Carolyn Gage
  • Home
    • Butch Visibility Project
    • Bio and Vitae
    • Endorsements
    • Production History
    • Catalog of Books and Plays
    • Online Essays >
      • Lesbian Culture and History Essays
      • Theatre Essays
      • Feminist Essays
      • Tributes/Obituaries
      • Reviews
    • Interviews >
      • Audio/Video Interviews
      • Print Interviews
  • Books and CD's
    • Gage Play Anthologies
    • Feminist Thought And Spirituality
    • Lesbian Theatre
    • CD's and DVD's
    • Anthologies with Other Authors
    • Journal Anthologies
  • Plays
    • One-Woman Shows >
      • The Second Coming of Joan of Arc
      • La Seconde Venue de Jeanne d'Arc
      • Joana Dark - a re-volta
      • Giovanna d'Arco - la rivolta
      • ВТОРОТО ПРИШЕСТВИЕ НА ЖАНА Д’АРК (Bulgarian tranlsation of The Second Coming of Joan
      • 贞德再临_中文 (Mandarin translation of The Second Coming of Joan of Arc)
      • The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman
      • Crossing the Rapelands
    • Musicals >
      • The Amazon All-Stars
      • Babe! An Olympian Musical
      • How to Write a Country-Western Song
      • Leading Ladies
      • Women on the Land
    • Full-Length Plays >
      • The Abolition Plays
      • The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women
      • AXED!
      • Black Star
      • Coming About
      • Esther and Vashti
      • The Goddess Tour
      • In McClintock's Corn
      • Sappho in Love
      • The Spindle
      • Stigmata
      • Thanatron
      • Ugly Ducklings
    • One-Acts >
      • Ain't Got No - I Got Life
      • The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold-Diggers
      • Artemisia and Hildegard
      • Battered on Broadway
      • Bite My Thumb
      • The Boundary Trial of John Proctor
      • Cookin' with Typhoid Mary
      • The Countess and the Lesbians
      • The Drum Lesson
      • Easter Sunday
      • Entr'acte or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped
      • The Enunciation to Mary
      • The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide
      • Female Nude Seated
      • The Gage and Mr. Comstock
      • The Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived
      • Harriet Tubman Visits A Therapist
      • Head in the Game
      • Hermeneutic Circlejerk
      • Heterosexuals Anonymous
      • Jane Addams and the Devil Baby
      • A Labor Play
      • Lace Curtain Irish
      • Lighting Martha
      • Little Sister
      • Louisa May Incest
      • Mason-Dixon
      • The Obligatory Scene
      • The P.E. Teacher
      • The Parmachene Belle
      • The Pele Chant
      • Planchette
      • The Poorly-Written Play Festival
      • Radicals
      • The Rules of the Playground
      • St. Frances and the Fallen Angels
      • Souvenirs from Eden
      • Starpattern
      • 'Til the Fat Lady Sings
      • Valerie Solanas At Matteawan
    • Short Short Plays >
      • 52 Pickup
      • At Sea
      • Black Eye
      • El Bobo
      • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter
      • The Clarity of Pizza
      • The Great Fire
      • Hrotsvitha's Vision
      • The Intimacy Coordinator
      • The Ladies' Room
      • Miss Le Gallienne Announces the New Season
      • On the Other Hand
      • Patricide
      • The Pickle Play
    • Dramatic Adaptations >
      • Amy Lowell: In Her Own Words
      • Brett Remembers
      • Deep Haven
      • El Bobo (one-act play)
      • El Bobo (short screenplay)
      • Emily & Sue >
        • Touring Production of Emily & Sue >
          • The Creative Team
          • Director's Vision
          • Adaptor's notes
          • Open Me Carefully
      • I Have Come to Show You Death
      • Speak Fully The One Awful Word
      • We Too Are Drifting (Screenplay)
    • Special Index: Plays That Deal with Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls
    • Special Index: Women's History Plays
    • Special Index: Romantic Plays with Happy Endings
  • Touring Work
    • Performances >
      • Lace Curtain Irish
      • Crossing the Rapelands
      • The Parmachene Belle (performance)
      • Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter (performance)
      • Gage on Stage
    • Lectures >
      • Lizzie Borden and Lesbian Theatre
      • The Secret Life of Lesbians
      • Paradigms and Paradigm-Shifting
      • When Sex Is Not the Metaphor For Intimacy
      • Meeting the Ghost of Hamlet's Father
      • A Theatrical Journey Through Maine's Lesbian History
      • Tara and Other Lies
      • Teena Brandon's Inconvenient Truth
    • Workshops >
      • The Art of the Dramatic Monologue
      • Acting Lesbian
      • Interrupting Racism: A Workshop
      • Playwriting Techniques for Poets and Fiction Writers
      • Ugly Ducklings Workshop
    • Residencies
    • The Lesbian Tent Revival >
      • Testimonials
      • The Lesbian Tent Revival Radio Hour Podcasts
      • The Lesbian Tent Revival Sermon on Dying Well
      • Sermons for a Lesbian Tent Revival
      • Supplemental Sermons
      • Hotter Than Hell
      • The Synapse Pendant
    • Cauldron & Labrys >
      • A Brief History
      • Upcoming Productions
  • Calendar
    • Productions of Gage's Work and Appearances
  • Contact/Storefront
    • Privacy Policy
  • Blog

