With the advent of utilizing psychoanalytic theory as an outlet for the conceptualization of cinema, it is important to explore the methods through which dominant reflections of societal politics and ideology are imparted, unconsciously or with willful designs, by filmmakers upon spectators. Laura Mulvey's 1975 “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” posits that on the basis of various modes of optic and other cinematic representation, conventional narrative cinema codifies and exacerbates male patriarchal empowerment at the expense of female autonomy outside the confines of their symbolic subordinance to men – as “signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.”
Indeed, while the existence of a gendered hierarchy within cinema is predicated on its normative societal analogue, for the intents of this essay, I will seek to analyze the extent to which cinema perpetuates the prevailing misogynistic social apparatus with regards to the designated and constructed role of gender in human behavior. As such, is there a symbiotic relationship that exists between cinema and reality? Does (conventional) cinema merely serve as a propagandist tool to preserve and indefinitely reinforce the status quo of female objectification and the gaze of male patriarchal narcissism? To what extent has an alternative to the despotic “phallocentric order” emerged to challenge the predominant order? Do female directors, their psyches potentially ingrained with conventional ideology, unconsciously and masochistically sustain the existing condition of patriarchy on the basis of their own projections developed by patriarchal society? Drawing upon my own critical engagements with Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977) and Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break (1991), I will apply my own ideas to these concerns through the lens
of Mulvey's arguments.
With the arbitrary formation of a linguistically-rendered Symbolic order within both society and the cinema, the crux of Mulvey's essay postulates that female “castration,” a prerequisite to the strengthening of patriarchal order, underscores womanhood's “lack” of phallic endowment – literally as well as Symbolically. She goes on to write that the “visual pleasure” acquired by the fixation of the male gaze upon the sexualized, castrated woman – both within the narrative and by way of male spectatorship upon objectified portrayals of women – must be shattered and ultimately subverted by analyzing it. “It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this article.” In the context of Argento's film, this argument can be considered by virtue of the juxtaposition between the film's spectacular visual direction and pleasure, and by its tantalizing premise. To this end, the structured roles of gender are established but ultimately thwarted by the film's narrative as a defiantly feminist horror film that assails the prevailing masculine order by its intent and many facets of its narrative, but may preserve aspects of residual patriarchy within its unconscious structure. This is because the female body is never expressly sexualized even though it is literally continually victimized by violence throughout the span of the film with the implications of manifest threats from a seemingly omnipotent “male” Other (the killer, who is later revealed to have been female) as its point of identification.
Embracing female points of identification – even at the belated expense of Pat, her female friend, and Sarah at the hands of a presumably male aggressor – marks a considerable sense of defiance to the domineering hierarchical patriarchy buttressed by most conventional narrative cinema, especially considering the presuppositions associated with an all-girl dancing school. By and large, Argento betrays the scopophilic voyeurism anticipated by the viewer's expectations of the film, making their ultimate betrayal all the more poignantly triumphant for a feminist subversion of “phallocentric order” – especially by the enormous power he ascribes to the witch matriarchy. However, remnants of patriarchy remain embedded within the film's configurations. While women are not eroticized to the degree that viewers can foretell, “conventional close-ups of legs ... or a face” remain part of the film's fabric to “integrate into the narrative a different mode of eroticism,” however unconsciously. But more significantly on the basis of the narrative paradigm, it is ultimately only with the guidance of two academic males that Suzy Banyon discovers and overthrows the witch coven hidden within the “iris” of the academy. Their presence as two of the only significant male characters in the film, as well as their dynamism in advancing the film's narrative, suggests that male authorization may be essential for the promotion of cinematic (and/or societal) liberation for womanhood as a signifying spectacle for man – as does the fact that Dario Argento himself is male. While male acquiescence may be welcomed as a means of incremental progress in ultimately thwarting the subtext of patriarchy, even within the context of the comparatively radical Suspiria, one can apply Mulvey's criticism of conventional cinematic constraints. “The narrative supports the man's role as the active one of forwarding the story, making thing happen ... the man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense.” Can femininity transcend the confines established by patriarchy without the precondition of male “permission” – even in a film like Suspiria?
Although Katheryne Bigelow's Point Break (1991) was directed by a woman, it is noteworthy by virtue of its strict adherence to phallocentric order and a strong sense of female subservience to the underlying constructs. “This is made possible through the processes set in motion by structuring a film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify,” as Mulvey argues. With blockbuster stars such as Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, male audience members cast their modes of identification upon the “male movie star's glamorous characteristics ... [as] those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived” by the mirror stage. To this end, female characters – bikini-clad surfers, no less – are appropriated with the desirous male gaze both within the film and external to its cinematic confines by male subjects who identify with their ego ideal, who ultimately possesses the sexualized female body. To me, the film's subtext, though entertaining from a satirical perspective, is made even more deeply flawed by virtue of the fact that the leading female protagonist, portrayed by Lori Petty, is reluctant to accede to Keanu Reeves' romantic advances, but ultimately offers herself to him despite the initial resistance. This presents the underlying dilemma of imparting ideological politics of sexuality upon the film, thus ingraining normative conceptions regarding male and female relationships to spectators within reality. In this strong sense, in the era of mass-reproduction of entertainment vis-a-vis the Internet, television and the movie theater, perhaps now more than ever, “the cinematic codes create a gaze, a world, and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire.” These codes are consolidated in perpetuity, and even in the face of illusory female resistance to gendered stereotypes, as in Lori Petty's character in Katheryn Bigelow's film, they manage to persist as a bulwark of the pervasive and prevailing societal construction of patriarchy.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Political Culture of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Africa
1. Topic Proposal/Introduction
With over fifty sovereign states spanning a population of over one billion people, thousands of languages, and a religious “Triple Heritage” derived from Islam, Christianity, and various indigenous religions, the African continent is a densely-layered tapestry of cultural diversity and heterogeneity. But despite the fact that individuals and communities from countless walks of life reside in Africa, information regarding the living conditions, political rights, and upward mobility of its population of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and the transgendered (LGBT) remains elusive. On the basis of cultural and religious norms, homosexuality remains stigmatic at best throughout much the continent – and in some cases, open acknowledgement of queer identity in Africa carries harsh legal repercussions. Despite recent strides in cultural acceptance and political recognition of gay rights in the Western world, the BBC reports that “homosexuality is outlawed in 38 African countries.”1
Normative attitudes and the extent of its legality fluctuates wildly throughout the continent – from South Africa, the only African state which has formally recognized same-sex marriages, to Uganda, where a controversial parliamentary proposal to impose the death penalty for homosexuality was recently scrapped in the midst of international outrage. For the intent of this paper, I will seek to determine the extent to which African policies towards homosexuality are a manifestation of rigid, inflexible cultural fixtures or subject to liberalization. Which, if any African societies, may be compatible with contemporary Western conceptualizations of gender identity and sexual orientation? Can globalization, through cross-cultural communication, increasing homogenization of culture, and the integration of transcontinental societies under Western economic hegemony convert African values – thereby transforming African policies toward gay rights? If recent events in Uganda serve as any example, the international community – led by North America and Western Europe, where several states recognize same-sex marriage – has become increasingly intolerant towards harsh African suppression of gay rights. Is there a correlation between sociopolitical acceptance of homosexuality and the individual nation-state’s global reputation in the 21st century?
2. The Reality of Pre-Colonial African Homosexualities: Misconceptions Dispelled
Despite the deceptive claims of some, notably Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, that “homosexuality is for whites only and is an anathema to African culture” 2 and “a Western phenomenon imported to Africa by the European colonists,” 3 the history of same-sex partnerships on the continent predates European colonial occupation. However, it is important to qualify that such relationships in Africa have often been more nuanced and sociologically divergent than contemporary conceptualizations (or widespread oversimplifications) of homosexuality in the West. In this sense, rather than an all-encompassing and universally applicable “homosexuality,” numerous “homosexualities” have existed throughout a myriad of historical, geographic, cultural, religious, ethnic, tribal, and/or social spaces and contexts in Africa. Although written statistical data pre-dating European colonialism in Africa ranges from sparse to nonexistent, Western anthropologists and other scientists documented homosexual practices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, according to German anthropologist Kurt Falk and contrary to the fallacious assertions by Mugabe and others, “same-sex practices were certainly a part of traditional Bushman and related Khoi societies in southern Africa”4 – located, ironically, in present-day Zimbabwe, as well as Botswana. “One Bushman painting in a cave in Zimbabwe … shows several males engaging in sex acts together. It dates from at least one thousand, but more probably two thousand years ago.” 5 Furthermore, British anthropologist Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard wrote that among the Zande people of Central Africa (who lived in parts of present-day Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), “Homosexuality is indigenous. Zande do not regard it as at all improper, indeed as very sensible for a man to sleep with boys when women are not available or are taboo…some princes may even have preferred boys to women, when both were available…and also that they sometimes do so on other occasions, just because they like them.” 6 In addition to distinguishing the pluralism of African homosexualities from our contemporary understandings of “homosexuality,” these findings constitute a resoundingly substantive rebuttal to the common falsehood that homosexual relationships are universally incompatible with African cultural values. Still, they cannot be applied to the multifaceted and diversiform whole of African tribes and ethnic groups.
