REFERENCES

Aldrich, Robert. The Killing of Sister George. Palomar Pictures. UK. 1968.

Berlant, Lauren and Michael Warner. ‘Sex in Public.’ In the Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Edited by Donald E. Hall et al. London: Routledge, 2013. 165-179.

Clayton, Jack. The Innocents. Twentieth Century Fox. UK. 1961.

Edelman, Lee. Homographesis. New York: Routledge, 1994. 192-242.

Foucault, Michel. ‘The Perverse Implantation.’ The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin, 1981. 36-49.

Halberstam, Judith/ Jack. In a Queer Time and Place. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 1-22.

Hanson, Ellis. Introduction to Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film. Edited by Ellis Hanson. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. 1-19.

Jarman, Derek. Blue. Channel 4 Television Corporation. UK. 1993.

Lansbury, Angela. Quoted in Bourne. Lecture 3. https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1474224/ mod_resource/content/2/QBC%20-%20Lecture%20Week%203.pdf

Section 28 or Clause 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 | 24 May 1988 |

Sontag, Susan. https://monoskop.org/Susan_Sontag#Works.

FINAL THOUGHTS

My initial understanding of queer limited my analysis of space to be a place that refuses mainstream or normal content. To an extent this still remains accurate, but now I see space more conceptually from discussing the way in which it operates in The Killing of Sister George, The Innocents and Blue. It seems that a queer public space cannot exist as one must enter it through admission of difference, immediately segregating them from general populous. Once exposed, though technically public, this space operates as a hostile and sometimes shameful environment rather than a liberating one. I’ve come to realise that to take the idea of queer literally can challenge the very notion that queer spaces exist at all. The Innocents use of paranormal space allowed me to conclude that queer space isn’t any space, rather a lack of space. When this idea is applied to Blue also, it appears that presence and absence can be synchronised, which suggests that all spaces are open to queering because space and void imply destinations or dimensions that you can simultaneously be in and out of.

THE DEEP BLUE

Jarman translates the film Blue into sheer space, a pure expanse of colour, in which our sense of time and space is lost almost completely. It is both immersive and repelled into a void of nothingness. There is no changing image, yet the image is always present, much like there is no space but there is always this queer blue space that time is suspended in. “A void is not the absence of any content, but simply the absence of anticipated content” (Susan Sontag), and with Blue we connect with the space provided, despite it not operating in a way that fulfils our expectations of space in the film.   

In the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, I found the intentions of Jarman were to replicate the strangeness of existing in a space controlled by your disease. The film follows no teleological structure, there is no development in the image we see, this queer use of time and space challenges the conventions of logic. Subsequently, Blue is a film that uses queer space, yet supports the notion that there is no queer space as the audience can be both immersed into and rejected from the image. They can both enter its dimension and experience the film from an external space. 

SPACED OUT

If queer space did exist separately to ‘normal’ space, what would it be? If queer by its abnormality and unconventionality then the afterlife is a queer space. The Innocents (Clayton, 1961) can be queered as the environment is haunted by paranormal entities. In the film the ghosts don’t exist in a physical space, rather a void that blurs the boundaries between spaces of life and death. The queer space that Miss Jessel and Quint inhabit, or rather non-space, allows them to act freely, or appear to. Perhaps humanity should seek to inhabit a non-space in which they too can act freely. Despite having argued that ghosts can exist within a queer space, the one we are referencing still operates as a space. For a space to be truly queer, it would need to oppose any constructs of a space; it would not be a location or a destination. “Queer uses of time and space develop, at least in part, in opposition […], they also develop according to other logics of location, movement, and identification” (Judith Halberstam, 1). The queer space that Quint is trapped in cannot be a space because a queer space, by definition, cannot be entered. In essence, queer spaces are not spaces for queer things, they are spaces of non-space. 

THE NEW NORMAL

The lack of space for queer opens a void to fall into. In Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993), the lack of space used on-screen overwhelmed me as if I was drowning, struggling to understand where I was or how I was supposed to react and feel. The void is a space in itself that can unhinge the very nature in which it exists. If I consider a lack of space long enough it can become a space, like if you were to analyse the most normal seeming person for long enough, they may seem too normal. A heterosexual male who lives with his wife and 2.5 kids in a house with a picket fence, is considered a stereotypical median in society when in fact it is a physical impossibility. If nothing is what it initially seems, our expectations and preconceptions are void also. Society reinforces codes and conventions around sexuality and logic which can be entirely unravelled. The space we have created for ourselves causes us to fear rejection and limit our uniqueness when there is nothing wrong with existing eccentrically when nobody is completely centric. 

