How Film Can Subject Us To A Non-Heterosexual Gaze Gender and Performativity in Carol (2015) and The Danish Girl (2015)

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How Film Can Subject Us To A

Non-Heterosexual Gaze

Gender and Performativity in Carol (2015) and The Danish Girl (2015)

University of Amsterdam

(Graduate School of Humanities) MA Media Studies: Film Studies

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Catherine Lord Second Reader: Dr. Abe Geil

Master Thesis submitted by: Michelle J.L. Versluis (12124168) Date: 28 June 2019

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Dedicated to all the beautiful people brave enough to be themselves and paving the way for our future generations towards a future without binary oppositions.

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Abstract

When we watch a film, we are positioned into a certain gaze that the camera work and other filmic elements guide us towards. However, these positions are often not deemed as successful and thus spark controversial debates. LGBTQ representation is often the center of these debates because there is a lack of LGBTQ representation in the film industry, both onscreen as offscreen. When reading reviews of these ‘controversial’ films, the emphasis is almost always on the identity of the actor and if they are ‘allowed’ to represent a certain group. In this thesis there is an attempt to reconcile representation and identification in film by looking at Judith Butler’s gender performativity and a reworking of Laura Mulvey’s gaze into a queer gaze. These theories are applied to Carol and The Danish Girl, the first one deemed successful in LGBTQ representation, the second a failure, however both controversial. Both films portray LGBTQ characters that are portrayed by non-LGBTQ actors. The aim of this thesis is to show that the different approaches and outcomes when analyzing representation. In order assess a representation we need to be more open-minded and fluid and reject our contemporary norms that are often gendered and heterosexual.

Key words:

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Reconciling Representation and Identification:

An Introduction

When putting a magnifying glass on mainstream Hollywood cinema, LGBTQ representation is something that we do not see very often yet. Surely there is some representation but this is often stereotyped. A lot of studies that researched representation in the film industry show that women and racial or ethnic minorities remain underrepresented.1_{The Gay & Lesbian Alliance}

Against Defamation (GLAAD) is a non-profit organization that was founded by LGBTQ people in the media and they research the LGBTQ representation in the media. They publish reports every year where they analyze TV shows and the major film studios. They also publish lists of LGBTQ characters in in TV shows on their website.2_{In their report from 2017 they showed}

that even though ‘high-profile’ Academy Awards wins for art-house films, like Call Me By

Your Name (2017), LGBTQ representation still declined when looking at a total of a more than

hundred films from these major film studios. None of these films featured a representation of a transgender character either.3_{Throughout this thesis I will mention LGBTQ, short for Lesbian,}

Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer, even though this abbreviation has more suffixes already, LGBTQIA. The reason for this is because in this thesis the focus will be more on the LGBTQ representation and identification and does not really focus on the IA part.

This lack of representation is not just in the films but in the mass media and award shows as well. When looking at the Academy Awards, a ‘high-profile’ Hollywood exclusive award show, also here there is a lack of acknowledging LGBTQ representation by actual LGBTQ actors. Admittedly, this year’s nominations and wins were dubbed the ‘queerest in history’ where straight actors received numerous nominations for portraying LGBTQ characters. “Historically, even when LGBTQ films have been nominated for Oscars, they have stood alone.

Call Me By Your Name (2017), Moonlight (2016) and TheImitationGame (2014) were the only

LGBTQ films nominated for Best Picture in their respective years.”4_{There have been LGBTQ}

actors who have won an Academy Award for portraying heterosexual characters, and

1_{Maryann Erigha, “Race, Gender, Hollywood: Representation in Cultural Production and Digital Media’s}

Potential for Change,” Sociology Compass, 9:1, (2015), 78.

2_{GLAAD Media Institute, “About,” website GLAAD.org, last accessed 4 March 2019,}

https://www.glaad.org/about

3_{GLAAD Media Institute, “Studio Responsibility Index 2018,” website GLAAD.org, last accessed 16 January}

2019, https://www.glaad.org/sri/2018.

4_{Jill Gutowitz, “This Year’s Oscars Will Be the Queerest Ever. But There’s a Bigger Story Behind the}

Numbers,” website Time, published January 23, 2019, last accessed 13 April, 2019,

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heterosexual actors who have won an Academy Award for portraying LGBTQ characters. There are also LGBTQ actors who have won an Academy Award but at the time were not exclusively out with their sexuality, for example Kevin Spacey who has won an Academy Award for his role in AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999).5 This often spikes debated in the media and

online about the underrepresentation of LGBTQ people. The focus here is always on the representation of LGBTQ identities of the actors and characters but the performing qualities of these actors is often left out.

In 2015, there were two very influential, but also controversial, films released that had an impact on the LBGTQ community, Carol (2015) and The Danish Girl (2015). Carol was received very good reviews from the critics and got high ratings.6_{However, The Danish Girl}

had more varied reviews which spiked some controversial debates in the LGBTQ community.7

Both films and their actors were nominated for Academy Awards however, only one of them won. Being nominated for, or even winning, an Academy Awards is as an actor or filmmaker seen as one of the biggest achievements in their career. Even though the voters in the Academy Award are exclusive Academy Award members only, the media attention around the award ceremony is worldwide spread. Because it is ‘worldwide’ covered in the mass media it can thus be regarded as influential on representations, especially of those of minorities. When looking at the actors of the films mentioned above, the transgender woman in The Danish Girl is played by a heterosexual actor, Eddie Redmayne. And in Carol, Cate Blanchett is not really open about her sexual orientation and Rooney Mara is often left out of this discussion mainly because the focus is on Cate Blanchett.

Even though these films share two completely different stories they do have some similarities beginning with the fact that they both portray underrepresented LGBTQ characters. Both films also received high praise, by getting nominated for lots of awards, for the achievements of the actors. Both Cate Blanchett and Eddie Redmayne received Academy Award nominations for best achievement as a leading character. Rooney Mara was nominated for best achievement as a supporting character and Alicia Vikander actually won an Academy Award for best achievement as a supporting character.8_{Another thing these two films have in}

5_{“List of LGBT Academy Award Winners and Nominees,” Wikipedia, last accessed 4 March 2019,}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT_Academy_Award_winners_and_nominees

6_{Metacritic is a database of reviews and ratings from certified critics which often differ from the ratings from}

IMDB and are thus also mentioned separately on IMDB. On Metacritic there is a distinction between critic reviews and user reviews because of this.