3. The Chronology of Homosexualities and Homophobia Through the Prism of Western Colonialism, Christianity, and Islam
Although largely obscured in contemporary African society on the basis of its comparative homophobia, some policies, misconceptions, and negative or fearful sentiments towards homosexuality throughout the continent are arguably rooted in the legacy of non-indigenous religious, cultural, and political forces upon Africa. This can be affirmed by the values imposed by the most influential Abrahamic Middle Eastern religions, Islam and Christianity, as well as the Western moral and judicial philosophies imparted by European colonialism itself. For instance, despite his oft-repeated claims that homosexuality arrived on African shores as an undesired export of White European decadence, it is the legacy of British colonialism in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe that originally established statutes criminalizing practices of homosexuality, specifically sodomy, in then-Rhodesia. 7 Two major events in Zimbabwe over the past two decades have crystallized the state of its institutional disposition toward homosexuality: the sexual assault allegations lobbied against its disgraced former founding president, Canaan Banana, and Robert Mugabe’s grandstanding decision to exclude an organization called Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) from participating in the 1995 Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) despite its annual thematic slogan: “human rights and justice.” 8 Mugabe’s decision ultimately had the unintended effect of galvanizing and reinvigorating Zimbabwe’s repressed gay rights movement, drawing considerable attention from international audiences for his bombastic and highly controversial remarks calling homosexuals “worse than pigs and dogs.” 9 Mugabe’s staggering devaluation of “human rights and justice” speaks volumes about the veracity of his commitment to it.
Meanwhile, Canaan Banana’s behavior can be considered prevailingly embarrassing for Zimbabwe not because of the homosexual nature of his crimes, but for the severity of the offenses – rape and sexual assault are morally loathsome regardless of whether they are heterosexual or homosexual acts. Zimbabweans were also humiliated by the blatantly hypocritical discrepancy between Banana’s public and private lives. As a former Christian Reverend who had publicly criticized homosexuality among men as the manifestation of “the poor upbringing of girls,” 10 Banana was ultimately convicted of all eleven charges of sexual assault and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. According to The Guardian, Banana’s trial also “exposed Mugabe's virulent anti-gay stance - untypical of wider Zimbabwean public opinion - as a facade, because it included testimony that his own officials had covered up for Banana and refused to help victims of his sexual demands.” 11 In this sense, both Banana and Mugabe’s public posturing fell far short of the reality of their respective behaviors, uncovering flagrant deception and duplicity among the most powerful men in Zimbabwe as well as calling the legitimacy of their anti-gay stances into contention. One can only assume that Mugabe knowingly attempted to conceal Banana’s behavior in order to prevent it from compromising his own political standing – and that if the gravity of Mugabe’s public sentiments were legitimate, he would have acted in a transparent manner to punish rather than protect his subordinate. To this end, it becomes clear that Mugabe’s corrosive anti-gay rhetoric is merely an insincere affectation crafted to consolidate political power, though I believe it is rooted predominantly in Zimbabwe’s existing British anti-sodomy laws and an appeal to the traditional mores of Christianity. Unfortunately, the Canaan Banana episode reinforces the negative stereotypes surrounding homosexual lifestyles that Zimbabwe’s leadership has propagated.
In Nigeria, where the Islamic Sharia penal code is the supreme judicial authority in twelve of its predominantly Muslim Northern states, “homosexuality by Muslims in those states can attract a sentence of 100 lashes if the defendant is unmarried or stoning if married or divorced,”12 according to the British government’s corresponding travel advisement report on its website. Corporal and even capital punishments for convictions relating to homosexual behavior exist elsewhere in Africa, but crucially, the authority of Sharia courts in Nigeria exemplifies the codification of anti-homosexual laws as a manifestation of Islamic rather than indigenous African values. This is not to say that Islam lacks sufficient African credentials, nor does it ignore that the religion of Muhammad has existed for centuries as an influential and perpetually expansive continental force. With millions of followers, especially in Northern, Eastern, and sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic religion has long since imbued itself into the African cultural psyche. However, it is significant to observe that having originated in the Arabian Peninsula, Islamic values are not inherently African. As such, the jurisdiction of Sharia courts in Nigeria reflects extrageneous rather than native customs.
It is my belief that modern African attitudes and policies towards homosexuality are not necessarily the product of indigenous cultural fixtures, as evidenced by its practice in pre-colonial tribes (though its application vacillates in accordance with the sheer diversity of ethnicities and cultures native to the continent). Moreover, contemporary homophobic policies and values within the African continent reflect the enduring influence of antiquated Western, Christian, and Islamic impositions and their gradual institutionalization into its complex and multilayered political culture. But beyond the residual dominance of former occupiers and missionaries, can today’s unprecedented forms of ever-increasing globalization subvert contemporary attitudes, thereby institutionalizing a sense of progressive acceptance toward gay rights? Will it ultimately expand civil rights to gays over time and liberalize contemporary African policies and attitudes? If there is a modern state serving as a model for incremental progress in the aforementioned direction toward egalitarianism for sexual minorities, it is most certainly South Africa.
4. The South African Exception: Marriage Equality on the Geographic Cusp of its Antithesis
Although nearly eighty percent of African states have made homosexuality an explicitly criminal offense, with most of the remaining African states bearing no criminal statutes pertaining to homosexuality by wholly ignoring its status, South Africa stands uniquely as the only country with legalized same-sex marriage and constitutional anti-discrimination protection. Following the end of Apartheid in 1994, the equality clause of South Africa’s interim constitution, ratified in 1996, declared that “No person shall be unduly discriminated against, directly or indirectly…on one or more of the following grounds in particular: race, gender, sex, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, religion, conscience, belief, culture, or language” 13 - sweeping protections unprecedented not only within Africa, but for any constitution in a modern state. On the basis of its liberal constitution and over the objection of Christian and Muslim leaders alike, South Africa extended its institutional sexual orientation protection even further when it enacted The Civil Union Act in 2006. In doing so, it granted legal recognition to same-sex couples seeking marital unions – with caveats allowing “clergy and civil marriage officers to turn away gay couples for reasons of conscience.” 14 Considering the dismal legal status of homosexuality throughout the rest of the continent, how can South Africa’s solitary strides towards civil equity be accounted for? And has its progressive stance on gay rights bolstered its international reputation among Western states? The answers to these questions remain ambiguous.
With regards to the sweeping protections in South Africa’s constitution, Neville Hoad posits that “the lateness of South Africa in the postcolonial moment is significant…given the illegitimacy of the regime being replaced and the imperative to incorporate the most …advanced forms of human rights, the timing of the South African constitution in the history of postcolonialism facilitated the entrenchment of lesbian and gay human rights.” 15 This perspective suggests that South Africa’s constitutional concerns for gay rights is the result of historical happenstance more than anything else: the combination of the nation’s resolve to obliterate all forms of discrimination to break with its traumatic Apartheid past, as well as the serendipitous virtue of being drafted during an era in which the struggle for rights among sexual minorities had gained visibility elsewhere in the world. As for South Africa’s global reputation, some reports have suggested an insufficient international commitment to gay rights. The Guardian reports that despite its constitution, South Africa has engaged in arbitrary and perplexing voting practices in its capacity as a United Nations member-state. In response to two 2007 requests for consultative accreditation from LGBT rights organizations, South Africa “sided with authoritarian states that abuse gay people, and against the western democracies where gays live freely.” 16 In light of this inexplicable discrepancy, I assert that its constitutional protections reflect the country’s internal politics and condemnation of Apartheid more significantly than an external effort to appear tolerant to Western countries. If the latter were the case, South Africa would be a steadfast supporter of gay rights within an international multilateral organization such as the UN.
5. The Ugandan Controversy: International Backlash in Defense of LGBT Rights
In the past several months, Western media outlets have reported upon a controversial piece of legislation known as the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 before the Ugandan parliament. Lambasted as “odious” by U.S. President Barack Obama and widely condemned throughout the Western community, the set of proposals would impose extremely severe penalties of capital punishment or life imprisonment for the commission of homosexual acts. In a particularly controversial subsection, the bill defines a separate category for “aggravated homosexuality,” a capital offense, as engaging in a homosexual act while being HIV-positive, among other categories. In lieu of the unexpected scope of the backlash, Uganda’s leadership, including President Yoweri Museveni and Deputy Foreign Minister Henry Okello Oryem, has attempted to disassociate themselves from the proposed changes. 17 In my belief, this arguably renders the proposal a startling eugenics program with the aim of inhumanely eradicating individuals afflicted with a disease – in this particular case, HIV. Another highly controversial aspect of the issue is predicated on the role played by U.S. Evangelical Christians in advancing the legislation. The three men – Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge, and Don Schmierer, are associated with the notion of “converting” homosexuals into heterosexuals through counseling and faith. 18 Although the American individuals claim they oppose the malignant consequences outlined by the bill, the episode serves as another stark reminder of the prevalence of non-indigenous Western influence, vis-à-vis Christianity, upon contemporary African mindsets pivoting towards condemnation rather than acceptance of homosexuality, further undercutting the notion that the West has encroached Africa with homosexuality. Indeed, Western contributions to African homophobia seem more prevalent than its mythologized appropriation of homosexuality.
