Final Paper 3 of Possible 3
posted by Michael | 5/01/2007 01:53:00 PM
Contributors
- Class: Empire (1 page)
- Carrie Nelson, MRG Jameson, Race Sexualities, Sexu...
- "Postmodernism" Essay: Class (1 page)
- Pack: Badiou Part 3 Evil
- Class: Badiou Part 3 Evil
- Pack: Badiou Parts 1 and 2 of 3
- Class: Badiou Part 1 and 2 of 3
- Bibliography 2 (of possible 2)
- Bibliography 1 (of possible 2)
- Pack: Porto Alegre
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Maria Fernanda Castro
AML 4242
Prof. Michael Rowley
3rd March 2007
All About Queer Theory; a Queer reading of All About my Mother
“Even though I love my mother, I didn't want to make an idealized portrait of her. I'm fascinated more by her defects - they are funnier than her other qualities,” Pedro Almodovar.
It is common for most people to think about All About my Mother (directed by Pedro Almodovar) as a deliberate attempt to mock transvestite and the homosexual community due to the problems it encloses. However, the intention of the film was quite contrary. It praises the transvestite community in Spain for the strength of its members to be actresses and women, through a very unique way. If the reader can grasp the admiration that Almodovar feels towards women because of their strength to act their parts and to hold Spanish society together, then the reader can also grasp that he feels the same admiration towards transvestites since they dare to take the part of women and to act twice as hard. In fact, the film aims to create a more positive image for transvestites in the world because they are acting twice as hard as other women. Also, through emphasizing the strength of transvestites to defy the norms, he is further emphasizing the strength of women like Manuela who are responsible for holding things together for society.
In the film Manuela (played by Cecilia Roth) defies Spain’s patriarchal society and raises her son with a transvestite all by herself. Also, Queer Theory can be applied to the film in a great variety of ways since there are a lot of overlapping issues of gender and sexuality. Primarily, the film may be analyzed from the perspective of the author himself since he is a member of the homosexual community in Spain; secondly, the issue of AIDS is also essential to the plot of the movie, which is a big concern to the homosexual community around the world; and lastly, the theme of the ‘Boston Marriage,’ which is the economical arrangement between two women in exchange for a loving relationship, is presented in the film through the relationship of Huma Rojo (played by Marisa Paredes) and Nina (Candela Pena), and later, of Huma and Manuela.
In the film, as Esteban (payed by Eloy Azorin) wonders about the identity of his father, Almodovar deliberately includes Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire.” This play has been widely read as a queer test given the fact that Williams was homosexual too. The situation in which Esteban dies revolves around his seventeenth birthday and how his mother took him to see the play. During the play, Manuela tells him that “twenty years ago, with an amateur group in my village, we staged this same play. I played the part of Stella and your father played Stanley Kowalsky” (Long Sypnosis). He wants his father’s identity revealed as his birthday present. This parallelism is significant because it is somehow ironic. It may be hinting to a time when Manuela was happy with the patriarchal order of Spain and somehow wishes that Esteban had not turned into a woman, ‘Lola the Pioneer’ (played by Toni Canto), who is Esteban’s real father (and whose name is also Esteban).
However, the main theme of the movie is Manuela’s strength for raising a child alone and by coping well for his tragic loss. Almodovar was inspired to direct this film after he remembered his childhood in La Mancha (Spain). There, he saw how women were mostly the ones who prevented tragedies by acting and faking better than men. The film can be easily studied through the queer eye, given the fact that he is openly gay himself and this is reflected through his films. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” said [Tennessee] Williams through Blanche Dubois. In All About my Mother the kind strangers are women” (Pedro Almodovar on “Faking it”). In some sense, this is the view that the film wants to highlight. Also, the film aims to give a tribute to women like Manuela who are actresses in that they fake it through hiding their true emotions.
Manuela defies the patriarchal order since she fakes it. She is the ultimate actress, who pretends to be unaffected by her surroundings to the extent that she provided a great environment for Esteban, in spite of a clear lack of the same. Her son grew up to be the epitome of a good boy. He aspired to be a writer, was studious, loved to read, spent time with his mother and was a loving son. She achieved all this all by herself without a man by her side to be the male template for her son. For this reason, after Esteban tragically died, she went crazy and began her tour-de-force odyssey to find Esteban’s father. Accordingly, Manuela became the ultimate actress because she did not reveal her past as she searches for ‘Lola the Pioneer’ in Barcelona.
Another queer reading of the film, can be seen through evaluating the relationship between
Huma and Manuela as a ‘Boston Marriage’. This type of unions were widely popular during the nineteenth century in that women had economic agreements that allowed some of them to remain single thanks to the generosity of other wealthy women (Tyson 319). This concept is clearly depicted in “The Bostonians” by Henry James and is similarly representative of the type of relationship Huma and Manuela had. Huma was clearly a lesbian. She had a relationship with Nina Cruz, her last assistant. However, it was very different with Manuela since their agreement was merely economical. At this point, she was ironically living through depending in the kindness of strangers. However, the women were defying the patriarchal order in that they were not dependent upon the kindness of men.