“Carol,” website Metacritic, last accessed 13 June 2019, https://www.metacritic.com/movie/carol.

7_{“The Danish Girl,” website Metacritic, last accessed 13 June 2019,}

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-danish-girl.

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common is the fact that the characters appear fluid in their genders, shifting from masculine to feminine and vice versa. Besides, this fluidity does not apply only the characters but to the actors as well. When looking at the filmographies of Eddie Redmayne and Cate Blanchett they both portrayed a character from the opposite side.

These films sparked debates about the LGBTQ representation because they were all portrayed by, allegedly, non-LGBTQ actors. These accusations about representation are all based on identity, saying that a non-LGBTQ actor does not deserve an award for portraying a LGBTQ character. In an interview Cate Blanchett told the interviewer that she received the most questions about her sexuality when doing the press tour for Carol. These questions imply and question, according to her, that to understand such a character and portray such a role she must have had a lesbian experience. In her opinion this defies the whole point of acting in general; “And I will fight to the death for the right to suspend disbelief and play roles beyond my experience.”9_{Discussing the fact that her personal sexuality and portraying a character are}

supposed to be seen separate from each other. She mentions that it provides a lot of opportunity for the actors to portray an LGBTQ character but with all the discussions around diversity and representation people now expect for the actor to have a close connection to the character, which all should be based on experience. Her skills as an actress are not mentioned in a debate like this, the focus is all on identity. For her as an actress it is all about trying to understand the importance of storytelling.10

With The Danish Girl it is different kind of discussion about the LGBTQ representation. The film was criticized by the public about the wrong use of historicity, even though it is based on a fictitious novel, and the use of a cisgender actor for the portrayal of a transgender character. Some criticized it even for being too femme forced erotized, saying that the gender reconstruction was just put in as an afterthought to the whole film. Next to this critics have also said that Eddie Redmayne not winning the Academy Award for this role is seen as a win for transwomen, calling his casting as in this film ‘Oscarbait’ since the year before he won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014). “Casting a cis man as a trans woman is akin to casting a white person in a role written for a person of color or a non-disabled person in a disabled role – both of which happen routinely in

https://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000003/2016/1?ref_=ttawd_ev_1.

9_{Ariston Anderson, “Rome: Cate Blanchett Defends Straight Actors Playing Gay Characters,” website The}

Hollywood Reporter, published 19 October 2018, last accessed 6 March 2019,

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rome-cate-blanchett-defends-straight-actors-playing-gay-characters-1154008.

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Hollywood.”11_{The film is seen as a setback to transgender representation in Hollywood after}

Dallas Buyers Club (2013), who, two years prior, opened up the discussion about the lack of

trans people on screen.

Thus, there are difficulties surrounding the casting of LGBTQ actors for portraying LGBTQ characters. These difficulties are not unknown to the film going public who are always quick to respond to these themes and issues. Especially when popular actors, who are known to be heterosexual, portray non-heterosexual characters. Star theory is an analytical research method that focuses around the actor’s performance and how this performance influences the experience of the spectator. The origins of star theory is mostly known through the works of Richard Dyer, who in 1980 wrote the book Stars.12_{In this book he developed the idea that the}

spectator’s experience of a film is influenced by its perception of the star and the star’s performance, like Cate Blanchett’s lingering looks and Eddie Redmayne’s awkwardness that expresses in his every move and expression. He explains that stars are constructed through mass media, magazines, advertising and etcetera, and that they are produced in this way to create a profit for the film industry. Stars are constructed to represent ‘real people’ with real emphatic emotions. However, a star is also seen as an ideology by Dyer, because a star often represents a social group, the result of this is that the spectator will idolize this star. A star thus starts as a ‘real’ person but slowly transforms into a construct, a construct that can be made into a brand.13

Richard Dyer also explains that there exists a paradox in stardom which means that a star has to be both ordinary and extraordinary, present and absent. The star needs to be ‘like us’ but at the same time be the person we idolize to become, something out of our league. They need to exist as part of our lives, that we discuss them in our social circles and may construct our identity, but they are absent in the fact that they are not really there.14_{In another book,}

Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, he continues this star research and argues that not

only the media constructs a star’s image but the spectator does so too. The spectator selects what it wants to believe and deems important, to create an image of the actor that gives meaning to him/her personally.15

11_{S.E. Smith, “Why The Danish Girl’s Oscar loss is a satisfying win for trans women,” website PRI, published}

12 March 2016, last accessed 6 March 2019, https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-12/why-danish-girl-s-oscar-loss-satisfying-win-trans-women.

12_{Richard Dyer, Stars. (London: New York Film Institute. 1979).} 13_{Richard Dyer, “Part One: Stars as a Social Phenomenon,” Stars, 7 - 32.} 14_{Richard Dyer, Stars, 43.}

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Another academic that is specialized in star studies is Philip Drake who focuses more on screen performance in his article “Reconceptualizing Screen Performance”.16_{In this article he suggests}

that when conceptualizing performance it should involve more than just reading actor’s performances, it needs a wider consideration of the ontology of film and the epistemological frames through which a screen performance makes sense.17_{He argues: “[…] there remains a}

conceptual gap between modes of film analysis (formalist, industrial, psychoanalytical) and the demands that an analysis of screen performance places upon them. Film theory, […] remains conspicuously silent on questions of performance.”18_{His central argument is that performance}

is fundamentally different from representation and that all media texts are in a way performative because they construct particular relationships between the audience and the performer.

Thus, as I argued above as well, we need a concept that fills the gap between film analysis and screen performance analysis. Drake argues that stardom, in a way, can fill this gap when they use a certain degree of ostensiveness, a scale of frequently used gestures. These gestures are performance signs and are what makes an actor’s work recognizable as his and his only and create what he calls their ‘idiolect’. Importantly, this idiolect of the actor does not have to involve emphatic performance, but their voice is normally a powerful sign of identification.19_{He also argues that screen performers are aware of the way the camera frames}

them and so they adjust their performance accordingly. This means that for instance with a close-up facial gestures are important because the slightest movement is highlighted and gives meaning to the character’s interiority.20_{A star performance means that the performer has to}

adjust in a way by varying the ostensiveness of their performance so that gap between performer and character is closed.21

Star theory only focuses on how the performance of the actor can influence the experience of the spectator. However, there are other analytical approaches which focus on the representation onscreen which are important for this kind of research. These approaches also originate from film studies but are combined with approaches from gender studies. In the seventies when feminist film theory was founded, gender studies and film studies were already academically linked. In her book And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory,

16_{Philip Drake, “Reconceptualizing Screen Performance,” Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 58, No.}

1/2, 2006), 84.

