- Queer Theory and Gender in Film

University of Texas Press
Society for Cinema & Media Studies
"It's Only a Piece of Meat": Gender Ambiguity, Sexuality, and Politics in "The Crying Game"
and "M. Butterfly"
Author(s): Leighton Grist
Source: Cinema Journal, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Summer, 2003), pp. 3-28
Published by: University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies
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"It'sOnly a Piece of Meat":Gender Ambiguity,
Sexuality,and Politics in The CryingGame
and M.Butterfly
by Leighton Grist
Abstract: Presenting a primarily psychoanalytic discussion of The Crying Game
and M. Butterfly,this article elaborateson existing and predominantlyhomosexual
readings of these films and examines the connotations of the particular relation
that they imply between the sexual and the political.
The aims of this article are threefold:first;and in the main, to unravelfurtherwhat
The Crying Game (Neil Jordan,1992) and M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg, 1993)
are sayingabout gender,sexuality,and sexualidentity;second, to explorethe relation
in these texts between the sexual and the political, and the theoretical implications
thereof; and third, to unpack what are, in the broadest sense, the texts' "political"
connotations.The article argues that the undoubtedly transgressiveresonances in
these texts are, ultimately,problematicallypartialand compromised and that both
texts implicitlyuphold what they explicitlychallenge. This is not to deny the troubling acuityof that challenge, which the texts themselves register.
A Beginning
The idea of a womanwith a penis returnsin laterlife, in the dreamsof adults:the
dreamer,in a stateof nocturnalsexualexcitation,willthrowa womandown,stripher
andpreparefor intercourse-andthen, in place of the femalegenitals,he beholdsa
well-developedpenis andbreaksoff the dreamandthe excitation
Freud,"Onthe SexualTheoriesof Children"l
Two scenes. In The Crying Game, Fergus (Stephen Rea), whom the narrative
has placed, subtextualconnotations notwithstanding,as heterosexual, returnswith
Dil (Jaye Davidson), whom Fergus believes is female, to Dil's flat. Intimacy is
imminent. Fergus removes Dil's dressing gown and the camera tilts down to reveal Dil's "well-developed penis." Fergus knocks Dil's hand away and Dil to the
ground, rushes to the bathroom, and is sick.
In M. Butterfly, an adaptation of David Henry Hwang's stage play, Rene
Gallimard (Jeremy Irons), whom, like Fergus, the narrative has placed, albeit
LeightonGristis a seniorlecturerin mediaandfilmstudiesat KingAlfred'sCollegein the
UK.He haspublishedon classicalandpostclassicalHollywood,as well as on filmandpsy-
choanalytictheory. He is the author of The Films of Martin Scorsese, 1963-77: Authorship
and Context(St. Martin's
Press,2000).
? 2003 by the University of TexasPress, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
3
possibly more uncertainly,as heterosexual,shareswhat Cronenbergterms a "paddy
wagon"2with Song Liling (John Lone). Although Song now has short hair and is
dressed in a suit and a tie, Gallimardhas for most of the film apparentlybelieved
Song to be female and has, seemingly on that basis, enjoyed a longstanding sexual
relationship with him. Song moves near Gallimardand begins to strip. Gallimard
scurries into an interior, cell-like space and, slamming an iron mesh door behind
him, squeezes himself into the corner farthest from Song and rocks with anguish.
The naked Song commands,"Lookat me."Gallimardrespondswith nervousglances
and painful, lacerating laughter.
Two scenes, therefore, of anatomical revelation and homosexual panic that
unequivocally "breaksoff' expectation and illusion, "the dream and the excitation." Implicitly informing this panic is the physical denial of the lack that, in
Lacanian terms, figures sexual difference and that is constitutive of the stable
binarismof patriarchalthought. The scenes also indicate certain differences in the
films' emphases and address. In The Crying Game, we too are invited to perceive
Dil as female and to share Fergus'sjarring discovery. Impelling a hasty reevaluation of events, it is a shock tactic consistent with, and indeed central to, the text's
concern with phallic demystification. In M. Butterfly, not only has Song'sbiological sex been made clear in the preceding trial scene but has-depending on culturalknowledgeor narrativeengagement-been comparativelyexplicitthroughout.
