Reconstruction Vol. 16, No. 2
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Trans Reality: A Singaporean Malay Muslim in/as a Dance Documentary / Jun ZubillagaPow
Abstract
The recent proliferation of the Hollywood dance film-Step Up (2006), Black Swan (2010) and School Dance (2014), for example-has triggered a regional interest in the genre. On the one hand, dance film festivals in Hong Kong (Jumping Frames) and Tokyo (Dance and Media Japan) to name but two Asian proponents of the genre have mushroomed. The interest in dance film in Singapore on the other hand suffered a short‐lived history with the programing of a dance film section within the Singapore Arts Festival for a mere three years between 2010 and 2012. The film that I will discuss in this essay belongs to this cultural trend, where the production and reception of this niche genre remain appreciated by a relatively small viewership. Nevertheless, the particular dance documentary analyzed in this essay highlights several important issues of gender, genre and social realism within and beyond the Singaporean context. At their intersection lie the salient questions of enframement and revelation vis‐à‐vis the subject and its technological objectification. I will deliberate upon these structural topics before providing a close reading of the short film.
Keywords: dance documentary, enframing, reveal, reality, trans, Singapore
<1> Singapore, a multiracial and multicultural city‐state of five million residents, has since Independence in 1965 practiced an authoritarian system of governance. Academic observers consistently note the regimental control and surveillance of its population including its deviant constituents (Heng 1992; McCarthy 2006; Chua 2008; Barr 2014). While the lay Singaporean already faces a range of censure and restrictions, known colloquially as OB ("Out of Bounds") Markers, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer citizen readily struggles through negative discriminations and limitations on an everyday basis. In the domains of education, health, military, media and social activism, queer subjects constantly negotiate a pragmatic course of actions, to the extent of even compromising and becoming complicit with the regulating entities (Yue and Zubillaga‐Pow 2012; Chua 2014). Likewise, members of the transgender community in particular encounter a lifetime of transphobia. Despite the advent of sexual reassignment surgery in Singapore in the 1970s and proliferation of transgender prostitution since the 1980s, society at large continues to be reserved on issues concerning and accepting transsexuals (Lo 2003; 2007). Many trans people especially from the working class are forced out of their homes and made to earn a living as sex workers in the city‐state. Physical and socio‐psychological issues remain central concerns of trans Singaporeans.
<2> Within such a conservative, patriarchal society, most transwomen fill the feminine role after their transition. They are, however, still excluded from most women's organizations in Singapore. To the extent that trans people join the "rat race" and lead private lives, they subsist on hormonal therapy and socio‐political acceptance. This is not to say that they are not spared from other institutional prejudices stemming from their class statuses and/or ethnicities. Correspondingly, research into transgender lives in Singapore is mostly lacking. I have personally addressed this discursive lacuna with two published essays on cross‐dressing in the visual art and the media, where transgender portrayals, I argue, persist within the heteronormative and homonationalist frameworks (Zubillaga‐Pow 2014; 2015). Whether imagined or real, the lived experiences of Singaporean transwomen are contingent on the rethinking of both gender and sexuality in the global city.
<3> One of the key problems for trans is the issue of revealing oneself in public. While the exposure of one's private regions marks the moment of physical revelation, coming out as trans through a speech act is considered a verbal form of revelation. The reveal is in fact an oxymoronic notion within trans discourse because it assumes an ethical position of "truth" that is imposed upon the trans person (Seid 2014). The institutionalization of trans or third gender globally becomes one among many other ethical and epistemic tactics in countering the stereotyping effects of a hegemonic gender binary, one which pertains to the physical, psychological or performative aspects of socio‐cultural decorum. That is, the desire to pass as either a male or female person in a heteronormative society is more often than not aspirational. The trans subject in a state of transition repeatedly thwarts any correlation to the fixed gender categories of male or female. Instead, because the trans body undergoes constant modifications, its ontological state is never stable. Trans visibility is always already paradoxical and therefore always fragmentary; it subsists in a state of becoming.<4> Assuming the veracity of the above philosophy, the technological apprehension of a trans person will then always be a revelation that is incomplete and temporary. Cultural theorist Nikki Sullivan thinks that "bodies are entwined in (un)becoming rather than…simply mired in being unless they undergo explicit, visible and transformational procedures" (Sullivan 2006: 561). The very act of capturing bodies on film performs this selfsame "being" process of making trans bodies "explicit, visible and transformational." Filming trans bodies thereby denies the inherent ontology of becoming. What differentiates film from, say, the portrait or the photo is the former's partial depiction of reality. In contrast to its static counterpart, the moving image subtends reality; that is, a reality that moves in a diachronic actuality and factuality against the filmic image. The film theorist Victor Fan explains this materialist dilemma succinctly:
on the one hand, the cinematographic image is a trace of reality, and is indeed apprehended as an image‐consciousness in the same way other images are grasped in one's physical reality; on the other hand, reality is absent in the cinematographic image, and the cinema makes present the absence of a reality that is at once concealed and revealed by the image. (2015: 3)
<5> Applying this concept to trans cinema, the encasement of trans everyday life within the cinematic frame privileges certain aspects of trans livelihood over others. To the extent that film, and by extension cinema, reveals distinct truths about the trans subject, it simultaneously leaves other significant matters out of the frame. Such an epistemological positioning that is delimiting can easily reify and reduce trans subjectivities to a monolithic socio‐cultural phenomenon, which obviously is not the case. The disjuncture between trans continuity and filmic enframing in both the temporal and spatial aspects creates an ethical problem for the very reason that the filmic techne disrupts the trans vital continuum. While the epistemological opportunities, as well as risks of technological enframing, are readily acknowledged-that the apparatus not only safe‐keeps but also endangers the essence of truth (Heidegger 1977: 33), the proliferation of queer and trans film productions and festivals has hitherto not presented the total reality of the quotidian. Instead, the neoliberalization of trans and also queer discourses via their institutionalization and industrialization has conjured and fortified countless transnormative myths.