17_{Philip Drake, “Reconceptualizing Screen Performance,” Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 58, No.}

1/2, 2006), 84.

18_Idem.

19_{Philip Drake, 87-88.} 20_{Philip Drake, 89.} 21_{Philip Drake, 93.}

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Anneke Smelik explains that feminist film theory derives from two different perspectives, semiotics and psychoanalysis. “From semiotics, feminist film critics learned to analyze the crucial role of cinematic techniques in the representation of sexual desire. From psychoanalysis, they learned to analyze structures of desire and subjectivity.22_{An example from Carol and The}

Danish Girl are how the females are captures by the camera. The camera keeps focusing and

almost lingers on every move and gesture they make. Especially in The Danish Girl, it is this emphasis on the gestures and hand movements that defines Lili’s femininity. In Carol it is the numerous close ups of nicely painted nails and the brushing of hair, to just give a few semiotic examples. Other examples could be the use of language in Carol are the secret looks Therese and Carol exchange as a way to show their desires for each other. In The Danish Girl it is a light flicker of a desire when Einar looks at the feminine gestures a woman makes. In her book Smelik states: “Film is no longer seen as reflecting meanings, but as constructing them; thus cinema as a cultural practice actively produces meanings about women and femininity.”23

Feminist film theory caused a shift in focus in film studies, not focusing solely on the ideological content of a film but rather the production of the meaning of a film.

An example of a psychoanalytical approach as Smelik mentions in her book, is found back in the spectatorship theory by Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” where she explains the notion of the gaze. Shortly, the gaze is the way of looking or being looked at a character in a film. Mulvey explains that in traditional Hollywood cinema this gaze is mostly a male gaze that voyeuristically looks at the female as a lust object.24_{In chapter one,}

this notion of the gaze and how power relations can be established will be explained more thoroughly by reworking Laura Mulvey’s notion off the gaze, which is a heterosexual and male gaze, into a queer gaze and applying it to Carol. “In most cases, the gaze is used to help explain the hierarchal power relations between two or more groups or, alternatively, between a group and an ‘object’”.25_{Mulvey’s notion of the gaze is important because it can be used to analyze}

and establish the power relations between for instance the characters, but also between the character and the spectator, the character and society to name but a few possibilities.

However, to rework Laura Mulvey’s notion of the gaze into a ‘queer gaze’ an explanation of queer theory and more importantly for this thesis, gender performativity is

22_{Anneke Smelik, “1. What meets the Eye: An Overview of Feminist Film Theory,” And the Mirror Cracked:}

Feminist Cinema and Film Theory, (London: MacMillan Press, 1998,) 9.

23_Idem.

24_{Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Visual and Other Pleasures, (New York: Palgrave,}

1989), 19.

25_{Clifford T. Manlove, “Visual “Drive” and Cinematic Narrative: Reading Gaze Theory in Lacan, Hitchcock,}

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needed. It is said that queer theory was founded by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism

and the Subversion of Identity, published in 1990.26_{Queer theory is a counter movement from}

feminist studies that looks further than the straight female. Important to note is that queer theory is not necessarily a theory that is used in film studies and comes from gender studies and sociology. Judith Butler explains that the feminist theory is problematic in its approach because it restricts the meaning of gender and has often homophobic consequences. “It was and remains my view that any feminist theory that restricts the meaning of gender in the presuppositions of its own practice sets up exclusionary gender norms within feminism, often with homophobic consequences.”27_{Queer theory does not take heterosexuality or binary gender constructions as}

its starting point or norm. it is a sociological and philosophical theory that in a way criticizes all the notion of sexuality in relation to heteronormativity.

Queer is a term without a clear definition because the definition can change all the time. In Queer Theory: An Introduction Annemarie Jagose gives a definition of queer:

Broadly speaking, queer describes those gestures or analytical models which dramatize incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations between chromosomal sex, gender and sexual desire. Resisting that model of stability – which claims heterosexuality as its origin, when it is more properly its effect – queer focuses on mismatches between sex, gender and desire. Institutionally, queer has been associated most prominently with lesbian and gay subjects, but its analytical frameworks also includes such topics as cross-dressing, hermaphroditism, gender ambiguity and gender-corrective surgery.28

Judith Halberstam in “In a Queer Time and Place” says “part of what has made queerness compelling as a form of self-description in the past decade or so has to do with the way it has the potential to open up new life narratives and alternative relations to time and space.”29_The

term queer thus does not have a fixed and static definition, the definition of queer is supposed to be very fluid because the definition still changes and it develops just like our understanding of everything outside heterosexuality. She explains that queer was once used as slang for homosexual and as a term of homophobic abuse. But that in the recent years it has become more of an umbrella term for “a coalition of culturally marginal sexual self-identifications and at other times to describe a nascent theoretical model which has developed out of more lesbian

26_{Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, (New York: Routledge, 2006).} 27_{Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, viii.}

28_{Annemarie Jagose, “Introduction,” Queer Theory: An Introduction, (New York: New York University Press,}

1996), 3.

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and gay studies,” 30_{which is how this term will mostly be used in this research. It this book she}

attempts to give an overview of queer theory and how queer theory can be used as a school of thought.31

Judith Butler is mostly known from her work Gender Trouble where she explains the notion of queer theory and gender performativity. Butler tries to explain that gender is not a construction but that gender is performative. It is performative in the sense that we are not born with a specific gender but that we perform a gender. In this way gender is not an expression of what one is but more of what one does. We grow up with the idea that our gender in determined by our sex, however they are different because gender is thus performative. It is performative in the sense that our identity is formed by a set of repetitive acts that we enact and make our own. When coming across these gendered acts, which are for instance only feminine, we have no other way of knowing other gendered acts. This means that our gender almost acts as a society organizing tool. Butler explains that performativity of gender is learned by these repetitive examples of gender we come across during the shaping of our identity.