6. Conclusion
Despite the fact that African homosexualities have been made manifest to varying capacities within diverse sociological groups and geographic locales throughout history and even prior to colonization, as documented among Bushmen, Khoi, and Zande ethnic groups, the vast majority of African states have today illegalized the practice. Some particularly incendiary heads of state such as Robert Mugabe have suggested that homosexuality is a product of European imperialism. Contrary to such assertions, although a pervasive sense of homophobia may very well have permeated the contemporary African psyche, I believe the research I have documented suggests that these sentiments and their codification are primarily the product of external Western, Christian, Islamic, colonial, and post-colonial influences that have shaped African culture – not a reflection of indigenous African values. In Nigeria, a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic Sharia law has percolated throughout prevailing mindsets and mentalities, culminating in its stoning penalties for homosexual acts. And in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s efforts to scapegoat homosexuality – predicated on outmoded British ordinances – have aided him in perpetuating a perniciously anti-gay Zimbabwean identity, directly implicating Western values in contemporaneous homophobia, though the vitriolic nature of his remarks have also helped to raise awareness regarding the plight of sexual minorities in Zimbabwe among the international community.
Despite these findings, it is important to avoid making sweeping generalizations with regards to this immensely complex and largely unstudied topic. Although South Africa exists as a distinct and praiseworthy example of social justice for sexual minorities, its society – and indeed, its leadership – has not been entirely forthcoming or consistent in promoting its own policies elsewhere, as evidenced by its bewildering opposition to relatively innocuous United Nations resolutions favoring the advancement of gay rights. To put this into perspective, we must consider that voters and lawmakers in liberal democracies such as the United States have also been unwilling to accept certain elements of the gay agenda. California and Maine have both voted to repeal existing laws sanctioning marriage equality in the past two years despite recognitions of its legality by courts elsewhere. South Africa, like the United States and other parts of the Western world where homophobia remains a factor, has at least illustrated incremental progress towards the ultimate realization of egalitarianism. With the advent of globalization as a liberalizing and secularizing force, it remains distinctly possible that other African countries will slowly begin to follow South Africa’s lead over the next several generations. Ironically, this path towards the reduction of homophobia and the expansion of civil rights could bring Africa culturally closer to its former Western colonizers – even though current homophobia is largely the product of vestigial Western homophobia, which has now begun to wane. But even if Africa on a whole can undergo a period of conviction-altering ideological transformation similar to that which has been experienced in the West, Christianity and Islam will remain rigidly opposed to any recognition of homosexuality – a significant obstacle. The question remains as to whether or how monotheistic religious influence upon society can be minimized, moderated, or liberalized.
VII. Notes
1. BBC News. 27 February 2008. “Africa’s lesbians demand change.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7266646.stm (21 April 2010).
2. Hoad, Neville. African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). 15.
3. Murray, Stephen and Will Roscoe. Boy Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 223.
4. Murray, 26.
5. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe. Unspoken Facts: A History of Homosexualities in Africa. (Avondale, Harare, Zimbabwe: Precigraph, 2008). 24.
6. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe. 24.
7. Hoad, xii.
8. Murray, 247.
9. BBC News. 12 August 1998. “Homosexual and Hated in Zimbabwe.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/143169.stm. (21 April 2010).
10. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe, 140.
11. The Guardian. 12 November 2003. “Obituary: The Rev. Canaan Banana.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/nov/12/guardianobituaries.zimbabwe (21 April 2010).
12. United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office. 21 March 2010. Nigeria Travel Advice. http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/sub-saharan-africa/nigeria?ta=lawsCustoms&pg=3 (21 April 2010).
13. Hoad, 86.
14. The Washington Post. 1 December 2006. “Same-Sex Marriage Law Takes Effect in S. Africa.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/30/AR2006113001370.html (21 April 2010).
15. Hoad, 87.
16. The Guardian. 21 August 2007. “South Africa’s Gay Betrayal.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/21/southafricasgaybetrayal (21 April 2010).
17. BBC News. 5 February 2010. “Uganda gay bill ‘will be changed.’” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8499798.stm. (21 April 2010.)
18. The New York Times. 3 January 2010. “Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html. (21 April 2010).
With over fifty sovereign states spanning a population of over one billion people, thousands of languages, and a religious “Triple Heritage” derived from Islam, Christianity, and various indigenous religions, the African continent is a densely-layered tapestry of cultural diversity and heterogeneity. But despite the fact that individuals and communities from countless walks of life reside in Africa, information regarding the living conditions, political rights, and upward mobility of its population of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and the transgendered (LGBT) remains elusive. On the basis of cultural and religious norms, homosexuality remains stigmatic at best throughout much the continent – and in some cases, open acknowledgement of queer identity in Africa carries harsh legal repercussions. Despite recent strides in cultural acceptance and political recognition of gay rights in the Western world, the BBC reports that “homosexuality is outlawed in 38 African countries.”1
Normative attitudes and the extent of its legality fluctuates wildly throughout the continent – from South Africa, the only African state which has formally recognized same-sex marriages, to Uganda, where a controversial parliamentary proposal to impose the death penalty for homosexuality was recently scrapped in the midst of international outrage. For the intent of this paper, I will seek to determine the extent to which African policies towards homosexuality are a manifestation of rigid, inflexible cultural fixtures or subject to liberalization. Which, if any African societies, may be compatible with contemporary Western conceptualizations of gender identity and sexual orientation? Can globalization, through cross-cultural communication, increasing homogenization of culture, and the integration of transcontinental societies under Western economic hegemony convert African values – thereby transforming African policies toward gay rights? If recent events in Uganda serve as any example, the international community – led by North America and Western Europe, where several states recognize same-sex marriage – has become increasingly intolerant towards harsh African suppression of gay rights. Is there a correlation between sociopolitical acceptance of homosexuality and the individual nation-state’s global reputation in the 21st century?
2. The Reality of Pre-Colonial African Homosexualities: Misconceptions Dispelled
Despite the deceptive claims of some, notably Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, that “homosexuality is for whites only and is an anathema to African culture” 2 and “a Western phenomenon imported to Africa by the European colonists,” 3 the history of same-sex partnerships on the continent predates European colonial occupation. However, it is important to qualify that such relationships in Africa have often been more nuanced and sociologically divergent than contemporary conceptualizations (or widespread oversimplifications) of homosexuality in the West. In this sense, rather than an all-encompassing and universally applicable “homosexuality,” numerous “homosexualities” have existed throughout a myriad of historical, geographic, cultural, religious, ethnic, tribal, and/or social spaces and contexts in Africa. Although written statistical data pre-dating European colonialism in Africa ranges from sparse to nonexistent, Western anthropologists and other scientists documented homosexual practices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, according to German anthropologist Kurt Falk and contrary to the fallacious assertions by Mugabe and others, “same-sex practices were certainly a part of traditional Bushman and related Khoi societies in southern Africa”4 – located, ironically, in present-day Zimbabwe, as well as Botswana. “One Bushman painting in a cave in Zimbabwe … shows several males engaging in sex acts together. It dates from at least one thousand, but more probably two thousand years ago.” 5 Furthermore, British anthropologist Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard wrote that among the Zande people of Central Africa (who lived in parts of present-day Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), “Homosexuality is indigenous. Zande do not regard it as at all improper, indeed as very sensible for a man to sleep with boys when women are not available or are taboo…some princes may even have preferred boys to women, when both were available…and also that they sometimes do so on other occasions, just because they like them.” 6 In addition to distinguishing the pluralism of African homosexualities from our contemporary understandings of “homosexuality,” these findings constitute a resoundingly substantive rebuttal to the common falsehood that homosexual relationships are universally incompatible with African cultural values. Still, they cannot be applied to the multifaceted and diversiform whole of African tribes and ethnic groups.