It is a difference further reflected in the films' casting, advertising,and publicity.
In contrast to the casting of name actor Lone as Song in M. Butterfly, Davidson
was makinghis screen debut in The Crying Game, and the gendered neutralityof
his name helped to maskthe film'ssexual twist: a twist reviewerswere asked not to
reveal and around which the film was, particularlyin the United States, largely
sold. Even so, in the paddy wagon, we, unlike Gallimard,are refused visual confirmation of Song's biological sex (we never see his penis), a denial that traces the
mechanisms of disavowalthat M. Butterfly unpacks in relation to Gallimard'sheterosexual masculine identity.
These differences are nevertheless counterbalanced by a number of narrative and thematic parallels. Both The Crying Game and M. Butterfly locate their
concern with gender ambiguity and sexual transgression in relationships that are
cross-racialand cross-cultural(white-black/Irish-English;
Caucasian-Asian/FrenchChinese) and in incendiary political settings .(the North of Ireland and London
in the context of the IRA'sarmed struggle; China at the time of the U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War and Paris in 1968), and both end with their central male
protagonists in prison. In institutional terms, The Crying Game implies a familiar exploitation cinema tactic: the release of a low-budget film that, it is hopedand in the case of The Crying Game successfully-preempts a narrativelyand/or
thematically similar major studio production. Produced for ?2.3 million, The
Crying Game more than compensated for its disappointing theatrical performance in the UK, where monies totaled about ?2 million, by achieving a boxoffice gross of approximately $68 million in the United States: a success not
unrelated to the intelligently aggressive marketing campaign by its American
distributor, Miramax. By contrast, M. Butterfly, which was produced by Geffen
4
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros., and which cost between $17 and $18
million, was an ignominious box-office failure. The film's American box-office
take was a paltry $1.2 million, while its four-week run in London returned just
?13,843. Although Jordan'sinitial version of The Crying Game, a script entitled
"The Soldier's Wife," dates from 1982, it was without the completed project's
sexual twist.3The first script with the twist dates from March 1991-that is, after
the play M. Butterfly had opened in both New Yorkand London (the play opened
on Broadway in March 1988 and in London's West End in April 1989). Moreover, the gendered ambiguity of Davidson's name recalls the dissimulative billing of, certainly,the first Americanand British stage performancesof M. Butterfly.
On Broadway, Song was initially played by an actor billed as B. D. Wong, who
was in time replaced by one billed as A. Mapa; in London, an actor billed as G.
G. Goei initially played the role.
Accepting such considerations,both The Crying Game and M. Butterflyhave a
certain authorial logic. The Crying Game centers on preoccupations that recur
within Jordan'soeuvre-Irish politics and a fascinationwith "perverse"sexual relations-while transfigurationsand deviationsof and within gender and sexualityare a
stock in trade of Cronenberg'swork. Authorship,however,is never culturallyexclusive, and The Crying Game and M. Butterflycan be groupedwith a spate of broadly
contemporaneousfilms that, spanninga varietyof nationalcinemas and filmmaking
practices, engage with similarissues of transvestitism,gender, and sexuality.Note,
for instance, Orlando (SallyPotter, 1992), Ba Wang Bieji (FarewellMy Concubine,
Chen Kaige, 1993), Mrs. Doubtfire (Chris Columbus, 1993), The Adventures of
Priscilla,Queen of the Desert (Stephan Elliott, 1994), To WongFoo, Thanksfor Everything!Julie Newmar (Beeban Kidron, 1995), and Daayraa (The Square Circle,
Amol Palekar,1996). Approachingfrom another, and not uncomplementary,perspective,we might regardThe Crying Gameand M. Butterflyin relationto the mainstream appropriationand legitimizationof the transsexualcomplexities recognized
as articulatedin the "less reputable"genres of science fiction and horrorin which
Cronenbergnotablymade his name. It is a generic provenancefurtherreflected in
the films'mutualinterpellationof a presumed masculinespectatorand intimationof