However, Judith Butler goes a bit further than this notion of performing gender by saying that gender is just as fluid as a performance, and that gender thus is not something static with an end result but can change over time. This changes by coming across other acts of gender that a person is not yet familiar with and adapting them as their own. Identification, then, is also something that constantly changes, because to identify is to desire a certain gender.32_She

explains that identification is ‘the phantasmatic staging of the event’33_{which means that the}

identification process is something imaginary, something she calls phantasmatic identification. In chapter two, I will go more deeply into Judith Butler’s notion of queer theory and her definition of phantasmatic identification. Even though Butler’s notion of queer theory and phantasmatic identification are not film theoretical concepts, it can be used as a tool to analyze the gender performativity of a character in a film, which is how I will apply this theory on The

Danish Girl, to explain the gender performativity of Einar into Lili. The notion of gender

performativity is important for this thesis because it shows how fluid a gender or sexuality can be and how we all perform our identities. I want to propose a queer gaze for analyzing films portraying LGBTQ characters instead of still putting them in boxes.

30_{Annemarie Jagose, 1.} 31_{Annemarie Jagose, 1-2.}

32_{Judith Butler, “Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sex,” Bodies That Matter: On the}

Discursive Limits of Sex, (New York: Routledge, 2011), 68.

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The focus in this thesis will not be on how ‘realistic’ the representations in these two films,

Carol and The Danish Girl, are. There are two main reasons for this, which are mainly personal,

the first one being that I identify as a cisgender female and thus would not be able to rate how realistic these representations are. Second, which is the main assumption and incentive for this research, is that I believe that representation and identification are subjective and personal and could therefore not be analyzed in an objective and collective way. Especially when looking back at Judith Butler’s argument of the fluidity of gender and sexuality. The focus will be on the processes of identification and how they could have an influence on the representation of the character. In this way we look further than the identity of the actor to review their performance. This means that we have to look further than a representation being realistic and focus on the ‘how’ of the representation, and to what extent are we being influenced by the filmic elements that guide us when watching a film. What we see onscreen is already a multitude of representations brought together because there has already been input from different perspectives that create a certain representation which the spectator assesses and give meaning to. The spectator is directed in a certain gaze to give meaning to the representation onscreen, what this leaves out is that the character onscreen is a representation of the performance of the actor portraying that character. This representation can of course be influenced by their own identity, but it is not a necessity to identify with a character to be able to perform as that character.

I want to propose that the identity of the actor is not important when representing a certain social group, in this case the LGTBQ community. My reasoning behind this is that representation is not based on the identity of the actor, but that of the character. The actor follows a script that lists the characteristics of the character and interprets them. However, what we see onscreen is not solely this interpretation of these characteristics by an actor, but a collaboration of the performance of the actor and the filmic elements that support this performance. Not only do they support but they also guide the spectator, which means that what we see is what the filmmaker wants us to see. This means that every interpretation of a representation can be different. What all these interpretations, and reviews and discussions about the representation have in common however, are the fact that we still focus on the identities of the characters and the actors. We still attempt to put them in ‘boxes’, when the aim of bringing up homosexuality or transgenderism in a film, or life in general, is to educate people. When we review or analyze a film, we do not seem to do this outside heteronormative because we as a society are programmed to do so. However, this always leaves us with views and beliefs that have been constructed for us instead of creating them ourselves.

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In this thesis I would like to propose a way to reconcile representation and identification and look further than these power-based dynamics that society has put as our norms. By reading with Judith Butler and her notion of gender performativity, and reworking Laura Mulvey’s gendered heterosexual gaze into a queer gaze, I want to engage with Carol and The Danish

Girl, and deconstruct these gender and sexuality based power dynamics. In her book, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler mentions in the 1999 preface:

“Those who make such prescriptions or who are willing to decide between subversive and unsubversive expressions of gender, base their judgement on a description. Gender appears in this or that form, and then a normative judgement is made about those appearances and on the basis of what appears.”34

What Butler mentions here is exactly then what seems to happen in discussions about representation in film. I would like to analyze how different filmic elements help us deconstruct the gaze in a film, and how they subvert the spectator to a gaze that is outside their comfort zone. The aim is show that is possible for us to analyze a film and their character representations outside the heterosexual norms, thus creating the possibility for plural identities as a ‘norm’. This will be done by, as mentioned before, analyzing Carol and The Danish Girl, both these films include scenes where the heterosexual spectator is subverted to a queer gaze.

In the first chapter, the gaze in Carol will be analyzed with a reworking of Laura Mulvey’s gaze into a queer gaze. This film tells two different stories, one which the heterosexual gaze follows, and one which the queer gaze follows. We can deconstruct this by looking at the filmic elements such as camera work, editing and the how the characters behave towards each other. Because it is set in the fifties, we are dealing with capitalism and a taboo on same-sex relationships. Thus, when two women are in a relationship, they have to show affection and desire in different, and mostly secretive, ways, with the use of a simple touch or lingering stare. It is this queer gaze that shows the spectator not only what these women desire, but also a story of love, and calls the spectator to have the same desire to be loved in a similar way.

In chapter two, I will analyze The Danish Girl, also looking at the filmic aspects and how they guide the spectator but by applying a different analytical tool, Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity. Eddie Redmayne’s performance as Einar/Lili in The Danish Girl is an example of gender performativity, because we not only see gender performativity in the actor but also onscreen. It shows a story of a man that never had a feeling he belonged

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somewhere, to desiring to be a woman. The camerawork shows the spectator not only what he lacks as a man who desires to be a woman but emphasizes this desire. We see Einar, biologically a man, performing as a woman, that what he desires most which he does so by repeating movements that he has seen other women do.

In the last chapter, I will recap these findings and look at them in a more contextual way rather than just focusing on the performances onscreen. I will attempt to analyze whether we can say something about the performances of these actors and how they may, or may not, have an influence on their performances in Carol and The Danish Girl. As mentioned before, Eddie Redmayne has a specific, almost awkward, kind of acting style that we see in The Danish Girl, but also in The Theory of Everything (2014) and Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (2016). When looking at Cate Blanchett, who also portrays a man, Jude, in I’m Not There (2007), but has a variety of different kinds of character portrayals in MAnifesto (2015), both

male and female. This chapter thus will focus more on the notion of stardom, Cate Blanchett and Eddie Redmayne, itself instead of their characters in Carol and The Danish Girl. However, when analyzing stardom there are struggles with representation and interpretation which is why there will be given short summaries of the different ways stardom, performativity and representation can be analyzed.

