Film course Final paper – Rough draft

According to queer theory the transgenderist is “the subject who crosses gender
boundaries in some way, whether through identification, actions or dress”(484, Prosser).
This position asserts that the performative nature of gender throws it wide open for
appropriation by any and all sexes and sexualities to exploit as the subject needs or sees
fit. Lesbian or gay identity is not necessarily a prerequisite. In the films Blue Steel, by
____________and Boys Don’t Cry: The Brandon Teena Story, by _______________ the
filmmakers explore two ways that the transgender performance of masculinity serves as a
vehicle in recreating ‘home’.

The narrative trajectory in both of these films follows a familiar arc of new beginnings
and hopeful horizons devolving into loss and violence as our protagonists try to establish
themselves in a world where they feel neither safe or at home. Megan Turner, in Blue
Steel, is a newly graduated New York City police officer who struggles with her inability
to form close relationships with men and her desire for the elusive fruits of femininity -
the emotionally fulfilling family life like that of her childhood girlfriend. Her tenure on
the police force is short-lived when fatally shooting a gunman on her first day forces her
into suspension from her job and simultaneously catapults her into the unenviable
position as a stalked object of worship. That she begins to date Eugene Hunter, the
murderous and adoring psychopath is but a small clue that our heroine has trouble
connecting the internal with the external. Loss of her humanity is the price she pays to
maintain her granite jawed stoicism in the face of traumatic violence.

Brandon Teena does not fare as well and in his own story he loses his life in the pursuit
of his modest desires. Driven by a “sense of not being at home in his/her body” (491),
this young female-to-male transgender in the American Mid-West finds himself in a new
town without the baggage of his story as a biological female who is taking on a male
identity. Love follows in his new home town but his ‘passing’ unravels. Brandon in his
naivety seems to think that because he feels he is a male then the biology reality is a
secondary consideration to be dealt with in time. The natives feel otherwise. In their eyes
Brandon is a dyke who is molesting one of their own. They reject the biology/gender
disjunction and respond with brutal violence.

Both Megan and Brandon have their own motivations for adopting masculine attributes.
Megan does so perhaps unconsciously, primarily through her career choice and Brandon,
consciously as a corrective to the mismatch of his biology and his gender. While Megan
is not interested in a male identity, what she shares with Brandon is the strategy of co-
opting masculine traits for the societal benefits they bestow in the form of power and
autonomy.

RESUME HERE
Credits shown with continuous close-up shots of a handgun, glinting blue, hard and
shiny. Shown as an object of worship (power)
Opens with a fade to a hazy locker room of dressing figures of indeterminate sex.
Suggests that gender identity is not so easy to discern. The figures could be either male or
female but as the haze clears it appears that they are policemen, or one would presume
they were men because they are clearly in police uniforms. But it ultimately becomes
clear that that figures are female police officers. This brief scene sets the viewer up to
anticipate confusion in role-playing.
The police uniform can be seen as a form of female to male cross-dressing. Since the
F2M gender-bender is primarily interested in the social power and control of masculinity
rather than the sexual identity, then it seems logical that the sartorial trappings of
masculinity play a very important part. Connect this with Megan gets cruised and
Hunter’s fascination with her gun. Also describe the scene where she has her sleeves
rolled up.

Megan admits to her partner that she wanted to be a cop “ever since I was a kid.” He
admits likewise. This suggests that there was probably a determining factor in her early
life and we find out later that indeed, her father was, and still is, a wife-beater. Later,
while sitting with Man/n staking-out the perp Eugene, in response to the same line of
conversation Mann asks what made her want to be a cop and she replies “He did.” It is
unclear whether she is referring to the perp or her father. By this time it is clear that the
perp and her father are cut of the same cloth. Her father and her date, the cpa, both equate
being a cop with being anti-feminine.
The bafflement expressed by those who question Megan’s choices support the contention
within the hetero-normative culture that female masculinity is perceived as a
“pathological sign of misidentification and maladjustment… as a longing to be and to
have a power that is just out of reach” (p8).

Oddly, Megan herself does not see the connection between being a cop and being
masculine. In her eyes being a cop means being in control, not necessarily a direct
connection with masculinity. She never expresses any defensiveness about her career
choice affecting her femininity, and in fact seems genuinely puzzled by Eugene’s
equation of sexuality and power.

