Lena Horne

(June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010)

Image Sources: Vintage-Stars (1, 2); Doctor Macro (3, 4); I know, right? (5); Fans in a Flashbulb (6); Mulatto Diaries (7); LIFE (8); ESL Listening (9)

As the icing on the cake that is the Queer Film Blogathon, my best friend in the whole wide world, Lillian Behrendt, has contributed the following essay. She justifies her choice of subject thusly: “I kicked off the month of June with the American Cinematheque’s Fassbinder retrospective. I saw ten Fassbinder films in ten days, and still missed three of the screenings. My dreams were in German for a week, and I don’t even

In 1968, Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed his first original play. One year later, he had made his first feature film. In 1982 (thirty years ago this month) he died at the age of 37 — with about forty films under his belt. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), originally produced as a stage play, is the first of Fassbinder’s “woman’s pictures” and the only film he ever made with an all-female cast. It’s a movie about class, desire, oppression, longing, loneliness, performance and power.

Margit Carstensen stars as the eponymous Petra, a recently-divorced fashion designer who lives with her silent assistant/secretary/maid/submissive Marlene (Irm Hermann) in a sparsely-furnished apartment filled with bald, naked mannequins and porcelain dolls. Petra falls in love with Karin (Hanna Schygulla), a young working-class woman who hopes to enter the world of modeling. Several months later, Karin returns to her husband, leaving Petra in pieces. After throwing a drunken birthday tantrum (giving new meaning to “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to”) and lashing out at everyone who cares about her, she apologizes to Marlene, the only person who remains. When Petra suggests that they leave the Mistress/slave dynamic behind and live as equals, Marlene packs her bag and leaves.

The whole unrequited-lesbian-love-ending-with-the-object-of-desire-reverting-to-heterosexuality thing is a pretty tired trope, and already was by 1972. Pulp novels and exploitation films (and Lillian Hellman plays) of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s usually pathologized lesbianism as a (titillating) tragic disorder rather than a (also titillating) delinquent behavior. (I would argue that Fassbinder was referencing some of this by subtitling the film “A Case Study.”) The progression of the relationships in Petra von Kant have several superficial similarities to those in Ann Bannon’s famous Beebo Brinker pulp novels (1957-1962): a (relatively) masculine main character involved with two femmes — one cruel and dominant, one kind and submissive. Main character prefers cruel, glamorous, dominant femme, is dumped for a man, and returns to the patiently-waiting submissive femme with the promise of “happily ever after.”

As revolutionary as it was in the early 1960s to allow a lesbian couple a happy ending, its assimilationist heteronormativity can be frustrating for a queer 21st century reader. In his excellent essay about Petra, Jonathan Rosenbaum explains that the original play ended with Marlene accepting Petra’s offer of an equal relationship and the two of them sitting down to talk. The dominant masculine figure (Petra) and the submissive feminine figure (Marlene) come together as false equals for a life of monogamous domestic harmony.

Reading the relationship(s) and power dynamics in Petra von Kant as a Beebo Brinker kind of “love triangle” is a mistake. Rosenbaum writes that the film’s new ending “suggests that at some point between the premiere of the play and the ten-day shoot of this film, half a year later, Fassbinder lost faith in his own capacity for change.” Although there is a kind of truth in Rosenbaum’s statement, I’m very wary of his implication that the play’s ending is “happy” and the film’s ending “sad.”

Throughout Petra, we are bombarded with imagery and conversations concerning artifice and performance. It is established very early on that Petra von Kant is a liar. Petra lies to everyone, herself above all, except Marlene. Only Marlene (in the beginning and very end of the film) and Petra’s mother (towards the end) see Petra out of wig and makeup. The sight of Margit Carstensen’s shiny, unpowdered face onscreen is more shocking than any nude scene could be. That is intimacy.

I’ve frequently read that Marlene leaves because Petra displays weakness, probably referring to a speech in the first half of the film in which Petra explains the failure of her marriage. Petra describes her husband hitting “a bad patch,” and how disgusted she became with him upon “seeing his ridiculous pride being hurt.” If looking pathetic was all it took to make Marlene leave Petra, there wouldn’t have been much of a movie. Marlene watches Petra fall head-over-heels for someone who couldn’t care less. She watches Petra lose it with jealousy and beg Karin to stay. She watches Petra flailing drunk on the floor, clutching the telephone in desperation and screaming at the people who love her.