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Chapter 1:

The Queer Gaze in Carol (2015)

Power lies in the roots of the gaze.35

Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gamman

Introduction: A Film Outside the Heterosexual Male Gaze

In 2016, Carol was named the best LGBT film as a result of a critical survey of LGBTQ+ films which was executed by the British Film Institute. In an updated version of this list, from 2018, it still remains in the first place. Over a hundred film experts, including critics, writers and programmers, have voted for this top 30.36_C_AROL_{is directed by Todd Haynes, a director who}

is a big advocate for the LGBTQ community in general, and starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. The two actresses were both nominated for Academy Awards for their roles in this film. The story is about Therese, an aspiring photographer in her twenties who falls in love with an older woman, Carol, and is set in the fifties. In the fifties same-sex relationships were forbidden and for two women to fall in love would thus need to happen in different ways which is exactly what this film is trying to show. The film does so by trying to subvert the heterosexual spectator to a queer gaze with the help of different filmic element. The story of the film is about Carol who at the time is still married to a man, however they have been living separately for a while and are in the process of a divorce. Her husband, Harge, does not want a divorce because he is concerned about his status in society because he does not seem to want to divorce a woman because of her sexuality, although she is not exclusively ‘out’. He petitions a morality clause against her where he threatens to expose her sexuality and give him full custody of their daughter. He thinks that she is unfit to be a mother to their daughter because of her sexuality.

This film tells the spectator two different stories, one which the spectator follows through the camera which tells a story of two women dealing with their identities in a time where their love is restricted because of the law. The second one the spectator reads in the looks that Therese and Carol exchange, which is completely different story than the first one, this is a love story through their gazes where they show their desires for each other in secret. This is

35_{Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gamman, “The Gaze Revisited, or Reviewing Queer Viewing,” Queer Romance:}

Lesbians, gay men and popular culture, edited by Paul Burston and Colin Richardson, (New York: Routledge,

1995), 20.

36_{“The 30 Best LGBTQ+ Films of All Time,” website British Film Institute, last updated 19 July 2018, last}

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why I will be using the term the gaze in combination with spectatorship theory from Laura Mulvey to analyze the looks in Carol and locate the gaze in this chapter, which is clearly defined as a female or queer gaze. In short, and as mentioned before, the gaze is a psychoanalytic term that analyzes the way of a character in a film is looking and being looked at by the spectator, who is guided by the camerawork and other filmic aspects. This gaze is, in classic narrative cinema, a male gaze, where the female character is seen in a voyeuristic way and mostly only functions as a lust object for the male spectator. In this chapter I will be using Mulvey’s concept of the gaze and apply it to Carol. However, because Mulvey’s notion of the gaze is heterosexual and gendered it will be reworked into a queer gaze. With this reworking of the gaze into a queer gaze we are able to deconstruct how the filmic elements subvert the spectator into a queer gaze, a gaze that maybe is outside their identity.

Laura Mulvey and the Queer Gaze

To be able to rework Laura Mulvey’s notion of the gaze it is important to know the basic principle and definition of this notion. She first mentioned the gaze in her article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Screen in 1975, a film magazine that covers the international film business and includes essays on film. This article and the theory she discusses became an influential staple in the film studies. She later republishes the same article in her book Visual and Other Pleasures. In this article she proposes a psychoanalytically inspired analysis which focuses on the structures of looking in Hollywood narrative film. It is thus an analysis that focuses on the reception of the spectator and how the narrative in a film guides the view of the spectator. She discusses that spectatorship is based on a division between active looking, which is done by men, and the passivity of the female, who is being looked at. The female is projected on the screen as the embodiment of the fantasy of the male. “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.”37_{This means that women are not just looked at but are also displayed in}

an erotic way by the male gaze, something she connotes to-be-looked-at-ness.38

37_{Laura Mulvey, 19.} 38_Idem.

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She argues that the ideal spectator is always positioned as male, and that his visual pleasure is derived from objectification of the female characters and the narcissistic process of identification positioning himself as the male hero, or ‘the ideal ego’. This theory she has drawn from Freud’s ideas of scopophilia, pleasure and the ego libido. However, she also draws on Lacan’s notion of the mirror phase and explains that recognition is overlaid with misrecognition.39_{“[…] the image recognized is conceived as the reflected body of the self, but}

it is misrecognition as superior project this body outside itself as an ideal ego, the alienated subject which, re-introjected as an ego ideal, prepares the way for identification with other in the future.”40_{When looking at the Hollywood film we can verify that in general the films}

present the men as active and dominant and that the women are treated as passive objects of desire, without being desired objects in their own right. She even goes as far as to state that the female figure poses an even deeper problem than it just being a lust object for the male spectator. What the female lacks is having a penis, which implicates that sexual excitement is not possible when not having a penis. “She also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure.”41_{When a woman is on the screen there is always an emphasis on something that}

represents her lack of penis; tight clothing, high heels, close-ups on breasts and legs or other body parts, long hair, bracelets, everything that society and the mass media stereotype as feminine.

“Traditionally, the women displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.”42_Before

feminism became popular in film studies as well, there was no notion of this happening in the films. But because of Laura Mulvey’s theory there has been a shift in the way we look at film and the ways in which we can analyze film. When applying her theory, we can psychoanalytically analyze the gaze of the camera and the character attached to it and how this gaze can influence the spectator. Which makes her theory valuable in this analytical method because it gives the tools on how the gaze in every film can be analyzed. Mulvey makes a distinction between three types of looks that influence the cinematic experience for the spectator; that of the camera as it is filming, that of the spectator, and the interactions or looks

39_{Laura Mulvey, 16-18.} 40_{Laura Mulvey, 17.} 41_{Laura Mulvey, 21.} 42_{Laura Mulvey, 19.}

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between the characters onscreen. “The conventions of narrative film deny the first two and subordinate them to the third, the conscious aim being always to eliminate intrusive camera presence and prevent a distancing awareness in the audience.”43_{Especially in classical}

Hollywood cinema there is no acknowledgement of the presence of the camera or the presence of the audience because of the rules of continuity.44_{Instead of being absorbed as a spectator}

following the male gaze, we, as women, are now able to look from a distance.

