Cheryl Dunye on "Gone with the Wind"

In her 2017 interview with The Film Stage, Dunye mentions that the Martha Page character in The Watermelon Woman is based on real-life director Dorothy Arzner (1897 – 1979), a queer of historical note whom I don’t recall ever hearing about before. This pioneering “out” lesbian from Hollywood’s Golden Era maintained a forty-year relationship with Marion Morgan, a dancer and choreographer who was ten years older than Arzner. Even though she tried to keep her private life as private as possible, Arzner was rumored to be linked romantically with a number of actresses, including Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn (Mayer). She never hid her sexual orientation, nor her identity; her clothing was unconventional for a woman of that time, she wore suits or straight dresses (Mayne, 42).

Yet, I still wonder why Dunye couldn’t find a real black actress from this era to profile in her film. We also got the inside scoop on Camille Paglia’s participation in the film. I sort of had the feeling Paglia was taking the piss out of herself, and this interview confirmed that!

In her June 2020 interview with Vanity Fair, Dunye is asked about the removal of Gone With The Wind from Netflix, given the current political climate in the U.S. and the removal of Confederate-era monuments. Dunye’s response is the same as mine: By all means, keep the film out there. It is an undeniable classic! (It is also one of my favorite films, along with another film released the same year about a magical, fantastical place that really doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t stop The Wizard of Oz from being great entertainment either.)

But the film needs to be accompanied by a discussion of its content that places the film in its proper socio-political context. It sounds like this is what Netflix plans to do. But withdrawing the film from distribution outright would totally suck, not the least of which is because, as Dunye notes, “it is a film that our first Oscar came from, right? Hattie McDaniel. Her troubled life—in the sense of dying too soon, in the sense of her place within the African American arts community and the disrespect from that and what she lived for—you’re going to shut down that film? Why not find out more about it? Why don’t we dissect it and think about it a little bit more?” (Desta).

 

Works Cited

Desta, Yohana. “The Watermelon Woman: The Enduring Cool of a Black Lesbian Classic.” Vanity Fair, 19 June 2020, www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/the-watermelon-woman-the-enduring-cool-of-a-black-lesbian-classic.

Mayer, So. “Dorothy Arzner: Queen of Hollywood: Sight & Sound.” British Film Institute, 7 Mar. 2015, www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/dorothy-arzner-queen-hollywood.

Mayne, Judith. Directed By Dorothy Arzner (Women Artists in Film). Indiana University Press, 1994. 

Schindel, Daniel. “Cheryl Dunye on Making History with 'The Watermelon Woman,' Representation, and Performance.” The Film Stage, 6 Feb. 2017, thefilmstage.com/cheryl-dunye-on-making-history-with-the-watermelon-woman-representation-and-performance/.

 

 

 

 

 

New Queer Cinema and Cheryl Dunye's "The Watermelon Woman"

When I first heard the term "New Queer Cinema", I thought we’d be talking about something, er, new, which in my mind means something within the past 5 years or so. But after reading Ruby Rich’s piece on the BFI website, I realized we’d be going back at least three decades to the 90’s when discussing new queer cinema. And although Rich didn’t coin the term until 1992 in response the voluminous queer content at film festivals that year, I had been aware of and seeing queer independent film for several years already at that point. Due in large part no doubt to my living in SF, I remember seeing films such as “Buddies” (1985), “Desert Hearts” (1985), “Parting Glances” (1986), and plenty of other queer films when they came out during the 80’s, but by 1992 we’d reached such a critical mass that Rich was able to identify and declare a “new wave” of film-making. 

Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman exemplifies this genre with its low-budget, independent production values, its rejection of heteronormativity, and its depiction of queer lives on the fringe of society. I don’t think “heteronormativity” or “Intersectionality” had been coined yet as academic concepts/terms when Dunye’s film came out, but the film is relevant to today’s audiences and queer studies students in the deft ways it portrays how sexual orientation intersects with race, gender, and class affecting the lives of the characters in the film.

I pegged the film as a “mockumentary” very early on. It was clearly actors reading from a script, though I was kept guessing for a while whether or not “The Watermelon Woman” was a real person. The appearance by Camille Paglia was a good move at throwing us off the scent as well. I wonder if she was in on the joke? But at some point the coincidences and fortuitous events were just too good to be true, like when Cheryl meets her mother's friend Shirley, who is a wealth of information about Fae Richards a.k.a. “The Watermelon Woman.” One of my favorite parts of the film was when the white archivist woman at the CLIT Center dumped out the contents of the box on the table. Hilarious, but a dead giveaway that what we were watching was staged. Nevertheless, the film was very entertaining and cleverly produced, even after you figured out the gimmick.

Dunye’s skillful blending of actual archival footage with creatively-produced “historical” footage and photographs did initially reel me in, but I was left wondering why Dunye needed to invent a character. She states at the end of her film, “Sometimes you have to create your own history” but I’m sure there must be other REAL black actresses from this era that Dunye could have researched. To my knowledge, there has yet to be a good documentary about Hattie McDaniel or Butterfly McQueen, and those are just two of the more well-known such actresses that I can name off the top of my head. I just had to Google her name, but I’ll never forget Juanita Moore’s powerhouse performance in “Imitation of Life.” And yet I know NOTHING about her! 

Works Cited 

Dunye, Cheryl, director. The Watermelon Woman. Dancing Girl, 1997, lumiere.berkeley.edu/students/items/35243.

Rich, B. Ruby. “New Queer Cinema: Sight & Sound.” British Film Institute, 25 June 2017, www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/new-queer-cinema-b-ruby-rich.

Back to School!

This semester (Fall 2020) I am taking an online class at City College of San Francisco: Contemporary LGBTQ Film. I've decided I'll blog the writing I do for the course, since I know you're all just SO god-damned interested! Here's my introduction, to get things started:

Hello Class!

My name is Jeff Matthews. I am a 59-year-old, gay, cisgender man, but I prefer the label "queer" for a few reasons. 

1.) It's accurate. I knew I was queer long before I knew I was gay. 

2.) It's provocative. I liked the in-your-face aspect of it at the time I adopted it, during the early 1990's Queer Nation Era. ("We're here. We're queer. Get used to it!")

3.) It's inclusive, encompassing everyone who is not heterosexual or cisgender.

4.) It's concise. No never-ending, forever-evolving anagram.

I took my first Queer Studies Course at CCSF in Fall 1995! Interestingly, it was a course titled "Homosexuality in Contemporary Film." I guess I've come full circle during the past 25 years, as this is the last course I need for my A.A. Degree in Queer Studies. Obviously, I wasn’t in any hurry to get the degree. Hey, I’ve been busy doing other things! LOL. Chipping away at the degree has always been a labor of love, anyways. I enjoy being a student.

I just retired in June, after teaching at a community college myself for 28 years. My crowning achievement there was creating an A.A. Degree Program in Queer Studies! I knew once I pulled that off, I could retire in peace, and I did. If you want to know more about that side of me, you can read this article.

I’ve also created some delicious music for stoned queers over the past 35 years or so, which you can check out here.

Besides not being able to travel, one of the things I hate most about Life During a Pandemic is not being able to go out to the movies. I developed a life-long love of movies (and grand theaters) when I was a little boy, and was there every step of the way as queers evolved in cinema since (and before) 1985. I am purposefully not looking ahead at the syllabus as I want to be surprised each week by Ardel’s picks. How many will I have already seen? This first week’s pick, “The Watermelon Woman,” will be new to me. I’m looking forward to watching it soon.

Good luck, everyone! Looking forward to getting to know you better this semester.

~ Jeff