In Between Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo: He Queerness of Gender
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01 In Between Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo: Te Queerness of Gender- Bending Stardom SARAH FELLOWS Te star personas of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich serve as beacons of queer representation in classical Hollywood cinema. Marlene Dietrich is a vision of glamour, seduction, and exoticism in her films and in her star persona, constantly straddling the mother/whore dichotomy.1 Greta Garbo also holds a persona of beauty, mystery, and charm in her films and in her star persona, constantly evading questions from the press and upholding the allure of exotic secrecy.2 Attached to both women’s star personas of sex, exoticism, and glamour, is the mystery of queerness. Both Dietrich and Garbo’s sexualities were interrogated and questioned by audiences, fans, and journalists. A queer subtext 11 reveals itself within both their star personas and in all of their films, consistently nodding to queer potentiality, queer sexuality, and queer desire. Tis article will argue that the queer star personas of Dietrich and Garbo are balanced between male and female, and therefore serve to denaturalize gender and sexuality entirely in the process. In line with Judith Butler, I will reveal the performativity of gender through a comparative and contrasting analysis of Dietrich and Garbo by taking the pre-code Hollywood films Morocco (1930)3 and Queen Christina (1933)4 as my case studies to investigate Dietrich and Garbo’s negotiations of gender. Furthermore, I will interrogate the construction of both Dietrich and Garbo’s star personas as upholding their potential queerness in demonstrating both male and female qualities. Finally, this article concludes with an analysis of Meeting of Two Queens (1991)5 to demonstrate the queer potentiality ingrained within Dietrich and Garbo’s presences onscreen. Tere will always be suspicion and mystery surrounding the sexualities of Garbo and Dietrich, but their actual sexualities ultimately do not matter and are not the point of interrogation for this essay, as they will always be queer icons for queer communities of the past, present, and future. Dietrich and Garbo both engage in high forms of gender performativity in their star personas and professional careers. In turn, both stars then participate in Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity in “Imitations and Gender Insubordination.”6 Butler explains gender as a set of repeated acts and learned characteristics within a regulatory, disciplinary, and naturalized frame; only these repeated acts and performances define gender, instead of gender defining performance.7 Butler’s goal becomes to denaturalize these repeated and traditional roles in the routine productions of gender rooted in biology, as she believes gendered identities are not a true reflection of one’s core self, but are culturally coded performances.8 Gender is then not determined by biological essentialism, but instead determined by the repeated performance of gendered acts.9 According to Butler, the performance of gender negotiates a paradox of identity, as 12 the “I” of the individual and the gender can only attain stability through repetition and performance.10 Te “I,” however, is never stable, as nothing precedes the “I.”11 Te “I” then possesses no core essence of being, biology, or gender that precedes its performance. 12 Both Dietrich and Garbo participate in Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Both perform male and female coded actions, traits, and roles. According to Laura Mulvey, Dietrich and Garbo both inhabit the gendered labour of the male and female roles in filmic narratives; they are the passive female spectacle and object of the narrative, as well as the active male protagonist and subject of narrative agency.13 Dietrich and Garbo both perform at once the female coded traits of glamour, exoticism, beauty and seduction, and the male coded traits of active sexuality and narrative agency. Dietrich and Garbo then inhabit a space between genders that destabilizes the notion of gender as a whole. Dietrich’s star persona was crafted through the tabloids and magazines of the 1930s to paint her as a glamorous, poised, and sophisticated goddess, as well as a demure and loving mother and wife. Tese tabloid articles serve to reaffirm her femininity and heterosexuality in her American star persona. In the article “Meet Marlene Dietrich,” Robin Irvine portrays Dietrich as a vision of feminine glamour and beauty.14 More importantly, however, Irvine discusses his encounter with Dietrich on the set of Morocco, during which she is cross-dressing in a tuxedo for her famous queer scene, and forcibly defines her as a feminine beauty: I turned, and there stood the most amazing vision—a girl in a black tailor made suit, collar and tie, and brogues, with hair seraped off her forehead and the most provocative tip-tilted nose I had ever seen. Imagine, if you can, a girl dressed like this and yet looking twice as feminine as any ordinary woman in frills and crèpe de Chine. Astounding contrasts are