3. The Chronology of Homosexualities and Homophobia Through the Prism of Western Colonialism, Christianity, and Islam
Although largely obscured in contemporary African society on the basis of its comparative homophobia, some policies, misconceptions, and negative or fearful sentiments towards homosexuality throughout the continent are arguably rooted in the legacy of non-indigenous religious, cultural, and political forces upon Africa. This can be affirmed by the values imposed by the most influential Abrahamic Middle Eastern religions, Islam and Christianity, as well as the Western moral and judicial philosophies imparted by European colonialism itself. For instance, despite his oft-repeated claims that homosexuality arrived on African shores as an undesired export of White European decadence, it is the legacy of British colonialism in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe that originally established statutes criminalizing practices of homosexuality, specifically sodomy, in then-Rhodesia. 7 Two major events in Zimbabwe over the past two decades have crystallized the state of its institutional disposition toward homosexuality: the sexual assault allegations lobbied against its disgraced former founding president, Canaan Banana, and Robert Mugabe’s grandstanding decision to exclude an organization called Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) from participating in the 1995 Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) despite its annual thematic slogan: “human rights and justice.” 8 Mugabe’s decision ultimately had the unintended effect of galvanizing and reinvigorating Zimbabwe’s repressed gay rights movement, drawing considerable attention from international audiences for his bombastic and highly controversial remarks calling homosexuals “worse than pigs and dogs.” 9 Mugabe’s staggering devaluation of “human rights and justice” speaks volumes about the veracity of his commitment to it.
Meanwhile, Canaan Banana’s behavior can be considered prevailingly embarrassing for Zimbabwe not because of the homosexual nature of his crimes, but for the severity of the offenses – rape and sexual assault are morally loathsome regardless of whether they are heterosexual or homosexual acts. Zimbabweans were also humiliated by the blatantly hypocritical discrepancy between Banana’s public and private lives. As a former Christian Reverend who had publicly criticized homosexuality among men as the manifestation of “the poor upbringing of girls,” 10 Banana was ultimately convicted of all eleven charges of sexual assault and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. According to The Guardian, Banana’s trial also “exposed Mugabe's virulent anti-gay stance - untypical of wider Zimbabwean public opinion - as a facade, because it included testimony that his own officials had covered up for Banana and refused to help victims of his sexual demands.” 11 In this sense, both Banana and Mugabe’s public posturing fell far short of the reality of their respective behaviors, uncovering flagrant deception and duplicity among the most powerful men in Zimbabwe as well as calling the legitimacy of their anti-gay stances into contention. One can only assume that Mugabe knowingly attempted to conceal Banana’s behavior in order to prevent it from compromising his own political standing – and that if the gravity of Mugabe’s public sentiments were legitimate, he would have acted in a transparent manner to punish rather than protect his subordinate. To this end, it becomes clear that Mugabe’s corrosive anti-gay rhetoric is merely an insincere affectation crafted to consolidate political power, though I believe it is rooted predominantly in Zimbabwe’s existing British anti-sodomy laws and an appeal to the traditional mores of Christianity. Unfortunately, the Canaan Banana episode reinforces the negative stereotypes surrounding homosexual lifestyles that Zimbabwe’s leadership has propagated.
In Nigeria, where the Islamic Sharia penal code is the supreme judicial authority in twelve of its predominantly Muslim Northern states, “homosexuality by Muslims in those states can attract a sentence of 100 lashes if the defendant is unmarried or stoning if married or divorced,”12 according to the British government’s corresponding travel advisement report on its website. Corporal and even capital punishments for convictions relating to homosexual behavior exist elsewhere in Africa, but crucially, the authority of Sharia courts in Nigeria exemplifies the codification of anti-homosexual laws as a manifestation of Islamic rather than indigenous African values. This is not to say that Islam lacks sufficient African credentials, nor does it ignore that the religion of Muhammad has existed for centuries as an influential and perpetually expansive continental force. With millions of followers, especially in Northern, Eastern, and sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic religion has long since imbued itself into the African cultural psyche. However, it is significant to observe that having originated in the Arabian Peninsula, Islamic values are not inherently African. As such, the jurisdiction of Sharia courts in Nigeria reflects extrageneous rather than native customs.
It is my belief that modern African attitudes and policies towards homosexuality are not necessarily the product of indigenous cultural fixtures, as evidenced by its practice in pre-colonial tribes (though its application vacillates in accordance with the sheer diversity of ethnicities and cultures native to the continent). Moreover, contemporary homophobic policies and values within the African continent reflect the enduring influence of antiquated Western, Christian, and Islamic impositions and their gradual institutionalization into its complex and multilayered political culture. But beyond the residual dominance of former occupiers and missionaries, can today’s unprecedented forms of ever-increasing globalization subvert contemporary attitudes, thereby institutionalizing a sense of progressive acceptance toward gay rights? Will it ultimately expand civil rights to gays over time and liberalize contemporary African policies and attitudes? If there is a modern state serving as a model for incremental progress in the aforementioned direction toward egalitarianism for sexual minorities, it is most certainly South Africa.
4. The South African Exception: Marriage Equality on the Geographic Cusp of its Antithesis
Although nearly eighty percent of African states have made homosexuality an explicitly criminal offense, with most of the remaining African states bearing no criminal statutes pertaining to homosexuality by wholly ignoring its status, South Africa stands uniquely as the only country with legalized same-sex marriage and constitutional anti-discrimination protection. Following the end of Apartheid in 1994, the equality clause of South Africa’s interim constitution, ratified in 1996, declared that “No person shall be unduly discriminated against, directly or indirectly…on one or more of the following grounds in particular: race, gender, sex, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, religion, conscience, belief, culture, or language” 13 - sweeping protections unprecedented not only within Africa, but for any constitution in a modern state. On the basis of its liberal constitution and over the objection of Christian and Muslim leaders alike, South Africa extended its institutional sexual orientation protection even further when it enacted The Civil Union Act in 2006. In doing so, it granted legal recognition to same-sex couples seeking marital unions – with caveats allowing “clergy and civil marriage officers to turn away gay couples for reasons of conscience.” 14 Considering the dismal legal status of homosexuality throughout the rest of the continent, how can South Africa’s solitary strides towards civil equity be accounted for? And has its progressive stance on gay rights bolstered its international reputation among Western states? The answers to these questions remain ambiguous.
With regards to the sweeping protections in South Africa’s constitution, Neville Hoad posits that “the lateness of South Africa in the postcolonial moment is significant…given the illegitimacy of the regime being replaced and the imperative to incorporate the most …advanced forms of human rights, the timing of the South African constitution in the history of postcolonialism facilitated the entrenchment of lesbian and gay human rights.” 15 This perspective suggests that South Africa’s constitutional concerns for gay rights is the result of historical happenstance more than anything else: the combination of the nation’s resolve to obliterate all forms of discrimination to break with its traumatic Apartheid past, as well as the serendipitous virtue of being drafted during an era in which the struggle for rights among sexual minorities had gained visibility elsewhere in the world. As for South Africa’s global reputation, some reports have suggested an insufficient international commitment to gay rights. The Guardian reports that despite its constitution, South Africa has engaged in arbitrary and perplexing voting practices in its capacity as a United Nations member-state. In response to two 2007 requests for consultative accreditation from LGBT rights organizations, South Africa “sided with authoritarian states that abuse gay people, and against the western democracies where gays live freely.” 16 In light of this inexplicable discrepancy, I assert that its constitutional protections reflect the country’s internal politics and condemnation of Apartheid more significantly than an external effort to appear tolerant to Western countries. If the latter were the case, South Africa would be a steadfast supporter of gay rights within an international multilateral organization such as the UN.
5. The Ugandan Controversy: International Backlash in Defense of LGBT Rights
In the past several months, Western media outlets have reported upon a controversial piece of legislation known as the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 before the Ugandan parliament. Lambasted as “odious” by U.S. President Barack Obama and widely condemned throughout the Western community, the set of proposals would impose extremely severe penalties of capital punishment or life imprisonment for the commission of homosexual acts. In a particularly controversial subsection, the bill defines a separate category for “aggravated homosexuality,” a capital offense, as engaging in a homosexual act while being HIV-positive, among other categories. In lieu of the unexpected scope of the backlash, Uganda’s leadership, including President Yoweri Museveni and Deputy Foreign Minister Henry Okello Oryem, has attempted to disassociate themselves from the proposed changes. 17 In my belief, this arguably renders the proposal a startling eugenics program with the aim of inhumanely eradicating individuals afflicted with a disease – in this particular case, HIV. Another highly controversial aspect of the issue is predicated on the role played by U.S. Evangelical Christians in advancing the legislation. The three men – Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge, and Don Schmierer, are associated with the notion of “converting” homosexuals into heterosexuals through counseling and faith. 18 Although the American individuals claim they oppose the malignant consequences outlined by the bill, the episode serves as another stark reminder of the prevalence of non-indigenous Western influence, vis-à-vis Christianity, upon contemporary African mindsets pivoting towards condemnation rather than acceptance of homosexuality, further undercutting the notion that the West has encroached Africa with homosexuality. Indeed, Western contributions to African homophobia seem more prevalent than its mythologized appropriation of homosexuality.
