Reconstruction Vol. 16, No. 2
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A Review of Three Important Works
Mennel, Barbara. Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires and Gay Cowboys. New York, NY: Wallflower Press, 2012. ISBN: 13-0231163132 (pbk). Vii + 136. / Frank Jacob
Suganuma, Katsuhiko. Contact Moment: The Politics of Intercultural Desire in Japanese Male-Queer Cultures. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. ISBN: 13-978-9888083718 (pbk). 293 pp. / Frank Jacob
Furuhata, Yuriko. Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-Garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. ISBN: 13-978-0822355045 (bpk). / Frank Jacob
Mennel (2012)
<1> Barbara Mennel emphasizes from the beginning that "Schoolgirls, vampires and gay cowboys are the heroes of this book" (1). Her aim is to provide a short and interesting survey of the development of international queer film, something she succeeds in. What had "emerged in German films as ciphers of queer desire" (1) in Weimar, Germany became a Hollywood phenomenon, and films such as Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain "symbolize the presence of gays and lesbians in contemporary Hollywood" (1) Mennel is ambitious when she wants to draw a line from the early Weimar movies to the modern films of queer cinema, but her book definitely "brings together important moments, periods and turning points that add up to a history of queer film" (1). She not only provides a survey for specialists and interested readers alike by focusing on this history, but she also recaptures the "archaeology of alternative cinematic aesthetics organized around non-normative desires" (1). Throughout the volume, she uses queer as an "umbrella term" for "non-normative sexual and gender identities" (3).
<2> In the first chapter, the reader is introduced to the origins of queer cinema as they were dominated by schoolgirls, vampires and cross dressers (6-25). Mennel focuses on Richard Oswald's Anders als die Anderen (Different from the Others, 1919) (10-15) and Leontine Sagan's Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform, 1931) (pp. 20-25) to show that Weimar Germany was a golden time for the development of queer cinema. Her focus is on that time period after the First World War when
…the increasing urbanisation permitted public expression of gay and lesbian identities in the anonymity of cities, turning Berlin of the 1920s into the hotspot of queer culture where the presence of members of the so-called third sex, also called inverts (…) could not be overlooked. (7)
<3> The films analyzed not only "shaped conventions for queer cinema" (9), but also "set in motion the main conventions of queer cinema" (25). After the initial description of Weimar's queer film culture, Mennel, in her second chapter (25-48), turns to the queer aesthetics in American films from the late 1940s to the early 1970s (25-48). She discusses Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948), Joseph L. Maniewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and William Wyler's The Children's Hour (1961) (30-36), films chosen because they "portray the discursive effects of prohibition to depict explicit homosexuality" (27). In the latter half of this chapter, particular queer aesthetics are taken into consideration. Next to lesbian images of sexploitation (44-48), the golden era of softcore in the late 1960s is discussed in more detail to show the different depictions of lesbian sexuality. Mennel then takes a closer look at Joseph P. Mawra's Chained Girls (1965) (44-45), Radley Metzger's Therese and Isabelle (1968) (45-46) and Robert Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George (1968) (46-48).
<4> In chapter 3 (49-66) the fights between drag queens in New York's Stonewall Inn and the police in Greenwich Village) are analyzed with regard to their cinematic consequences. New filmmakers were influenced by these historical events, creating a watershed in the history of queer cinema. Mennel chose Robert Towne's Personal Best (1982), John Sayles' Lianna (1983), and Donna Deitch's Desert Hearts (1985) to show in the ways in which lesbian stereotypes were transformed to, in the case of Personal Best, present "eye candy for spectators including a straight male audience, while it partakes in a liberal discourse by including characters who engage in lesbian sex without being demonized" (53).
<5> The following chapter focuses on the aesthetic language of new queer cinema (67-93). It consequently describes the "radical political and aesthetic shift in films that appeared between 1990 and 1992" (67). New filmmakers and films like Derek Jarman's Edward II (1991) or Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) "radically broke with familiar cinematic representation of gays and lesbians" (67), creating a new queer image on the screen. The impact of these films was immense since they planted the seed for a general acceptance of lesbian or gay characters as part of mainstream Hollywood. This development is emphasized in the last chapter, where Mennel describes the role of "gay cowboys, fabulous femmes and global queers" (94-112). After a discussion of Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993) and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005) (95-98), the chapter provides a "brief overview of contemporary global queer cinema" (95; survey on 108-112).
