Gender, Genre and Narrative Pleasure by Longhurst Derek;

Author:Longhurst, Derek;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 1989-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The very ‘syntax of envy’ suggests professional, middle-class, heterosexual mimicry as the gay ‘norm’ set up by the homophile movement prior to the 1970s. Where McIlvanney constantly focuses on the social, political and cultural co-ordinates of crime, Hansen keeps much closer to the surfaces, the ‘psychologies’. In the former writer, this quoted exchange would be part of a critical placing of a certain set of assumptions; in this text, it is coded in terms of what is seen as the characteristically self-pitying envy of this negatively constructed figure, Taylor. Nevertheless, the whole sequence is an important contradiction which points to Brandstetter’s closeness to the liberation, fluidity and ‘humanization’ of middle-class discourse and consciousness-raising: personal growth. His relationships are outside the governing philosophy of the hedonism of gay Los Angeles. Even when he invites Cecil Harris to live with him there is little sense of his ‘keeping a young man’ as a pastime or for fashion’s sake. In fact, Cecil is quite explicit about not wanting to be ‘kept’; their relationship is based upon companionship – a marriage model – not sexual adventure, unlike the negatively constructed bi-sexual, Miles Edwards in Gravedigger, who wants to marry, and have sex with, both Brandstetter and Cecil.

The novels do, however, make public, textualized and ‘speakable’ certain features of gay desire which marked a quite radical departure in popular forms. With Brandstetter, Hansen has perhaps created part of a gay liberal ‘fantasy’ that all homosexuals are basically the same as everyone else – as we have seen, the ‘suburban couple’ image is certainly strong. However, the transvestite figures in both Skinflick and Nightwork are coded positively (in the former text, there is one of only two instances in all seven novels, of Brandstetter being involved in ‘casual’ sex). In Nightwork, the ageing, rich, closet transvestite is surrounded by high walls, pillars and iron gates behind which he lives out fantasies based on an early love affair with screen idol Ramon Novarro (in his portrait, Novarro is for ever young). This is an interesting perspective because of Novarro’s marketing as a supreme icon of heterosexual masculinity. Linked with this is De Witt Gifford’s (the transvestite) protection of the young Hispanic gang leader, a Novarro look-alike and also gay, but who is publicly meaningful only in terms of his ‘macho’ imaging. His name Silencio refers both to his hidden sexuality and also to Novarro – the silents star.

These positive codings are an important strategy, even if based upon fairly simple image reversals; as so often, fear/mocking of transvestitism is fear of homosexuality itself (‘to be gay is to want to be a woman’). In a novel about the Moral Majority (Skinflick) this is significant because of the right’s caricature of the homosexual as ‘effeminate’ and ‘pederastic’, and it is also critical of bourgeois gay attitudes of exclusion (of transvestites) and collusion with a form of homophobia. Hansen doesn’t, however, while breaking with the internalized self-oppression represented by effeminacy, go along with the ‘clone’ masculinization of gay life (constructed around another set of stereotypes, perhaps, of the ‘super macho’).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.