a specificallymasculinegender crisis.4
The causes of this "masculinegender crisis"are widely accepted to lie historically in the challenging of patriarchalassumptions that has attended a combination of post-World War II contingencies and the influence of various social
movements, not least those of feminism and the gay rightsmovement. Correspondingly, the quite sizable critical literature on The Crying Game inclines, when discussing the film's sexual connotations, toward privileging a homoerotic or
homosexual reading. Exemplary,both in its argument and its cautious, carefully
weighted praise, is that offered by Kristin Handler, which, positing that it is in its
"treatmentof homosexualityand homophobia"that The Crying Game "comesclosest to realizing its impulse to overcome difference," concludes that the film "presents a genuine, if limited, challenge to homophobia."5Althoughincreasing,critical
writing on M. Butterfly has, in a possible correlative to its lack of box-office success, been far less extensive. However, Slavoj Zizek has similarlyplaced the film
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
5
within a homosexual nexus, describing it as "a kind of litmus test for our cultural
and homophobic prejudices"and its commercial failure "asthe unfailing index of
the enduring homophobia of our 'permissive'societies."6
Such homosexualreadingsof The Crying Game and M. Butterfly are undeniably valid. They are also somewhat partialand delimiting and, marginalizingother
and more ambiguousinflections,tend to foreclose significantmattersregardinggender and sexualidentity that each film would appearto raise. In discussinghow The
Crying Game problematizes the masculine-feminine binary,analyses of the film
seem all too eager to replace one binarywith another,that of hetero-homosexuality.
It is, moreover,in the blurringof this latterbinarythat the film M. Butterflydiffers
substantivelyfrom its play text forerunner,in which the hetero-homosexualbinary
obtains a relativelyinsistent explanatorycapacity.7
The Crying Game offers itself openly
Homoeroticism, Polymorphousness.
to a homoerotic reading.8 From the moment that captive black British soldier
Jody (Forest Whitaker) effectively seduces IRA volunteer Fergus into removing
the suffocating hood that covers Jody'shead ("You'rethe handsome one"), their
enforced intimacy-as it develops through a carefully gradated series of sympathetic exchanges-carries strong homoerotic overtones.9The exchange between
Jody and Fergus of the photograph of Jody's"special friend" Dil accordingly acts
as a triangulatingdisplacement of inadmissible desire: a connotation compounded
when Fergus proceeds to fulfill Jody'slast wish and seeks out Dil in London to
"see if she's all right."Not only is this heterosexual dissimulation exploded by the
revelation of Dil's biological sex, but the text emphatically represents Fergus's
relationship with Dil as a displacement. Hence, Fergus's repeated asking of Dil
about Jody ("Tell me about him," "Did you do that to him?" "Would he have
minded?"...), questions that at one point impel Dil explicitly to query Fergus's
"obsession,"and Fergus's three strategicallyedited "visions"of Jody in his cricket
kit. The first and third of these visions, of Jody bowling and of him smiling knowingly as he tosses a cricket ball, occur in dreams. Seemingly troubling to the
"heterosexual"Fergus-we see him sweating and agitated-they also, respectively and markedly, follow his first meeting with Dil and the revelation scene.
Even more insistently, Fergus's second vision of Jody occurs as Fergus is being
fellated by Dil-a shot of a photograph of Jody, from Fergus's point of view,
dissolves to the shot of Jody bowling, which dissolves to photographs of Jody and
Dil before cutting to the "spent" Fergus, who promptly asks, "Whatwould he
think?" Finally, when Fergus cuts Dil's hair and dresses "her"in Jody's cricket
whites, Fergus transforms Dil into Jody, an implication underscored when the
white-clad Dil emerges, like Jody in Fergus'svisions, from the surroundingdarkness.'? Fergus in addition takes the transformed Dil to a hotel for what he dubs
"ahoneymoon," whereupon an eliding straight cut takes us from the hotel's exterior to a shot of Fergus lying on a double bed, under whose covers Dil sleeps
while Fergus smokes what might be construed as a "postsex"cigarette.