<6> Henceforth lies the crux of our problem: is the trans subject not always already a filmic object a priori? Whether shot as a documentary or fiction, the trans subject merely undergoes another technological form of objectification after the personal, the medical and the social. The technological intervention-film, projector, screen and cinema-that enframes and reveals the trans subject becomes a sheer extension of the trans imagination performing a quasi‐prosthesis of self‐expression. Borrowing from Chinese modern film theory, Fan considers such a cinematographic process as the "potential" ontology of "approaching reality": "a way of thinking of our cinematic experience as a state of suspension between reality and virtuality" (2015: 12). The trans subject represented on screen becomes a form of suspended reality.<7> The same can be said of the dance subject. While most of Bollywood cinema and ethnographic documentaries on African cultures already contain dance as part and parcel of the cinematography, the genealogy of the dance film similarly stems from an agenda or ideology of virtualizing dance culture. Dance being a movement art form is fairly congruent with the aesthetics of film; this combination was in fact already envisioned by the choreographer Rudolf Laban (1879‐1958) among others during the interwar decades (Franco 2012). Capturing dance on film is not only the most efficient way of recording, historicizing and propagating the art form, but it is also an effective tool for self‐appraisal and critique. Through the technological enframing, both the beautiful and the imperfect can be revealed. Correspondingly, the trans dancer qua subject approaches a certain reality that is suspended between the inert body and its movement. This conception enables the trans body to be defined by its movement; the two becoming inseparable. Against recent trans cultural critique, I argue that such a mediation is pre‐performative and pre‐spectacular (cf. Horak 2014; Käng 2014). Instead, the figure of the trans dancer is already virtual, approaching reality; it thwarts the directorial demands-systematization, taxonomization and representation-of the documentary film.
The Trans Subject Revealed
<8> Here, I hope to exemplify my theoretical exposition with a short film from Singapore. Transit
(2011) is a dance documentary directed by Regina Tan with additional writing by Eysham Ali. Ten minutes in duration, the film was produced as part of a university course in filmmaking at Chapman University, Singapore. Between 2011 and 2013, the film was screened at various times in Singapore and the United States, notably at the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Shot in the style of an autobiographical voiceover, there is almost no diegetic dialog or music in the film. The protagonist, Sri Alif, who is also the narrator, presents an account of herself and various aspects of her living circumstances. Speaking in her native language of Malay, she discusses her caring relationship with her mother and boyfriend, as well as her personal consciousness and identity within both the Malay community and Singaporean society. She says that dancing is part of her life and various image sequences show her dancing solo or as part of a group of crossdressers on stage or in a crowded dance studio.
Figure 1. Dancers from Transit (2011)
<9> What the filmmakers contributed to the mise en scène are the prosthesis of the call to prayer and images of group prayers in a mosque, as well as the spotlighting of various parts of Sri Alif's dancing body in the opening sequence. While the former sets the backdrop of Islamic censure without too much overt elaboration, the latter produces a misalignment and dis‐identification of gender and expression for the viewer. The diachrony of movements for the viewer—that is where both body and camera move in contrary motion—disavow any complete grasp of the dance language, and corresponding by allegory, the life story of the trans person herself. Set in stark contrast to the stationary ritualistic movement of the Salaat prayer performed by cisgender men, Sri Alif's corporeal soliloquy articulated by outstretched limbs and a rotating torso appears subversive. In addition, her outfit also differs from the traditional baju shirt and songkok hat worn by the Muslim men in the mosque. Adorned with multi‐colored bracelets, she bares her mid‐riff in between a tight‐fitting shimmery black top and a translucent white tutu. The difference is representative of the divergence in ethical and social outlook. While the men adhere to an ascetic way of life, the trans character presents herself as far more liberal in her taste and lifestyle.