The gap in this approach concerning the research of this thesis, is that this theory, and Mulvey’s gendered approach specifically, only focuses on the experience of the male spectator and his desire and identification. What is left out is the issue of the desire of the female spectator and identification and thus also a queer gaze. It is thus a very gendered and also binary approach, it is only men versus women, and thus leaves out, for instance, transgendered spectators. But also bisexual spectators, because they can regard all genders as erotic. I would like to show that even though Mulvey’s approach does not incorporate the queer gaze, it can still be used as a basic analytical tool to analyze this queer gaze. We can still analyze how the camera work and other filmic aspects positions the spectator in a certain position that is outside their own identity. This is enhanced by the aesthetic structures in the film itself and creates an identification for the spectator that he or she thus maybe never experienced before.

How Carol Creates a Queer Gaze That is Understandable to the Heterosexual Spectator

Carol seems to be the embodiment of the opposite of the male gaze in classical Hollywood

cinema, and thus uses a queer gaze. Carol has the gaze as its key aspect of narrating the story, in such a way that it can be argued that the looks they exchange tell their love story. At first their looks look almost lonely, which reflects on their personal lives. This is visible in the first scene where they meet for the first time in the shopping mall where Therese works. At first, they are both very distant in the frame as if they are just two random people in the story. However, the camera slowly zooms in when they see each other for the first time. When Carol approaches Therese at the desk we are more positioned closer to them, however still very distant, which changes at a scene a little later in the film where they meet in a diner. These

43_{Laura Mulvey, 25.}

44_{Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, “Cinema as Eye – Look and Gaze,” Film Theory: An Introduction}

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distant positions in combination with their lingered staring to nothing in particular give an overall sad atmosphere in the scene. Given the information we know from the characters separately already, we know that Therese is not happy with her job and love life. There is no enthusiasm in the things she does, but she lights up from the moment when she sees Carol. Carol’s look and expression seems empty at first as well which can be derived from the fact that she is going through a divorce, and will possibly lose her child, which we learn a little later in the film. This is enhanced by the cold lighting and her position in the frame, which is not in the center, but more to the left creating a big space next to her as if something or someone is missing from her side. Another thing that is creating this space is her far distance from where the camera is positioned. What happens in this film is that their looks evolve in a way when they meet and fall in love, they become warm and loving, but at the same time secretive in their desires.

Although the looks they exchange are discrete, when analyzed closely they can be regarded as flirtatious and seem to have a depth to them not visible to the heterosexual gaze in their filmic world. There is an emphasis on their looks, not only towards each other, but also their furtive glances out of windows and their reflections in mirrors. Same-sex love is forbidden in the fifties and so they use their yes and light toughing throughout the film to express their desires. This gives the film a secretive vibe, when looking closely we are let into their little secret of love. What this also does is creating a queer gaze for the viewer, putting them in this power position that creates a desire of wanting to be looked at in the same way, despite their sexual orientation. This is done with using two different ways of looking that they use throughout the whole film, which are a direct stare and a broken stare. This direct stare is mostly used in the beginning when they first meet at the department store where Therese works. From the moment Carol walks in Therese notices her and keeps staring at her and almost everything

Image 1: Scene where Carol and Therese meet for the first time. Showing both women from a distance, the spectator positioned somewhere in between them.

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around them seem to disappear for a moment. They lock eyes for a brief moment and then this stare is interrupted by a female customer with her child who asks Therese a question. When Therese is able to look again Carol has disappeared, but suddenly a second later stands in front of her.

The broken stare is mostly used when they are sitting facing each other at a restaurant or café. This broken stare seems to be their way of flirting and implicates a sexual attraction as well. It starts with a stare which gets broken off by looking at something on the table, food, a drink etcetera, and then they continue this stare again. An example of such a moment is when they are meeting each other for the first time in a diner. The scene starts with Therese staring outside the window waiting for Carol to arrive. At this point of the scene the spectator is following her point of view, we see what see is seeing. However, this changes when they sit down at a table in the diner. We follow their conversation with an over the shoulder view the whole time, which is very distant from the beginning but eventually moves in closer when their conversation becomes more intimate and personal. Notable here is that even though the spectator is placed outside of their booth, by the over the shoulder camera position, we are still getting involved in their conversation. They are not positioned in the center of the frame but more to the left with a distinct amount of negative space.

Image 3: Shot from the diner, the focus is only on them, the waiter is intentionally left out of the frame. Spectator is positioned outside the booth.

Image 4: When the conversation starts to get more personal the camera zooms in, only seeing Carol and Therese now.

Image 5: Close up of Therese during this conversation, not really showing any emotion.

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However, because we are not seeing what is happening around them, not even the face of the waiter is shown, we are positioned in this bubble that they created. The shot-reverse-shots are long and lingers on their expressions and gestures which enhances their every look and move. The shot-reverse-shots create this intimacy which for the outside world might not be visible but is shown to the spectator. These glances and stares are thus their way of showing their desire to each other when they cannot say it out loud, which is most of the time. In much of their time they must hide these desires, but their gaze reveals these to the spectator almost as if the spectator is the only person beside Carol and Therese who is let in on this secret. What this does is that the camera puts the spectator in the position of that exists inside this bubble that they have created between them, this secret they both share, it almost compels a desire to the spectator that he or she might not have ever experienced.

The whole movie is shot and narrated from the point of view of Therese and we follow her gaze and, in this way, also her awakening of her sexuality, although this is never very explicit. Her gaze seems to be closely linked to her relationship with photography. When she is dating Richard, a very cold relationship that feels forced, she is not interested in taking pictures of people and she explains that she believes that people do not move her. This is why she has no interest in capturing them on film but also refers to her almost sterilizing relationship with Richard. Although during a conversation with her friend Dannie, he advices her that she should start taking pictures of people which she immediately does so by taking pictures of Carol when they meet again. This camera is at first an object that separates her physically from her object of desire, Carol, so that she can safely observe her. This is the reason for the emphasis on the film camera and her making pictures of Carol. In the scene where they go and buy a Christmas tree, we see a shot of a close up of the film camera when Therese puts in a new film role in the camera. Because in this scene the focus is so much on the camera the spectator is positioned inside the camera, thus in-between Carol and Therese. The spectator is, in a way, forced to be take a queer position for a while. The use of the camera, and Therese photographing Carol, could also emphasize a new start in her life where she starts to see things differently. However, after the trip when they no longer speak, these pictures are a lasting representation not only for her desire for Carol but also her female gaze.