Megan attempts to exploit the symbolic power of the state embedded in masculinity by
literally becoming the face of state power. Oddly, Hunter, who represents the face of
insufficient masculinity “figured by…upper class bodies” strives to align himself, albeit
perversely, with Megan’s perceived privilege of coercive power. Incidentally, the
character of Hunter, in addition to his deviant socio/sexual behavior, seems overly
burdened with traits of servient or minor masculinity, i.e. short stature, money trader
(anti-Semitic?), upper social class, and ethnic features. As “the ‘bad guy’ [he] is a
standard generic feature of epic masculinity narratives” (p4).

No cause and effect - “reveals as fraudulent the accepted version of the relations between
sex and gender in which sex is considered to be the cause of gender”(p484). At its most
elemental level this can mean to apply outside of sexuality, for example to non-traditional
employment choices that entail a gender performance that is at odds with the physiology
of the subject. Megan becomes a police officer where the job entails taking on the mantle
of masculinity in dress and behavior. We have no reason to believe that she is anything
but heterosexual in spite of the fact that she is alienated from her femininity. Her embrace
of masculinity affords her access to power and control; the lack of the aforementioned
being inextricably linked in her mind with femaleness and by extension femininity.

Finding her ‘voice’ – during the initial shooting scene her voice is weak and breaks when
she orders the robber to put down the gun. As she repeats herself her voice becomes
stronger and deeper.

Cab scene – “she likes when it snows because it makes her feel ‘safe’. The filmmaker
uses plain language to tell the viewer that Megan comes from an unsafe place.

Restaurant is named Boeuf a la Mode, English translation is ‘in the style of beef’. A
reference to ‘beefcake’?

She repeatedly disregards what should be apparent to her ‘feminine side” i.e. she does not
sense what are ordinarily signs of danger to women. Is this true? Well, for one she
completely misreads what the woman in the domestic dispute altercation might be. It
does not occur to her that the woman (her mother?) may not be grateful that she has been
‘saved’ from the violence of her spouse.
At the same time director equates femininity with powerlessness. In her dream sequence
after her flying date with Eugene, Regan sees herself ‘on top of the world’ flying over
Manhattan and suddenly slips falls out of the open door. Eugene grabs her by the wrist
but makes only a half-hearted attempt to hold on and she slips into a freefall to her death.
Men are clearly not to be trusted. This one takes her to dizzying heights only to let her
fall through the open door.

Her sexual aggression lacks passion, almost as though it was by rote. Up to the scene in
his apartment with Megan, Eugene does not return her sexual moves. It is when he feels
her gun under her jacket that he lights up with interest.

Depictions of butch : 1)When M. is returning home from her swearing in ceremony in

full dress she passes a flashy ‘hot’ looking woman who cruises her, M. returns the look.
2)in the scene where she is defending her arrest of Eugene she is wearing a holstered gun
and wearing a red T shirts with the short sleeves rolled up a` la Brando.

Megan’s tomboyism is reinforced by the presence of her childhood girlfriend always

resplendent in her girlie clothes. Megan’s trans/gressive gender behavior clearly did not
begin upon entry to the police academy. The “lesson in restraint, punishment and
repression” of female adolescence is lost on Megan. Perhaps Dad’s anger toward her is
grounded in her failure to be “remodeled into compliant forms of femininity” (P6).

In the scene where M. arrests her father, he tells the wife “Don’t you talk, Shirley”
Husband has taken away the wife’s voice. His violence does more than the immediate
physical damage; it takes away the victims voice. Is this the synergistic effect of
combining intimacy and violence? A silencing effect? Does M. need to co-opt masculine
attributes and behaviors in order to maintain her own voice?

Think about the parts where she keeps getting trapped by the lawyers ‘gotcha’ game. She
repeatedly tries to pounce on Eugene without having her rational “evidence “ lined up.
She doesn’t put two plus two plus two together to connect the dots for the system, instead
she just jumps from two to six as if by magic everyone will agree she’s got it right. The
lawyer clearly frustrates her as he paints her as an irrational woman with an ax to grind.
But the frustration for the viewer is that she acts on impulse and falls for it again. At this
point it doesn’t take rocket science to figure this is a pattern of behavior between her and
her father that has played out over and over again; he violates her safety (the sanctity of
the home) and she is reactive but without real effect. She is powerless as a girl and can
only escape the inevitable by escaping her girl-ness.

