depiction of high school and its typical characters in the coming-of-age tradition by incorporating multiple dimensions into the film’s characters. While significant parts of the film are situated at Christine’s high school, there is no classical introduction of types, nor are we as viewers aware of a ruling hierarchy at Christine’s school, and thus what her position would be. What is complicated here, is that we as viewers are influenced by years of repetitive teen film structures and strategies, as established by Catherine Driscoll in her book Teen Film (2011), and similarly by Wilkinson and Shary in their works on the topic. Driscoll states that teen films systematically use repetition and stereotypes to prepare viewers for characters and situations that they then are presumed to “instantly recognise” (86). However, contrary to this standing tradition, Lady Bird actually tries to implement more ambiguity and mobility by moving away from the simplified character types and complicating our presumed knowledge regarding recognizable situations. Popular girls become friends with more offbeat girls and offbeat girls date popular boys, yet these occurrences only

44 seem remarkable in our shaped minds, rather than in the film itself. In fact, Lady Bird shows viewers that high school (and the world at large) is more complex and less black and white than the years of teen film tradition might have pictured it out to be, which adds to the film’s sense of reality. Another dimension that Lady Bird adds to the coming-of-age genre is the appointed marginalised identity of heroine Christine and the exclusion she experiences from being a working-class teenage girl. By centralising the family’s constant struggle with funds and Christine’s responding shame or discomfort, the film emphasises teen hood’s inherent connection to material possessions. Wilkinson explains how in 1980s America the political landscape emphasized notions of capitalism and materialism, and these notions were clearly traced back in the time’s popular culture (The Makeover 385; Wonder Girls 25). As a result, the rise of teen film went hand in hand with the rise of materialism, creating a longstanding tradition of teenage girls measuring themselves materially. This material tradition clarifies the intersecting experiences of class and gender, as portrayed in Lady Bird, too. Quickly it becomes evident how Christine is ashamed for what she does not have as a teenage girl. Christine lies about where she lives to new and wealthy girlfriend Jenna similar to why she lies to impress her crush Kyle about why she needs to work and why she asks her dad to drop her off a block away from school in their working-class car. She is embarrassed of her working-class status in front of her wealthier peers as she feels like her material possessions define her, thus in order to get the validation she desires, she lies. However, the experience of class does not end with Christine, as Lady Bird offers its viewers a multi-perspectival narrative structure that allows them to identify with Christine’s mother Marion, too. As viewers, we thus get two perspectives on the experience of being working-class in the film: the egocentric annoyance of adolescent Christine and the constant worrying of breadwinner and mother Marion. While the scenes with both women come across as rather feisty due to their constant clashing, there are many solo shots of both characters and how they each deal differently with their economic status. Due to the fact that viewers obtain this double perspective we rise above the narrative and are also able to set these divergent responses in perspective in order to understand both sides, something that the characters themselves are only able to do at the end of the film. By allowing these two disparate experiences to exist together in parallel without passing any judgement, filmmaker Gerwig created a more rounded story about growing up in a working-class household that comes across as rather realistic. Additionally, the experience of class is also extended within the film through the formal aspects, emphasizing the family’s inequality compared to their wealthier environment. Generally,

