women’s bodies weren’t “made” to do anything, nature didn’t “intend” anything, no human action is “unnatural” and there is no inherent “purpose” to a human life
something i actually just realized on call w some friends recently is how crazey it is that your online friends are as many as thousands of feet above or below u right now. like if you teleported to their location without changing your height above sea level, well your fucked in some way basically
I’m not entirely sure you can write a “feminist retelling” of the odyssey from the perspective of a single female character because where the position of women becomes so interesting in the context of the epic is as a collective and how simply inescapable the presence of women is as the major scaffolding of the entire story. it is not imho the physical journey home that is the major backbone of the odyssey nor Odysseus on his boat with his men, but the consistent metaphor of weaving which reflects womanhood as an identity that is actively constructed and physically tangible in the cloth and clothes he is constantly having to receive from the xenia of other people, and this forms the connecting sinews between a lot of parts of that are slightly smaller but that ultimately do end up forming the physical bulk of the narrative - Athene, penelope, eurycleia, melantho, Helen, calypso, ino, nausicaa, arete, Circe, Persephone. The story starts with Athena’s actions and it ends with her too. Odysseus is undoubtedly gendered as male but he moves through a world in which the individual actions of diverse women stitch into an inescapable web. Even when Odysseus goes to the land of the dead its Persephone’s land. He meets the blind seer but he also meets his mother
I guess I’m not against the specific point of view limitation and I have fiddled with it myself and find it interesting, so much as the current publishing need to do this at the same time I don’t think I’ve seen a single modern adaptation/retelling that really includes what a major presence women as a whole are in the odyssey. I think I’m haunted now I’m actually reading it by how the retelling tends to restructure the story specifically in a way that limits their centrality in the narrative (to focus on Odysseus’s quests before Ithaka! Which is fine! Not a bad thing! But has lead to a social construction of the odyssey in which women collectively hold less space in the text than in the original odyssey, and it’s from this perspective of semi-erasure the new retellings are working from. You can’t put a voice back into the story in the space of the erasure of the voices already there
the reason I put feminist retelling in quotation marks is that I am not against the feminist retelling per se as a thing that exists!!! Just the execution
but I think the actual under discussed elephant in the room here is not the issue of the “feminist retelling” but the inverse, the normalized “masculinist retelling” that forms the majority of adaptations and popular consciousness about Homer’s odyssey specifically, where the version that the general public is aware of and that’s formed the bedrock of general retellings for a while one is not a slight deviation but a significant reworking of the entire structure of the text that centers a (more) linear retelling of odysseys and an all-male crew having present-tense adventures among islands instead of the past-tense recalled narrative amidst a complex array of mixed-gendered domestic environs in which women are far more actively present in every way. I’m generally kind of wary of people talking about the Correct Text versus the wrong text or Rewritten versions because it can leave out the operative fact that everything is retelling and interpretation but in the case of Homer’s odyssey it is really undeniable that the base structure of the whole text has been rewritten to fit a more pleasingly male-centric narrative about men doing adventures in a way that has really worked to recenter Odysseus as only and sole lead of the work and sideline the collective voices of women and their social world from being active and central members of the text! The entire thing has to be gutted and resewn to make Odysseus into that! Ironically this series of versions does just as much as say Madeline miller to restrict the entire text but while EVERYTHING is obviously a perspective it’s a very very certain perspective on how to adapt Homer that’s become very mainstream and idk, even stuff like epic the musical or Nolan’s odyssey doing this at least as intensely as any feminist retelling
(also like hmmmm i think this isn’t a men versus women thing so much as a way we tell this narrative but I think also!!!! These tellings really do Odysseus a disservice from what a complex character he really is in the odyssey and one we largely learn about from how he interacts with other people, particularly women! So much of who he is and what he does is about being this survivor who is no longer really a cool sexy war soldier because there is no war and yet he has the trauma, it’s just that as per Homer’s original text much of that trauma is due to the combined effects of years of rape and imprisonment and isolation and this has definite effects on the ways he contextualises the world and the people around him! So I’d really love to see and odyssey that digs into Odysseus himself in this wider and largely female context and that like, focuses on the fact he’s a male survivor of rape and a refugee who washes up naked on other people’s shores and that this has a massive impact on his narrative and how he views people)