So, if she is so devoted to and supportive of Petra, why does Marlene leave? When everyone else has left, Petra approaches her and apologizes for how she has acted. Genuinely moved, Marlene attempts to submissively kiss her hand, but Petra pulls away and scolds her. “Not like that!” Petra’s disgust is not with Marlene, but with what Rosenbaum refers to as the perversity of their relationship. Lesbian desire and the fact of lesbian relationships is almost completely taken for granted as normal in this film. Petra’s mother expresses surprise upon learning that her daughter is in love with another woman, but that’s about it.

What Rosenbaum and Petra find “perverse” here is the combination of Petra and Marlene’s sadomasochistic relationship with Petra and Karin’s sadomasochistic relationship. There is no struggle between Marlene and Karin over Petra. Yes, Marlene is in pain for most of the movie, but her pain is not that of a jilted lover, but rather that of someone forced to witness the pain of someone they love, powerless to fix it. The apartment is big enough for the three of them. The “love triangle” as plot device is dependent on the widely accepted belief that a three-person romantic relationship is unnatural, unhealthy and ultimately unsustainable. We feel the same way about Dominant/submissive relationships. A monogamous, “equal” relationship is the only kind we deem valid. Sure, Marlene thinks she’s happy serving Petra, who is in turn being cuckolded by Karin, but what she really wants is for her and Petra to be a nice, normal couple. For Rosenbaum, the only happy ending is a clear, kink-free, monogamous ending, in which Marlene abandons her sexual identity for something more palatable and socially acceptable.

These are issues Fassbinder himself struggled with. He came out in his teens and was widely recognized as a homosexual. He had two marriages to women, at least one of which was a sexual relationship. He lived communally with friends and lovers, most of whom either appeared in or worked on his films. Rosenbaum suggests that Fassbinder had a relationship similar to that of Petra and Marlene with his frequent collaborator and composer Peer Raben. He also had a string of “Karins” upon whom he lavished very expensive gifts, most notably Gunther Kaufman, who crashed four Lambourghinis in a single year. Fassbinder needed to have sex with both men and women, held multiple concurrent romantic relationships, was deeply concerned with the ways in which oppression affects sexuality and, like Petra von Kant, was both a sadist and a masochist (with a definite cuckolding fetish). He also had a cocaine habit that was rumored to be about an ounce per day. Irm Hermann was his secretary at one time, and then his lover. He was incredibly cruel and violent to her, and it doesn’t sound like it was always consensual. She remained devoted to him until 1977, when she left him for another man, refusing his offer of marriage.

Which brings us back to Marlene. Why does she leave? She’s offered a normal, healthy, ideal relationship with the woman she most loves and desires, and she rejects it. If it’s not disgust, is there something wrong with her? To prove that she’s serious about her offer of equality, Petra asks Marlene to tell her about herself. To not only speak, something we have not heard her do, but to speak about herself. Petra does this as she puts on an old record, and takes a seat on her bed to listen. This is exactly what she does to Karin before asking her to move in. Petra’s offer of equality is nothing of the kind, but rather an attempt to salvage her personal ideal as to what a liberated relationship should be. Whether she means to or not, Marlene makes a political statement by leaving. And that is revolutionary.

Lillian Behrendt is a fat femme who sells sex toys and draws comics in Los Angeles.

I’d also like to thank my partner in crime Andreas over at Pussy Goes Grrr for helping me to pull it off. Wonderful having you on board this year, Andreas!

And congratulations to raffle winner Jake Cole of Not Just Movies who, by the grace of the random number generator, shall be receiving The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo.

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a late contribution to the event by my best friend Lillian Behrendt, who is sharing with us her thoughts on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). Wish I could get it up today but, like I said, tuckered. (As most of you in the classic film blogging/Twitter family know, it’s been one helluva week!)

After that I’m going to be taking a teeny tiny break from blogging, but shall return in July. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you all for making this event such a roaring success. Hope we’ll see you again next year!

Ho. Lee. Crap. Can you even handle this gorgeous My Favorite Wife artwork done for me by the amaaaaaaaazing Mollybot? I think I love it even more than last year’s Rebel Without a Cause piece. THANK YOU MOLLY. I’M GOING TO TATTOO IT ON MY FACE.