6. Conclusion
Despite the fact that African homosexualities have been made manifest to varying capacities within diverse sociological groups and geographic locales throughout history and even prior to colonization, as documented among Bushmen, Khoi, and Zande ethnic groups, the vast majority of African states have today illegalized the practice. Some particularly incendiary heads of state such as Robert Mugabe have suggested that homosexuality is a product of European imperialism. Contrary to such assertions, although a pervasive sense of homophobia may very well have permeated the contemporary African psyche, I believe the research I have documented suggests that these sentiments and their codification are primarily the product of external Western, Christian, Islamic, colonial, and post-colonial influences that have shaped African culture – not a reflection of indigenous African values. In Nigeria, a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic Sharia law has percolated throughout prevailing mindsets and mentalities, culminating in its stoning penalties for homosexual acts. And in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s efforts to scapegoat homosexuality – predicated on outmoded British ordinances – have aided him in perpetuating a perniciously anti-gay Zimbabwean identity, directly implicating Western values in contemporaneous homophobia, though the vitriolic nature of his remarks have also helped to raise awareness regarding the plight of sexual minorities in Zimbabwe among the international community.
Despite these findings, it is important to avoid making sweeping generalizations with regards to this immensely complex and largely unstudied topic. Although South Africa exists as a distinct and praiseworthy example of social justice for sexual minorities, its society – and indeed, its leadership – has not been entirely forthcoming or consistent in promoting its own policies elsewhere, as evidenced by its bewildering opposition to relatively innocuous United Nations resolutions favoring the advancement of gay rights. To put this into perspective, we must consider that voters and lawmakers in liberal democracies such as the United States have also been unwilling to accept certain elements of the gay agenda. California and Maine have both voted to repeal existing laws sanctioning marriage equality in the past two years despite recognitions of its legality by courts elsewhere. South Africa, like the United States and other parts of the Western world where homophobia remains a factor, has at least illustrated incremental progress towards the ultimate realization of egalitarianism. With the advent of globalization as a liberalizing and secularizing force, it remains distinctly possible that other African countries will slowly begin to follow South Africa’s lead over the next several generations. Ironically, this path towards the reduction of homophobia and the expansion of civil rights could bring Africa culturally closer to its former Western colonizers – even though current homophobia is largely the product of vestigial Western homophobia, which has now begun to wane. But even if Africa on a whole can undergo a period of conviction-altering ideological transformation similar to that which has been experienced in the West, Christianity and Islam will remain rigidly opposed to any recognition of homosexuality – a significant obstacle. The question remains as to whether or how monotheistic religious influence upon society can be minimized, moderated, or liberalized.
VII. Notes
1. BBC News. 27 February 2008. “Africa’s lesbians demand change.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7266646.stm (21 April 2010).
2. Hoad, Neville. African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). 15.
3. Murray, Stephen and Will Roscoe. Boy Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 223.
4. Murray, 26.
5. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe. Unspoken Facts: A History of Homosexualities in Africa. (Avondale, Harare, Zimbabwe: Precigraph, 2008). 24.
6. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe. 24.
7. Hoad, xii.
8. Murray, 247.
9. BBC News. 12 August 1998. “Homosexual and Hated in Zimbabwe.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/143169.stm. (21 April 2010).
10. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe, 140.
11. The Guardian. 12 November 2003. “Obituary: The Rev. Canaan Banana.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/nov/12/guardianobituaries.zimbabwe (21 April 2010).
12. United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office. 21 March 2010. Nigeria Travel Advice. http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/sub-saharan-africa/nigeria?ta=lawsCustoms&pg=3 (21 April 2010).
13. Hoad, 86.
14. The Washington Post. 1 December 2006. “Same-Sex Marriage Law Takes Effect in S. Africa.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/30/AR2006113001370.html (21 April 2010).
15. Hoad, 87.
16. The Guardian. 21 August 2007. “South Africa’s Gay Betrayal.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/21/southafricasgaybetrayal (21 April 2010).
17. BBC News. 5 February 2010. “Uganda gay bill ‘will be changed.’” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8499798.stm. (21 April 2010.)
18. The New York Times. 3 January 2010. “Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html. (21 April 2010).
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
- The Landscapes of Science Fiction
The urbanized dystopic landscapes made manifest in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965), Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), and Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985) – situated within varying social, cultural, political, lingual, and historical conditions – successfully underscore the four films' appreciably diversiform thematic priorities. Cinematographic depth, surface, (a)symmetry, architecture, and composition on a whole – mise en scène – are artistically cultivated, frame by frame, to visualize a director's vision for audiences. In the case of Metropolis, Lang renders a hierarchical system of mediated social strata to denote the compartmentalized separation between its metaphorical “head, heart, and hands.” To this end, the film's visual setting situates both the film's narrative as well as an expression of social organization. The rational, linear, geometric modernist architecture accentuates the cold, rigid mathematical precision of the film’s institutional apartheid. To this end, the film’s cinematography presents a model for exhaustive technological efficiency, which ruthlessly necessitates the reduction of extraneous, expendable hands (workers). Scenes of laborers marching in stringent symmetry underneath a perfectly balanced archway replicate similar structural practices conducted by automakers in their assembly lines – the intention of the director, according to R.L. Rutsky’s ”Between Modernity and Magic.”
Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville presents an autocratic dystopia. Although urban landscapes are rendered in passing (albeit largely unexposed, claustrophobic buildings shrouded in noir-like shadows), the majority of the film takes place within public spaces such as hotels or government buildings, or scenes of transitory passage. This may speak to the prominence of the technocratic state, and the eradication of personality and individuality – even homes – found within a world where words like “love” are abolished, sex is largely reduced to a business transaction, and feelings of affection and bereavement are punishable by execution. The aesthesized idealization of death as a water sporting event – simultaneously objectifying women – serves as perhaps the most disturbing scene of the film in attesting to the way masses are subdued. In sum, the film borrows heavily from the rationality posited by Metropolis – the interiors of buildings are bright, sterile, and geometric – in a more explicitly political context made evident by its subtext as well as its release date and technological superiority over its prototypical predecessor. Tellingly, Godard chose to render the film without color despite its availability, attesting to Alphaville’s voluntarily bleak, contrasting, and mechanical absolutes.
Blade Runner, which is predicated upon the ceaseless continuance of postmodern stagnation as reflected in the imminent future, presents a world in which a multitude of languages, attires, vehicles, hairstyles, and contextual customs coexist within a grim cauldron of senescence. The “accelerated decay” of humanity as we know it has been incurred by the lack of significant advancements or innovations – a sense of arrested development – and the erosion of distinctions characterized by the layered hybridity of postmodernism and post-industrial existence. The film's hypothetical 2019-based mise en scène landscape is characterized by a bleak sense of darkness, often shrouded in fog, steam, smoke, or rain – as if other elements of the natural world have been wholly subsumed by the precipitation. The only “dominant” colors seem to represent marketing or technology – for instance, the iconic, and vibrant plasma-screen Coca Cola advertisement with the ubiquitous gaze of its woman, or the Tyrell Corporation's gold logo, with the rest of the masses confined to a jarringly drab coexistence. Finally, the mise en scène of Terry Gilliam's Brazil seems to contribute most to the film's narrative by nature of the overwhelming array of billboards, advertisements, and messages – from “Consumers for Christ” to “Don't Suspect a Friend, Report Him!,” and overtly Nazi-like guardsmen and soldiers to accentuate the notion that the protagonist is wading through a satirically totalitarian nightmare.
- Visions of Outer Spaces
Throughout George Lucas' Star Wars franchise, the vastness of space is presented as often too large for cinematographic containment – which may explain the legions of spin-offs and merchandise it inspired. Cinematically, the series' magnitude, in some manners, can be visually exemplified. For instance, the Death Star is typically displayed at angles designed to highlight its protuberance. Galactic empires and civilizations of fluctuating development, colonization, slavery, race, spaceships, modernity, and antiquity are all represented – although with very broad strokes – as part of the fabric of a universe that has captivated imaginations and permeated itself within popular culture as a fantasized alternative to our own existence. Its landscapes and inhabitants fluctuate, from impressively futuristic (Cloud City), to rustically nomadic (Tatooine) or endearingly primitive (Endor), depending upon the particular stellar, urban, agrarian, or naturist setting within the space opera's boundless universe. To this end, Star Wars transcends many of the confines that characterize our comparatively drab and monotonous existence on earth as a cinema of the imagination.
Meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick's cinematographically-stunning 2001: A Space Odyssey reflects the beautification of the otherworldly in its glowing, immaculate uncertainties – and as an impenetrable void of nothingness. While there is a palpable juxtaposition between the high-tech and primitivism, as in Star Wars, the two differ dramatically in thematic depth; Kubrick film's opening sequence, in its portrayal of the beginning of civilization and the continuity rendered by the continuous transition into the film's future, suggests, in self-referential critique given the groundbreaking technological achievements rendered by the film itself, that humanity has yet to truly evolve beyond its primordial instincts for survival. Another comparison to Lucas' franchise can be drawn in HAL's unlikely display of emotion, in singing “Daisy” and fearing for his life, which offers parallels to Droids such as C3PO and R2D2 – machines anthropomorphized with distinctly human attributes that often exhibit more emotion than their human models. In the case of HAL, this seems to be the case, suggesting that technology's advancement has spurred the dilution of emotion at its expense.