the thing about the omg why are the women in the odyssey just sitting and weavinggg thing is that like I am absolutely not here to argue they are NOT living patriarchally confined lives! But the social situation in the odyssey is not a divide between getting to go on a cool YA anime magic quest with a sword or sit home and do nothing. The social setting in the odyssey is that the war is over and the war was a real war, which means it fucking sucked and people died. Odysseus’s men have died. “Why doesn’t she get to pick up the cool swordy thing?” Because the men who picked the cool swordy thing up are literally dead and often for reasons far beyond their personal sphere of control and they aren’t here any more and who is are women with their looms
Potentially overlooked or underwatched queer films I think are worth watching: a list by me
A very succinct title for this post, I know! lol
My 'methodology' for this was just to sort my Letterboxd list of all the queer films I've seen by popularity, so it's clearly not foolproof and people are welcome to disagree with me about whether any of these films are overlooked or underwatched XD it's really more just films I don't see talked about often when queer cinema comes up, or films that may be more overlooked by casual watchers, so if you're steeped in the history of queer cinema you'll probably be like 'wtf, these aren't overlooked at all, you fool!' But, yeah, that's my little disclaimer because I am an anxious person
I've grouped some of the films by theme to make it a little easier for me and I've also linked to the Letterboxd page for each film so you can see the summary so this post doesn't get TOO long
One more note: as I was compiling this list, I realised basically all these films are about cis men. I think this is a combination of those making up the bulk of queer films I've seen + the ones that aren't either being better known or just really not good (or I don't remember them well). But, yeah, it really showed up the blind spots in my viewing! Feel free to leave recs too fill in those blind spots (or any other recs)
I think I'm probably going to do separate lists of Australian queer films and one for 90s/00s queer rom coms? Yes, no, maybe, I don't know? So there aren't many of those on here for that reason
ANYway! For anyone who doesn't want to read more of my ramblings, here's just a list:
All three of these films were made in countries where homosexuality was illegal at the time the films were made (and I believe still is in two of them). They're also, as far as I'm aware, the first queer film produced in each country
Desecration (Nigeria) has been watched by 5 entire people on Letterboxd! It is not what I would call a 'good' film and the sound mixing is so poor I missed a lot of the dialogue, but I have SO much respect for not just independent filmmakers telling their stories with whatever means they have, but for people telling stories like this in particular. As I said, I would not call it a 'good' film, but I think it's worth watching if you have any interest in queer stories, especially from people and countries that may not often get to tell their stories, let alone on a more global scale
You can watch it on YouTube
Kapana (Namibia) is another independent film but I'd consider it 'better' than Desecration (and happier). While it's a romance, it also explores the reality of people living with HIV/AIDS in Namibia and, again, it's the kind of film I think is 'important' to watch for the same reasons as Desecration
You can watch it on YouTube
Dakan/Destiny (Guinea) is the most watched and probably better known, but I wanted to add it in here too. It's also probably the 'best' of the three and a film I can see myself revisiting. Like the others, it's the first queer film out of its country, but this was made in the 90s! And, from memory, there is a frankness to it that was sometimes elided in western media at the time. It's a brave film that was also clearly made with love
THIRD MAN OUT 2005 // SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM 2006 // ON THE OTHER HAND, DEATH 2008 // ICE BLUES 2008
I already did an entire post on the Donald Strachey films, so I won't repeat myself, but go watch these movies if you like hardboiled detective stories/noir pastiche and cute husbands, I highly recommend
Oh, and they're very different, but two other queer films in the murder mystery genre I'd recommend are The Last of Sheila (which Rian Johnson was inspired heavily by for Glass Onion) and Deathtrap
RIOT 2018
Riot is a fictionalised look at the gay rights movement in 1970s Australia. People are SO harsh on Australian films and it makes me sad, but I remember thinking this was not only genuinely good with some very solid performances, but it's so rare to get films about Australia's queer history. (If you want more on that, the docuseries Queerstralia is well worth a look as well)
I could probably do a post just on Australian queer cinema if anyone wants me to (or even if you don't :P)
THAT CERTAIN SUMMER 1972 // AN EARLY FROST 1985
The only thing these have in common is being TV movies, but I'm putting them together anyway
That Certain Summer is a lot better and more engrossing than I was expecting a TV movie to be (which I think shows my own bias more than anything) and is one of the earlier films I've seen that deals with a father/son relationship. It's a sensitive and empathetic portrayal
Plus, you get to see a young Martin Sheen (with, I might add, magnificent hair, say 'militant straights').