Thus, the film is shot from Therese’s gaze, a female gaze but also a queer gaze which is at times amplified by the use of photography. Photography is used here as a reference to photographs of women in the fifties with the works of Saul Leiter being a huge influence. Saul Leiter is a photographer from the fifties who photographed a lot of women behind glass windows, in cars and in the reflections of mirrors. Some of these pictures are sometimes also

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very intimate showing a naked woman in a vulnerable state. These pictures are showcasing the beauty of women outside the male gaze.45_{These photographs are sometimes even parallel to}

what is what we see happening onscreen. We constantly see Therese and Carol looking through windows and in mirrors. When they are buying a Christmas tree and she starts making pictures of Carol, these pictures as well share resemblances to the works of Saul Leiter. Other works of Therese, for instance the intimate picture she has taken when Carol was asleep during their trip also resemblances the intimate work of Saul Leiter.

As mentioned before, the film plays with the gaze having a constant focus on the looks Therese and Carol share. And even though it is mostly a Therese’s gaze, there seems to be a shift in the gaze of the film, because it seems to go from Therese’s gaze to Carol gaze at the end of the film which is emphasized by the recurrence of the scene in the Oak room which is at the very first scene of the beginning and recurs at the end of the film. This scene in the Oak room is where they reconnect again after months of not having seen each other. This off course we don’t know in the beginning of the film, however we do already see something important happening in this scene, their looks, and the point of view. In the start of the film we follow Therese at the end of the Oak room scene, who follows Jack to a party. When Carol says goodbye she softly touches Therese’s shoulder, a touch of desire and love, and we see the sadness in Therese’s eyes. When Carol leaves, the camera slowly zooms in on Therese’s face as we follow her. The rest of the film thus follows Therese but at the end it seems we follow

45_{Website Howard Greenberg Gallery that had a Saul Leiter exhibition in 2008 and shows his work.}

http://www.howardgreenberg.com/exhibitions/saul-leiter-women;

Anne Leszkiewicz, “Behind Carol: the photographers who influenced Todd Haynes’ award winning film,” website NewStatesman, published 27 November 2015, https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/art-design/2015/11/behind-carol-photographers-who-influenced-todd-haynes-award-winning-film.

Image 6: Example of Saul Leiter's photography. (Source: Google Images)

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Carol’s point of view. This switch happens when the Oak room scene recurs at the end of the film, where thus the first scene starts again. This also correlates with the transformation that both Carol and Therese undergo throughout the film.

In the fifties there was an emphasis in society about the structures of life and the relationships between men and women. This is mostly because it was out of balance after the war, where women suddenly had a lot of power when their men where away and they had to work to earn money. When the men came back they had to regain their dominance in the family and become the head of the family again. The standard in the fifties became domestication and normalcy, which is the opposite to the non-heterosexuality desires of Therese and Carol for each other. Carol’s marriage is based on appearances which becomes very clear when she is together with her husband Harge who keeps commenting on her looks, saying she is the most beautiful woman in the room. Carol is a very feminine women and dresses exactly as how she is expected to dress by society, but she also does not defy this. Her make-up and hair are always neat and you will never catch her with a chipped nail, which are always painted red. This in comparison to Therese who in the beginning still seems to have to find herself, she doesn’t dress in a feminine way like Carol and almost seems a bit ‘girly’ still. However, this changes at the end of the film where she is very dressed up when she is meeting Carol. Carol also goes through a little transformation after the trip when Abby comes over, most of her make-up is off her face, she looks tired and she is just wearing a sweater. At the end of the film she has recollected herself and although she dresses the same, she is more outspoken and has a different aura around her that speaks confidence. She transformed into the woman she wanted to become, without losing that what defined her.

These are just a few specific aspects in Carol that define the use of the female gaze, Therese’s gaze. Although it is a love story their desires are not shown as wild lust objects for each other but lies in a simple stare or touch. This is also amplified by the fact that they are always shown in the frame above their waistline and never under. They are not objects of desire to the spectator, or other characters onscreen. They are only objects of desire towards each other. Which manifests in a sex scene which is very implicit and does not show a lot. It does not serve the purpose of awakening a desire towards the spectator. What it does do show a desire that everyone can identify with. This sex scene is the first scene where they get physical for the first time. The scene starts with Therese brushing her hair while looking in the mirror, and Carol who joins her, standing behind her. From this point we only follow them from a distance again, over the shoulder and looking in the mirror. What happens is that their dialogue does not really matter anymore, the focus is solely on their looks to each other. We follow these

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looks, towards their hands and ultimately them touching each other, kissing and diving into the bed. The lingered stares and emphasis on fabric and touch is as if we’re almost touching the fabric ourselves. Nothing else seem to exist, the spectator is neither someone who joins, but is watching still over the shoulder, neither distant nor close, but is encapsulated in this bubble they created. The effect this has on the spectator is raise this desire of being loved and touched the way that Carol loves Therese. This is a desire that everyone can identify with and not just someone with the same sexuality. We as people all desire to be looked at the way Carol looks at and loves Therese, like nothing else in the world matters or exists.

Another aspect that amplifies this is the fact that their sexualities are never explicitly stated. Even though we see Therese finding herself and admitting that she has fallen in love with a woman it is not defined as a coming out story. It’s just two women who fall in love in a period of time where they are not able to show it to the rest of the world, so instead they only show it to each other by looking at each other. There is a clear desire in their every touch and look, and their directness and enthusiasm to each other clearly defines their intent to each other, and to us as the spectator, however the spectator can only speculate as to how far this desire goes. Their gaze tells their love story.

Carol shows us a story about love and the struggles of the taboo of same-sex relationships in

the fifties. By using the notion of Laura Mulvey’s gaze I was able to analyze the gaze and its influence on the spectator. However, not Mulvey’s gendered heterosexual notion of the gaze was used in this analysis, because we are not dealing with a male gaze where the female character is being projected as a lust object. The film has a queer gaze which we follow through the eyes of Therese, a young female who falls in love with an older female. The film has two narratives which we follow in two different ways, the chronological narrative of the film and the narrative we follow through the looks Therese and Carol exchange. This second narrative is a secret narrative, not visible for those around them, because they have to hide their true desire for each other. There is a reciprocity in their direct stares and broken stares which are emphasized by the camerawork in the film. Their lingering looks are emphasized by the use of close-ups and the long shots. However, this emphasis is not only on their looks but also the way they lightly touch each other in public. What highlights this forbidden love even more is the fact that the spectator is never fully included in their desires and motives, but always watching from a distance. The effect this has on the spectator is that of desire as well, the desire to be looked at the way Carol looks at Therese, all because of a lingering look. In this way it tries to achieve a queer gaze in the spectator as well, even if the spectator identifies as heterosexual.

