Carolyn Gage
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One More Blog on Jodie Foster

1/17/2013

11 Comments

 
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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?

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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.

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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.

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 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
Tallon Nuñez
1/17/2013 03:41:02 am

Very interesting perspective Carolyn, thank-you. When I was younger, I felt a kinship with Jodie Foster, in that she moved, she sounded, and often looked the way that I did/do, as a child, then teenager. When she started dressing in a way that is acceptable for society, wearing more feminine clothing, I lost interest in her work, she began to look like someone who wasn't comfortable in their own skin, which made me uncomfortable. Her speech was a little strange, her energy was frenetic, and uneasy, she just doesn't strike me as someone who expresses herself in the way that she really wants. All that said, having lived her life since she was a toddler, in the public eye, her every move under intense scrutiny, and then being stalked (who knows by how many, we only know of one, but there are likely more, that we don't know about), by a man who then attempts to assassinate the president, I really don't think any of us should have a damn thing to say about her being in or out of the closet.

Reply
Peggy
1/17/2013 03:47:03 am

I thought about this too, after viewing the speech. But my main concern was around the criticisms that I read about Jodie Foster not using the word "lesbian." A lot of butch and femme folks feel little connection to that word, and don't particularly identify with it (because of how it turns butch or femme into adjectives, when they feel like nouns: because of the lesbian community's oppression toward butches and femmes that some of us have felt, because the word simply does not feel accurate to an outsider gender/sexuality). If Jodie Foster was just trying to live an authentic life, as she asserted in her speech -- and fight the forces that worked against that from when she was so young -- maybe coming out as "lesbian," uttering that word, simply didn't feel right to her. Maybe saying "I'm a butch" or even "I'm a butch who dons dresses for my job sometimes, but they always show off my arm muscles" or "I'm a butch who gets sexualized by men because of the roles I play" or whatever else she feels inside just felt like it would meet with freaked-out silence, or that it wouldn't quite hit the target and make her any less invisible. Sometimes one has to carve out authenticity in a world where language is completely inaccurate, even staring the Mel Gibson-ness of life right in the face because power, oppression, conflict feel so close at hand. Queer femmes are also invisible in Hollywood. Portia de Rossi certainly seemed more visible as an actress in her own right before she became "Ellen's wife" and I think most of us who grew up femme felt out of touch with Hollywood role models -- except for the occasional tomboy who stirred up something impossible to explain. Jodie Foster's body has been manipulated by complete strangers quite enough -- practically from the day she was born -- and I say, let her live her own freak truth which few people can even understand, and say whatever she wants about it.

Reply
Liz Bradbury
1/17/2013 04:30:23 am

I do get the point about the Butch persona in Hollywood. My issue with her speech isn't about her not coming out earlier. It's about the disappointing quality of a life time achievement award winning Yale educated smart woman. I'm sad I don't think Joide is smart anymore. She had a wonderful chance to say brilliant, meaningful things, she could have appropriately affirmed her wanting to be private. She had plenty of time to write a good speech and learn her lines. But she didn't. And so she came off sounding off point and self righteous. I'm sad I've lost the image of Jodie Foster as a smart woman in Hollywood. And the Mel Gibson thing really underscored her lack of savvy.

Reply
Jaime McLeod
1/17/2013 05:15:48 am

Yes, as a young butch, I definitely felt a flutter of recognition whenever I saw any of Ms. Foster's films. You can put a butch in a dress and makeup, and she may even look good in it, but she'll still be a butch.

Reply
Toto
1/17/2013 05:34:16 am

Brilliant post, Carolyn.

First, I found Nell to be a very engrossing film, and also wanted more from it along the lines you mention.

The whole matter of her (probably) being butch, to me, is clearly one lens that ought to be looked through when contemplating public women such as Jodie Foster. The dissociation stuff makes so much sense to me of what we actually witnessed in her speech, and in her own admiration of and allegiance to Mel Gibson. (I've not heard anything else that would make sense of it, actually, other than an anti-Muslim, neo-con white woman blogger claiming Jodie was also anti-Semitic, reportedly wanting to portray the Nazi propagandist filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl.)

At any rate, especially initially, she seemed frenetically dissociated, reminding me of times when I could barely make sense of my own dissociated experience and being. Thank you for plunking that critical piece, also, into this particular puzzle.

@Tallon, my sense--from very limited invasive paparazzi photos of her with Cyd--is that she didn't dress femme at all when she thought she wasn't in front of a camera.

@Peggy. Thank you so much for that perspective! I've heard that 'lesbian' doesn't work as a way of naming oneself from many radical queer women of color, primarily for its anglo/euro history and contemporary white-centric usage. Your analysis also makes all the sense in the world to me.

