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I See Gay People: “Whip It,” “Hannah Montana,” and Metaphors for Homosexuality

My affection for fictional characters knows no sexual orientation – but I do have a queer sixth sense when I watch TV and movies: I see gay people.

It was no surprise, then, that Drew Barrymore‘s grrrl-powered roller derby flick, Whip It, played itself out on two levels in my mind when I saw it last weekend. The first was Bliss Cavendar’s (Ellen Page) coming-of-age story. The second was Bliss Cavendar’s subversively sexual coming out story. What is surprising is that Jeremy Clyman, a columnist at Psychology Today, agrees with me. He wrote an article about Whip It on Psychology Today‘s Side Reel blog entitled “Lesbian Fantasy, Disguised.”

In it he says:

[Whip It] purports to be the story of a small town adolescent who rebels and finds her genuine identity as roller derby star athlete. But I think this film is also a secret communication to closeted lesbians living in hostile places in which the closet is the only safe place to be.
Clyman lists a number of factors that inform his hypothesis about Bliss’ sexual orientation: she “playfully [dyes] her hair blue for a beauty pageant”; her immediate infatuation with roller derby is “incited by the image of three women pushing each other” on skates; and, after always putting derby before him, she “dumps her boyfriend with suspicious ease and celerity.”

He also notes that the men in Whip It are portrayed as sexually non-threatening or impotent. Metaphorically, they’ve all been castrated.

If Bliss does represents a closeted lesbian, then her success as a roller derby star effectively signifies her coming out, a decision that is ultimately accepted and celebrated by her new community, her family and her long-time straight friends. After reading Clyman’s article it occurred to me that maybe my lesbian sixth sense is more than just wishful thinking.

Perhaps there’s something to be learned from my propensity to seek out subtext between female characters or to dig for LGBT themes in implicitly heterosexual stories.

The best of both worlds

I was reading Karen Joy Fowler’s Jane Austen Book Club the first time I realized I wasn’t the only lesbian in the world who bore the burden of a sixth sense.

During the book club’s reading of Pride and Prejudice, the lesbian character, Allegra, questions the sexual orientation of Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend: “What I was thinking was that Charlotte Lucas might be gay. Remember when she says she’s not romantic like Lizzie? Maybe that’s what she means. Maybe that’s why there’s no point in holding out for a better offer.”

One of the other book club members asks, “Are you saying Austen meant her to be gay … or that she’s gay and Austen doesn’t know it?”

It’s an astute observation on Allegra’s part, followed by a discussion similar to the ones I often have with myself: Did filmmakers intend for that character to be gay? Is she gay, but the screenwriters didn’t realize it? Is this really about roller derby?

I can think of two unlikely examples from movies I watched this summer. One is certainly an unintentional coming out allegory and the other, I believe, is a purposeful inclusion of a quiet queer character. I say they are unlikely because both are children’s movies, distributed by Disney.

First, the unintentional: Hannah Montana. If you are unfamiliar with Hannah Montana, I can catch you up with a few sentences: On the Disney Channel show, Miley Cyrus plays Miley Stewart, a normal teenager by day, and a pop superstar (Hannah Montana) by night. Only her dad, brother and best friend know her true identity.

Essentially, it’s a live-action version of Jem and the Holograms, with more pronounced southern accents.

While the Hannah Montana sitcom is thoroughly cheese-tastic from acting to laugh track, Hannah Montana: The Movie set a much more serious tone when it hit theaters in April. In the feature film, the burden of Miley’s double life begins to take its toll on her. She spends most of the movie trying to bridge the dissonance between the regular girl and the rock star. In the climactic scene, she stops performing in the middle of a concert and takes off her Hannah Montana disguise to reveal her true identity to the crowd.

It is a perfect symbolization of the coming out process, and I found myself moved by the message I thought Disney was sending to tweens: Live an honest life. Be true to yourself. (Be here! Be queer!)

Imagine my disappointment when the crowd pleads with Miley to put on her wig and return to her double life, effectively thrusting her back into the closet.

