in common

We just were watching The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love -- as Rook is still wading through druidsquirrel's giant stack of lesbian movie classics -- and I realized it had the same ending scene as Fucking Amal - the 2 having to come out of a squalid room with a howling mob outside...

Which makes it seem much less about individual lesbian experience and more about the gay rights movement and visibility of queerness.

Fucking Amal was about a million times better of a movie. But 2 girls in love, though so cartoony, laid things out more explicitly and had an interesting violent edge -- the parents all howling "I'm going to kill you!" not meaning really kill them -- but then the scary married guy really threatening to kill them because they were a danger to (his) marriage. "Amal" didn't have that threat.

Anyway. It's a perfect example of how context deepens your understanding of the value and meaning of a work. When I saw that scene in Amal, I was mostly thinking about "coming out" as an individual experience. I was thinking about myself in high school and comparing experiences. That it showed up in both movies made me rethink the scene and realize that it's also about a general social change and cultural visibility on the macro scale. I am sure any real queer-theory-reading person will roll their eyes at my slowness!

Comments

[elswhere]

I loved "fucking Amal." I am no good at queer theory, I just loved it.

Have you seen the BBC version of "Tipping the Velvet?"

Or "Together"? Not the Chinese one, but the one by the same director as "Amal." It's not especially lesbian (well, there's one lesbian character), but it's one of the warmest, most generous movies I've ever seen. About a troubled commune in Sweden in the '70's.

Also-- you came out in high school?? Brave you.

--elswhere, came over from spanglemonkey

[badgerbag]

No but at this rate I will soon have watched everything possible!

I was thinking more about high school and how there was not really any paradigm of "coming out". in TX there wasn't really much to come out to. We were openly freaks, that's all. We were already freaks enough that it didn't feel like we had much to lose. But at the same time, there was no walking around holding hands and no one's parents were involved except my friend Julia's mom who was bi and lived with her girlfriend and would listen to all my shit endlessly. She was nuts, but at least I had her and her gf who was also my high school debate coach.

I also was imagining the rich girl and the poor girl from the 2 girls in love movie as me and my high school girlfriend and thinking of the totally non-happy ending of me being me and her being.... worse than unimaginably poor, to the point where she just enthusiastically emailed me that thank god she finally got the last of her teeth pulled out and got some welfare dentures. fuck it's depressing. I realized in my 20s at some point that she would die young in some hideous way from poverty, no health care, and hanging out with guys who collect guns, or whatever... OMG don't get me started. I'm blogging in my own comments box.