A New Way of Seeing and Being Seen

Finding the Queer Gaze

The extraordinary film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) covers a lot of potent feminist and queer territory, one of which is writer and director Céline Sciamma’s consideration of looking, of two women looking at each other and being seen. In one scene, Héloïse tells Marianne “regarde,” to look and see their shared position of seeing and being seen by each other. This revelation quietly startles Marianne, who hadn’t realized her dynamic with the people she painted was on more equal footing than the patriarchal institution of painting had indicated. The French word Héloïse commands Marianne with, regarde, is interesting to consider in English in a different way: regard, to consider or think of someone/thing. 

Our experience mirrors that of Marianne, who had to be retrained from “seeing” and representing her art through a patriarchal lens. When Héloïse rejects the first portrait of her that Marianne had surreptitiously painted and initially defended with the male-dominant art “conventions,” she says of the painting: “The fact it isn’t close to me, that I can understand. But I find it sad it isn’t close to you.” In its quietly powerful way, Portrait asks us to question why we have given so much time to art that is not ‘close to us’ and does not speak to us. ~ H. Petrocelli, On Finally Being Seen

What if we pay attention to what it means to consider the people we place our gaze upon? What does it mean to see anew? What can you do about the way people with the most societal power—let’s be real, cishet white men—look at you and construct looking at you? And what is the impact on those of us seen through a lens that regards us, if at all, in limiting and/or damaging ways?

Héloïse & Marianne looking as equals. Still from Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019).

A goal of this project is to recalibrate, liberating ourselves from the insidious white cishet patriarchal gaze in order to immerse in queer ways of looking—the Queer¹ Gaze. We have seen the world largely through the white cishet patriarchal lens our entire lives—and it has seen us through its demeaning, sexualizing, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, fatphobic, ableist, self-serving lens our entire lives. 

I have spent a lifetime loving films made by straight cis white men for straight cis white men. I intellectually know that this had to have had a damaging effect on me psychologically, because these films did not love or even witness me back. However, luckily, us queers have a secret weapon that many non-queers don’t even realize exists: we can instantaneously reframe any story and mentally recreate it so that it tells us our story. This is an important tool of self-preservation and survival queers have mastered. ~ H. Petrocelli, On Finally Being Seen

Nina Menkes examines film’s misogynistic patriarchal lens on women in her incredibly important 2022 documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power. It’s chilling as she methodically and sharply details the what and how of the deep damage, both systemic and individual, caused by men’s lens on women. Menkes specifies it is the lens of the “cis male heterosexual” (which some women certainly absorb and perpetuate) and towards the end touches on some of the few women, like Sciamma, who have shed enough of the damage (is it really ever gone?) in order to eschew replicating—and, instead, to reimagine—the gaze.

Deborah Bright’s Dream Girls series (1989-1990), photomontage (cropped)

We can find queer re-imaginings in numerous art and media projects, many more of which we hope to learn about and from during this project. A most thoughtful gift from A’s cousin Topher recently brought one such amazing dyke intervention into our world. In Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs edited by Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser, the photos and essay by Deborah Bright called ‘Dream Girls’ (1989-1990) consider a lesbian intervention into heterosexual Hollywood. Bright’s photomontages speak perfectly to the queer experience of having to rewrite most everything to “insert” ourselves in the dominant narratives. In ‘Dream Girls,’ Bright literally cuts and pastes herself into film stills in order to directly and defiantly queer the Hollywood narratives that she grew up with in the 1950s and 1960s. Bright’s intervention is a queer artistic mode of resistance that both redirects the gaze and reimagines the lens.

The damage society’s harmful lens does to those of us it sets its sights on is unquantifiable. It’s not only pervasive, but also detrimental to safety, to freedom, to health, even to happiness. When you stop to think about what you would be like if you had grown up free of that oppressive force, it feels paralyzing. In fact, we call spaces free from that force “safe spaces,” but even those are constantly in threat. With this project, we are stopping to consider both the damage done to each of us (similar and different), as well as what could come from trying to step outside of the scorching blaze of cisheteronormativity. We hope you will join us and share the project with others.

Portrait showed so many of us a new way. It’s not just another lesbian period drama—it’s a revelation in seeing and being seen. And it can’t be the only one out there. Regarde.

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The most Hype Dyke shout-out for The Queerest Year’s logo and branding, which we are thrilled to unveil, goes to our multi-talented friend and comrade Audrey Nieh @audomatic. Audrey is not only a fantastic designer, but also is a film & sound nerd, co-host of @sapphiccultureclub, and a truly lovely and weird-o funny human bean (or is it hot dog?).

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Bros

Gay bros be bro-ing in Bros (2022), where Billy Eichner rants his way into a monogamous relationship-ish.

~SPOILER ALERT~

H: I wanted to watch Bros because I like Billy Eichner—there’s something about his particular brand of in-your-face queer Jewish camp that totally amuses me. I’ve seen all of Billy on the Street and Difficult People and I wanted to support this film—plus, I still have trouble processing that a film from 2022 is the first theatrically released major studio gay rom-com that is co-written by and stars an openly gay man and features an almost entirely queer cast and crew. Like, WHAT!?! For fuck’s sake; we are living 3 years beyond the original Blade Runner timeline and not only do we not have replicants or flying cars, but we are just marking these major-studio milestones. What in the unholy queer fuck! Here’s the big issue I have with Bros: I generally loathe rom-coms. It’s one of my least favorite subgenres and it turns out I still don’t like the rom-com even if they try to “queer” the rom-com. But maybe in this case it’s because the rom-com tropes are not actually reinvented, inverted, or queered but, instead, uphold a version of homonormativity. Bros has an underlying assimilation vs. liberation narrative tension, in which the sentiments expressed by Eichner’s character, Bobby, speak to liberated queer differences, whilst the film’s plot continually attempts to assimilate the gays into, as Bobby says, “heteronormative nonsense.” The film ends with two formerly “promiscuous” and “commitment-phobic” gay men being in a “monogamous relationship,” which leaves me confused about why Eichner even included the “love is not love. Our relationships are different” bit. Bros is just a traditional rom-com sprinkled with queer dust from beginning to end. It’s this gay dust that I enjoyed most (even if it felt a bit forced at times). Eichner took on the rom-com in an attempt to queer it, and he continuously invokes queer history to try to make queer history—but, for me, it simply was not actually queer enough. 

