Butches and femmes in Disneyland

I had to post about this. The internet is abuzz with Kate Bornstein's post about WALL E and gender in film.

It begins like this:

I’m completely smitten with WALL•E, this summer’s Pixar/Disney offering. But the last thing I expected to see in my friendly, heterosexual upper east side Manhattan neighborhood movie theater was a feature length cartoon about a pair of lesbian robots who fall madly in love with each other. WALL•E is nothing short of hot, dyke Sci Fi action romance, some seven hundred years in the future! Woo-hoo!



Bornstein goes on to describe the reasons why WALL E and EVE don't have a gender. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, WALL E and EVE are clearly gender-less robots. They obviously don't have genitalia or xy/xx chromosomes. Why do we see WALL E and EVE as male and female? Simply because they are portraying the traditional male and female "roles" that our society has created? Who's to say that those robots aren't butch and femme lesbians or gay men?

Bornstein explains, "I think the answer is that we shift our mind’s criteria for gender when we watch a film or listen to a love song or read a novel. We all blithely switch genders in our minds, the better to identify with the vocalist or character. Reading novels, listening to music, or watching films, we consciously or unconsciously switch the gender mix to that which delights us the most."

So true. While I was trapped into thinking WALL-E and EVE were male and female robots, I had a different experience while watching Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There. For those of you who haven't seen this movie, Cate dons full drag (including a mustache for one brief scene) and morphs into Bob Dylan. She does an excellent job. And while I thought she was the most believable, most Bob-like Bob Dylan, I still found myself wanting to think of her as Cate Blanchett in drag. Because that is hot.



And why shouldn't I? According to Bornstein, it's perfectly normal, especially when a film suspends the bounds of gender itself. It's up to me to decide because I am the interpreter of the movie.

How refreshing.

You can read the post in its entirety here:
http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2008/07/walle-a-butchfe.html