very typical of Marlene.15 Although Irvine touches on Dietrich’s performance of gender as denaturalizing in her use of “astounding contrasts,” Irvine 13 resoundingly points to Dietrich’s beauty, glamour, and femininity as “twice” that of “any ordinary woman.”16 Irvine effectively dismisses Dietrich’s troubling of feminine gender norms in her cross-dressing in a tuxedo by instead portraying her as a vision of incredible feminine beauty. Irvine continues to affirm Dietrich’s femininity and heterosexuality as he states, “I was invited to Marlene’s home to meet her husband and their beautiful little girl, Haidédé.”17 Irvine ends his section on Dietrich with the resounding statement that “Marlene is not, by any means, the super-vamp she plays so well in celluloid, though she is an entirely fascinating woman… Tough she is sophisticated she is an unaffected, genuine person with a great sense of humour.”18 Again Irvine confirms Dietrich’s glamorous, sophisticated, and kind persona and directly disavows her roles as the super-vamp, the femme fatale, and her queer role in Morocco in discussing instead the reality of her glamour and femininity. Irvine’s desperate attempts to prove Dietrich’s unabashed femininity and heterosexuality only serve to highlight her queerness more: she wears men’s clothes and she constantly plays the seductive femme fatale, entirely agentic over her own sexuality. Tese are not female-coded traits, but male ones, entirely overwritten by Irvine in his attempt to prove Dietrich’s heteronormativity and femininity. Dietrich’s queerness, however, shines through Irvine’s heteronormative article. Alongside Dietrich’s persona as the natural, glamorous, and loving mother and wife in her private life, there exists another layer of Dietrich’s crafted persona: the seductive and powerful femme fatale. Dietrich is characterized by confidence, seduction, manipulation, and power, which are all masculine coded traits. Dietrich’s star persona can then be shown to split into two dichotomies: the loving and glamorous mother (feminine), and the confident and manipulative woman (masculine). Te star persona of Dietrich is defined by the mother/whore dichotomy, as Dietrich is both the immaculate loving mother, and the seductive and manipulative whore in her star persona and the roles she plays on the screen.19 Dietrich’s glamorous and feminine star 14 persona is reclaimed and praised, whereas her femme fatale and masculine persona is cause for gossip, drama, and condemnation. Te article “Films of the Day: Marlene is Marlene Again” by George Campbell illustrates Dietrich as the femme fatale “in all her corrupt and dazzling beauty.”20 Campbell states, Te hussy of the shabby Berlin Cabaret was no dramatist’s creation. She was Woman (…) the living symbol of all that has ensnared and enraptured, enslaved and betrayed foolish man since the dawn of time (…) She just looked from those wide eyes reflecting the innocence which is apart of the natural, unconscious sinner’s heritage; and the poor old professor (…) succumbed like a rabbit to a snake.21 Campbell illustrates the mother/whore dichotomy exemplified in Dietrich’s persona as both the glamorous mother and the femme fatale whore; he paints Dietrich as an illusion of innocent beauty who in reality is corrupt to the core with sin. Dietrich lures poor innocent men into her snares of manipulation and deceit as the femme fatale, playing the active and coveted masculine role. Dietrich therefore embodies and performs both masculine coded traits of sexual agency, power, and confidence, and the feminine coded traits of passivity, innocence, glamour, motherhood, and marriage. Dietrich’s star persona then inhabits a space in between male and female, mother and whore, glamorous star and femme fatale. Dietrich’s queerness inevitably comes to the forefront of this in-between and destabilized space of gender. Greta Garbo’s femininity and heterosexuality are both upheld and proven in a similar way to Dietrich’s in her star persona. Garbo’s star persona also encompasses glamour, sexuality, sophistication, and exoticism. In “Garbo Vindicated,” Peter Burnup delves into both Garbo’s hyper-femininity and her androgyny. Te article pictures Garbo in Mata Hari (1931),22 dancing provocatively in a gold-sequined cutout body suit, a golden headpiece atop her head, and a giant tiki-man looming in the background.23 Her picture in Mata Hari takes up half a page of the article space, privileging photographic evidence of her exotic glamour and sex appeal as a star.24 Further down there is 15 another picture of her in Te Rise of Helga (1931),25 in which she wears a revealing and glamorous gown covering only her breasts with star-shaped sparkling fabric.26 Both images serve to prove Garbo’s hyper-femininity, to counter any inklings of queerdom or masculinity from her star persona. Burnup continues along these lines of hyper-femininity in claiming that “Allure is—Greta Garbo,” and he plays into her exotic sexuality, stating, “Garbo is an enigma who provokes you.”27 In line with Dietrich, Garbo’s exoticism and glamour creates an air of mystery and ambiguity surrounding her star image, contributing to the mystery of her sexuality.