Queer History (Pride pt. XXII)

Orlando

Wilde

Hi again, gay, and welcome to another week of Pride double features! As this humid June marches on and my Summertime sadness attempts to make itself uncomfortably comfortable, I am keeping myself sane with good friends, good air conditioning, and as always, good movies. As I continue to watch and research queer films, I realized that I’ve neglected to feature any films that display LGBTQ+ life pre-20th century, so I’m amending that this week with a round of films that showcase two iconic, fantastical, queer historical figures. As someone who bit off more AP history classes in high school than they could chew, I’m a later-in-life history buff who has recently become enamored with learning more about human history—and despite what Shane Gillis (barf) says, learning more about history only made me more of a leftist! My history nerd sister has introduced me to two of my new favorite podcasts—After Dark and Betwixt the Sheets (both of which solely discuss the seedier, shadier, lesser-discussed footnotes of history involving things like witchcraft and sex scandals and ghosts) and the history of queerness is one of the most fascinating topics they’ve covered. Though heavily imbued with tragedy and oppression, queer history is as vibrant and expansive as the queer present. Same-sex relationships go all the way back to the Renaissance, to Ancient Greece and Rome, to cave paintings, to eras in which there wasn’t yet language to describe it or separate it from heteronormative relationships. The defining and labeling of queer relationships is a newer addition to human lexicons. If it weren’t for the pearl-clutching puritans and the anxious, strangely morbid Victorians, homosexual relationships might’ve never been considered taboo. But regardless of the cultural and societal ideas surrounding the LGBTQ+ community, queer people, trans people, and even what-about-me-bisexuals have been around forever. Tonight’s two films are a representation of this fact, and though one of them is technically fictional, they both shine a light upon vital and timeless perspectives that existed loudly and proudly despite the many hardships they endured.

Truth is, historically, stranger than fiction, and yet tonight’s first bit of fabricated strange history is somehow not that strange in the scheme of things—this is Sally Potter’s 1992 film Orlando. Loosely based on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography, Potter’s film transports us to the Elizabethan era, where an aging Elizabeth I (played by Quentin Crisp) lies on her deathbed. Before she passes, she promises a young, androgenous nobleman named Orlando (Tilda Swinton) a large tract of land and a castle built on it, along with a generous monetary gift—on one, unusual condition: “Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old.” Orlando graciously accepts these gifts as a narrator explains that for Orlando, “It wasn’t privilege he sought, but company”, and about ten years later, he finally is granted some company, in the form of Princess Sasha (Charlotte Valandrey), the daughter of the leader of the Muscovites. It’s a short-lived courtship, but through it Orlando gains his first muse, and his first lesson about life and love, which inspires him to pursue poetry. His emo boy phase produces a lot of poetry, in fact, which eventually fills Orlando with some joy, until a celebrated poet mocks and critiques his turns of phrase. Suddenly, it’s 1700, and Orlando, still unwithered and unfaded, has been sent to the Ottoman Empire as an ambassador for England, and is now faced with an entirely different climate and culture—one that is far less frigid and rigid than his homeland. Orlando seems to befriend one of the men in charge, though he is cautious of Orlando because, “England has a habit of collecting… countries.” And sure enough, when a battle breaks out, Orlando is forced to take up arms against his new friends—but he flees as soon as he witnesses his first death. Despondent, Orlando sleeps for seven days straight, and when he awakes, he is a woman. This does not inspire shock or disgust or even really confusion; she just gazes at her now feminine body in the mirror and remarks “same person, just a different body.” It is now 1750, and the ageless Lady Orlando is suddenly caught up in the treacherous world of “society”, where she encounters dangerous individuals like wits and other poets, most of whom are just pretentious, misogynistic men. But Lady Orlando tells them off in the most eloquent and informed way, having garnered a greater capacity for empathy in her boundless existence than they could ever fathom. There is so much more that happens in this film, and surely, a great deal more occurs in the novel, but I feel strongly that Orlando is the type of film you must experience for yourself. The costuming and set design and cinematography across ice and desert and moss was delectable to observe—and this is to say nothing of the addition of a long-haired, 90s era, romance-novel-cover-ready Billy Zane, whose name here is, for some reason, Shelmerdine. The conversations between Orlando and Shelmerdine were some of my favorite bits of dialogue, as they have discussions about gender and expectations and desire that were centuries ahead of their time. To say this film blew me away was an understatement. I was so captivated and so down for the timeless, fantastical journey Sally Potter takes us on—I’m so glad she fought to have it made, despite several industry people warning her this movie would be, “un-makable, impossible, far too expensive, and not interesting.” Virginia Woolf based this novel upon the life of her close friend, sometimes literary rival, and lover Vita Sackville-West, who lived a bit of a mystical, gender-bent existence, but it is also a satirical, experimental, unbelievably modern imagining of the history of English literature as a whole. (And as an English major and Feminist Studies minor, I’m wondering how I never encountered even a snippet of this book.) Orlando, both the film and the novel, were the primary inspirations for both the both the 2020 Spring exhibition of the Costume Institute at the Met and the 2020 Met Gala theme, entitled “About Time: Fashion and Duration”, and several other adaptations of this story have been brought to life over time, including a 1981 film from Germany simply called Freak Orlando.