- Cyborgs, replicants, androids
J.P. Telotte's “The Doubles of Fantasy and the Space of Desire” asserts that science fiction cinema, as exemplified most poignantly by high-tech futuristic visions in films such as James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) creates a speculative space for the consideration of artificially-rendered humanoid substitutes – whether cyborgs (hybrid mechanical and organic beings), androids (entirely synthetic human replicas), or “replicants,” the “skin job” substitutes portrayed as perhaps the most chilling of the three by Blade Runner. Beyond these corporeal duplications, directors have also manifested emotional facsimiles of the human psyche, which can potentially supersede their organic counterparts, given that their superior mechanical constitutions are less inhibited by mortality, morality, and human emotion. In the case of Blade Runner, the so-called “replicants” are wholly organic in their make-up, but artificial in their origin, and possess superior cognitive and physiological attributes – actualizing Telotte's fears of “ models of real desire for life, love, and meaning, which may indeed seem better than the original.” Another model is presented in Terminator 2. despite the mechanical origins of Arnold Schwarzenegger's titular protagonist, his adopted “humanity” is idealized as endearing and sentimental. Finally, Ash's duplicity in Alien presents an incognito and deceptive portrayal of the android.
Although I have still yet to see the original Terminator in its entirety, in Terminator 2, Arnold Schwarzenegger is introduced to viewers as a menacing and violent thug who senselessly steals a motorcyclist's clothing, sunglasses and equipment. Although the film makes Schwarzenegger's core reliance upon his “mission” to protect John Conner abundantly and sometimes comically clear (such as when the child Conner commands Schwarzenegger to make movements and teaches him slang terminology, including the memorable “Hasta la vista”), the terminator seems to develop a sincere affinity for Conner and his mother, as well as a sense of appreciation for human life despite his mechanical organs. The paternalized idealization of the Terminator comes as he takes upon a fatherly, protective role for the fatherless Conner, who has also brutally lost his foster parents – made more moving by his eventual self-sacrifice. In stark juxtaposition to this positive representation of a cyborg, the terminator's enemy – a more advanced model – is ruthless and completely lacking in compassion as he pursues the annihilation of young Conner, as exemplified by the means through which he literally impales the obstacles (human beings) that stand in his way.
In Alien, the presence of Ash as an android comes as a startling revelation to the crew in the midst of widespread panic and terror upon the deaths of other crew members and the missing alien. This again casts the replication in a negative light for the purposes of a science that values its advancement over human life itself. Ash's mission – to return intelligent extraterrestrial life to the crew's corporate, human life-devaluing commissioners, even if it costs the crew members' lives – is comparable to the Terminator's in its rigidity, but for less moralistic or identifiably good purposes. To this end, can an android's moral core be freely determined, or is it merely an extension of its creator's intentions? Are we to pass judgment on “Ash,” or on his creator? And does the advent of synthetically or mechanically-produced human substitutes present a moral dilemma in itself, with humans assuming an unprecedented degree of creationist divinity?
Finally, with the binary opposition of portrayals of human replications in Terminator 2 as either positive or negative, and in Alien as exceedingly negative, Blade Runner presents a much more ambiguous portrait given the fabrication of memories and emotion vis-a-vis photographs and speculation that Harrison Ford's protagonist himself may be a “replicant” (based upon his unicorn dream). Because they are physically indistinguishable from organic, womb-based human life, the notion of replicants in Blade Runner seems pertinent to Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, which posits that within our postmodern era, the distinctions between the real and its representations often become blurred beyond recognition – that simulations overshadow the reality they were ostensibly created to represent and become their chilling substitutes in “hyper-reality.” Although the essay was written over a decade after the release of Blade Runner, the parallels cannot be denied.
- Technophobia
In an era of accumulating technological advancement, especially with the advent of the Internet, technophobia has emerged as an almost neo-Luddite means of resisting its potential tyranny, oppression, and invasiveness. Although films that highlight these negative aspects of technology are necessarily somewhat contradictory in the sense that they are predicated on technological prowess in the first place, they can also be interpreted as a means of subverting the medium with a message that opposes its detrimental effects. In Alphaville (Godard, 1965), the technocratic regime – led by a sentient robot called Alpha-60 – represents the doomsday scenario in which technology has overcome humanity entirely, imposing its rigid rationality, demanding obedience, and suppressing all semblances of emotion or expressive thought. As the creation of Natascha Von Braunn's father, is the machine an extension of its creator, or has it taken upon its own means in the suppression of humanity? To what degree can computers exhibit independence? Ultimately, Alpha-60 and the tyranny of Alphaville are overcome – in a cliché but relevant sense – by Natascha Von Braun's will to love. Although other films, as discussed earlier in this paper, grapple with machine's capacity to love, the notion that humans are characterized by emotion and “Others” by its rational lack thereof is also a frequent staple throughout the science fiction genre.
George Lucas' THX 1138 (Lucas, 1971) presents a grimmer – or literally whitewashed, sterilized, “cleaner” alternative to our own society. Humanity is excessively regulated to the extent that drugs are forcibly administered (lest subjects be punished severely), sex for pleasure is entirely forbidden, dress codes and hairstyles are mandatory in their enforcement. When the protagonists stop taking their medication, the government's retaliation is predictably ruthless, and eventually, their execution is called for. “Normalizing” and sedative pharmaceuticals, in this sense, are called into question as agents of oppression; loss of sex drive and creativity are frequently mentioned as side-effects to antidepressant medications within our own world. Furthermore, in 2009, prescriptions are often imposed by psychiatrists for profit-driven motivations rather than the well-being of patients, and while such research may or may not have been conclusive in 1971, the film is eerily prescient in this sense.
Finally, in the Wachowski brothers' 1999 The Matrix, drawing upon Cartesian philosophy, presents a world in which the unknowingly shackled and enslaved masses live within a fantasized reality as a means of placating and subduing a humanity that has been rendered subservient to machines. The film is perhaps most ironic in its opposition to technological overindulgence considering the great lengths its filmmakers took to render it with “bullet time” effects. Nevertheless, the film presents an optimistic philosophy of revolutionary subversion in the face of digital tyranny, which can be considered analogous to our own world given the virtual existences on the Internet that many find themselves and their identities repressively overpowered or replaced by. Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation becomes relevant again as a metaphor when “Neo” pulls out a floppy disk from a deceptive copy of the book near the beginning of the film. Reality's usurpation by its virtual equivalent, both within the film (to an exaggerated degree) and our lives, has become a threat to livelihood, and new media continues to exacerbate its dangers. Unfortunately, our collective addictions to its brainwashing effects make such illusions – the “blue pill” – more attractive to the masses.
- Contemporary anxieties, fears and concerns
Like thematic predecessors such as Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1981), David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), and the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix (1999), Alfonso Cuaron's 2006 Children of Men commentates on contemporary controversies associated with the postmodern condition. Some of the broad thematic concerns pinpointed by the film include an increasingly intrusive, totalitarian government; the brainwashing pervasiveness of trite infotainment media with a profit-driven agenda to depreciate legitimate exigencies, thereby subduing the masses; the marginalization of “illegal aliens,” “terrorists,” revolutionaries, Muslims, and distinctions of existence and identity deemed subversive and/or Other; mandatory, homogenizing drugs and/or fertility testing; and torture inflicted upon the disenfranchised enemies of the state. Tellingly, each of these apprehensions, however exaggerated within the context of the film, is predicated upon conditions that characterized Western civilization when the film was released. Above all, Children of Men bleakly prophesizes that the constancy of our coeval post-millennial existence will inevitably – within two short decades – bring about an even more sordid and deeply disturbing future. Beyond these explicitly socio-political anxieties, like Blade Runner more than any of the other films discussed, the director's mise en scene presents a “future” that largely resembles the present in its landscapes and setting; the advertisement-emblazoned metro-buses, large plasma-screens embedded into nominal skyscrapers, and putrid city streets have semblance to Western capitals in 2009 as much as they do in the film's hypothetical 2027. In fact, the streets of London are so nondescript in Cuaron's film that they could be any metropolitan post-industrial sprawl.
Disorientation and powerlessness can be pinpointed in the portrayal of characters. Theo is a gambler, an alcoholic, and a heavy pot smoker, and his vices, while unremarkable, represent the faintest measure of escape available to the populace in such a grim setting. Lack of control is made most frightening in the inexplicable death of fertility and procreation, rendering humanity's demise hopelessly inevitable until the surprise pregnancy. Social commentary is espoused most effectively by nature of the exact duplications of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay torture presented when the concentration camp bus arrives at the refugee camp, and while the bus itself remains in the foreground, these vivid representations remain completely in focus, confirming the director's explicit exposition. During the film's final sequence of scenes, when Theo, the pregnant woman and her child are attempting to escape, the physical act of running through the war zone is filmed in real time, presenting a heightened realism to portray the chaos more devastatingly. When these characters emerge from the building an into the war zone, the camera takes upon a jarring and unsteady shakiness vis-a-vis a tracking shot to highlight the uncertain, deathly volatility of running through a battlefield.