Odd point – Scene in her care after she has arrested him - Dad is violent because he has
no control, he “Gets mad” and this is an acceptable explanation to Megan. Also, he seems
genuinely horrified that she is ashamed of him, like this has not been apparent. Weird?

Her make-up toward the end of the film becomes increasingly smudgey looking. As
though she is perpetually prepared for battle. Warpaint.

Thematic mise-en-scene is the wash of blue that saturates the frames. The cold blue color
of the weapon in the credits is pervasive. It suggests both the hardness of masculiniy and
the coldness as in a lack of emotion, as a masculine trait. Megan is so distanced from her
femininity that she can’t allow herself to properly grieve the loss of her best friend. The
most she can summon up is an angry grimace as Mann is driving her home early the next
morning. There is no stopping to cry, she bucks up and takes it like a man. She gets angry
instead.
FM – “heroic masculinities depend absolutely on the subordination of alternative
masculinities” (p1) Detective Mann is the real deal and police women are poor imitations,
“framed as the rejected scraps of…the real thing”(p1).

Only when she becomes vulnerable does she become sexually attractive to the normal
man/n. When her defenses fall at the end of a long day of murder and mayhem, she is at
last vulnerable in Nick’s eyes. But this vulnerability lasts only as long as an unplanned
sexual interlude. Almost as quick as the sex is over she gets up from bed, slips into a
man’s shirt, resuming the mantle of masculine control; and lights herself up a smoke.
Unbeknownst to her, the real man/n who has gone into the bathroom takes a bullet to the
gut in appreciation for his studly endeavors. Megan

The final scenes of the film devolve into near science fiction, reminiscent of the final
scenes of the futuristic Blade Runner. Two druids dragging themslevse around like so
much chopped meat. The predator man and the transgender man.
Lots of flashes of red in the black and white nights.

Stereotypical male remark that she has nothing to go on… all you have is a hunch. This is
an especially ironic thing to say to Megan as she is particularly deficient in the gift of
woman’s intuition.

Part Two – Boys Don’t Cry

BDC Visual theme of changing sky – Represents what

Brandon Teena shares in the American Dream. With his girl Lana “We can start our own
trailer park” complete with their own AirStream.

“The concepts of being at home and not being at home in the sexed body only take on
meaning in the cultural context: change the context…and the meaning also
changes”(p493). This is what Cuz was trying to tell Brandon – Get the sex change or
become a butch dyke if you expect to be able to belong in this part of the world. Because
you can’t go around ‘passing’ (in Nebraska) or you’ll end up dead or in jail.

B., in response to his cousin’s admonitions that it is unsafe to be masquerading as a

biological male – “I’m not a dyke”
Cuz “You need a sex change” or you’ll end up in jail. The Cuz is hip to the fact that
Brandon’s representation as male, other than as a butch lesbian, will not be tolerated so
long as his biology is not in agreement.

FM – “heroic masculinities depend absolutely on the subordination of alternative

masculinities” (p1) Detective Mann is the real deal and police women are poor imitations,
“framed as the rejected scraps of…the real thing”(p1).

Belonging trumps all other considerations, including legal obligations. Brandon is so

desperate to fit in and be accepted as the person he feels he is that he that he willfully
disregards demands for his court appearance in order to remain in Falls City.
Other examples of his desperation to prove his manhood include an episode of dangerous
bumper-skiing, a form of truck rodeo. When Lana calls him on his foolishness, “I thought
that’s what guys do around here” is his puzzled response.

“Sexism and misogyny are not necessarily part and parcel of masculinity”(p4) this is in
agreement with Prosser and goes a long way to explaining why women loved Brandon. In
his own words, “they say I’m the best boyfriend they ever had”.
Denigrating femininity is an acceptable male trait and name-calling invariably includes
“pussy”. For example when the clearly unbalanced Tom shows Brandon his self-
mutilation, explaining that it helps him to control his violent urges, he challenges
Brandon to try cutting himself. Brandon demurs, “ I’m a pussy compared to you”. Here is
the single instance where Brandon is unwilling to mimic what he perceives to be
masculine behaviors.
Brandon gave himself away repeatedly by his failure to exhibit the power and domination
of male masculinity. Too considerate!