Another issue pertinent to the queer reading of the film, is the how AIDS affects some of
the characters and how they are antagonized through the disease. Sister Rosa (played by Penelope Cruz), is a nun who is pregnant with Lola’s baby and has no one to trust but Manuela. Sister Rosa was infected with AIDS after she had sex with Lola and she is never going to live to see her baby. Manuela agrees to take care of the baby, who will be named Esteban after Manuela’s dead son. In this situation, AIDS is terribly vilified since a nun is infected with the virus and is pregnant. Also, the relationship between Manuela and Sister Rosa, can also be analyzed through the ‘Boston Marriage’. However, this relationship has a twist because Manuela will achieve a new opportunity to be a mother through Sister Rosa’s baby.
Additionally, AIDS is furthermore vilified in the film through Lola the Pioneer’s character. She is the stereotypical depiction of the perverse transvestite. She takes drugs, steals, hides, lies, had sex, impregnates and contaminates a nun with the HIV virus. However, she has no idea that she left Manuela, nor Sister Rosa pregnant. Also, it is very likely that the film is aiming to
differentiate this perversion commonly associated with the gay subject by conceptualizing perversion in terms of an unconscious structure of desire (Dean 22), as Jacques Lacan explains in Tim Dean’s text “Beyond Sexuality.” He was not trying to depict Lola as an evil character who was evil because she was homosexual. Lola was merely confused and under the influence of drugs, which at the same time separated her from reality. In the end, Lola is deeply touched by the fact that she had a son (or two) named after her-Esteban.
Similarly, this overlapping of identity between Lola and Esteban is also significant to the queer view of the film. Lola does not fit within the binary system of gender. She is neither male, nor female. Lois Tyson defines Queer theory in his text, “Critical Theory Today: a user-friendly guide,” in the following terms: “ [it] reads texts to reveal the problematic quality of
representations of sexual categories, in other words, to show the various ways in which the categories homosexual or heterosexual break down, overlap, or do not adequately represent the dynamic range of human sexuality.” (Tyson 338). This definition is highly applicable to the definition of a gender for Esteban/Lola. He was biologically a man, but he had breasts and had sex with both men and women. He was almost a sex-less subject which did not fit within the typical categories. Also, if one studies Simone de Beauvoir, through Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity,” in terms of the distinction of gender, Esteban/Lola is deeply incongruent. To her, women are designated as the “Other” and the only gender is the female gender (Butler 9). Through this distinction, homosexuals have no place and less than likely, transvestite. Lola/Esteban, has no identity if one relies on this theory. He/she is an “unintelligible” subject, or that subject who is not instituted, nor “maintain [s] relations of coherence and continuity among sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire” (Butler 17). In the film, Esteban/Lola is especially incoherent. He had plastic surgery to get breast, and he acts as a female who is also having sex with women.
Lastly, ‘La Agrado’ is depicted in the film as the good transvestite who has been a victim of the streets. Her views are clear as she delivers her monologue. She opens with the following statement: “They call me La Agrado, because I have always tried to make everyone’s lives more pleasant...Aside from being pleasant I am also very authentic” (La Agrado’s Monologue). This monologue is deeply ironic given the fact that there is nothing superficially authentic about a transvestite; however, La Agrado is in reality authentic if one overlaps these fact and looks at her virtues. She continues her monologue by telling the audience all of her surgeries and their respective costs. She finishes by saying: “It cost me a lot to be authentic. But we must not be cheap in regards to the way we look. Because a woman is more authentic the more she looks like what she has dreamed for herself” (La Agrado’s Monologue). In some sense, her qualification of her own gender is more accurate than those of the theorists. She is authentic and identifies herself to what she wants to be identified.
In the end, Almodovar achieved to create a more positive image for transvestites even through the adversities they face daily and the discrimination they experience. Also, he is successful in that he deepens his admiration for women, as the glue which holds society, through the film’s representation of Manuela and in a very unique way. If the reader can grasp that Almodovar feels admiration towards transvestites because they dare to take the part of women and to act twice as hard, then the reader can also grasp that he greatly admires mothers in particular for being the heads of the households and dealing with the problems of both, men and children. Yet, the reader may never know if the representation is verisimilar to the reality of the streets of Barcelona. Other critics may want to further analyze the role of ‘Lola the Pioneer’, how she is lacking in Esteban’s life and how it may affect him to know that his father is a travesty with AIDS. Also, the lack of male dominance in the film (and in most of Almodovar’s in general) is predominantly clear and can be further analyzed.
In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are
not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government,” Pedro Almodovar.
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