Homosexuality in Film

A look at nascent female sexuality in french film through psychological waters.

Films:

À ma sœur ! , Catherine Breillat, (Tartan, 2002).

Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson, (Touchstone, 1996).

H20, Ralph Steiner, (1929).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4muinY8Q9M (Accessed: 5th May 2014).

Innocence, Lucile Hadzihalilovic,(Artificial Eye, 2004).

La Vie d’Adèle, Abdellatif Kechiche, (2013)

Les Quatre Cents Coups, François Truffaut, (Tartan, 2002).

Naissance des pieuvres, Céline Sciamma, (Slingshot Studios, 2008).

Pauline, Céline Sciamma, (2009)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUHyJjiouUw (Accessed: 5th May 2014).

Sex is Comedy, Catherine Breillat (Artificial Eye, 2002).

Tomboy, Céline Sciamma, (2011).

The film genre now commonly known as “folk horror” has been the focus of much research of late. As Adam Scovell laid out in his oft-cited “folk horror chain,” this subgenre of horror consists of films that focus on landscape, isolation, a skewed belief system, and a summoning/happening. Some theorists have argued that the setting for a folk horror film must be rural, while others have noted that counter-cultural beliefs and behaviors can also set a group apart, thus creating an ideological “distance” that can isolate a group and offer the possibility for a folk horror narrative even in urban settings. In both cases, the key element is the focus upon an insular group that holds beliefs and engages in practices eschewed and shunned by members of “mainstream” society. Because folk horror hinges on this recognition of difference, it can productively be examined through a lens of queer theory. Folk horror unearths our fear of the other and sheds light on how we demonize those whom we do not understand; those who hold different beliefs than we do; those who inhabit different lifestyles. As Edward Miller and John Semley note, “Folk horror may be best distinguished not by its mere depiction of Satanists, pagans, witches, buxom nudes wreathed in summer garlands, but by the manner in which they pose threats to our fundamental beliefs.” In this paper I examine three films, PENDA’S FEN, SPIRAL, and THE WICKER MAN to explore the way in which folk horror narratives can be read as metaphors for the power dynamics at play in the policing of “unwanted” elements of society and how these narratives bring our fear of the unknown into sharp focus.

Analysis of the gender, ethnicity, and class aspects of Mauricio Garcés's representation of Don Juan. Garcés plays with the classic elements of Claramonte's and Zorrilla's character but his roles evince the politics and social tensions of the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico. The emphasis is on the complex and ambiguous screen masculinity created by Garcés, that transcends the strict hypermasculine tropes established by the male leads of the Mexican Golden Age of cinema.

In this paper, I aim to analyse the homosexual sex acts depicted in the film, Inxeba (Trengove 2017). The analysis is informed by Lisa Downing's 'sex-critical' approach that deems that 'all forms of sexuality should be equally susceptible to critical thinking about the normative or otherwise ideologies they uphold' (Downing 2013:95). The findings of the analysis underscore that the film displays a phallocentric scripting of the sex act: the practices and sequence of sexual acts that privilege the erect, penetrating penis. In cognisance of this point, the sex scenes under discussion can be critiqued for perpetuating a narrow phallocentric ideal of sex that runs parallel to hetero-patriarchal norms. To offer an alternative expression of homosexual sex acts, Alphonso Lingis's writings on sexuality and sexual desire provide a springboard to explore erotic caresses and couplings that encompass the entire male body. To this end, Lingis's work is presented as a means to queer homosexual sex from hetero-patriarchal and phallocentric scriptings. The paper concludes by using Lingis's theories to imagine an alternative sex scene in Inxeba that illuminates queer eroticism and pleasure outside of penile penetrative sex.

Contemporary critics believe that the Yugoslav cinema of the 1960's was one of the most radical in Europe. But whether the radical and liberal attitude was evenly distributed and covered, sexuality raises questions that can be answered from different angles, taking into account the political, ideological and cultural context of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. The analysis is focused on the following issues: 1. The Black Wave used discourse and scenes of homosexuality in order to provoke the dominant political discourse of socialist Yugoslavia, 2. Homosexuality served as a metaphor for gender limiality/ ambivalence which is associated with the Yugoslav policy of Non-alignment and commitment to the so-called Third World; 3. It reveals latent conservative attitude of black wave cinema towards homosexuality while double handling sexuality with political connotations. Suppression of homosexuality, the deliberate effort to deny the possibility of erotic relationships between persons of the same sex lasted until the mid-sixties. This period coincides with the sexual revolution, the revolutionary awakening of Student movements across Europe and the emergence of the Black Wave which originates from the film nouveau, Czech and Polish films of similarly critical orientation. Post-yugoslav critics belive that Yugoslav cinema of the 1960's was one of the most radical in Europe. But whether the radical and liberal attitude was evenly distributed and covered sexuality in the same extend as other aspects of life, remains a question that can be answered from different angles, taking into account the political, ideological and cultural context of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia.1 Black Wave directors were disturbing discourses on progress, democracy and society, by revealing the hidden side of a Yugoslav reality, imprisoned by authoritarianism and social insecurity. They invited the spectator to liberate oneself from political and ideological discipline. The need to find a public space for experimental cinema, to deconstruct norms, principles, hierarchy and above all to liberate oneself from the constraints imposed by the regime, gave birth to a new theme-the questioning of sexuality. Thus, an alternative approach to sexuality, one that " deviates " from 1 1 Pavle Levi, Raspad Jugoslavije na filmu. (Beograd: XX vek, 2009), str. 81.