On The Cinematic Expression of Time Travel
Buoyed by the latter half of the 20th century's accumulative technological progress – by measures such as science, medicine, warfare, and post-industrial development, but most poignantly for the purposes of this essay, within the literally “timeless” medium of cinema – the exploration of time travel, a concept that has existed as a human fantasy for quite some time, has managed to effectively penetrate the human and cinematic psyche. This has been accomplished by the advent of influential films dealing with the provocative subject matter such as Chris Marker's innovative 1963 La Jetee, from France; James Cameron's 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the second film in the popular Hollywood franchise; and Terry Gilliam's 1995 12 Monkeys, its tagline confirming that the U.S. film was officially “inspired by La Jetee.” Significantly, all three of these films fantasize the notion of a post-apocalyptic future, in which the dismal prospect of humanity’s extinction or complete usurpation by the growing (and hauntingly realistic) advent of all-pervasive technology spurs the development of a form of time travel. Inherent within this fantasized technology is the hopeful mission of somehow changing the future – or even restoring it to its rightful place, therein taking solace in the past either by simple reminiscence or literally returning to it, as a means of coping with the monstrosity of the present or our impending anxieties regarding the high-tech future. But no matter how idealized our recollection of this heyday may be, audiences may still be lost on the fact that our collective nostalgia is still predicated on a past that, both within the context of these films and within our lives, ultimately if circuitously contributed to humanity’s present (or future) “critical dystopia.” To what degree can impending catastrophe really be averted, if at all?
In challenging their viewers with the impossible notion of a “time loop paradox,” La Jetee and 12 Monkeys force their respective protagonists – and by extension, viewers – to come to terms with the traumatic notion of not only seeing one's self while traveling in time, but witnessing one's own death. As inevitable as death may be for all living creatures, this motif suggests that in attempting to transcend the linearity of time and space, despite unprecedented technological prowess, humankind is still incapable of transcending its own mortality and the manifest apprehensions surrounding it. Humankind’s collective existential desires and anxieties, in many ways, seem to trigger the desire to travel through time and space to attain an outlet for humankind’s survival in lieu of the impending uncertainties or destruction imposed by technology. In Terminator 2, and indeed the franchise itself, temporality is explored as a cyclic institution with effects that are directly related to their causes, regardless of ex post facto breaches in the fabric of time. Therefore, by returning to the past from a dystopian future to destroy the child version of rebel leader John Conner, he will also cease to exist in the future. In the original Terminator, this hypothetical cause and effect relationship is explored within another context: the notion of choosing one’s own parents by retroactively altering the course of history, and in the case of the franchise, idealizing John Conner’s father – the “primal scene,” a concept reminiscent in some ways of Sigmund Freud’s observation of the irreparable and transformative trauma a child faces in observing one’s own parents making love.
“Observation,” interestingly enough, is a theme explored in Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, as the protagonist Cole is chosen for his mission precisely because of his exceptional observational abilities stemming from the indecipherable childhood trauma of witnessing his death. Fascinatingly, the film’s ending in which the child Cole witnesses the older and disguised version of himself being shot at an airport and dying is also the beginning of the film’s narrative – mirroring La Jetee, in which the nameless protagonist’s vague recollection of a traumatic incident on “the sea by the pier” serves as the catalyst for the perpetual re-experience of his own death. Both films, to this end, provocatively call into question the notion of temporal priority itself, and posit that within the cinematic realm, the impossibility of traveling through time can flourish precisely because narrative structures themselves can be upheaved and reshuffled to the director’s liking. This point is underscored in La Jetee by its creative production from photographic stills, which additionally implies a sense of stagnation within events that remains frozen in time beyond our attempts to manipulate and revolutionize them for humanity’s betterment. Tellingly, the only moment in which there is actual cinematic movement (or the illusion of such movement, given the structure of film’s projection at 24 frames per second) in La Jetee comes from a woman opening her eyes, as if in realization of humanity’s failure. Temporality – and death – cannot be surmounted.
In challenging their viewers with the impossible notion of a “time loop paradox,” La Jetee and 12 Monkeys force their respective protagonists – and by extension, viewers – to come to terms with the traumatic notion of not only seeing one's self while traveling in time, but witnessing one's own death. As inevitable as death may be for all living creatures, this motif suggests that in attempting to transcend the linearity of time and space, despite unprecedented technological prowess, humankind is still incapable of transcending its own mortality and the manifest apprehensions surrounding it. Humankind’s collective existential desires and anxieties, in many ways, seem to trigger the desire to travel through time and space to attain an outlet for humankind’s survival in lieu of the impending uncertainties or destruction imposed by technology. In Terminator 2, and indeed the franchise itself, temporality is explored as a cyclic institution with effects that are directly related to their causes, regardless of ex post facto breaches in the fabric of time. Therefore, by returning to the past from a dystopian future to destroy the child version of rebel leader John Conner, he will also cease to exist in the future. In the original Terminator, this hypothetical cause and effect relationship is explored within another context: the notion of choosing one’s own parents by retroactively altering the course of history, and in the case of the franchise, idealizing John Conner’s father – the “primal scene,” a concept reminiscent in some ways of Sigmund Freud’s observation of the irreparable and transformative trauma a child faces in observing one’s own parents making love.
“Observation,” interestingly enough, is a theme explored in Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, as the protagonist Cole is chosen for his mission precisely because of his exceptional observational abilities stemming from the indecipherable childhood trauma of witnessing his death. Fascinatingly, the film’s ending in which the child Cole witnesses the older and disguised version of himself being shot at an airport and dying is also the beginning of the film’s narrative – mirroring La Jetee, in which the nameless protagonist’s vague recollection of a traumatic incident on “the sea by the pier” serves as the catalyst for the perpetual re-experience of his own death. Both films, to this end, provocatively call into question the notion of temporal priority itself, and posit that within the cinematic realm, the impossibility of traveling through time can flourish precisely because narrative structures themselves can be upheaved and reshuffled to the director’s liking. This point is underscored in La Jetee by its creative production from photographic stills, which additionally implies a sense of stagnation within events that remains frozen in time beyond our attempts to manipulate and revolutionize them for humanity’s betterment. Tellingly, the only moment in which there is actual cinematic movement (or the illusion of such movement, given the structure of film’s projection at 24 frames per second) in La Jetee comes from a woman opening her eyes, as if in realization of humanity’s failure. Temporality – and death – cannot be surmounted.
Fantasmatic Violence as Distinguished From the Real: Neutralizing Legitimate Concerns and Easing Apprehensions with Idealization in the Cold War
In “The Imagination of Disaster,” Susan Sontag posits that in the developing and adolescent stages of the Cold War between 1950 and 1965, as established by the division of the post-war world into the ideologically adversarial East and West and the development of nuclear weapons by the United States of America and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as the preceding demonstrative nuclear catastrophes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki , science fiction cinema emerged as a new filmic medium designed not only to commentate on the perpetual threat of nuclear war, but to pacify the devastating psychological anxieties associated with it. In conceptualizing the titular “imagination of disaster,” Sontag also writes of another, perhaps equally menacing threat to the American and international psyche: banality itself in an era of accumulating industrialization and suburbanization associated with the historical context. With increasing material excesses beginning to subsume everyday American and Western life (though shockingly, not to the degree of contemporary globalized society), science fiction cinema has not only taken upon for itself the mantle of “normalizing what is psychologically unbearable, thereby inuring us to it,” but also providing for an imaginative fantasized escape that fulfills our extravagant desires. When flying saucers, encounters with aliens or the Other, devastating metropolitan destruction, technological catastrophe, and generalized invasiveness are made and perceived as commonplace, our actualized fears of such carnage in the nuclear era are diluted – and even idealized for the viewer through endearing entertainment. In this sense, science fiction cinema does not glorify violence, but its fantasmatic equivalent – thereby alleviating human uneasiness and allowing for a distracting escape from the mundane.
