Queerly Canadian (Exam), Essay Example

How and why is David Cronenberg’s film Crash a queer film?

David Cronenberg’s film Crash can be considered a queer film for one obvious and one, less obvious, reason. Most notably, the film has two homosexual sex scenes (one between two men, and one between two women). There is, however, very little evidence that there is true engagement between the partners in these scenes, beyond their overt pursuit of sexual gratification. In other words, these individuals are not motivated to have sex because they seek a connection with one another; instead, they are simply looking to achieve arousal through any means possible (Cronenberg, 1996). This most obvious reason draws parallel with the sex lives of the majority of gay men, who are notorious for having multiple sex partners and very little emotional connection to any of them. The second reason is more abstract, but still relevant. Throughout Cronenberg’s Crash there is a lingering feeling of longing and isolation. Each character is motivated to act on his or her sexual urges in an attempt to connect with someone else. In other words, the characters resort to their sexual fetishes because they cannot connect otherwise. Therefore, we can deduce that they have these urges because they are deficient of something else; in this case, it is a shared connection with someone else. Similarly, homosexuals and bisexuals are often categorized as being the product of a certain deficiency. In other words, a large body of people claims that homosexuals (or anyone else that does not fit in the realms of the heterosexual norm) must be the product of a childhood trauma, or improper parenting. Based on that idea, the film definitely depicts a queer theme.

Is William alive or dead in The Hanging Garden?

In Thom Fitzgerald’s The Hanging Garden William is both dead and alive. In reality, William committed suicide ten years ago by hanging himself from a tree in the garden. He killed himself at age 15 because his grandmother caught him having sex with his bisexual friend Fletcher. In the reality version of the film, William has been dead for ten years and his family still struggles with the fact that he killed himself (Fitzgerald, 1997). They do their best to carry on with their lives, despite this nightmare which haunts them. In the alternate version of the film, William is 25, and alive and thriving. He returns home to attend the wedding of his sister Rosemary to his childhood lover Fletcher. In the alternate version, the adult William interacts with the teenage William. The adult William finds out that he has fathered a child when his mother took the teenage William to a prostitute to cure him of his homosexual tendencies.

How do the writers, filmmakers, and artists we’ve studied challenge the sex-gender binary as a way of upsetting institutionalized patriarchy and heterosexism?

Sex-gender binary classifies gender and sex into two distinct and disconnected categories of feminine and masculine. As such, only one type of gender system exists. Because it is such a generalized system, people are discouraged from crossing or mixing gender roles. It also greatly discourages people from creating other forms of gender expression. The most obvious aspect of gender binaries is that women give birth. Other gender binaries are typically observed in various religions; for instance, Catholics only allow men to serve as priests, and Islamists believe that women are the primary caregivers to children (Nestle, Wilchins, & Howell, 2002). However, these gender binaries are known to polarize society where anything that does not fit into the realm of traditional sex-gender binaries is taboo. In the works studies this semester, artists, filmmakers, and authors challenge the sex-gender binary and simultaneously upsets the institutionalized patriarchy.

They do this by creating characters that challenge traditional sex-gender binaries. For instance, characters in David Cronenberg’s Crash are sexually aroused by car crashes and victims of car crashes. The film is riddled with meaningless sexual encounters, none of which are conventional or pure. Sex in this film happens between men and women, women and women, men and men, and people and machines. All sex-gender binaries become obsolete as each character is driven by his or her individual, unrestrained sexual drive.

In Ivan E. Coyote’s No Bikini a six-year-old who identifies as a male, but is treated as a female by his parents, recalls a summer when he decided not to wear a two-piece swimsuit during swimming lessons. Everybody knows that girls should cover what would become their eventual bosoms, yet this brave little person decided he felt more comfortable wearing only swimming trunks, blatantly demolishing the barriers of sex-gender binary (Coyote, 2000). Similarly, Camilla Gibb touches on issues of transgender in In Brooklyn on All Fours, when a female ninth-grade high-school student identifies as a boy.

All writers, directors, and artists studied during this semester have broken the traditional sex-gender binaries by focusing on everything that is not considered to be the norm. By doing this they have illuminated the fact that there are other options, other that the two gender options commonly referred to by less-informed heterosexuals, and that those options are alive and thriving (Gibb, 2002).

References

Coyote, i. E. (2000). No Bikini: Close to Spiderman. Vancouver: Arsenal Publications.

Cronenberg, D. (Director). (1996). Crash [Motion Picture].

Fitzgerald, T. (Director). (1997). The Hanging Garden [Motion Picture].

Gibb, C. (2002). On All Fours in Brooklyn. Vancouver: Arsenal Publications.

Nestle, J., Wilchins, R., & Howell, C. (2002). GenderQueer: Voices from beyond the sexual binary. London: Alyson Publications.