Dear filmosophers -
I too agree that the idea of 'heterosexualised camp' is very narrow and
pigeon-holing. Whatever happened to queer cinema's founding idea of 'fluid
sexualities' or, for that matter, going back somewhat earlier, Freud's
'polymorphously perverse sexuality', which is after all the most normal,
everyday thing in the world ????
Movie musicals are, I believe, absolutely the area of cinema where this sort
of fluidity - on screen, and in spectators - is clearest. You can't tie
musicals to one gender or another, one polarised/rigidifed sexual preference
or another. It's stupid to try! Look at even something as
normal/conventional as DIRTY DANCING: there are some wild bisexual phantasms
there, in a Patrick Swayze teen movie !!!
Baz Luhrmann is not my favourite filmmaker - I tend to agree with Robert's
evaluation of his all-in style - and I don't much like the 15 second
'homage' to Bollywood in MOULIN ROUGE, wielded by some commentators as a
blow for radical multicuturalism! - BUT it is beyond doubt that Luhrmann is
a fascinating figure in terms of this fluidity I'm talking about. To speak
from the perspective of someone immersed in the Australian media - and not
putting it biographically, because I don't know Luhrmann personally, and it
wouldn't be relevant to this argument if I did - here is a creator who comes
across publicly in an incredibly multiple and multi-faceted way: his cinema
and theatre are of course absolutely dripping in camp and what many
celebrate as a gay sensibility (not only in 'Gay Sydney', but definitely
with a lot of passion there!!), but of course he is also married, his wife
is his closest professional collaborator ... well, he is obviously a very
open guy culturally and artistically, and he has sure found the form to
express his openness: the musical! ... Well, in some ways I think we are
touching upon a very old, venerable idea in art-philosophy here: that
artists are, and have to be, open in their imaginations to the whole variety
of human experience. Mention of 'heterosexualised camp' makes me recall
remarks like 'men novelists cannot really write women characters' and vice
versa, it's so willfully reductive and just so UNTRUE to the history of
creative works in all media ...
By the way, speaking of musicals, I was just re-watching GUYS AND DOLLS and
I thought: isn't the meeting of Brando and Sinatra across a table a bit like
De Niro's and Pacino's coffee-conversation in HEAT!!!???
singsong Adrian
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