Homoerotic connotations also impact on the film's climax. On one level,
Fergus'staking of the rap for Dil's shooting of Jude (MirandaRichardson)implies
6
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
expiationfor his guilt-ridden"responsibility"for Jody'sdeath. On anotherlevel, with
Fergus and Jude suggested, at the film'sbeginning, to be lovers, Dil can be seen to
excise a heterosexual obstacle to Fergus's homoerotic inclinations, to act out his
unstatedwishes. Moreover,in the North of Irelandscenes, Jude functionsas a counterpoint to Fergus and Jody'shomoerotic complicity.Justas, duringthe sequence of
Jody'ssexual entrapment, Jude holds Jody'shand, so Fergus holds Jody'sbound
hands as he urinateswhen in captivity.Before this, Fergus both shines the beam of
a flashlightsuggestivelyupon askingJude "Did you give him it?"from Jude to Jody
and responds with quizzical interest when Jody claims that he "didn'teven fancy"
Jude, that she was not his "type."When IRA cell leader Peter (Adrian Dunbar)
states that he has had "doubts"about Fergus'scommitment, Jude'sconcurring"Not
the only one" carriespolitical and (homo-)sexualconnotations.A similarcombination of the political and the (homo-)sexual,of terroristfailure and erotic betrayal,is
conveyed by Jude's comment when she fatally enters Dil's flat: "Once was bad
enough, but twice?"In addition, Jude is shown entering in a shot that foregrounds
the photographof Jody that Fergus looked at as he was being fellated.
So far, so straightforward.But ambiguities remain. The effect of Dil's transformation is visually less that of masculinization than of androgyny,bearing out
somewhat Fergus's claim that he does not want to make Dil "like"Jody but to
make "her"into "something new." Further, what Jonathan Romney aptly terms
Dil's "fundamentalindeterminateness""is reflected in the apparentdifficultycritics
have found in exactlydescribing"her."Dil is called "atransvestite"by MarkSimpson
and Diane Sippl, "atransvestite man"by SarahEdge, "ahomosexual transvestite"
by zizek, a "transvestite,"a "gay,"a "blackfemale," a "transgender,"and a "transsexual"by Joy James, and an "effeminate transsexual"by Jack Boozer; Handler
covers variouseventualities by referringto Dil's "homosexual/transgendered/feminine identity,"while Lola Young, after worryingover whether Dil is a transvestite
or a transsexual,opts for the analogouslycompound "homo/transsexual."12
The difficultyis sharedby charactersin the diegesis. As Amy Zilliaxpoints out,
"No one in the film can generate a satisfactoryname or label for her."'3It is thus
entirely consonant that while Jody'scomments that Dil "wouldn'tsuit" Fergus or
that he loves "her""whatevershe is" are placed, at the sight of Dil's penis, as teasingly disingenuous,they hardlyclarifybut rathercontribute to a more general uncertaintyabout what Dil is. Similarly,while Fergus, following the revelationscene,
may well bemoan that Dil should "havestayed a girl,"and while he repeatedly asserts, and the film obtains a deal of deadpan comic effect from, the fact that Dil is
"nota girl,"Dil continues to refer to "herself' and Fergus continues to treat "her"as
a girl. We see Fergus gallantly defend Dil against the insults of his employer,
Deveroux (TonySlattery),offer "manly"comfortwhen Dil gets upset, and continue
romanticallyto date "her"and, althoughtouchy about physicalcontact, and resistant
to Dil's terms of endearment, to kiss "her"on the lips. In all this, the ambiguitiesof
Dil's gendered and sexualstatusare matched by those of Fergus'smotivation(s):it is
never entirely clear to what extent Fergus keeps seeing and protects Dil because of
his guilt over Jody'sdeath, because of his sublimatedhomosexuality,or because he is
just attractedto and cares for Dil, "whatevershe is."
