Gender and Sexuality in Film

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how issues raised by cross-dressing and transgender identities in film are largely dependent on the way in which they are treated. It looks at how the mainstream cross-dressing comedy finds reasons to dismiss the potential danger of cross-dressing, while independent and foreign films such as "Ma Vie en Rose" and "All About My Mother" tend to offer a representation which is crude and possibly more accurate.

From the Paper:

"Tootsie also highlights the way in which women are treated in the workplace, as he learns submission as an actress who has to obey. He used to be hard to work with as an actor but as Dorothy Michaels, he has the door shut to his face by the director and is also refused a drink when the director just says 'no, no, she's fine'. Moreover, he says that he would hit the director if he wasn't dressed as a woman, which points out to the social boundaries and expectations of what a woman should do and should not do, mainly that women do not hit and men should not hit women."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Ackroyd, P. 1979. Dressing up, Transvestism and Drag: The history of an obsession. London: Thames and Hudson, p. 54.
• All About My Mother. 1999. by Pedro Almodovar.
• Bell-Metereau, R. 1993. Hollywood Androgyny. New York: Columbia University Press, p. 235.
• Bolin, A .1988. In Search of Eve: Transsexual Rites of Passage, p. 94 in Lorber, J. 1994. Paradoxes of Gender. Yale: Yale University Press, p. 85.
• Bruzzi, S. 1997. Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies. London: Routledge, pp. xx, 147- 152, 157, 162.

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