Alright, folks! This is the place! Comment below with a link to your post(s) and I will put them all up here as official contributions to the Queer Film Blogathon 2012, co-hosted of course by the lovely Pussy Goes Grrr. (Why do I feel like I’m going to get a lot of misplaced traffic from putting that adjective next to the first word of that site name?) Remember, you can also enter our raffles for a copy of The Celluloid Closet (from me) and Celluloid Gaze (from PGG).

If you’re wondering where my contributions are, honey, they all happened last week: Dracula’s Daughter (1936), My Favorite Wife (1940), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Victim (1961), and Together Brothers (1974). Give ‘em a gander if you’re so inclined.

Without further self-promotion ado, let the blogathon begin!!! If you run into any problems with leaving a comment, or if I missed your post, don’t hesitate to send me an email at Garbo.Laughs.Blog@gmail.com or tweet me at @GarboLaughsBlog.

Friday, June 22 (Day 5)

Stacia of the world-famous She Blogged By Night (is it world-famous? it should be) joins us on this final blogathon day asking some tough questions about the cultural endurance of Freebie and the Bean (1974).

The Filmatelist compares Beautiful Thing (1996) and Happy Together (1997).

Christianne tells us about a fascinating documentary about gays and lesbians in Uganda in her review of Call Me Kuchu (2012).

Yvette from in so many words… holds our hands through the heartbreak of Brokeback Mountain (2005).

Joseph over at the Queer Film Blog (you mean you get to do this kinda fun stuff all year ’round?!?) provides us with a delightful queer interpretation of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012).

Mary tells us why Todd Haynes’ glam rock extravaganza Velvet Goldmine (1998) is one of her favorite films.

Margaret is back to share with us 5 Films That Changed the Way We View Sexuality.

Brandie returns to ruin enhance all our childhoods by queering Disney!

Thursday, June 21 (Day 4)

Peter Nellhaus joins us one more time with his review of the 2009 Japanese drama Kakera: A Piece of Our Lives.

Christianne also returns (and is definitely a shoe-in for the Most Prolific Blogathoner Award) to share her impressions of The Wise Kids (2011).

My brilliant partner Molly (who is also responsible for our official Queer Film Blogathon artwork above) just saw Psycho (1960) for the first time and writes about why reading Norman Bates as queer is homophobic. THANK YOU MOLLY! ♥

Chris Edwards over at Silent Volume re-posts his review of Wilhelm Dieterle’s Sex in Chains (1928).

Jesse Ataide of Memories of the Future provides us with an excellent queer re-imagining of His Kind of Woman (1951)!

The lovely Lê is back with a look at “devious” queer characters in the cinema of the 1950s.

The incomparable Brandie of True Classics reviews Barbara Stanwyck’s turn as a female prison inmate in Ladies They Talk About (1933).

Good friend Ivan of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear contributes a review of the quirky romantic comedy Different for Girls (1996).

Wednesday, June 20 (Day 3)

Sam has got us covered with his Top 5 LGBT Themed Films over at A World of Gods and Monsters (itself a hat tip to gay director James Whale and his brilliantly-camp Bride of Frankenstein).

Christianne continues her excellent series of contributions with a look at several trans documentary features, what they get right and what they get embarrassingly wrong.

The wonderfully insightful Stephanie Hammer at Magically Real shares with us her reminiscences of John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971).

Wednesday’s Child joins the party with a review of Heaven’s a Drag (1994), a gay-themed supernatural romance.

What Happened to Hollywood tucks us into bed with a worrying question: did homophobic bullying contribute to Rudolph Valentino’s untimely death?

Tuesday, June 19 (Day 2)

Joseph starts off Day 2 with a bang as he explores Susan Sontag’s infamous “Notes on ‘Camp’” in relation to Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg.

Peter Nellhaus of the awesomely-named Coffee coffee and more coffee takes us to Thailand with his review of Yes or No? (2010), touted as that country’s “first lesbian romance.”

Jake Cole from Not Just Movies is back for another round as he looks at Fassbinder’s In a Year of 13 Moons (1978).

Christianne Benedict again graces us with her presence and a review of Bernie (2012) starring Shirley MacLaine and Jack Black.

The fabulous Angela over at The Hollywood Revue takes us all the way back to 1914 with the silent gender-bending comedy A Florida Enchantment.

Monday, June 18 (Day 1)

The always-insightful Christianne over at Krell Laboratories has started the celebration early by sharing her musings on Tomboy (2011), Bound (1996), The King and the Clown (2005), Open (2010), and Weekend (2011).