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
7
Figure 1. A kiss between Fergus (Stephen Rea) and Dil (Jaye Davidson) in The
Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992). Courtesy BFI Collections.
The ambiguities and slippages of gender and sexualityembodied by Dil and
evoked through "her"relationship with Fergus are complemented formally.The
cited linkages involving Jody and Dil and Fergus and Jude characterize a dense
networkof parallels,reversals,and displacementsthat, coveringvarioustextualregisters, cross, collapse, and problematize accepted boundaries and preconceptions
regardingthe relationsbetween gender, agency,and sexualdifference (not to mention race).14Witness, among other examples, Dil and Fergus'ssimilarlyshot cutting
of each other'shair, the verbal-visuallink invited between Jude'sbitchy comment
that Dil is a "bitheavy on the powder"and the earliersight of Fergus'sdust-covered
face as he labors,or the way in which Fergus and Dil are each shown (at the "honeymoon"hotel, and at Dil's flat) rising while the other sleeps. In turn, as Jody and
Fergus respectively,and roughly,attempt to feel the genitals of Jude and Dil, so
Jude, upon her unexpected appearancein Fergus'sLondon room, roughlygrabshis
genitals. The latter is shot with a canted camera that recalls that used when Fergus
takesJody'swallet, with its photographof Dil, fromJody'sinside pocket. This Fergus
does while holding a pistol to Jody'shead, an action reprisedby Jude with respect to
Fergus in his London room. Significant is the trope of following. Fergus follows
Jody and Jude and then Dil, Jude and Peter follow Fergus and Dil, who think they
are being followed by Dil's ex-suitor,Dave (Ralph Brown), and Dil follows Fergus,
Jude, and Peter. The trope foregroundsthat which is implicit in other linkages:the
explosion of the reciprocal active-passive/dominant-subordinatebinaries that are
8
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
culturallyassociated with, and seen as definitive of, masculinityand femininity.A
complex of problematized culturalmeanings is accordinglypresented in the montage that opens the film'sclimactic sequence: the sight of the biologicallymale Dil
removingwomen'sunderwearfrom a drawerthat "she"uses activelyto bind Fergus
to "her"bed, to renderhim passiveand subordinatewithin the (conventionallyfeminine) space of the home, is followed by that of the biologicallyfemale Jude removing a decidedly phallic pistol from a drawer preparatory to her acting in the
(conventionallymasculine) spheres of politics and violence, to her taking a part in
the assassinationof a judge.
Slippages in gender and sexual differences are further mapped onto the body.
Quite apart from being given a "woman"with a penis, we are given a man with a
bleeding wound-Jody, whose bleeding mouth, filmed in close-up as it obtrudes
from beneath his hood, is shot so as to resemble a vaginal scar. It is also a wound
that is caused when Jude hits him with a pistol in order to shut him up: another
inversion of gendered norms, of activity and passivity,domination and subordination, and even-should we regard the pistol as symbolizing the phallus-of sufficiency and lack.Noteworthyin additionare the characters'gender-reversiblenames.
Dil's name is similarly"not gender-specific."15
The implication would seem to be that the text "wants to play against the
notion that 'biology is destiny.'"6Indeed, it can be seen to present psychoanalytic
connotations that, in patriarchalterms, are fundamentally transgressive. To adduce Sigmund Freud, the collapsing of boundaries and of subject positions suggested by the text'spatterning functions metaphoricallyto evoke a reversionto the
polymorphousnessof the pre-Oedipal, within which the active-passivedichotomy
operates priorto, and outside of, gendered subsumption.To adduce JacquesLacan,
the same evokes, correspondingly,a denial of the differentiated significations of
the Symbolic, of the Name of the Father, before a reversion to the more fluid
identifications of the Imaginary.Complementing this reading is the text'sdiminution of the penis as phallus, its emptying of the organ'smystificatorystanding-in
for the "privilegedsignifier"17of the Symbolic, the detached, transcendent object
that structures meaning and desire and that, through its figuration by the penis,
underpins patriarchalauthority.Thus, for all the immediate and calculated shock
of the sight of Dil's penis, it is an anatomicalfact that the narrative,in concert with
Fergus, increasinglyappearsunquestioninglyjust to accept. Or, as Dil puts it, that
"she"is "not a girl,"that "she"has a penis, becomes largely a matter of "details,
baby, details."The phrase in turn recalls the urination scene involving Fergus and
Jody, during which, as he enjoys much-needed relief, and with due, retroactive
penile irony, Jody says: "It'samazing how these small details take on such importance." Further,when Jody implores Fergus to replace his penis in his trousers, its
symbolic significance is explicitly refused: "It'sonly a piece of meat."