45 the colour grading of the film looks rather dusty, grainy and yellowish, and can come across as vintage or nostalgic. While generally teenage girl coming-of-age films go for a more sleek and glossy style which conveys a high class feeling15, Gerwig opted for a less shiny look and feel that is coherent to the working-class status of the family. Furthermore, every location other than Christine’s school serves to either emphasize the family’s working-class status (the family’s house, thrift shop, grocery store, coffee house where Christine works), or to underscore their marginality compared to those in power (Jenna’s house, Danny’s grandmother’s house, Kyle’s house, the open house Christine and Marion visit). Lastly, the sentiment of working-class is emphasized in the many “Do-It-Yourself” attitudes in the film, as we are appointed to Christine’s self-dyed hair, see how she handcrafts her school posters, and witness how Marion remakes Christine’s dresses to make them fit in with her boyfriend’s higher class. Nevertheless, while Lady Bird sheds light on a different social class representation, we need to re-evaluate Christine’s experience of working-class due to her complete identity. As film critic David Kaufman argued, Christine views the class-related problems of her family as mere “technicalities” or “challenges that should not define her fate or future”, which is a rather privileged viewpoint (Kaufman). Thereby, viewers are appointed to Christine’s identity as a white, teenage girl, who is not defined by her working class. It is here that we see exactly how much influence the ‘separate’ dimensions of one’s identity have on each other, as Christine’s working- class is compensated by her whiteness. In no way is Christine defined by where she came from, she can even escape her past completely and no one would notice it, as she does for a moment in New York when she tells someone that she came from San Francisco, instead of Sacramento. In doing so, the film brings us to the workings of white privilege, as we are made aware of how Lady Bird is put in an advantage due to her race. While for a long time many people believed (and some still do) that racism was only something that put others at a disadvantage, it can also take the reversed form and put people in an advantage due to their race, as Peggy McIntosh asserted in her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack” (1992) (30). This reversed form is more difficult to acknowledge because, “similar to how men are carefully taught not to recognize male privilege, whites are taught not to recognize white privilege” (McIntosh 30). As the white norm is very much alive in Lady Bird with an almost entirely white cast, a closer look at the film reveals insightful moments of white privilege. When Christine is applying for colleges, the only concern she has for whether she will get accepted or not are her grades, as

15 This glossy look and feel is to be seen in many teen films, such as Clueless (, 1995); Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004); Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010) amongst others.

46 she does not have to worry if there might be other reasons why she would not get accepted (such as her skin colour). This sentiment is similar to Christine’s job at the coffeehouse, of which the application process is not incorporated in the film because she immediately got the job without having to worry about her skin colour as a degrading factor. When Christine speaks up at the abortion assembly she takes a risk concerning her education, which she seems unaware of, as her behaviour will unlikely have serious further implications regarding her graduation. It is exactly this expression of careless risky behaviour and this general state of oblivion of Christine that can be regarded as expressions from a racially privileged position. The intersectional analysis of Lady Bird showed how the different social categories of one’s identity actually interact and how much they can influence each other in one’s experiences. We are presented with a white, working-class, heterosexual character who has various sides to her personality, as Christine rejects the singular teen girl type. The choices she makes during her journey towards maturity are not presented as either wise or foolish, similar to how Christine is not fully virtuous or immoral as a person. This is because Lady Bird is more ambiguous in its representations of characters as well as the aforementioned high school hierarchy, opening up possibilities for complexity and mobility within set strategies. This representation does not present a perfect world, instead it is coherent to people’s experiences in our existing world. The film is rather frank about how certain experiences actually are for a girl growing up comparable to Christine in the “real” world, since Lady Bird does not idealise its storyline in order to present a happy ending. The class and mental health issues that Christine and her family deal with are not over when the film screen turns black and doing so Lady Bird brings reality to the coming-of-age genre.

3.5 A Multifaceted Journey in Moonlight Moonlight shows us the coming-of-age Chiron, an African-American, homosexual, lower-class boy. As this introduction points out already, the main character is marginalised on three separate levels which additionally all interact with each other. Due to these mutually reinforcing social vectors, Chiron’s experiences are shaped by his minoritized positions of being black, gay and lower-class from an early age on. Although this film portrays one individual’s personal coming- of-age story, the concepts of diversity, intersectionality and discriminatory barriers that form the heart of Moonlight have the power to speak to many people in society. It is important to remember Stuart Hall’s “representation matters” at this point, to see what a film such as Moonlight can do for the people it represents. To start with, there is a significant difference to how black males were and often still are framed in cinema and how they