<10> The scene at the mosque, where Sri Alif does not appear or enter, is interjected with her walking down a dimly‐lit runway donning a sexy black bra. Together with her trans performers, she smiles and sashays with confidence, but the image is cut back to the mosque exit where an elderly man puts on his shoes. The presence of a single lonesome figure amidst a hoard of devotees' shoes appears as a doppelgänger of the religious community barring Sri Alif from the space of worship. The subsequent scene shows her putting on make‐up in her bedroom before go to greet her mother in the kitchen. Her mother does not embrace her but resumes her household chore, leaving Sri Alif standing in the middle of the room. At this point in the narration, Sri Alif clarifies her relationship with her mother, who was unable to accept her trans child. She is pregnant with her third child and does not want Sri Alif to get too close to her womb lest affecting the gender identity of the unborn infant.
<11> As Sri Alif recalls wearing her mother's dresses when she was younger, the director inserts images of Muslim women and mannequins covered in the tudung headdresses at a shopping street for women's apparel. She then remembers that she used to be mocked for dressing as a girl in primary school and turning into a different person as she matures, but she claims she has always been the same person on the inside. What then allows her to express her emotions and let her "heart speak" is the medium of dance, specifically street dancing. She reveals that she did not seek any form of psychological help but used dance to understand and express herself. The screen frames her as part of a six‐member group rehearsing to electronic dance music in a brightly‐lit studio. In comparison to the other crew members, she stands out as the only trans person wearing shoulder‐length hair and hot pants. We observe that even if members of her troupe identify as crossdressers, Sri Alif is the only person who is authentically living as a trans person.
<12> Two‐thirds of the way into the film, the director brings in the character of Sri Alif's partner. Sri Alif inhabits the shame that she can neither reveal herself to his parents nor satisfy her boyfriend's sexual demands. In this scene, there exists a cinematic contradiction where she relates verbally the communal and social discrimination against her and her lover, but the director films them as a happy heterosexual couple using the laptop on the bed and holding hands on the streets. They then stop along the way for her to adjust her hair by using her boyfriend's sunglasses as a mirror. In contrast to the suburban domestic apartment that we have seen so far, the choice of the couple strolling along up‐market High Street in the core of the central district appears to jar with the protagonist's gender conformity and class status. By going stealth among the peak‐hour crowd, Sri Alif is suspending the reality of her gender, affect and class. Given her ability to own several costumes, an Apple laptop and soon an additional sibling, she can readily be assumed as middle class and, as such, filled with middle‐class aspirations. The cultural theorist Sara Ahmed summarizes this neoliberal situation thusly:
[the] investment in the freedom to be happy for queers corresponds with conventional class desires for upward mobility… But at another level, queerness is what gets in the way, allowing the body to intrude with another kind of desire. Such desires might even queer our aspirations. (2010: 120)
<13> In terms of cinematic geography, the short film is shot along the shopping street, in the modern dance studio and at the grand mosque. With respect to how these places arbitrate her gender identity and class status, what "intrudes" in Sri Alif's ability to be happy is her very body. Her freedom to dress, to dance and to be accepted by other Muslims-that is, to do things in those designated spaces-are all aspirations derived from her queerness as the raison d'être. I have written elsewhere that contemporary Singaporean queer films persist in locating queer bodies in mainstream neoliberal spaces, shopping centers, hotels, and army camps, for example (Zubillaga‐Pow 2016). Transit is no different. The chosen locations exist as potential Foucauldian heterotopias for the trans person to transcend. She is, however, incapable of doing so; she is absent from the street and mosque, and her choreography in the studio does not distinguish her from the other dancers. Even at the end of the film, Sri Alif laments that if she were to go back to being a boy, she would do it for her mother. Filial piety triumphs over trans desires.
Conclusion
<14> From my analysis of the dance documentary, I argue that certain aspects of trans livelihood have been revealed and others hidden in the process of becoming a part of virtual reality. Through the retelling of Sri Alif's life story from past to present, the filmmakers enframe the trans dancer as a cinematic subject in a process that simultaneously safe‐keeps and endangers her vital trajectories. While viewers are informed of her conflicts with the religious community and her closely‐knitted family, issues of her military conscription, education and the socio‐political outlook across Singapore, for instance, are kept off‐screen. The cinematographic apparatus reframes the trans subject into a filmic object, locating its agency at each moment of revelation. The fetishization of such moments is difficult to avoid precisely because the genre of the documentary is predicated congruently on such virtual effects of the reveal. The same can be said for the dance subject who always aspires towards a synthesis between body and movement; there is no dance without one or the other. The approach for the trans dancer enframed is to negotiate these ontological structures of gender, genre and technology and strive towards real social transcendence. Situated amongst the cinematic history of social realism, Singaporean or otherwise, Transit reveals trans dancing to be approaching reality.
Principle Cast and Crew of Transit (2011)
Director: Regina Tan
Writers: Eysham Ali (as Muhammad Eysham Ali), Regina Tan
Sri Alif (as herself)
Acknowledgement: Unless otherwise noted, all images were acquired under a Creative Commons license.
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