As Jodygrinninglydisplayshis (off-screen)penis for the sight of Fergus, homoerotic connotationsare once more offered. Clearly,these invite reinflectionin relation to the polymorphous reversions implied through the text's patterning. The
relationshipbetween Fergus and Jody can also in itself be read to figure a retreat
from the Symbolicto the Imaginary.On one hand, it suspends "Symbolic"divisions
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
9
of race, nationality,and politics. On the other hand, with the Imaginarydominant
duringinfancy,the relationshipimplies a suggestive-if, in terms of age, hardlypsychoanalyticallyexact-regression to childhood. While writing outside a psychoanalytic framework,Peter N. Chumo aptly observes that Fergus and Jody "talkabout
sportsas adolescentsmight"and laugh aboutthe urinationepisode as though it were
In addition,
part of "a mischievous boys'-night-out behind-the-parents'-backs."l8
Fergus "is often reprimanded"by Peter and Jude "asif he were their child,"while
"even the chase in the woods that tragicallyleads to Jody'sdeath seems a kind of
Withinthis setting of suggested regression,Fergus'squotationof Paul'sfirst
game."19
to
epistle the Corinthians-"When I was a child ... I thought as a child. But when I
became a man, I put awaychildishthings"-achieves a significancebeyond that of an
obviousnostalgiafor an earlier,less complicatedtime. Conversely,Fergus cuts short
his and Jody's"chase"by raisinga pistol, wielding a phallic symbol.
Masquerade, Disavowal, Fetishism. Lacanianinterpretationis furtherinvited
by the use of mirrorsin The Crying Game. Figuratively,this implies the concept of
the mirror stage, the identification with an exterior other, for which the mirror
situation provides the model, which institutes the "firstoutline of what is to become the ego."20Correspondingly,mirrorsin the film appear repeatedly in association with the assumption of image and identity. Witness the shots of Fergus's
reflection when Dil cuts his hair, the dressing-table mirror before which Dil retouches "her"lipstick, or, most insistently,the three-part mirrorthat reflects Jude
as she dresses for the assassination.Lacannotes, moreover,that the identifications
of the mirrorstage constitute a misrecognitionthat "situatesthe agency of the ego,
before its social determination,in a fictionaldirection."21
Indicatively,when Fergus
and Dil exchange looks through the mediation of mirrorsat the Metro, "neitheris
really seeing the other person"22:Fergus sees Dil as a woman, and Dil sees Fergus
as Scottish, as "Jimmy."Indeed, the misrecognition of the mirror stage is elaborated upon and compounded by the subject's"socialdetermination,"for which the
mirrorstage serves as the basis, and which refers identity to the cultural.
Similarconnotations attend the presence of mirrorsin M. Butterfly. Early on,
Jeanne Gallimard(BarbaraSukowa)is shown acting out a parodyof Orientalfemininity as she hums an ariafrom Giacomo Puccini'sMadameButterflywhile staring
into, and reflected in, a bedroom mirror.While this echoes back to Song'spreceding performance at the Swedish embassy, Song himself is later twice shot as reflected in a mirror in the dressing room of the Beijing Opera, a multi-mirrored
space in which Song assumes the feminine identity that he enacts professionally.