47 are now portrayed in Moonlight. As Eric A. Jordan and Derrick R. Brooms explain in their book chapter “Black and Blue: Analyzing and Queering Black in Moonlight” (2017), historically black men have been depicted rather singular as either “sub-human, superhuman, violent, criminal, or as buffoons” (138). Given the representative power of media to function as a window of and to society, all these depictions are problematically archetypical and limiting. The most frequent representation of blackness was the depiction of black males being wildly aggressive (as also discussed by bell hooks in the previous chapter), which established an overly negative stereotype of black men in media. However, Moonlight aimed to break with these singular depictions of blackness by hiring an all-black cast. To start, Chiron’s mentor Juan is presented as a black, masculine drug dealer, who goes against common expectations of a Hollywood film as he is also sensitive, caring, and responsible. This portrayal of the drug lord as vulnerable actually results in an atypical representation of a black man. As viewers we promptly get confronted with the ethical question: what actually makes a person ‘bad’: his behaviour or his profession? In Moonlight, his ‘profession’ does not define Juan’s identity. Instead, his fatherly care and encouragement for Chiron does. By embracing his own sensitivity and rejecting the arbitrary definitions of masculinity, Juan seems to free himself from the traditional notion of black masculinity as derived from the colonial oppression (Jordan and Brooms 145; hooks Black Looks 90- 92). Instead of depicting “constructs sculpted by the white domination”, Moonlight shows us how black men can have complex identities (Jordan and Brooms 153). Through this representation of Juan, Moonlight breaks with the traditional, passive act of black men “absorbing narrow, stereotypical and one-dimensional representations of black masculinity” (hooks Black Looks 89). This non-stereotypical way of approaching black culture can also be witnessed in the film’s aesthetic form, as the bold lightning design of Moonlight moved away from the traditional safe attitude towards the exposition of dark skin tones on film. In approaching the dark skin tones as a normality instead of a deviation, the film handled Black culture with more integrity than mainstream ‘white’ dominated cinema. In addition to the deviant colours, the orchestral soundtrack too opposes what viewers might expect from a film set in a black ghetto of crime and poverty. Once again, Moonlight complicates common representations of black identities on screen, and confronts viewers with the stereotypical representations that they are so heavily influenced by. However, the core complexity of Moonlight is to be found in main character Chiron and the intersection of his race, gender, sexuality and class. The coming-of-age film about a homosexual black boy served as a rather innovative representation, because African-American

48 and queer characters rarely intersect in American cinema. As José Esteban Muñoz argued in his book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999) it was long assumed that “the queer is a white thing”, which not only resulted in an absence of coloured images in the academic field but similarly in queer cinema (9). A consequence of this queer culture of whiteness is that queer cinema has been slow to diversify the white, gay, male perspective. Simultaneously, there also is an absence of queer characters in African-American cinema because the emphasis in black cultures lied mostly on masculine representations, as hooks argued (hooks Black Looks 90- 92). This makes stories of queer people of colour a rarity on screen. However, Moonlight brings this necessary representation and allows its viewers to develop an understanding of the experiences of a black, queer guy similar to Chiron. Earlier when looking at Juan’s character it became evident how gender and race are intricately connected when it comes to the representation of black men, but Moonlight shows us how each of the social categories influences each other. A quick break-down of Chiron’s experiences will be useful here. To start, Chiron is being bullied from an early age on for his non- conformity of his gender and queer identity, as he is “too soft” and needs to toughen up in order to not be the victim of constant harassment. It is thus early on in the film that we are made aware of the intersection of gender and sexuality, and the heterosexual male fear of homophobia as explained by Michael Kimmel in the previous chapter. This fear of men of being misperceived as gay – and thus as weak and unmanly – stems from the heterosexual power discourse that Judith Butler similarly established, as she argued that sexuality is always constructed within the terms of heterosexual and phallic cultural conventions (Kimmel 48; Butler 41). As Richard Dyer stated in his essay “Seen To Be Believed: Some Problems In The Representation Of Gay People As Typical” (1983), when homosexuality is translated to ‘weakness’ and ‘unmanliness’, the assumption becomes apparent that true masculinity is in large measure defined in heterosexual sexuality (“Seen To Be Believed” 8). This notion is clearly demonstrated in Moonlight, where it is assumed that Chiron’s queer sexuality makes him less masculine according to his environment. When Chiron grows up it becomes apparent how much his race also intersects with his non-conformity on the levels of gender and sexuality. As discussed in the previous chapter and in my reading of Juan, hooks established why it historically seemed extra important for black men to embody a masculine identity, since they wanted to measure themselves to their ‘white’ counterparts (Black Looks 93). In the later publication We Real Cool: Back Men and Masculinity (2004), hooks states: “At the centre of the way Black male selfhood is constructed in white- supremacist capitalist patriarchy is the image of the brute – untamed, uncivilized, unthinking, and unfeeling” (We Real Cool x). During his adolescence Chiron moves away from this colonised

