Pursuant to an earlier chat, this is one of the people who leapt out of my early cinema experiences as a kindred spirit. Idgie from Fried Green Tomatoes. No labels, just vibes.
Today I was thinking about how many films of that era, like Steel Magnolias, normalized a stark gender binary that always felt more like SF than actual SF to me.
But there have always been liminal characters. *People* have been nuanced in every era. Current discourse sometimes forgets this & tries to reinvent the wheel.
Relatedly, this is also why I adore the film Carol. Director Todd Haynes is extremely thoughtful in his portrayal of queerness. There are no "coming out" scenes, because even in the historical era under exploration, the idea of queerness *was not new*. People have always known human experience to have a range. That's why the Hays Code existed - to try to suppress it. To write it out of media, when early cinema proved "too" open about human range. (Watch Marlene Dietrich in Morocco if in doubt!)
Oh! 😂 But I shouldn't be too hard on Steel Magnolias. It *technically* has a genderqueer character, too: they used a baby named Clara Gabrielle to play Jack Jr. ... because a baby is a baby is a baby!