The suggested relation between femininity and determining culturalantecedents is complemented by the text'suse of magazines.As she "performs"before the
mirror,Jeanne Gallimard fans herself with a copy of Elle. Song is subsequently
implied to be an avid consumer of women's and film fan magazines, and over a
close-up of a cover bearing an illustrationof actress Anna MayWong, we hear him
say, "I am trying my best to become somebody else."
The representationof femininityas assumed, performed, and culturallydetermined accordswith the apparentinvestment of The Crying Game and M. Butterfly
10
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
in the notion, introducedby Joan Riviere,of womanlinessas masquerade.Consider
the multiplemasqueradesof Jude in The Crying Game. In the course of the film, she
moves from the image of blonde tartinessthroughwhich she seduces Jody,via her
brief wearingof motorcycleleathersand her unkempt"naturalness"
at the IRAhideof her dark-haired,besuited appearout, to the "inhumanlylacquered glamour"23
ance in London:an appearanceboth that Jude explicitlyrefers to as a "tougherlook"
and that the film offers as an image when she stands and, smoothingdown her suit,
looks at her mirroredreflectionbefore leaving for the assassination.
However, womanliness as masquerade is most plainly apparent in the films'
representation of men "passing"for women. In each film it is an acting out of
gender that spans a pair of differentiated,but mutuallyinforming,"theaters."Both
Dil and Song literally perform exaggerated and stylized varieties of femininity on
stage: Dil's gesturallyprofuse miming to the song "TheCryingGame"at the Metro;
Song'splaying of female opera roles. Dil's performance might in addition be considered to be double coded, to offer contrastingreadingsfor an "innocent"straight/
nontransvestite and a "knowing"gay/transvestite spectatorship.24Yet the characters' off-stage "playing"is no less performative,especially as each presents a rather
reductive and cliched version of femininity. Dil, who at times pointedly refers to
"herself' in the third person, and who notes that Dave wanted "her""to perform
for him," veers between flouncing flirtatiousness and tearful and clinging, "tired
and emotional" dependence. Song combines insinuating (false) modesty with excessive "feminine,""Oriental"submissiveness.
With femininitythus represented in terms of spectacle, sexual availability,and
subordination,not only is it acted out by men but it implies patriarchalconditioning.
This returnsus to Riviere'sinitial formulationof masquerade,which describes it as
the adoption of an ingratiating,patriarchallyfriendlywomanliness, an attempt "to
avertanxietyand the retributionfeared from men."25It is neverthelessthe postulate
that such womanlinessis adopted-and adoptable-that lends masqueradeits posited abilityto provide a criticalperspective on the relationshipof gender to power.
MaryAnn Doane writes:"Theeffectivityof masqueradelies preciselyin its potential
to manufacturea distance from the image, to generate a problematicwithin which
the image is manipulable,producible, and readable."26
It is a potential that is enhanced in The Crying Game and M. Butterflyby the evident disjunctionbetween
Dil and Song'sbiologicalsex and their assumed femininities.
Further,consistent with the refusal of M. Butterflyto dissimulate Song'smaleness, masquerade and the contingency of gender identity obtain in the film explicit and reflexivetextualreference. In explainingwhy women'sroles in the Beijing
Opera are played by men, Song openly opines that "onlya man knowshow a woman
is supposed to act,"while as he begins to undress in the paddy wagon he notes that
he is helping Gallimard"tosee through"his "act."Song's"femininity"is also played
off againstthe appearance and opinions of female Communist Partyofficial Comrade Chin (Shizuko Hoshi). Stony-faced, sturdilybuilt, dressed in a masculinizing
Party uniform, and the purveyor of Communist and feminist nostrums, Chin dismisses Song'smagazines as "decadent trash"and asks rhetorically,"Don'tyou understand how degrading those images are to women?"
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
1 1
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f^
i'!
rr.?
:,1
?ga?l~:
,4.
???
-u??:
-
'?.
..
s?
)Kl
I
'.:
..