My dear friend Lara over at Backlots explores the queer side of our beloved Greta Garbo in her review of Queen Christina (1933).

Rich of Wide Screen World takes a look at director George Cukor and five notable women he made shine on the screen.

The Lady Eve joins us with an excellent profile of movie songwriter Jack Lawrence.

Sarah, the newest member of the True Classics crew, kicks things off by comparing and contrasting Lillian Hellman’s controversial play The Children’s Hour with two big-screen adaptations.

Richard Finch writes about Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fox and His Friends (1975) on his fantastic blog The Movie Projector, where the William Wyler Blogathon begins June 24.

Jake Cole at Not Just Movies join us with his analysis of Todd Haynes’ feature film debut Poison (1991).

Margaret Perry of The Great Katharine Hepburn jumps into her very first blogathon (welcome to the cult, Margaret!) with her post on Sylvia Scarlett (1935).

Kevyn Knox of The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World re-posts a “retro review” of Brokeback Mountain (2005) written right after the film’s release.

Lê of Crítica Retrô graces us with a post on Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and Yentl (1983) — em Português! Just click on the handy translator widget in the sidebar to transform the post into the language of your choice using the magic of Google.

Marc Heuck writes about By Hook or By Crook (2001) on his blog The Projector Has Been Drinking.

From The Depths of DVD Hell come C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), Nowhere (1997), The Doom Generation (1995), and Kaboom (2010), all by Elwood Jones.

As I’ve already explained, both Garbo Laughs and Pussy Goes Grrr are running two separate raffles for two separate prizes. My prize is:

The Celluloid Closet (1981) (Revised Edition) by Vito Russo

If you’d like to get your hands on a copy of this ground-breaking book, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. The raffle entry period ends Friday, June 22, 11:59PM PST. To enter Pussy Goes Grrr’s raffle for Boze Hadleigh’s Celluloid Gaze, comment here.

Remember, if you also make a contribution to the blogathon, you’ll be entered into the raffle twice. Double your chances of winning! (However, only one comment and one post will be counted per person, so nobody can enter more than two times.) Good luck and happy queering!

And just to further entice you, today we (meaning blogathon co-host Pussy Goes Grrr and I) are announcing the raffle prizes we will be giving away to two lucky winners!

Yes indeedy! We are giving you the chance to win one of two bona fide classics in the genre of queer film theory!

My prize is the 1981 (revised 1987) tome The Celluloid Closet by historian Vito Russo, a thoroughly-researched and provocative look at cinematic portrayals of LGBT life which was adapted into the ground-breaking 1995 documentary film of the same name.

Andreas’ prize is the 1986 book Celluloid Gaze (originally published as Conversations with My Elders) by journalist Boze Hadleigh, featuring juicy interviews with six gay men in the film industry, including Rock Hudson, Sal Mineo, and George Cukor.

How exactly you can win these prizes will be announced a little later today, just as soon as I smooth out some details with Andreas (and finish a few hours of that nasty little thing I call “my real job”). You can also follow me and Andreas on Twitter for the latest updates!

Synopsis: Local policeman Mr. Kool (Ed Bernard) is everyone’s favorite neighborhood cop in a poor black community in Galveston, Texas. So it comes as a heartbreaking shock when he turns up shot to death in cold blood one night near the playground. The only witness was five-year-old Tommy (Anthony Wilson), who was so traumatized by the incident that he’s refusing to say a word. When the local police seem slow on the tail of the killer, Tommy’s big brother H.J. (Ahmad Nurradin) and his friends take it upon themselves to gather a list of suspects. Soon, the trail leads them to the mysterious Billy Most (Lincoln Kilpatrick), just out of prison on an arrest made by Mr. Kool himself.

Say, folks! If you’re interested in the topic of queer images in film, have I got an event for YOU! From June 18-22, Garbo Laughs (that’s me) and Pussy Goes Grrr will be hosting the Queer Film Blogathon. Check it out now to find out how you can contribute and even win prizes. The party simply won’t be the same without you!