49 notion of masculinity and grows into a sensitive, insecure boy who feels different from his peers but also feels the pressure that he should be masculine like them. It is precisely this tension within Chiron that vocalises the realism of the film, as Moonlight is transparent in showing cultural constructs and its influences on people. Due to his non-conformity on the levels of gender and sexuality, Chiron experiences more homophobic and discriminating bullying from his masculine black peers every day. Lastly, Moonlight also exposes the intersectional influence of class on Chiron’s already marginalised identity, with which it brings to light the inherent connection of racism and classism as explained by hooks in her 2012 book Where We Stand: Class Matters (7). Throughout the story, it becomes clear that Chiron did not receive the support from his environment he so desperately needed. Living in an impoverished ghetto with a drug-addicted sex-worker as a mother and attending an under-resourced school made Chiron extra susceptible for bullying and made it more difficult for him to of this toxic situation. Instead, his ‘salvation’ is also his decay, as he travels to the grim underworld of Miami’s drug culture. As such, all separate social components of his identity intersect and have influence on his experiences. Similar to the internal tensions present within the Chiron’s identity, the cinematography of the film focused on friction too, being the friction of beautiful lights and dark proceedings present in the city of Miami. This is clearly demonstrated throughout the film, as we see graphic or violent incidents filmed rather beautifully through framing, colours and lightning. Attracted to this beauty, viewers unwarily become voyeurs of the violence, crime, and poverty Chiron has to endure during his childhood. Most importantly though, in its conclusion Moonlight opens up about the effects of growing up with an identity such as Chiron’s, being marginalised in multiple ways, while not having enough support. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Chiron, who is absolutely fed up with being mistreated for being a poor, gay, black man, reinvents himself in the last past of the film. In a way, this reinvention into a ‘straight’ rich black man can be interpreted as a critique on Western society itself, and the lack of support there is for many queer and gender- nonconforming black youths. For Chiron it felt like reinventing himself according to the ruling societal norms was the only way that he would survive in his environment. Thereby, the overtly masculine identity Chiron created predominantly discloses how severely the discriminating barriers are in place for people who share his identity and environment, as Chiron rather lives a lie than lives his truth. Even when Chiron did not have access to support at home, the school system should have addressed the constant bullying, but instead they conformed to the heteronormative ‘curriculum’. Since similar harassment actually happens on a regular basis in

50 America16, Moonlight’s story connects with a multitude of people, hence the film movies more towards the “real” world.

3.6 A Queer Journey in Call Me By Your Name In Call Me By Your Name we witness the coming-of-age of central hero Elio, who is male, queer, white and higher class, and experiences his coming-of-age process mostly as a sexual awakening. It can be valuable to consider the impact of the specific intersection of Elio’s identity on his experiences, especially in comparison to Moonlight because both films are set in the same timeframe, namely the 1980s. As it turns out, Elio experiences some exclusion but generally also a lot of privilege compared to Chiron, due to his marginalised sexuality and the interaction of his other social categories. As such, Call Me By Your Name alongside a work such as Moonlight comes to be a useful reference in the depiction of queer youth experiences in different racial and socioeconomic environments. First, we must shortly distinguish the manner in which Elio is depicted in Call Me By Your Name, being a complex and layered, central queer character. Historically, queer characters have been portrayed either in the form of distinct, singular “types” (such as The Macho or The Sad Young Man), thereby reducing everything about them to his or her sexuality, or they were presented as rather passive supporting objects without acknowledging their specific queer experiences (Dyer “Seen To Be Believed” 4; Dyer Culture of Queers 23; Russo 4). This means that either there was too much focus on their queer sexuality or there was not any in their representation in film. However, as established in the previous chapter, Call Me By Your Name is in line with what Richard Dyer coined “radical gay culture”, as it centralises Elio’s queer coming- of-age process as a psychologically rounded experience in the film (Culture of Queers 23). Elio becomes the main character that viewers can identify with due to his distinct personality and he is not reduced to his queer sexuality nor is he neglected for it. In that sense, the film avoids problematic gay stereotypes and instead opens up possibilities of depth and complexity for the queer experience through Elio’s multidimensional identity.