<6> All in all, Mennel's introductory survey on queer film from Weimar Germany to modern global queer culture is a valuable book for every reader who wants a fast and very readable insight into the topic. For the specialist, the potpourri as is provided by chronological and topical jumps sometimes leaves this reader feeling displeased and wanting to to see more on national specifics of queer cinema. What is unfortunately completely missing is an Asian perspective, leaving the book with a Euro-American focus. It does, however, stimulate an interest in the topic and might be a good first read for interested readers or students. Mennel reaches her formulated aim and has to be applauded for her uncanny ability to condense a complex topic within a short survey.
Suganuma (2012)
<7> Culture is always a process impacted by adaption and reinterpretation. That is especially true for male-queer culture as it is examined by Katsuhiko Suganuma with his specific interests in the development of Japanese male-queer culture and the way it was impacted by factors from abroad. Suganuma correctly states that:
Cross-cultural contact often puts a person in a situation in which she or he feels insecure. In contact with another culture, all of a sudden a person's mode of being is left on shaky ground, creating the feeling of a subtle distance from the previous identity. (1)
<8> The consequences of these contacts are binary systems that determine their own culture in contrast to the "Other." In his book, Suganuma focuses on such "contact moments "between Japanese male-queer culture and that of the West in post-Second World War Japan" (1). Central to his discussion is the question of "how Japan's post-war male-queer culture has been realized through a perspective of comparison with the West" (2, similar to 10). Suganuma consequently examines "the ways of finding and knowing the multivalent identities of Japan's queer culture through their contact with the West," (2) and also uses his own experiences as a framework for further questioning (2-9). He makes clear that "there is no claim that [his] personal experiences are representative," but this intimate point of view provides the reader a highly personal and individualistic introduction into the topics as they are discussed in thereafter. In addition to this personal survey, Suganuma provides a short survey of Japanese queer culture (22-26) before he again-and unnecessarily-summarizes the introduction (26-27).
<9> The second chapter (37-74) takes a closer look at non-normative sexual discourse in Japan after its defeat in 1945. Suganuma examines the hentai-zasshi, or perverse magazines, of that period to highlight the particular nature of certain sexual discourses of the time, especially since "post-war Japan was filled with the ubiquity of things sexual" (27). The years after 1945 seem to be emblematic for such a discourse because
…in the time of Japan's confusion after the war, the gender and sexual discourses on the country's cross-cultural contact with the West are largely constructed for the purpose of reconstituting the "sovereignty" of the Japanese male subject. (72).
<10> Chapter 3 (75-100) deals with the 1970s in order to "tackle the question of how the master narrative of colonial hierarchy between Japan and the West was taken up and put to work in a different context" (28). Suganuma analyzes the issues of the gay magazine Barazoku (76-79) and shows how Japanese queer masculinity was constructed in contrast to that seen in the West. This journal seems especially valuable to the moment, given that Japanese gay men have long used the issues to fashion their own identity (78). Adding to this discussion are an exploration of the Gaijin (foreigner) complex (84-87) and of male physiognomy (90-97).
<11> The following chapter (101-126) delivers an "in-depth literary analysis" (29) of John Whittier Treat's Great Mirrors Shattered: Homosexuality, Orientalism and Japan (1999), considered by Suganuma to be deconstructive of the Orientalist binary and therefore of special interest. Chapter 5 (127-154) focuses on gay liberation movements of Japan in the 1990s. Here, the Japan Association for the Lesbian & Gay Movement (OCCUR), as well as the activities of gay author Fukushimi Noriaki, are of special interest. A close analysis demonstrates that Western and Japanese approaches to gay liberation in Japan existed side by side. The sixth chapter (155-176) extends the discussion of Japanese male-queer culture to the age of cyberspace, a recent period in which the binary between local and global queer culture has risen to prominence.