EXILED & EXPOSED

When we analysed The Killing of Sister George it became apparent that both public and private spaces offer immense difficulties for lesbians in regards to acceptance and fulfilment. The domestic disputes and theme of infidelity certainly suggests that lesbianism is not an ideal lifestyle as it causes confusion and upset in the home and havoc outside it. For example, when Childie is found to be not exclusively involved with George and is seduced by Mrs Croft. Beyond the film itself, the mere fact that Angela Lansbury refused the role that Beryl Reid accepted because she “didn’t want to play a lesbian at that time” (quoted in Bourne, 208) informs us of the pressure and discomfort that came with playing a somewhat taboo character in the space and time the film was produced. It seems actors feared homosexuality might reflect negatively on their career which demonstrates how unyielding the environment was towards the queer. It seems that for queer people there is no accepted public place for them to wholly exist in without prejudice, as no queer space can be normative and no normative space can be queer.

COMING OUT

The choice between remaining in the confines of the closet or entering the a potentially hostile space means deciding between expressing or suppressing yourself. If chosen to express oneself, an individual may no longer be required to perform a falsity, but at the price of vulnerability and exposure. Hanson illustrates this by saying “to be out is always already to be in – to be partially obscured or unspeakable and to articulate oneself within and through a rhetoric that can never be fully one’s own” (18). Coming out disrupts a previous space and lifestyle to employ a heteronormative rhetoric in which you differentiate yourself from. Arguably, there is also more vulnerability than visibility as, needless to say, queer characters are vastly under-represented on-screen and lesbians, in particular, still to this day lack a level of visibility, which films like The Killing of Sister George (Aldrich) wish to illuminate.  

UNWELCOME

“Outsiders” is a returning term suggesting queer people have not only been pushed away, but put away. The treatment of those who unsuccessfully uphold social standards is, generally speaking, hostile and disapproving. Our hegemonic heteronormative society forces homosexuals to publicly announce their sexuality, which when AIDS and various factors are considered, segregates them. Despite sex and sexuality being regarded as private matters, “intimacy is itself publicly mediated, in several senses.” (Berlant, 2604). The blatant connotations of “the closet” convey the suffocating restrictive environment in which a person can hide from the rest. If and when they choose to come out of said closet, they are forced remove themselves from the private space and admit intimate details which are then into the public domain like an unnecessary public service announcement, warning others of their presence.

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

Most spaces can be divided into public and private domains, and when homosexuality is publicly prohibited, it excludes a certain number of people from the public space, condemning them to conceal. Treating “the ‘unnatural’ as a specific dimension in the field of sexuality. This kind of activity assumed an autonomy with regard to the other condemned forms” (39, Michel Foucault), which I understand as condemning non-heteronormative behaviours and placing them in a separate space. So, if queerness is an outcast of normality, then queer people are outcasts from society. Homophobic attitudes and cultural reinforcements make it difficult to for queer to exist publicly, especially when a moral panic ensues such as the AIDS crisis, which two upcoming films focus on. Being present in or entering the public space is a challenge for queer individuals as they are reinforced that they don’t belong in the sphere of normality, which in reality is more of a spectrum. Instead queer people are expected to simply exist elsewhere, but I’m unsure where that space might be?

I NEED SOME SPACE

Spaces within the public domain and on-screen seem to offer constructed ideologies of normativity and convention. From analysing films on this module, it is evident that space can cause colossal effect on the context, meaning and reception of a film. The anticipation and expectation from a space comes with social conditioning and awareness, for example, in a prison you would assume the presence of criminals. Yet some spaces defy our expectations and are thus queer in some way.

Not only can space be queer or queered, but it can also be the destination for the queer. A queer or unusual space in film falls outside the boundaries for conventional narratives and aesthetics that adhere to a heteronormative function. The queer does not reside in the centre of homonormativity, instead it insists on, in Edelman’s words, “disturbing” (224), making queer innately eccentric. It appears evident that queerness is consistently rejected through cultural reinforcements, like the “No Outsiders” policy which, as described in Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, states “a local authority ‘shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality”, discouraging what was considered an inappropriate and unproductive lifestyle.