16 I base this statement on research provided by the Gay Straight Alliance Network. The Network’s report from 2014 showed that 82 percent of LGBTQ+ youth of colour were harassed due to their sexual or gender expression. This research is to be found at: Burdge, Hilary. "LGBTQ YOUTH OF COLOR: Discipline Disparities, School Push-Out, And The School-To-Prison Pipeline". Gsanetwork.Org, 2018, https://gsanetwork.org/files/aboutus/LGBTQ_brief_FINAL-web.pdf.

51 An important aspect of this multidimensional depiction of Elio’s queer experience is the supposed layering in his desire and sexuality. Elio is both attracted to childhood friend Marzia, and to the new research assistant Oliver. As Elio pursues both attractions on different levels, being genuinely attracted to Marzia but being hopelessly in love with Oliver, Call Me By Your Name puts the hero’s multifaceted desire at the core of the film. In doing so, viewers are appointed to how very layered Elio’s sexuality actually is, and what complexities come with falling in love. While some argue that this intricate depiction of desire presents a realistic narrative of (Anna Rose Lovine 2018; Steven Blum 2018), it can also be argued that this depiction actually steers the film away from the politics of sexuality. Although we witness Elio’s alternating desire closely, we are not directed to form judgement about these occurrences. Rather than debating whether Elio is in fact bi-curious, we are instead made curious about him as a person, and his ‘authentic’ sexual awakening: the sexual identity of Elio actually becomes more ambiguous. In doing so, Call Me By Your Name breaks with the use of singular queer stereotypes and simultaneously opts for more realism in the depiction of a queer sexual awakening. This un-stereotypical and layered approach to the portrayal of the queer experience is similarly to be witnessed in the sensual form of Call Me By Your Name. From the operated camera movements viewers can dissect instantly that this is a film about desire, as they are introduced to Elio and Oliver with many delicate close-ups of people and props, soft transitions between scenes, and rather slow pan-shots of the characters within the Italian landscape. We are presented with an idyllic paradise-like location “Somewhere in Northern Italy” (as told by the opening credits), where it is mainly warm, peaceful and green, alike the Garden of Eden. Continuing in the Garden of Eden symbolism, ripe peaches and apricots form an important sign of eroticised sensuality throughout the film, thereby possibly referring to the forbidden fruit (and the historical tradition of peaches symbolising carnal love). Call Me By Your Name seems to move away from the formal stereotypical notions of cold, shame and hiding connected to the queer experience on film17 but rather focuses on the positive beauty of queer sensations. Still, do not forget that Call Me By Your Name’s depiction of queerness is a white, high- class queerness. This classification is significant because it has quite some effect on Elio’s experience of his gender and sexuality during his coming of age process. When turning back to Moonlight shortly, it is evident that Chiron’s race and socioeconomic environment have consequential influence on the expression and thus experience of his gender and sexual identity. Comparing Chiron’s queer struggle to Elio’s queer awakening, awareness is raised considering

17 This stereotypical negative portrayal is to be seen in, for example, (, 2005) and Carol (, 2015)

52 how much easier Elio’s experience seems to be, away from the shame, hurt, and restrictions that tormented Chiron while growing up. A closer look reveals that Elio’s ease stems from his intersectionality, as he experiences privilege due to his white, high-class environment while Chiron experiences exclusion due to his Black, low-class milieu. Again, this advantage due to one’s race directs us to Peggy McIntosch’s notion of white privilege (30), as we similarly witnessed in Lady Bird. Additionally, people might not recognize the occurrence of white privilege if they only look at Call Me By Your Name, which explains the critical reviews of the film stating that it depicts merely an “idealised deception of queer sexual awakening” (Grootboom 2018). However, the privileges connected to Elio’s identity become clear when compared to other, more marginalised intersections, such as Moonlight’s Chiron. The same goes for Elio’s class, as we witness the impeccable amount of support he receives from his highly educated, perceptive and accepting parents. They encourage him to explore his queer sexual awakening and practically push Elio in the direction of Oliver, whereas Chiron’s lower-class environment only made it harder for him to be his true Self. This comparison evidently exemplifies the impact of marginalised identities. In its conclusion, Call Me By Your Name equally shows quite the oppositional sentiment than Moonlight, as we are appointed to how such acceptance and support can positively affect a young man’s identity during his coming of age (and queer sexual awakening) process. While we noticed that Chiron completely hid his true Self after years of discriminatory bullying and lacking support, Elio is now able to express his true queer identity (emphasized through his clothes and overall presentation) precisely through his accepting and supporting environment. That is why I want to argue that the intersectional analysis of Call Me By Your Name teaches us two things; first, that there are many different stories to be told about the queer experience, Elio’s positive version being one of them. Second and most importantly, the film alerts viewers to the significant effect that one’s particular intersectionality can have over the formation of one’s true identity.

