Life is a Stage

This week, I watched TransAmerica for my film, and I had no idea what to expect. This movie was difficult to watch at some parts because of the fact that you knew all of Bree's secrets would blow up in her face. It was also tough to see her have to go through knowing that she was at one point a father and not a mother, in the technical sense. In regards to Judith Butler's idea of gender being performative I think both of these films definitely outline that theory, and makes it seem like truth to me.

It is extremely difficult to deem gender as intrinsic or something that society decides for us. This is because it is absolutely impossible to separate us from society. My sex is female, and I, for the most part, follow the gender qualities that are labeled as feminine, but I also have qualities that are deemed masculine–are these who I am or how society has conditioned me to be? I will never actually know.

Butler compares this performative quality of genders as theatrical in a way. It reminds me highly of the existential concept of "life is a stage" found in many post modern writings like Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead where the characters are playing out their part in a play and not actually making decisions about the course of their life. It makes me think about whether or not I or a lot of people I know are actually making decisions about our gender or whether or not we are just    playing roles already spelled out for me. Bree, though, deliberately makes the decision to be herself and "perform" a gender that sides with famine attributes.

The films that we watched this week really gave me something new to think about when it comes to gender and sexuality, and I am appreciative in that:

"Gender is what is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure, but if this continuous act is mistaken for a natural or linguistic given, power is relinquished to expand the cultural bodily through subversive performances of various kinds."

I admire the "with anxiety and pleasure" part because by both performing a desired or undesired gender, it will give everyone both of these feelings. When trying to live up to masculinity, men can feel anxiety, while a transgender woman may finally get to fully perform her desired gender as being feminine. After all, life might really just be a stage.