@Liz, I guess I felt similarly, at first. I went into the show thinking, "Wow: Jodie will have some opportunity here to say a lot that's important!" And when I saw her I was really, really confused. But I think now that's because maybe she was mirroring an uncomfortable level of extreme dissociated being right back at me, and I scarcely wanted to recognize it because when I'm in the state she was in--under very different circumstances to be sure, I'm nonetheless similarly "all over the place" and the sharpness of my mind can get terribly dull. So I still believe she's very, very bright. And I do think what she said was largely scripted and memorized: I see her as too much of a perfectionist to just wing in at such a momentous occasion. After watching and reading the speech a few times, I see her reciting each section quite intentionally and often effectively.

I felt she dropped into herself and became more grounded as she spoke so beautifully of her love for Cyd and their sons; it irritated me no end that the camera DIDN'T ONCE focus on Cydney as Jodie spoke of her, but only on their sons! (Whenever any hetero male or female award recipient thanked or mentioned their significant other, the camera was right there on them so we could watch the reaction.)

But the quality of expression and energy was most calm and powerfully focused as Jodie so, so movingly, directed her attention on the longest love of her life: her mother, with whom there is allegedly such a complex history.

Navigating complex relationships with very complex people, including within herself, seems to be a theme in her life.

Reply
Lynne
1/17/2013 09:30:06 am

ditto..I am a butch who lived in nyc and wore makeup and a leopard (fake fur) coat...I went to a butch identified meeting with this garb and was looked at very strangely when I said I was butch...one woman...an "old time" butch she understood. I have always thought of Jodie Foster as buytch no matter what drag she is in.

Reply
Tina Gianoulis
1/17/2013 01:16:14 pm

Wow, Carolyn, I kept meaning to email you and ask you what you thought of Jodie Foster's speech, but of course you're way ahead of me--

in my babydykehood I definitely related to Foster as a lesbian, tomboy, etc. 'the little girl who lives down the lane' might be my all-time favorite--that was the fantasy, get rid of the adults and live by myself.
I was actually impressed with her speech (which i agree with toto seemed scripted and very intentional--it did seem to me that she made herself genuinely vulnerable--that, in a way, her thank you for the award was to give people this look into her life--and that that life was really damaged in some way by the fact that she's been in Hollywood since she was 3 years old.

the part about her mother was interesting to me, and touching--i hadn't realized (until frantically looking her up after the speech) that her mother was a lesbian.

but this is exactly why i love watching awards shows--every now and then something interesting happens.

Reply
Toto
1/17/2013 04:24:35 pm

Hi Tina. For much more on her mom's lesbianism, I recommend reading Jodie's brother's biography of his sister (combined with an autobiography of himself), titled Foster Child: A Biography of Jodie Foster, by Buddy Foster (1998). I also loved The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, and agree with your last sentence--that's the reason I watch!

Reply
FeistyAmazon
1/17/2013 02:56:07 pm

I so agree with this, and yes, I did watch the speech online after the fact, and it was not very definitive.....course it was no surprise either! Just a confirmation of what every Dyke I"VE KNOWN knew since the early '80's in speculation! That and her butchy/tomboy sensibilities....but I would have liked to have heard the word LESBIAN too...Butch in front of a Hollywood audience would have been even more of a stretch, perhaps too much to ask, but she always did have those tomboy/butchy sensibilities, and when she lost those on screen, she did become less interesting. Still, she played tough as nails characters with smarts, like in Silence of the Lambs and also in 'Contact' which I really loved her in. Just came across her on 'Foxes' last night...wow, definitely NOT one of her better films, but she was very young..kind of a teen movie....and again, she played a very butchy/tomboy type character, wearing flannels and with her own very butchy black truck! I mean come on, Femme types aren't often depicted driving a beat up ole truck! But Butches are well known for it!

Reply
Christiane Lopes link
11/4/2013 10:28:28 am

I've never seen such a good conversation about Jodie. What do you say now that she has been spotted with Alex and seems not to care?

Reply
Gannon Roberts link
2/12/2017 04:23:14 pm

Geez, I'm the only guy here so far. I'm straight with next to no experience regarding lesbians. I've read this post and what amazes and somewhat saddens me is that gay folks, known to be perfectly normal since 1973, still can be so fearful of how they will be received by others that they are sometimes paralyzed by that fear. Here's a thought regarding that, one word to use when confronted by some homophobic, misogynistic turd: Fuck'em. (I know. Life ain't that simple. But it'll make you feel better if only for a second.)

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

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