Conclusion In this chapter I have looked at the incorporation of marginalised identities through an intersectional lens. By acknowledging the particular interaction between someone’s social categories of gender, sexuality, race, and class, an evaluation can be made considering how one’s experiences are shaped either positively or negatively due to their particular intersection. In media, the incorporation of this concept can be a meaningful manner to break with singular stereotypes and express more integrity through psychologically rounded and more diverse characters. By now it has become clear that neither the Bildungsroman, nor the classic cinematic

53 coming-of-age genre has actually incorporated multifaceted characters or the effects of marginalised identities. Consequently, the stories remained rather conventional and repetitive, while losing its touch with reality. Looking at the case studies Lady Bird, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name I have aimed to demonstrate that these recent coming-of-age films actually do embrace more diverse characters in order to depict more complex characters and their layered stories of growing up. Through this incorporation of non-normative identities, we see a break with superficial stereotypes of respectively working-class women, lower-class black men and higher-class queer men. Taking into consideration that cinema functions as a window to and of society, I argue that the inclusion of non-normative characters in coming-of-age cinema leads towards more realistic representations and thus forms a more realistic reflection of society. As these films direct us to see the coming of age of marginalised people, they can serve as pedagogic instrument to show a segment of the many diverging identities that exist in the world, and their different experiences. While many of these experiences on display in Lady Bird, Moonlight and Call My By Your Name are far from ideal, they do represent the reality of the way in which Western societies handle different identities, and the discriminatory barriers that still exist. Precisely by shedding light on these difficult societal truths, the genre can be considered to take action in the current political and activist times. Therefore, these recent coming-of-age films do not only a break with the conservative and repetitive Bildungsroman but also, and more significantly, are constitutive of a movement towards politicization within the coming-of-age genre.

54 Conclusion

Throughout this thesis, I researched the renaissance of recent coming-of-age cinema and its connections to the historical Bildungsroman tradition in order to examine the development in identity representation within the coming-of-age genre. My research question was: How does recent coming-of-age cinema handle the representation of diversity in its portrayal of identity formation, compared to the traditional Bildungsroman? I compared the traditional Bildungsroman to the recent coming-of-age films Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name with the purpose of reflecting on my hypothesis regarding the politicization of the contemporary coming-of-age genre in the Age of Activism. By exploring the Bildungsroman and coming-of-age tradition, it became clear that the Bildungsroman and later the coming-of-age film have a narrative format that has great potential for both pedagogy and entertainment. However, as the years of tradition showed as well, generally the stories of growing up were told from the perspective of a white, heterosexual, middle-class male. As this conventional perspective was repeated but not much broadened over the years, the tradition seemed to offer a rather limited and one-sided view on maturing to people, which can be regarded problematic, especially when remembering the genre’s didactic core. Nevertheless, the very act of diversifying representation on screen can very impactful during one’s identity formation. Second, the standard representation present in the historical Western coming-of-age genre regarding gender, sexuality, race, and class reflects the norms in our western culture. Although coming-of-age film thus traditionally reinforced dominant societal norms, I noticed that recent coming-of-age films are attempting to break with this tradition. The first indication I distinguished is the notion of agency, which translates to personal empowerment. Whereas the historical Bildungsroman favoured conservative pedagogical conduct through a peaceful integration of hero and society, the recent coming-of-age films Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name aimed to let go of these conservative conventions by centralising their hero’s personal agency. In doing so, the contemporary expressions centralize agency in two ways: they give the central heroes personal power in an agency deprived tradition and in doing so they also potentially empower the people these strong characters represent in society at large. This connection between representation and society is even more addressed by the second notion I analysed, which is the inclusion of non-normative identities. Through an intersectional analysis I evaluated the interaction of social categories gender, sexuality, race, and class to evaluate how these intersections shapes someone’s experiences. Parallel to the use of

