JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

1. Janet E. Halley, “'Like Race' Arguments,” in What’s Left of Theory?, ed. Judith Butler, John Guillory, and Kendall Thomas (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 64.[return to page 1 of essay]

2. Richard Dyer, The Culture of Queers (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 7.

3. I take this formulation from Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 132.

4. Richard Dyer, White (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 89.

5. Susan Courtney writes, “…a history of white vision…cannot be read apart from the history of American cinema.” In Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 4.

6. See Michael DeAngelis, “The Characteristics of New Queer Filmmaking: Case Study—Todd Haynes,” in New Queer Cinema, ed. Michele Aaron (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 41-52.

7. Sharon Willis, “The Politics of Disappointment: Todd Haynes Rewrites Douglas Sirk,” Camera Obscura 54 (2003): 131-75.

8. Willis, “Politics,” 167.

9. Siobhan B. Somerville, Queering the Color Line (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000), 4.

10. Ibid. Somerville explains that what distinguishes late 19th century sexologists’ construction of homosexuality from mid-20th century conceptions is a shift from defining homosexuality in terms of physiology or even physiognomy (the invert), to defining it in terms of object choice (the homosexual). See Chapter 1, “Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body,” 15-38.

11. Ibid., 39.

12. Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989): 141.

13. Halley, “Like Race,” 46.

14. Siobhan B. Somerville, “Queer Loving,” GLQ 11.3 (2005): 337-8.

15. See Halley, “’Like Race.’”

16. Dyer, White, 20.

17. Dyer, Queers, 3.

18. Haynes is granted a certain exceptionalism among contemporary U.S. filmmakers because, as Lynne Joyrich explains, “his films implicitly position themselves as theoretical reflections, intertextual explorations, and self-referential critiques” and thus he is “often [treated] as a theorist and critic of his own text.” Lynne Joyrich, ‘Written on the Screen: Mediation and Immersion in Far from Heaven’, Camera Obscura 57 (2004): 212.

19. Dyer, Culture, 6-7. Also, Haynes stated in a 1993 interview that his films aim to “queer” representations of sexuality by disrupting notions of both heterosexuality and homosexuality, to mark both as interdependent constructs and thus reveal them as “strange.” In Justin Wyatt, “Cinematic/Sexual Transgression: An Interview with Todd Haynes,” Film Quarterly, 46.2 (1993): 8.

20. This is the character’s designation in the official screenplay (see next reference.)[return to page 2 of essay]

21. Todd Haynes, Far from Heaven, Safe, and Superstar: Three Screenplays (New York: Grove Press, 2003), 78.

22. Ibid., 78-9.

23. Ibid., 80.

24. Haynes mentions in the DVD director’s commentary that Eleanor’s reaction to Cathy’s admission of her crush on Raymond is less about Eleanor’s racism and more about feeling betrayed, because Cathy lacked trust in her when Eleanor initially confronted Cathy about the rumors. [return to page 3 of essay]

25. For a discussion on the ways in which a critical race perspective can challenge and reconceptualize the notions of “the closet” and “coming out” within queer theory and discourse, see Marlon B. Ross, “Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm,” in Black Queer Studies, ed. E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson  (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 161-89.

26. Ross, “Beyond,” 161.

27. Willis, ”Politics,” 166.

28. Ibid., 165.

29. Ibid., 168.

30. Dyer, White, 13 (my emphasis.)

31. See also Willis’ conclusion, “Ultimately, the film disappoints its own logic because its structural analogy between racism and homophobia fails through its very visual organization. It cannot go beyond the boundaries it has set for Cathy in terms of racialized geography and spaces. And it can’t grant Raymond the independence it permits Frank, because it has not endowed him with a point of view,” “Politics,” 168.

32. See Stanley Fish, “Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech,” Critical Inquiry, 23.2 (1997): 378-95.

33. Cinematical.com. “Interview: Duncan Tucker, writer/director of Transamerica,”
http://www.cinematical.com/2005/12/14/
interview-duncan-tucker-writer-director-of-transamerica.

34. Dorthe Troeften, “Trans/acting Truth: Narrating Transgender in Theory and Practice” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2005).

35. I want to thank Colin Haines for pointing this scene out to me.[return to page 4 of essay]

36. Troeften, ”Trans/acting,” 12.

37. Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,”  ARTnews, January (1971): 22-39, 67-71.

38. See Mercer, Welcome, 221-32.