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Chapter 2:

To Desire or to Identify? The Female Body in The Danish Girl (2015)

It's hard for a man to be looked at by a woman. Women are used to it, of course, but for a man to submit to a woman's gaze - it's unsettling. Although I believe there's some pleasure to be had from it, once you yield.46

- The Danish Girl (2015)

Introduction: The Danish Girl and Transgender Representation

The Danish Girl, which was released in the same year as CAROL, 2015. The film was directed by Tom Hooper and is starring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander who were both nominated for Academy Awards for their roles in this film. It is a fictitious love story that was inspired by the Danish married artists Lili Elbe, portrayed by Eddie Redmayne, and Gerda Wegener, portrayed by Alicia Vikander, and is set in the twenties in Denmark. This film is also a novel adaptation, which was written by David Ebershoff, who changed a lot about the characters and events which is the reason why it is thus a fictitious story. The story follows Einar, later Lili, who realizes through the art of his painter wife, Gerda, that he is a woman trapped in a male body and desires to transform into a ‘complete’ woman. In the film it is said that she was the first to ever undergo such a successful operation, however she was among the first ones. At the end of the film Lili passes away due to the complications from the second surgery, the vagina reconstruction. In reality, the real Lili had the reconstruction together with a uterus transplant which caused an infection that lead to her passing away.

Even though this film was praised by Hollywood, receiving four Academy Award nominations and even winning one, it has also been criticized by the public about the wrong use of historicity. The historicity of this story is off, mainly because it is fictitious, but they also criticized the film for the use of a cisgender actor for the portrayal of a transgender character. As mentioned before in the introduction his portrayal of the character was seen as ‘Oscarbait’ and was seen as a setback for transgender representation. What they leave out is his role as an actor and thus performance in this film. He was praised by the Academy and Hollywood for his performance in this film, however the LGBTQ was dissatisfied with this representation and

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completely leaves out his performance. Another thing is that they said that using a cisgender actor for a transgender character is just as bad as whitewashing.

This raises the question whether we should class sexuality representation as something that is cultural. Thus, in this chapter the focus will not be on how realistic the representation is but will focus on how the filmic elements emphasize the performativity of gender. The camerawork shows the spectator not only what Einar lacks as a man, because he desires to be a woman, but they emphasize this desire. The film and the characters, especially Gerda and Einar/Lili seem to lack emotional motivation, we are not really included in their thoughts. However, what this film does do is show in a few scenes this performativity of gender and how society influences how we see gender and thus reenact this. Judith Butler is specialized in this notion of gender performativity explaining that you construct your gender through your own behavior. She even goes as far as to say that the process of identification belongs to the imaginary, a phantasmatic staging of events. In the next paragraph this theory will be explained further before I will apply the theory of gender performativity to The Danish Girl to show how gender is performed in this film and how the camera work and other filmic aspects emphasize this.

Gender as a Social Construct or Performance? Judith Butler and Phantasmatic Identification

To be able to analyze the gender performativity in The Danish Girl, it is important to summarize where this notion of gender performativity comes from, which is queer theory. As mentioned in the introduction, queer theory is an important theory to use as an analytical approach in this research. Queer theory is a counter movement that thus includes people from other sexualities and genders. The term was founded by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the

Subversion of Identity.47_{In this book she aims to open up a field of possibilities for gender}

without dictating the kind of possibilities need to be there to realize this.48_{She argues in her}

1999 preface that some queer theorists in the past have drawn analytic distinctions between gender and sexuality but refusing to see a causal or structural link between the two.49_{In Gender}

Trouble, Judith Butler states that gender and sex are not completely different, as other theories

47_{Judith Butler, Gender Trouble.}

48_{Judith Butler, “Preface 1999,” Gender Trouble, viii.} 49_{Judith Butler, “Preface 1999,” Gender Trouble, xiv.}

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state, but that gender is different because it is performative. Gender performativity is the central concept of this book. She explains that we grow up with the general idea that someone’s gender is determined by their sex. Which would mean that a man is a man, and a woman just a woman and nothing in between is possible. This would also mean, she argues, that the general discourse in society is that a person’s sex is something stable, and in that way also binary. This discourse also base their judgements on the descriptions that they come across and they in that way make their ‘norm’.50_{Which is why we are programmed to see a man as a man, and a woman as a}

woman, and everything outside that norm is judged as odd. Butler argues thus that gender, sex, sexuality and other axis of difference are generally constructed through repetition of stylized acts in time and that these are performative. “[…] performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual, which achieves its effects through its naturalization in the context of a body, understood, in part, as a culturally sustained temporal duration.”51_{Thus, sex is seen as}

biological, however gender is a construct made by society which we perform.

The basis of queer theory in Gender Trouble is that identity and gender can be as free and flexible as a performance. This would mean that no one would have specifying gender when they are born, because gender is a process that happens when we come across certain repeated norms. Gendered norms of how men and women act, or more like society says they should act. Queer theory explains that the gender of a person can, because it is not static but fluid, change throughout their lives when they come across these norms. We are ruled by society to think and feel a certain way about our bodies, we have very heteronormative constructed views on gender because of this. In this way, the heteronormative way, gender is seen as a society shaping organizing tool, everything that is masculine belongs to men, which in norms only applies to those who possess a phallus, and everything without a phallus is feminine and thus a woman.52_{However, Butler argues that we can learn gender by doing, by repeating certain}

acts and make them our own, we mirror and imprint but also produce them again.53

For Judith Butler, this notion of queer theory is not enough and so she decides to go a step further in the next book, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex.54_{In this}

book, essentially, she starts with clearing up the misconceptions that she received after publishing Gender Trouble. These misconceptions often misrepresent her theory, saying that

50_{Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, xxii.} 51_{Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, xv.} 52_{Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, 65.} 53_{Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, 68.}

How Film Can Subject Us To A Non-Heterosexual Gaze Gender and Performativity in Carol (2015) and The Danish Girl (2015)