55 agency, marginalised intersectional identities were not incorporated in the Bildungsroman or classic coming-of-age film genre yet. Due to their preference for depictions that cohere to the dominant cultural norms, the history of coming-of-age presents us mainly (and repetitively) with rather singular, conventional, and stereotypical characters. However, Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name portray more diverse characters and their intricate stories of growing up, which forms a more realistic reflection of society. Through their diversely layered representations, the fictional depictions of Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name actually attempt to move away from their isolated fictional world and gravitate more towards the real world instead. Connecting my analytical findings throughout the three chapters, I would argue that the representation of empowered heroes and marginalised intersectional identities in coming-of-age film does actually politicizes the century-old genre in the present Age of Activism. Through the act of breaking with and exposing dominant cultural constructs regarding identity formation, the recent coming-of-age genre takes part in society’s current political activism. Thus, the genre that traditionally merely reflected the white, heterosexual, middleclass male is now making a shift towards the representation of more diverse minorities (female, black, queer, and lower-class identities). Additionally, the contemporary films also portray these minorities as personally powerful. In doing so, the genre that held a status of “popcorn movie” during the 1980s and 1990s is moving towards more serious territory due to its complex and powerful portrayals in the 2010s. Now, the everlasting teen film genre is reflecting on societal power structures and diversity issues regarding representation. These films are actively using their representational power and medium-specific qualities (such as their pedagogic essence, to which I will come back to shortly) to broaden people’s perspectives in these activist times, which affirms the genre’s newly adapted politicized character. Taking it a step further, I would argue that due to the politicization of the coming-of-age genre, a certain development is noticeable within said genre. As identity is inherently intertwined with culture, it is not new that there is a strong connection between the genre and society, which focuses on the relationship between maturing and society’s cultural norms and constructs. However, whereas the traditional genre mostly obliged to the ruling cultural norms and created stories and films that stood in the service of society, it is within the contemporary coming-of age genre that we start to see a change. This change can be formulated as a movement towards awareness of these cultural constructs, and their problematic essence. The contemporary corpus does not break with all societal norms and constructs, but, Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name all individually integrate an awareness of cultural constructs in their storylines. We see that Lady Bird rather boldly plays with society’s gender norms, Moonlight exposes the problematic

56 tendencies of cultural constructs surrounding masculinity and Call Me By Your Name aims to devalue some societal norms regarding sexuality. This cultural awareness is enhanced due to the three films’ acknowledgement and representation of marginalised people in stories. As mentioned earlier in the introduction, the field of film production diversified too, and directors Gerwig, Jenkins and Guadagnino used their unique personal perspective of respectively a woman, a black man and a queer man to represent women, black and queer men as empowered characters. Aware of the universality of their personal experiences, the three directors reject the conventional depictions of identity formations as seen in the traditional genre and opt for a more diverse palette in an industry that has opened up. The awareness of the contemporary coming-of-age films can also be traced back in the tradition’s core objective: pedagogy. Coming-of-age does not lose its didactic essence, yet instead of the original social lessons on appropriate conduct, the genre opens up its didactic methods to educate viewers in a broader manner. Traditionally, the main character held the same white, middle-class, heterosexual identity, thus the only lessons to learn were regarding what endeavours he would encounter during his formative journey. As the contemporary corpus portrays under- represented people, their multifaceted experiences and the workings of cultural constructs, the genre opens up wider pedagogic possibilities for the audience. Aware of the rich tradition, contemporary directors attempt to broaden the genre’s depictions of identity formation, to deliver new and different social lessons to the viewers. Namely, instead of being taught about right and wrong behaviour, the pedagogy of the coming-of-age genre moves towards educating viewers on the many different people in the world and their diverging positions of power and different intersectional experiences. Nevertheless, it is important to stay critical of the developments in the recent coming-of- age corpus. In line with what has been discussed earlier, Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name do show a certain awareness, yet they are by no means not perfect in their execution. As mentioned in the introduction, I did not set out to prove the wrongs of the Bildungsroman tradition and the rightful contemporary movement. Instead, I wanted to offer new perspectives (such as agency and intersectionality) from which one could look at these films and indicate that there is a certain development within the genre. What became clear in my research is that the contemporary coming-of-age films may still derive from the Bildungsroman tradition but reject many of the ‘aged’ traditions in order to diversify the genre. As argued, due to their integrated integrity the films function as a window to and of the world. This further explains the still