Although I’ve mentioned several times on this blog that I’m not a real big fan of the cinema of the 1970s, I felt it was important for this particular series to go outside of my classic comfort zone and include a review of a film from the first post-Code decade. That’s because I simply do not feel right holding an LGBT blogathon and only covering decades in which the T (trans or transgender) portion of that acronym was essentially nonexistent on the silver screen. I mean sure, if you throw cross-dressing and drag under the trans umbrella, you’ve got material dating back to the very foundation of the medium of film. But the transgender identity doesn’t stop at gender performativity the way drag and cross-dressing do (if you’ll pardon me for the gross oversimplification); being transgender means that one’s internal gender identity differs from the gender one was assigned at birth, an assignment usually made based on one’s biological sex. To be as inclusive as possible, I wanted to seek out and highlight a depiction of a transgender individual fitting this definition. That was nigh on impossible to do if I limited myself to films made before 1970.

Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, transgender individuals have not been represented accurately or positively in film… well, ever, really. Yes, there are of course exceptions, but they are few and far between, and even the current norm is nowhere near exemplary. One of the first and still most pervasive utilizations of transgender characters in film has been the trope of the “transgender killer,” an antagonist whose “confused” gender identity/expression is typically used as a metaphor for a deeper, more dangerous psychological disturbance. Think Psycho, Homicidal, Dressed to Kill, Sleepaway Camp, and the most egregious offender, Silence of the Lambs. Needless to say, continually portraying transgender people as crazed serial murderers is neither accurate nor positive. Unfortunately, Together Brothers, directed for 20th Century Fox by William A. Graham, is yet another example of this trope in use.

Billy Most comes unglued.

Marking the first appearance of a transgender person of color in a motion picture, the character of Billy Most is presented as your by-the-book deranged and “confused” murderer who guns down a beloved neighborhood cop, seemingly for no reason. However, once Billy is allowed to have her say, she’s given some pretty interesting motives for her crime. “My whole life, they done laughed at me,” she tells her drag queen confidant Maria. “Treat me like I wasn’t human. Nobody let you be somebody.” Then she explains her pivotal interaction with Mr. Kool, the officer she later kills. In arresting Billy for a crime (which I won’t specify, even though I’m spoiling most of the rest of this movie for you), it turns out Mr. Kool publicly stripped Billy naked for no discernible reason other than to humiliate her. “Why did Kool have to take off my clothes?” Billy sobs. “Why’d he have to shame my ass?” She then breaks down, kneels before Maria and asks, “What am I?!? Some kind of beast?”

Wait. Hold up. This cop, who’s presented throughout the entire movie as this bastion of goodness, who encouraged kids to stay off the streets and avoid drugs and alcohol, who the whole neighborhood worshiped, arrested a transwoman and then publicly undressed her? That’s not cool, Mr. Kool.

And here I was actually rooting for them to bring your killer to justice!

I mean, I’m not saying Billy was justified in killing Mr. Kool for his act of brutality against her. Murder is never justified, blah blah blah. But I doubt Billy had any legal recourse in lodging a formal complaint against Mr. Kool. After all, according to a study released by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 48.3% of transgender people of color who were victims of a hate crime reported that police were indifferent to their complaints, compared to 7.7% of cisgender and white survivors. On the whole, hate crime victims within the LGBT community reported 61% of police attitudes as indifferent, abusive or deterrent. And this wasn’t in 1974, this was in 2010. Add to that the fact that Billy would’ve had to bring charges against a police officer and you begin to understand why she believed her only method of achieving justice was by killing Mr. Kool.

Although it doesn’t show its transgender character in a positive light, I have to give this movie credit for at least presenting Billy as a somewhat sympathetic character. Unfortunately she too often sways into pathetic territory to really be classified as a step forward for trans representations. Overall, though, this was a fantastic movie. It’s blaxploitation, yeah, but the characters were actually allowed to be people instead of one-dimensional, overly-violent or sexualized caricatures. They’re allowed to be happy and to cry and to have emotions that real people have; imagine that! The soundtrack by Barry White was perfect, and the directing got downright Hitchcockian at times (always a compliment). But above all it was the stellar acting that really blew me away. Ahmad Nurradin as the lead character H.J. was particularly enthralling, especially for a seventeen-year-old kid who’d never acted before and only appeared in one film after. Lincoln Kilpatrick as Billy Most was also completely captivating every moment he was on screen. I picked this movie pretty much at random but found myself utterly surprised by it; don’t you love it when that happens? For some reason it doesn’t seem to be available on DVD anywhere, but at least you can watch it free (with commercials) on Hulu. I thoroughly recommend it.

Together Brothers (1974) – 4.5/5 stars