In Robert Wise’s 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still – released only a few short years following UFO sightings in 1946 and 1947 – social commentary is espoused in the form of a benign, peaceful, and intelligent alien named Klaatu landing on earth and leaving it, appalled with humanity’s comparative warlike stupidity and childishness. The ugliness of human nature is made more pressingly ironic by Bobby’s excusable childlike naïveté being more civilized than the cynicism of many adults featured prominently (and antagonistically) in the film, such as his mother’s boyfriend. Wise also skewers humanity’s increasing dependence on technology in the scene during which electricity is disabled for thirty minutes, ensuing global human stagnation – as if man is incapable of even the most basic functionality without lights, cars, and television, among other things. This may resonate all too realistically, as the film is shot in a black and white “documentary”-like style in an effort to portray how humanity may really react to the “invasion” of a peaceful Other. The media is ridiculed for its sensationalism, ironically ignoring Klaatu’s intelligent commentary on the invasion in favor of more hysteric remarks by the brainwashed masses, to better complement their agenda. The filmmakers make a concerted effort to distinguish Klaatu from other humans despite his kindness and humanoid appearance; personality-wise, he is stoic, reserved, and typically emotionless, yet pacifistic and deeply moral. This suggests that such stereotypically “lacking” traits may in fact be the most ideal human qualities, with most conflicts predicated on emotion. The film seems to idealize the notion of an austere and peaceful existence; for instance, despite its complex technological advancement, Klaatu’s spaceship maintains a sleek and minimalistic aesthetic, implying a sense of beautification of the otherworldly. In the most literal sense of Sontag’s argument, The Day the Earth Stood Still “normalizes” the anxieties associated with foreign invasion by portraying the “invader” as intelligent, strong, beautiful, respectable, and kind despite his lack of emotion or indulgence in mortal trivialities – thereby lessening the generalized fears associated with such an invasion (whether communistic or otherworldly) in the first place, simultaneously requesting that its audience abandon its overly emotional and cynical distrust for those who are perceived as “Other,” as well as its materialistic excesses and reliance on the media and technology (a primary source of our banality), in favor of a cleaner, more minimalistic, and more serene sense of utilitarian, moralistic efficiency.
Furthermore, Sontag’s thesis can be applied to another of other films, including Gordon Douglas’ 1954 Them!, which features an “invasion” of less celestial origins: from giant mutated ants who were transformed in New Mexico deserts by U.S. nuclear testing. Like Ishiro Honda’s 1954 Godzilla, released in the same year, Them! passes judgment on the ethics of the nuclear era itself, and in presenting oversized and destructive, monstrous versions of familiar creatures that inhabit earth (more debatably in the case of Godzilla, though lizards and dinosaurs are still “recognizable” to the general public), these directors attempt both to familiarize the potentiality of a nuclear catastrophe and stress the fact that they are man-made disasters – that perhaps humanity itself is the real menace as the catalyst for an ugliness that Godzilla and the ants cannot control. The relative vilification of the otherwise familiar, a common motif within the context of science fiction cinema, serves to create a fantasy element to entertain viewers by usurping the otherwise banal and ordinary nature of such creatures. Both films also include urban settings that may appear familiar to their target demographic audiences (such as Tokyo and Los Angeles), and conclude with the familiar open-ended science fiction cinematic motif that the threat may return one day to wreak further havoc – creating a fused notion of fantasmatic banality that also calls upon viewers to draw comparisons with the real-life potential implications of man-made disaster, and perhaps to a lesser extent given the endearing entertainment value, to wrest with the moral implications of man’s monstrosity.
In Robert Wise’s 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still – released only a few short years following UFO sightings in 1946 and 1947 – social commentary is espoused in the form of a benign, peaceful, and intelligent alien named Klaatu landing on earth and leaving it, appalled with humanity’s comparative warlike stupidity and childishness. The ugliness of human nature is made more pressingly ironic by Bobby’s excusable childlike naïveté being more civilized than the cynicism of many adults featured prominently (and antagonistically) in the film, such as his mother’s boyfriend. Wise also skewers humanity’s increasing dependence on technology in the scene during which electricity is disabled for thirty minutes, ensuing global human stagnation – as if man is incapable of even the most basic functionality without lights, cars, and television, among other things. This may resonate all too realistically, as the film is shot in a black and white “documentary”-like style in an effort to portray how humanity may really react to the “invasion” of a peaceful Other. The media is ridiculed for its sensationalism, ironically ignoring Klaatu’s intelligent commentary on the invasion in favor of more hysteric remarks by the brainwashed masses, to better complement their agenda. The filmmakers make a concerted effort to distinguish Klaatu from other humans despite his kindness and humanoid appearance; personality-wise, he is stoic, reserved, and typically emotionless, yet pacifistic and deeply moral. This suggests that such stereotypically “lacking” traits may in fact be the most ideal human qualities, with most conflicts predicated on emotion. The film seems to idealize the notion of an austere and peaceful existence; for instance, despite its complex technological advancement, Klaatu’s spaceship maintains a sleek and minimalistic aesthetic, implying a sense of beautification of the otherworldly. In the most literal sense of Sontag’s argument, The Day the Earth Stood Still “normalizes” the anxieties associated with foreign invasion by portraying the “invader” as intelligent, strong, beautiful, respectable, and kind despite his lack of emotion or indulgence in mortal trivialities – thereby lessening the generalized fears associated with such an invasion (whether communistic or otherworldly) in the first place, simultaneously requesting that its audience abandon its overly emotional and cynical distrust for those who are perceived as “Other,” as well as its materialistic excesses and reliance on the media and technology (a primary source of our banality), in favor of a cleaner, more minimalistic, and more serene sense of utilitarian, moralistic efficiency.
Furthermore, Sontag’s thesis can be applied to another of other films, including Gordon Douglas’ 1954 Them!, which features an “invasion” of less celestial origins: from giant mutated ants who were transformed in New Mexico deserts by U.S. nuclear testing. Like Ishiro Honda’s 1954 Godzilla, released in the same year, Them! passes judgment on the ethics of the nuclear era itself, and in presenting oversized and destructive, monstrous versions of familiar creatures that inhabit earth (more debatably in the case of Godzilla, though lizards and dinosaurs are still “recognizable” to the general public), these directors attempt both to familiarize the potentiality of a nuclear catastrophe and stress the fact that they are man-made disasters – that perhaps humanity itself is the real menace as the catalyst for an ugliness that Godzilla and the ants cannot control. The relative vilification of the otherwise familiar, a common motif within the context of science fiction cinema, serves to create a fantasy element to entertain viewers by usurping the otherwise banal and ordinary nature of such creatures. Both films also include urban settings that may appear familiar to their target demographic audiences (such as Tokyo and Los Angeles), and conclude with the familiar open-ended science fiction cinematic motif that the threat may return one day to wreak further havoc – creating a fused notion of fantasmatic banality that also calls upon viewers to draw comparisons with the real-life potential implications of man-made disaster, and perhaps to a lesser extent given the endearing entertainment value, to wrest with the moral implications of man’s monstrosity.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Sunday, August 9, 2009
On David Cronenberg's Videodrome
Videodrome posits a universe in which the human mind has been effectively brainwashed and usurped by excesses of consumption, addiction, and technology – specifically by the intertwined mediums of television and sadomasochistic sexual gratification, implicitly marketed as drugs by agents of corporate capitalism. With the pronouncement near the beginning of the film that Civic-TV is “the one you take to bed with you,” we are given an early indication as to the toxic property of these fused addictions that go on to literally destroy the protagonist's life. Max Renn is presented to viewers as slovenly, unkempt, perverted and jaded by over-stimulation – from his unshaven appearance to his robe and questionable breakfast of coffee and pizza as he reviews pornography on his television, his multiple vices are made evident from the onset. The inherently seedy nature of his profession, the sleaziness of flirting with Nicki while on nationalized television and later willingness to engage in sadomasochistic pleasure with her, and the way he treats women in his office (casually slapping his interns on the behind) also underscore a flawed personality tainted by the insatiable desire for sexual stimulation.
Videodrome is not only about man's perpetual and obsessive desire for excess, but the erosion of self-identity incurred by addictive technology as a horrific extension of the body with radical sadomasochistic implications. This is visualized most abjectly by Max's hallucinogenic abdominal vagina and “fleshgun” as he is rendered victim to the drug-like effects of “Videodrome.” Much like ConSec in Scanners, this process of indoctrination and mental-bodily slavery benefits hegemonic multinational enterprises – in this case, Spectacular Optics. The internal conflict between mind and body is exacerbated by the uncertainty of Max's hallucinations. As Max gradually begins to lose his sense of subjective self to “Videodrome,” the line between hallucination and reality – television and reality – is increasingly blurred for both Max and the viewer. As his torment eventually crosses the reality threshold into murder and rebellious subversion, Max is eventually overcome by an illusory desire to transcend “the flesh” and all its bodily excesses and limitation – as Professor O'Blivion has proven possible by virtue of his pre-recorded posthumous “existence.”
Significantly, the professor also states that “O'Blivion is not my real name; it is my television name...” He eerily and presciently predicts that in the future, everyone will have a cryptic pseudonym – ominously, if unintentionally, foreshadowing the contemporary era of instant communication (or instant gratification.) On Internet websites like Facebook, I am particularly fascinated by the relationship between things we choose to reveal about ourselves and things we selectively omit – consciously or otherwise. As a digitized representative extension of our idealized selves, social networking is an outlet used primarily for perpetual public refinement of the persona. Social networking, chat rooms, and message boards offer individuals an addictive medium and the unprecedented opportunity to reinvent their identities, while cellular devices equipped with Internet access for the purposes of social media take the concept of bodily extension to frighteningly realistic degrees unforeseen by Cronenberg in 1982. The Internet has come to transgress television as a medium for corporate capitalism's globalized technological excesses and its propensity to feed off human weaknesses for profit. As a cautionary tale, Videodrome may be more relevant than ever in 2009.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)