One More Blog on Jodie Foster

1/17/2013

11 Comments

 
Picture
So Jodie Foster gave a speech at the Golden Globes this year. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. Lots to love: She acknowledged she was lesbian. She acknowledged the support of her former partner and co-parent. She was clearly frightened and did it anyway. Yay!

Lots to not love, too. She never said the word “gay” or “lesbian.” When she talked about coming out “a thousand years ago,” she did not make it clear that she had remained professionally closeted for decades after that.  And then, of course, there were the cutaway shots to her best buddy Mel Gibson, gazing adoringly at her, during her speech. Mel Gibson, whose record for unrepentant domestic violence, and anti-Semitic and misogynist epithets have made him anathema to most folks with a conscience.

PictureJodie in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Folks have asked me what I thought of her speech. I don’t have too much to contribute. It’s the half-empty/ half-full thing. But there is one question I would raise:

What if Jodie Foster is a butch? Yeah, I know, “Have you SEEN the woman?” But to that I say, “Have you seen her in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore?” Have you seen her pre-Taxi Driver? And then I would ask, “How much do you understand about butch identity, butch culture, and butch oppression?” How many butch celebrities have there been prior to Ellen, and even now?

Picture
What would happen to a lesbian butch girl, not only growing up in Hollywood, but coming of age, after a series of tomboy roles, with a turn as a pre-teen prostitute at the age of fourteen—and getting nominated for an Oscar? And then discovering that one’s performance in this role attracted a stalker who shot the President in a bid for her attention? Artificial worlds with incredibly narrow and highly incentivized gender roles. And then massive, public trauma around that gender role, even as one received a nomination for the nation's top award for it? Confusion much?  And this was an era before “gender dysphoria” was a thing.

Picture
Another thing I find interesting about Foster is her choice of adult roles. Lots of female avenger/protector roles. And then there was Nell. For all the mockery, Nell was not of this world. She was someone whose identity had evolved free from gender roles. She spoke her own language. Hollywood, of course, femmed her up… but the story… ! The story is an intriguing one, and the film might have had more integrity if it could have committed to the androgyny that, at least to this viewer, would have been intrinsic to the situation.

PictureFoster at Yale
The butch identity, when not disparaged, is erased. Butch oppression is subsumed under the rubric of homophobia. There is no language for the multiple dissociations that occur when a lesbian butch lives a publicly closeted life and has an appearance that can be mistaken for a heterosexual femme icon… or when she tries to adopt a public persona to go with that.

But there are clues. For instance... one might be giving an acceptance speech in which one has difficulty figuring out one’s audience, or the tone one should adopt… resulting in a confusing monologue in which voice and focus alternate wildly. One could find it easier to split off alarming aspects of another person’s identity also… such as a history of domestic violence. One could make comments that indicate a certain dissociation from one's own body or appearance. One could be insanely uncomfortable.

Picture
 I have no idea about what's going on with Jodie Foster. But butch invisibility is something about which I do care, as a lesbian playwright whose work features butch women. Not all tomboys are just immature fems. Some of them are butches, and that road is not an easy one. And let us just imagine a different Hollywood. What if an actor like Foster could have moved into a canon of adult roles featuring grown-up, tomboy women? What if she could have had celebrity cachet as a gorgeous masculine woman? Would she have gone for it? And how might that have changed everything?

Here’s hoping that future, with all its options, becomes a reality for other tomboy girls.


Thanks to Kathleen Carbone for her insight and inspiration in writing this blog.

11 Comments
    Picture

    Carolyn Gage

    “… Carolyn Gage is one of the best lesbian playwrights in America…”--Lambda Book Report, Los Angeles.

    SUBSCRIBE:
    To subscribe to the blog, scroll down and click on "RSS Feed". To subscribe to my newsletter, click here.

    Categories

    All
    Child Abuse
    Civil Rights
    Incest
    In Memoriam
    Interviews
    Lesbian Feminism
    Lesbian History
    Psychotropic Drugs
    Rape
    Reviews
    The Environment
    Women And Theatre
    Women's History

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    June 2022
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    October 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.