I was so enraptured and enchanted by Orlando, and by Tilda Swinton’s spellbinding performance, that it made tonight’s next film, a tale about one of the most fascinating, controversial, and iconic queer historical figures… downright boring in comparison—this is Brian Gilbert’s 1997 film Wilde. Not only is the cast of this film stacked—with appearances from Jennifer Ehle, Vanessa Redgrave, Gemma Jones, Judy Parfitt, Michael Sheen, Zoë Wanamaker, Tom Wilkinson, Ioan Gruffudd, Orlando Bloom, Jude Law at his hottest and blondest, and the impeccably-cast Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde—but the opening credits of this film are so unique and cool that I have to take a moment to speak about them. Every name that appears, from cast to crew to editor to director, had a corresponding tarot-esque card that appeared alongside it, and I just think that’s super cool and we should do intricate, personalized typeface like that more often, but I digress. Wilde opens in a very unexpected place—Leadville, Colorado in 1882—where a towering, colorfully-dressed, and flamboyant Oscar Wilde greets and regales a large group of surly, burly silver miners, who are just as rapt by his words as his snobby peers back home in the UK. At a party back in London, Wilde is entertaining a party full of intrigued people, one of whom whispers, “I know he’s famous—or notorious—but for what, exactly?” to which a friend responds, “for being himself.” Oscar Wilde is unmistakably himself: confident, intelligent, fiercely witty, daringly funny, and proudly Irish. With very little effort, he charms nearly every person he meets, including a young woman named Constance (Ehle), whom he soon marries. They have a couple of sons, a lovely home, and all is generally going smoothly as Oscar’s first major play—Lady Windermere’s Fan—goes off without a hitch. But after an unexpected romantic encounter with a young journalist named Robbie Ross (Sheen), Oscar begins to blossom into himself even more. The revelation of and experimentation with his sexuality seems to open up Oscar’s world even more, and as more and more gorgeous men appear in his orbit, praising his work effusively, he becomes quite comfortable with his rising fame. One thing he could’ve never prepared for, though, is the impact of a young poet named Lord Alfred Douglas—better known as “Bosie”—who really awakens something in Oscar before bringing about his eventual downfall. Oscar is never home anymore, and his wife Constance fears she’s pushed Oscar away because she focused too much on their children, but at the same time, she knows that he’s probably just out writing and networking and entertaining because, “Oscar needs disciples.” It’s a complicated juxtaposition this film displays, because while Oscar is becoming more and more himself, creating classics like The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, spearheading the emerging Aestheticism movement, and falling in love with Bosie, Constance is utterly, unmistakably alone. Plus, it makes it harder to celebrate Oscar’s burgeoning queerness when the primary lover featured here is an absolute demon twink from hell. So much of this film focuses upon Bosie being a bratty, jealous, entitled, high-cheek-boned but low-down-dirty menace, that it began to annoy me just a tad. Perhaps Oscar Wilde’s life wasn’t as thrilling and full of pleasure as it appears in hindsight, but I still would’ve liked to have seen Oscar experience more moments of happiness. It was fascinating and fun to witness the clandestine same-sex gentlemen’s clubs and the vibrant nightlife that Oscar belonged to, and every bit of dialogue involving this myth of a man was expectedly intelligent and thought-provoking, but when his life takes a depressing turn, the film handles its protagonist delicately. We are not shown some of Oscar’s toughest hardships, though many are implied, but we are shown just how loving and supportive his wife Constance was, even in the darkest hours of their lives. It’s always delightful to see depictions of open-minded and fearless great-thinkers and trailblazers, and Oscar Wilde was one of the most unique and profound voices of his time. He was a respected literary brain who made waves simply by speaking his mind, and yet, even in one of the dandiest and most philosophically-exploratory eras of human history, Oscar Wilde faced immense scrutiny for his brilliance. Though it took awhile for stuffy society to catch up to Oscar Wilde’s wild ideas, he’s cemented in history as one of the most extraordinary playwrights, authors, and personalities to ever exist. Stephen Fry was perfectly-cast as his doppelgänger, Oscar Wilde, and the script, written by Julian Mitchell and based on Richard Ellmann’s 1987 biography of Oscar Wilde, felt incredibly contemporary. While it didn’t blow my mind like Orlando did, I thoroughly enjoyed Wilde, and I’m now craving more fun, fabulous depictions of queer existence throughout history. Well that’s enough energetic, educational cinema for one sitting, but thank you for reading and learning along with me. Until next time, stay gay.