<12> All in all, Suganuma's study is very important, but as he states in the introduction, each chapter takes "a different contact moment as a case study" (34). Consequently, the present book solely offers a potpourri of several case studies arranged and summed up chronologically. His approach for this reader seems very selective, not based on a broad variety of texts and publications, and solely focused on the interpretation of the foreign influences in Japan. As a rule of thumb, an analysis of culture and its development is usually based on interaction. Here Japan is described as the receiver and the West as the provider, something that, I suggest, is not the case. A better approach would have been a closer look at the contact moments and their consequences in Japan and the West alike. Queer culture cannot be monolithically explained, since queer culture is as a rule also established in a process that is driven by the sort of contact moments on which Suganuma focuses. In addition to that weakness, the numerous redundant parts of the book diminish the quality of the single chapters, which seem to be interchangeable and not really thoughtfully connected to the greater good of readers.
Furuhata (2013)
<13> Japanese avant garde cinema is unfortunately not very well known in the Western world, making Yuriko Furuhata expert analysis of "the cinema of actuality" all the more important. Beginning with the thesis that "the New Left generation of Japanese student protesters are the children of television whose political actions are deeply conditioned by the ubiquitous presence of the news camera" (1), she examines the "avant-gardist appropriation of journalism … within postwar Japanese cinema" (2). The "changing conception of cinema in relation to television and other image-based media" (3) is becomes the primary focus of the book. And a closer look at the "journalistic turn of political avant-garde filmmakers in the 1960s" (3) should provide a better view on the developments in Japanese cinema after 1945 in general. The role of akuchuaritii (Actuality) in cinema is consequently of central to her analysis (7).
<14> In the first chapter (13-52), the discourse of the term eizô , or image, with regard to cinema and television is given closer consideration in an attempt to explain the developments of Japanese cinema in the 1950s. The chapter initially focuses on Ōshima Nagisa's Band of Ninja (Ninja bugeichô) with its use of sketch lines, word bubbles and speed lines to provide the audience with an intermedial character (13). Thereafter, a closer look is given to documentaries (33-37) of that period when cinema was privileged as "a visionary medium that reveals what remains inaccessible beneath the surface of visibility" (p. 36). The following chapter (53-87) focuses on the connection between theatricality and actuality and analyzes key debates in Japanese film theory discussing the concept of actuality; this discussion is consequently used as a framework to discuss particular movies (For the Damaged Right Eye [1968], Funeral Parade of Roses [1969], Death by Hanging [1968]) to demonstrate why these films are representative examples of the cinema of actuality (57-58). Furuhata shows that in these examples "filmmakers and performance artists [are] competing with journalists to produce street-based events that confer sensations of actuality" (87).
<15> That Japanese avant garde cinema also had a political component is emphasized in chapter 3 (88-114) since even pink movies quoted verbatim from media events (91-93). Furuhata analyzes the films of Wakamatsu Kôji as a "vantage point to analyze this difference" (10) between cinema and journalism. Wakamatsu's pink films, she argues, expose a "critical attitude toward the proximity between cinema and journalism" (114) despite the fact that they borrows significantly.
<16> Chapter 4 (115-148) then puts the interrelationship of journalism and cinema that has previously been elaborated on in connection to thefûkeiron (landscape theory) discourse in Japanese movie theory. A.K.A. Serial Killer (1969) and The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970) are discussed in detail to demonstrate that landscape theory is now central to landscape films (118-120) as an equivalent to state power and governmental control. Japanese movie makers from the period also used the cinema of actuality as a political weapon: (120-133). As Furuhata rightly observes:
Their critique of the landscape was deeply rooted in their concern over the invisible traces of state power inscribed in the everyday environment, the kind of power that was obscured by the incessant media coverage of the militant student movement and violent juvenile crimes. (148)
<17> The final chapter focuses on the confrontation between the cinema of actuality and television insofar as both claim to be mediums of actuality (149-182). Insights into the militant cinema of Japan and a close analysis of The Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War (1971) are followed by a comparison of this Japanese movie with Jean-Luc Godard's Here and Elsewhere (1976). Furuhata concludes that the former was an attempt to establish a new form of journalism (182), but it
…embodies the limitations of a leftist political imaginary that perhaps fails to address its own complicity with the existing police order that determines what counts as proper political action. (182)
<18> With doubt, Furuhata's study is a valuable addition to the field of Japanese film studies, but that aid, it is not for a general reader interested in Japanese film. The precision and focus of her discussion si sometimes far too complex; her discussions of the films assume an informed readership. From an academic perspective, her book is a must-read, but unfortunately it fails in its promotion of a wider, general knowledge of Japanese film history to an otherwise uninitiated public.
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