Key scene -Later when he returns to Lincoln in an effort to make his court appearance he
excitedly tells Cuz that “It’s working”, meaning that he is successfully ‘passing’ as male
amongst his new acquaintances in Falls City. Cuz mocks his child-like expectations,
pointing out the absurdity of Brandon’s vision “When you gonna ask her to marry you?
After the sex change?” “Trans” is seen as a vehicle enabling the subject mobility and an
abandonment of the “home of a community founded on the body”(p485). The “trans”
individual is liberated from the past and exists in an eternal present. Presumably the
subject is free to take up a nonreferential gender identity that is perpetuated moment to
moment in a state of “becoming”. However, as in Brandon’s case, this “trans” mobility
takes him only so far as the next big town. In Falls City he is able to successfully ‘cross’
to a masculine identity and delights in the prospect of happily-ever-after. But where
theory and reality diverge, somewhere in central Nebraska, he loses sight of the fact that
he will eventually have to bring his sex and gender into agreement.

Lana disregards the biological evidence. When she and Brandon have their first sexual
encounter she catches a glimpse of Brandon’s cleavage. That prompts her to examine his
face for signs of facial hair, which is nonexistent, but none-the-less fails to convince her
that her experience and perception of Brandon as a male is not valid. His sexual
performance is clearly evidence enough for Lana. She is willing to concede that “He’s no
he-man, but…” not willing to explore physical evidence that runs counter to what she
thinks she ‘sees’. At the point when she is directly confronted with Brandon’s physiology
she rejects any explanations that Brandon offers, telling him to “shut up, its your
business”. Her investment is in his masculine identity.

Seeing is in short supply with Brandon as well. When things in his new hometown begin
to turn ominous he is oblivious to the danger brewing around him.
Can’t deny his female biology – He is consumed with dread that he has to deal with
menstruation and repulsed at the prospect of using a tampon.
Faults Halberstam for an inaccurate reading of the trans experience. It is not bliss, but
“origins in painful wrong embodiment, its end in the reconstruction of the material body”
The trans sees ‘becoming’ as the “final going home”(p488).

Key Scene – Brandon reports his rape by John and Tom to the authorities. He is
interviewed by a sheriff who addresses him as Teena. In making the report he is unable to
acknowledge his femaleness barely able to croak out “my vagins” in describing the
assault. The sheriff explicitly voices the societal truth of Brandon’s transgression – it was
“the lies” about his identity that was the crime. ‘Passing’ as male was practically
justification in itself for the violence against Brandon. Brandon stated as much in the
immediate aftermath of the assault when he whimpers to his assailants “This is all my
fault, I know”.
The shame that Brandon feels, a result of his ‘gender identity disorder’, is evident in the
post rape car scene.(p492) Sexual violence is shaming and punitive, causing and
reinforcing “shameful difference”. (p493)

Key Scene – Brandon and Lana have sex in the shed after the rape. It is the only scene
where Brandon is not masquerading as a biological male. This scene sort of
cements the power of transgender representation. While there is full disclosure of
Brandon’s female body, Lana accepts him as her male lover. Lana asks was he a
girl/girl like her before, when he was young. “I was a girl, then a boy/girl” he
explains, “then…finally everything felt right.” In the face of full disclosure Lana
accepts the truth of the performance of masculinity over the biology as the actual
reality. This scene has been read as evidence of Lana’s lesbian or bi-sexual nature
but nowhere does she accept Brandon as a woman.

John –“taking out a couple of dykes, you one of ‘em?” – He assumes that because
Candace has given Brandon refuge in her home after the rape, in spite of her knowledge
that Brandon is a biological female, must make her a lesbian.

Mom – “don’t let ‘it’ in the house”

Halberstam, Judith, Female Masculinity, Duke University Press, Durham and London
1998

No Place Like Home: The Transgendered Narrative of Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch
Blues by Prosser, Jay in Modern Fiction Studies 41.3-4 (1995) 483-514

Judith Butler and performance, 1990 Gender Trouble

Halberstam - The performative nature of gender precludes gender as a narrative that

necessarily involves a beginning, a middle and an end. “Queer gender undoes the linear
progression… confusing the cause and effect”.(p484)

Blue Steel
Nick Man/n - hegemonic masculinity
Megan Turner - transgressive gender/bender, power seeker
Eugene Hunt – deviant masculinity, predator/ ritualistic consumer
Dad - hyper macho misogynist
Mom/Shirley – victim/child, powerless
Girlfriend – hegemonic femininity

Brandon – Trans gender

Lana – straight/bi hyper-feminine, long red nails
Candace – friend/victim
John – hyper masculine/sexual victim
Tom – partner-in-crime with John
Mom
Lonnie – Brandon’s Cousin