Butch lesbians.
I have often wondered why there are so few -- any? -- movies about butch lesbians out there, but I actually haven't really wondered because the answer is obvious:
A studio does not feel like it can sell a movie about butch lesbians.
Gay men? Easy, especially lately. Lipstick lesbians? Sure. It's every man's fantasy. Transgender or non-binary? We are starting to see these characters really flourish on screen.
But butch lesbians remain a tough sell. For one, there is nothing flamboyant about them, and flamboyance is something that plays well on screen in whatever form it takes. If you're talking about two characters who have short hair, wear flannel shirts, are maybe a bit pudgy and bear a bit of a resemblance to one another, that is not the sort of colorful display to which a camera is traditionally drawn.
In a way, lipstick lesbians and butch lesbians are each others' exact opposites in terms of cinematic appeal. The former could potentially please all four quadrants of the cisgender viewing population: straight men, gay men, straight women and gay women. Straight men fantasize about lipstick lesbians, if we are to believe the copious amounts of porn in existence about such women. Gay men find them a bit fabulous and aspirational, especially the drag portion of the gay male audience. Straight women are generally supportive of women on screen and also aspire to the beauty of these characters. And of course gay women, either lipstick lesbians or butch lesbians, have many of the same fantasies about such women that straight men do, and if they don't, they are in it just for the representation.
Butch lesbians? One quadrant at best. And even the gay women in the audience may want something more aspirational, something that doesn't remind them so much of themselves. (Yes, there is self-loathing among all people, and especially in the gay community.)
(Side note: I am aware that these terms are very reductive. I know no person is reducible to a set of stereotypical traits. However, these terms have also been used historically to differentiate for the purposes of commentary and analysis so I am engaging them here.)
Despite the likelihood of disappointment, I was determined to find whatever butch lesbian movies were out there. As discussed, the pickings were slim. Though to be fair, I stopped after one reddit thread because I recognized one of the two titles mentioned right away, both by the film itself and by the director. (The other was a Thai film and I didn't even start to look it up.)
Dee Rees directed a movie that made my top ten of the year it was released, Mudbound in 2017. At the time I saw and loved it, I knew that Rees was known for her prior feature, Pariah, which was her debut and released in 2011.
Pariah might not be a butch lesbian movie quite in the way I had anticipated. I guess my core idea of a butch lesbian is the sort of white women wearing the clothing and with the haircut I mentioned above. But no one would call Alike (uh-LEE-kay) -- known as Li -- a lipstick lesbian, so at least that's something.
Li (Adepero Oduye) is a 17-year-old living in New York, an aspirational writer whose primary medium is poetry. She isn't out to her family, though they have their suspicions, especially her younger sister (Sahra Mellesse), who teases her but is accepting of what she knows her sister is. Their mother (Kim Wayans) doesn't want her daughter to hang out with her out friend Laura (Pernell Walker), the closest this film has to a true butch lesbian, and sees what's going on despite the fact that she can't bear to think about it. Their father (Charles Pernell) is kinder to Li but only because he's in deep denial. Li starts to see a new girl (Aasha Davis) on the sly, and things are about to become a lot more complicated for all of them.
A very brief 87 minutes, Pariah is not heavy on plot as it basically takes Li through a familiar series of coming of age beats -- or, maybe more appropriately, coming into her sexuality beats. More than its details about that part of her growth, the film distinguishes itself for the intersection between its look at sexuality and its look at the Black community of 2011. Although Rees is too shrewd of a filmmaker to come out and say it, the film is wrestling with a particular level of acute homophobia that has always been ascribed to the Black community. There are some interesting gender complications thrown in here as well, as both Li's and Laura's mothers are the hardest on them, inclined to shut them out completely. This has already happened with Laura's mother and Li's mother seems to be going down a similar path.
If there is something a little rudimentary in the storytelling of Pariah, it could be because a) small independent dramas are not typically heavy on complicated plots or unexpected developments, and b) in 2011, a story like this was probably new enough in "mainstream" cinema (I'd hardly call this a mainstream film, even though it features some known actors) that it doesn't need to be anything more than a primer on this type of character and the prejudices she endures. Those prejudices are pretty strong, as the title suggests exactly how unwanted Li feels.
And to its credit, Pariah has a very strong denouement -- perhaps not an unexpected one, but one that is executed confidently and with emotional potency. By the end of only 87 minutes we have come to really understand Li and have some better idea what she's going through -- knowing that without actually walking in her shoes, we will never fully understand it. When she weeps on the floor in frustration, our hearts really go out to her.
I guess I'm still looking for my idea of what a real butch lesbian film would look like. Perhaps because Li is an artist, because she is reasonably stylish and because her sexual preference doesn't scream out from her appearance, I feel like this is still a marketable lesbian story. Perhaps, because it's the movie business (emphasis on "business") we are talking about, we'll never see "real" butch lesbians as protagonists of their own movie.
One final film next week involving lesbians from history, who I can tell you for sure will not be butch.
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