Saturday, February 23, 2013

Performers Performing Performances

There are no other women like you, Michael. You're a man.”

Tootsie (1982) is a film that explores performance on several levels, opening with the struggles facing our performing-protagonist, Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman). Michael is shown attending various auditions and donning various ensembles in an attempt to fit the director's artistic vision, but to no avail. He glues on facial hair in an attempt to look aged, but the director needs someone older. He dresses in child-like clothing and raises his voice an octave or so, but that director needs someone younger. The unseen director calling orders from the darkened theater assumes the role of societal censures, dictating what is ideal and not ideal for the role that a character, or an individual, is required to adopt. This manner of communication continues for a bit (taller, shorter, etc.) until we are given the following exchange:
Director: “We're looking for someone different.” 
Michael: “I can be different.”
Thus, ladies and gentleman (and everyone who identifies as something in between), we have a premise. Michael can be different. I was immediately reminded of Sartre's essay that we read earlier in the semester, in which he claims that humans are oftentimes able to transcend their facticity. Michael can be taller. Michael can be shorter. Michael can be different. Michael can be woman. He is unable to get work as a male actor, so he dons a disguise – by the name of Dorothy Michaels (he really worked hard for that alias) – and is cast in a Soap Opera. As he later says, it is “one of the greatest acting challenges an actor can have,” referring of course to the transformation of his perceived gender.

This notion of perception brings me to an important distinction that must be made. At no point during the film does Michael self-identify as “woman” outside the context of his performance as Dorothy. His gendered performance as a woman is not the same as his ongoing performance of gender as Michael. One is a performance in the theatrical sense, and the other in the societal sense, as Judith Butler describes in her essay. Butler notes that in theatre, and presumably also in film, “one can say, 'this is just an act,' and de-realize the act, make acting into something quite distinct from what is real.” Michael asserts, at least initially, that Dorothy is separate from himself. Dorothy is a character he plays, apart from the performance of his gender which he unwittingly repeats on a daily basis.

But as in any good cross-dressing story, the line between performance and reality gets blurred. Michael begins to portray Dorothy outside the television show studio, carrying some of her worries around with him. Butler accounts for this, saying that when a subversive gender performance is placed into the context of reality, “there are no theatrical conventions to delimit the purely imaginary character of the act, indeed, on the street or in the bus, there is no presumption that the act is distinct from a reality.” The passage is particularly relevant to the scene in which Michael is attempting to decide what to wear to Julie's (Jessica Lange) house. He is genuinely concerned with his appearance, with the way a striped outfit pulls unnaturally across his (unnatural) bust. He is himself; his concerns are genuine and without “theatrical conventions.” Of course, to play the devil's advocate to my own argument, the scene itself is contained within a film, which draws a very clear line between our reality and the actors' performances. Dustin Hoffman is playing Michael Dorsey whose role as Dorothy Michaels is bleeding into his own life, which is itself just a result of Hoffman's performance. A male actor is performing as a male performer performing as a woman, who in turn performs on a television show. Are we meta enough yet?

While Tootsie may seem to be predominately a portrait of Michael's journey through womanhood, of him putting Butler's assertion that “One does one's body” to practice, his love interest Julie bears some consideration – especially with respect to her discovery of Michael's true biological sex. To reference last week's discussion, Julie experiences “the uncanny” when Michael pulls off his wig, at once knowing the person before her and finding that she-turned-he is a complete stranger. But why is Michael a stranger? I would say that he is the same person, minus the stuffed bra and the heavy make-up. In the end, she seems to humor him, agreeing to give their relationship a shot. I understand her wariness, but I don't understand why I understand it, if that makes any sense at all. Perhaps his lie was so significant that it makes him difficult to trust? Or is gender something that so shapes our perception of another individual that any drastic alteration in gender performance forces us to redefine the terms of a relationship?

2 comments:

  1. The way that people perceive different genders is largely influenced by the stereotypes surrounding them. To address your last comment, I think that Julie is shocked so greatly by Michael's revelation because his performance of a woman was so contrary to what a man is supposed to be. (This is especially significant since she did not know he was acting) I would think that the reason why people are so mystified by people that "act outside of their gender" is due to our desire to separate out characteristics between genders. In Julie's case it seems that discovering Michael's true gender is startling because she is uncertain if he is a typical male or not.

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  2. Love the identification of uncanny in the moment where Dorothy pulls of the wig... how many times has that moment been repeated in cinematic and TV history? What's interesting to me is that it can actually be funny to view someone experiencing feeling of the uncanny. Surely its terrifying (at least initially) for that person, but why is it that the surprise can be so entertaining from a second hand perspective? In terms of how she then perceived Michael, that is, as a stranger, I believe that gender does carry that big of a role, but part of her reaction could be in response to the lie, not in the change in gender and new information.

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