57 insubstantial elements in the corpus regarding identity representations, as the world is not ideal yet either. Ultimately, I would like to argue that perhaps with the mature identity films as Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name the coming-of-age genre has ‘come of age’ itself in this Age of Activism. The genre has left its conventional tradition and superficial teen years behind and is moving into a more serious and self-reflective cinematic adulthood. In this research, I showed the first steps of coming-of-age’s own maturity, which starts with an awareness of the actual lived world of the fictional characters that filmmakers need to incorporate in their stories of identity formation. In that light, I believe there will be plenty of research to be done as the genre matures even further in the years to come.

58 Filmography

Selected Corpus Call Me By Your Name. Dir. Luca Guadagnino. Sony Pictures Classics, 2017. Lady Bird . Dir. Greta Gerwig. A24, 2017. Moonlight. Dir. Barry Jenkins. A24, 2016.

Additional Referenced Titles 20th Century Women. Dir. Mike Mills. A24, 2016. The 400 Blows. Dir. François Truffaut. Les Films du Carrosse, 1959. American Honey. Dir. Andrea Arnold. Maven Pictures, 2016. Boyhood. Dir. Richard Linklater. IFC Productions, 2014. The Breakfast Club. Dir. John Hughes. , 1985. Brokeback Mountain. Dir. Ang Lee. , 2005. Carol. Dir. Todd Haynes. The Weinstein Company, 2015. Clueless. Dir. Amy Heckerling. , 1995. Carnal Knowledge. Dir. Mike Nichols. Embassy Pictures, 1971. Easy A. Dir. Will Gluck. Screen Gems, 2010. Ferris Bueller’s day Off. Dir. John Hughes. Paramount Pictures, 1986. Garden State. Dir. Zach Braff. Camelot Pictures, 2004. The Graduate. Dir. Mike Nichols. Lawrence Turman, 1967. Grease. Dir. Randal Kleiser. Paramount Pictures, 1978. Hairspray. Dir. John Waters. New Line Cinema, 1988. Hairspray. Dir. Adam Shankman. New Line Cinema, 2007. Into The Wild. Dir. Sean Penn. Paramount Vantage, 2007. Mean Girls. Dir. Mark Waters. Paramount Pictures, 2004 Rear Window. Dir. . Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions, 1954. Rebel Without A Cause. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Warner Bros, 1955 Risky Business. Dir. Paul Brickman. Geffen Company, 1983. Sixteen Candles. Dir. John Hughes. Universal Pictures, 1984. Some Kind of Wonderful. Dir. Howard Deutch. Hughes Entertainment, 1987. Stand By Me. Dir. Rob Reiner. Corporation, 1986. Thelma & Louise. Dir. Ridley Scott. Pathé Entertainment, 1991.

59 Works Cited

Images on the Title Page (clockwise from left to right): 1. Still from Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017): A24. Lady Bird in the Changing room. 2017, http://www.flare.com/beauty/lady-bird-acne/. Accessed 25 June 2018.

2. Still from Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017): Sony Pictures Classics. Elio Reading In The Sun. 2017, http://sonyclassics.com/callmebyyourname/. Accessed 25 June 2018.

3. Still from Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016): A24. Chiron Walking to School. 2016, http://www.indiewire.com/gallery/moonlight-image-gallery-exclusive-pictures-barry- jenkins/#!7/moonlight_1-13-1/. Accessed 25 June 2018.

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