The intentional LGBT-themed kids movie of the summer, I believe, was Pixar’s Up. In it, we meet a tropical bird whose rainbow-colored plumage always sets him apart from his surroundings. Russel, the tag-along vagabond Boy Scout, names the bird “Kevin,” leaving us to assume he’s male. Late in the film, Russell discovers that Kevin is a mom: he has a flock of babies. To make matters worse, Kevin is being hunted down by the film’s villain (and his pack of freakishly obedient dogs).

There are a couple of reasons I think Pixar intended Kevin to represent either a lesbian (a boy who looks like a girl) or a transgender male (who is, in fact, male, but is able to reproduce). 1) He’s cloaked in a gay pride flag. 2) There’s no specific reason, plot-wise, for the audience or Russel to be confused about Kevin’s gender. 3) Up was conceived during the height of the Prop. 8 debacle in California. 4) Pixar’s films are notoriously symbolic. In The Pixar Touch, Andrew Stanton confirmed that Finding Nemo has an underlying Christian message that was influenced by his faith. And Jan Pinkava revealed that Ratatouille was formulated as a metaphor for coming out of the closet.

The Bible vs. Fan Fiction

So, there are homosexual themes in purportedly heterosexual films; what’s the big deal?

Well, according to Psychology Today‘s Jeremy Clyman, the big deal is that movies provide escape, which he argues is the primary purpose of entertainment.

About Whip It, he says:

We … have a subtextual discussion about lesbian sexuality in a way that satisfies unmet lesbian needs without explicitly communicating to the public that this is happening. The misery of concealable stigma is addressed, the theme of sexuality is activated and the threat of heterosexual sexuality is diffused.
In short: Lesbians in the audience can leave the theater feeling uplifted, while straight people in the audience can leave without feeling threatened.

While I agree that escape is one of the reasons people attend movies and watch television, I think there is an even deeper reason we seek out narrative entertainment: something about authentic fiction resonates with the human experience. It is what NPR’s Ira Glass calls “the pleasure of discovery, the pleasure of trying to make sense of the world.” Good stories, Glass says, ask “What bigger truth about all of us does it point to?”

We, as a human race, are moved by story.

Consider that the longest-surviving religious texts are predominantly narrative. Despite what conservative fundamentalists would have you believe, the Christian Bible, for example, is not a list of rules and regulations. It is 80 percent narrative, comprised of hundreds of stories of societal screw-ups searching for the things all of us are searching for: unconditional love, redemption and purpose.

The resonance of story is also the reason we see so much activity these days in online fan fiction communities.

Find yourself a die-hard Tibette (Tina and Bette from The L Word), Otalia (Olivia and Natalia from Guiding Light) or Naomily (Emily and Naomi from Skins) shipper, and ask her why she’s so invested in those characters. She will probably tell you it is because she sees something in the couples that she either identifies with, or one day hopes to identify with. And when television writers disappoint us, we rewrite the kind of happy endings we want for ourselves.

A lie that tells the truth

Picasso famously said “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”

Those truthful lies are why we, as a gay community, are affected so deeply by fictional stories of overcoming adversity or of successfully navigating duel identities and finding personal and societal acceptance as a whole person. There is an element of truth in these stories that we can cling to, truth we can apply to our unique difficulties as gay people – even if the stories are, at least superficially, about heterosexual characters dealing with heterosexual conflicts.

But is that acceptable? Shouldn’t the LGBT community have the opportunity to watch dynamic, organic gay characters on the big screen? Shouldn’t there be films that challenge the paradigms of heterosexuals? Absolutely.

But the fact is, there are closeted gays who would never attend a screening of a movie like Milk or Brokeback Mountain; just as there are ignorant heterosexuals who would never watch a film with such overt homosexuality.

Metaphors are necessary.

In fact, I would argue that metaphors are beneficial. In a world where homosexuals are, at best, are not allowed the same civil liberties as heterosexuals and are, at worst, beaten and killed because of their sexual orientation, it is common to feel isolated and misunderstood. A roller derby story that can be interpreted (or even misinterpreted) as a coming out story simply proves that some human struggles are universal. We are not alone.

Maybe the lesbian sixth sense causes me to read too much into movies and television shows. Or maybe it’s like Allegra says in The Jane Austen Book Club. Maybe characters have secrets their authors know nothing about.

Maybe they slip off when their author’s back is turned, to find love in their own way.

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