A: Yeeeeahhhh. I’m not a rom-com person, either (though there are a few here and there that I can appreciate, so I’m not a complete movie-laugh-love grinch). And I came into this not being the biggest Billy Eichner fan (my favorite thing of his still being the “let’s go, lesbians” meme), but open to the possibility of what he could do and excited about what this movie could mean for big films made by and for the queer community. It was interesting to see Eichner try putting a “but gay love is different!” message into a heteronormative film formula—and I’m glad he swung for the fences. (We can all thank A League of Their Own for that sports reference from me.) I surmise the reason it didn’t fully work in practice is because the Bros cishet co-writer and director, plus the big studio suits, introduced straight interference that turned Bros into a normie wolf in gay sheep clothing. My sentiment probably isn’t helped by the fact that I recently watched and really liked Fire Island by queers Joel Kim Booster and Andrew Ahn. While neither Bros nor Fire Island did *anything* for lesbians (other than make inferences that we are serious and sexless and have our shit together—things gay men should know are NOT ENTIRELY TRUE, especially if they had ever bothered watching The L Word or Tampa Baes), Fire Island at least shows a few different kinds of gay representation and relationships.

H: I agree with you about preferring Fire Island, especially because I know we both appreciate that the film doesn’t center two affluent, cis white gays and the friends feel more integrated into the story. The Achilles heel of Bros is that the rom-com conventions used only work to uphold cisheteronormativity and, thus, a conventional ending. But, just so we don’t seem like we hate everything about everything, and because we both laughed more than once, let’s talk about some aspects of Bros that we actually like, beyond the parade of queer cameos (with Harvey Fierstein, Bowen Yang, and Amanda Bearse being my faves). The idea of the Zellweger gay dating app, based around talking about actresses before you go to bed, is fantastic, but I will be rebranding it as Chat Blanchett. (Honestly, our C.U.N.T.S. lesbian friend group text thread is basically an early prototype of this app.) I would be happy to watch Home Alone, But with Sarah Paulson, discuss it on Chat Blanchett, and then go to bed. Most importantly, in Bros, Eichner unabashedly and unapologetically puts aspects of queer culture front and center—from poppers and prostate milking to internalized homophobia and queer trauma—and that feels refreshing to see in a major studio rom-com. Probably my favorite aspect of the entire film, besides the Yentl moment, is the museum’s “educational” ride “A Haunted House of Gay Trauma.” I would like to be on the planning committee to make it happen—I’m highly qualified! Email me for my résumé.

A: OMG, that ride is sheer perfection—and of course the concept is perfectly delivered by Bowen Yang. I endorse your position to make it happen. Before I say a few other things I liked, the HIV/AIDS educator in me (fuck safe, shoot clean, people!) has to first note that Bros emphasizes how traumatized GenX Gays are by AIDS (Bobby says “It’s not fair, Tina… We had AIDS, and they had Glee”—uh, yeah exactly), but then did not give a single indication of anyone having safe sex—nary a condom wrapper or a PrEP mention to be had. SMH. Anywhoo, yes I still silently chuckled at the low hanging gay fruit sprinkled throughout Bros. I lightly gasped when stellar Joan Armatrading was in the soundtrack and yelped in joy at seeing lovely Harvey. What a triumph to have so many queer actors cast as queer characters. I weep. Even if Bros didn’t hit the mark for me personally, I am glad some queers have a rom-com they like and am hopeful for more queer-led cinema to come.

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Bros, as one of the few major studio queer-led and/or queer-made films, has the impossible task of carrying too much expectation on its shoulders. Straight society wants a fun, challenge-free gay place to tourist; queers need thoughtful inclusion and thorough representation with our stories told by us. That’s an incredible amount of pressure for one film—and is, quite frankly, not fair to the film or its makers. We are hard pressed to think of another rom-com that has endured the level of scrutiny that Bros has, even since before its release. It’s easy to take down what stands alone. Bros doesn’t deserve that—and, still, us queers deserve more. A single cultural product cannot begin to fill the void left by the lack of representation afforded an incredibly diverse community. While a lot of queer people will feel seen by this film, which is great, many others won’t—so we want more! Unfortunately, because Bros is now considered a box-office “bomb,” big queer-led rom-coms are likely to remain relegated to dreams and shadows for a while longer. Queer people can survive, and even thrive, in the shadows; maybe it’s a better place to be than in the crosshairs of normative culture’s harmful lens and under the scrutiny of a gaze that neither represents nor regards us.

1. We use the term “queer” as our preferred term to generally represent the LGBTQ+ moniker. While this term might not be everyone’s self-selecting label, it works best for us in both sentiment and usage, as an open anecdote to the awkwardness of an acronym that never has enough letters to represent our vast diversity, and as a representation of the subversive, deviant, and non-normative existence we want and strive for.