An Early Frost is a TV movie about a lawyer who discovers he has AIDS and this was shown on network TV at the height of the epidemic. It was actually number one in the Nielsen ratings the night it aired and was nominated for 14 Emmys (winning 3) but I rarely see people talk about it these days. (That could just be that I'm somewhat reclusive, even online lol) And it was really good imho!
Oh, and the screenplay is written by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman who also wrote/produced the US version of Queer as Folk
If you're looking for other 80s films about HIV/AIDS, I'd also recommend Buddies (which was devastating) and Parting Glances (I think this is pretty well known for starring a young, beautiful Steve Buscemi), which was actually lighter than I'd remembered it being when revisiting it
THE BURYING PARTY 2018 // BENEDICTION
The Burying Party is a crowdfunded film about Wilfred Owen, who has been one of my favourite poets since high school. (If you've not read any of his poems, at least read his most well known Dulce et decorum est, which doesn't shy away from the horrors of war.) It's obviously low budget, and less than an hour long, but made with a lot of care and love. I actually backed the kickstarter, or whatever it was, and I'm currently trying to figure out if I'm able to download the film from Vimeo where I 'own' it. But, yes, I think it's very good for what it is!
Benediction is far better known, being a Terence Davies (RIP) film that got cinema and festival screenings, but as it's about Siegfried Sassoon (Owen's mentor - afaik they never had a physical relationship, but they seemed to have loved each other dearly), I just wanted to note it.
BROTHER TO BROTHER 2004
Brother to Brother is one I don't remember super well, but it stars Anthony Mackie as a young gay man who befriends an older gay man who was a writer during the Harlem Renaissance. I pretty much never see anyone talking about this film, but I'm a sucker for an intergenerational friendship, especially with queer stories or stories about other marginalised people sharing their history
(Also of note, but far better known, is Looking for Langston. And, while we're talking about Isaac Julien, Young Soul Rebels is brilliant! And Mike from Heartbeat is in it haha)
WILDHOOD 2021
Wildhood is an incredibly tender and special film (though with a brutal start) about the main character finding himself and reconnecting with his heritage (his maternal lineage is Mi'kmaq) and is also essentially kind of a road trip movie, too, which I'm a sucker for. Really, really beautiful film!
The only other queer film I've seen with Aboriginal Canadian* characters is Fire Song, but I don't remember it well
*sorry if that's not the right term
WHEN I'M SIXTY-FOUR 2004
When I'm Sixty-Four is the film for you if you want some ~old man yaoi. It's soooooooo beautiful! I don't have anything else to say about it, but it was just so lovely and moving and ugh. I need everyone to watch it!!
HARD PAINT 2018
Hard Paint is another somewhat difficult watch with a cathartic ending. I just adore films about loneliness and lonely characters. Beautiful film, visually and otherwise, and I remember it having a cracking soundtrack too
A few others I'd like to mention that I don't remember well enough to write about (and, also, I'm tired and just want to post this): A Date for Mad Mary ; Alice Junior ; Cop Secret ; Golden Delicious ; The Leather Boys ; A Very Natural Thing ; Naz & Maalik ; Princess Cyd ; Coming Out 1989 ; O Fantasma ; Winter Kept Us Warm 1965 ; Some Nights I Feel Like Walking and I could keep going foreverrrrr. Might have to do a second part to this post one day?
And I'm planning on doing a post just on Marco Berger's films one day, but for now, I'll say, Plan B, Hawaii, Taekwondo and The Astronaut Lovers are all gorgeous!
MY OTHER REC POSTS // LIST OF ALL QUEER FILMS I'VE SEEN
Also, I never usually do this, but I'm going to be cheeky and tag anyone who liked and/or commented on my post about whether or not I should make this post. Feel free to scroll on by and ignore it though! Or tell me to never do this again. Or even block me if it's really annoying and/or inappropriate!!
Time has passed but I don't think I'll ever really get over what happened to Zhang Zhehan - the cruelty of it, how quickly it happened. He was at the top and then blotted out. I found so much joy in those first post SHL months but I can't really think about it anymore without pain. I miss his acting so much - I hope one day we see it again.
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