Figure 2. Dil (Jaye Davidson) performs at the Metro in The Crying Game. Courtesy BFI Collections.
12
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
Even so, the ambiguities of Fergus's motivations regardingDil in The Crying
Game are matched by those of Gallimard'smotivationsregardingSong. Until Song's
masculine appearance at Gallimard'strial, what exactly Gallimard"knows"about
Song's biological sex is unclear. Certainly, Gallimardis introduced both as epitomizing the dismissive insularityof the Western diplomat and as somewhat culturally limited-he admits that he has "neverseen" MadameButterfly. Nevertheless,
Gallimard'senraptured praise after he first sees Song sing at the Swedish embassy-"It was a beautiful performance.... I've never seen a performance as
convincing as yours"-not only contrasts signally with the dismissal of another
guest ("she simply has no voice") but is, given the text's reflexivitywith respect to
Song'sfeminine masquerade, laden with irony.
Whatever Gallimard'sintimated cultural ignorance, the suggestion is of disavowal:in psychoanalyticterms, a defense mechanism that refuses "the realityof a
traumaticperception"27through the splitting of knowledge and belief-hence the
symptomaticresonance of Gallimard'sreferences to "performance."Similarlyconsider the scene in which Song questions why, with his "pickof Western women,"
Gallimardshould "choose a poor Chinese with a chest like a boy."Gallimardresponds, "Not like a boy, like a girl, like a young innocent schoolgirlwaiting for her
lessons."Such seeming disavowalof homosexualitylends ironiclayeringthroughout:
to, for example, Song's claim that he and Gallimardare embarking"on the most
forbiddenof loves,"or to Gallimard'sdesire for "honesty"in their relationship,that
there be "no falseness"between them. Moreover,what we glimpse in long shot of
Song's"ancientOrientalways of love,"which, in an extension of the text'stake on
masquerade,he laterclaimsto have "invented"just for Gallimard-fellatio andwhat
appearsto be anal intercourse-carries homosexualovertones.28
Disavowal, however, finds its defining psychoanalyticreference specificallyin
relationto the male heterosexualperversionof fetishism whereby the appointment
of a penis substitute achieves "atoken of triumph over"and "aprotection against"
the threat of castrationembodied by the female while simultaneouslysetting up "a
memorial to" the threat in the substitute's appointment.29Indeed, whereas The
Crying Game critiques phallocentrism through the depreciation of the penis, M.
Butterfly does so through foregroundingthe penis's overvaluation.Within the fetishistic economy of male heterosexuality, Song can be seen to figure the ideal
"female"partner:the woman with a penis. By contrast,the female threat of castration-both actualand symbolic-is figuredtextuallyby the characterof Frau Baden
(Annabel Leventon). Middle-aged and sophisticated-she outlines the plot of
Madame Butterfly for the "lacking"Gallimard-Frau Baden is similarlyplaced as
formidable sexually.An intelligence officer (David Hemblen) describes her, with
apparent macho disdain, but what can be read as defensive relief, as being "built
like the Forbidden City":"Everyonecan look, but no one gets inside." Frau Baden
later sexuallypropositionsGallimardin a bar.Cut to a hotel, where Gallimardskulks
in a bathroom before emerging reluctantly,and bemoaning the (emboldening?)
absence of a bottle of wine that he has ordered, to be confronted by the sight of
Frau Baden'smature, "engulfing"naked body-a sight we share from Gallimard's
point of view. It is a "threatening"presence that, in combinationwith Frau Baden's
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
13
Figure 3. A kiss between Song Liling (John Lone) and Rene Gallimard (Jeremy
Irons) in M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg, 1993). Courtesy BFI Collections.
cursory "come and get it," differs markedly from the imagined "young innocent
schoolgirl"with whom Gallimardcompares Song, the "safe"woman with a penis to
whom Gallimardimmediately, and drunkenly,repairsfrom the hotel.
For Freud, fetishism ensures the male subject's heterosexual identity "by
endowing women with the characteristic which makes them tolerable as sexual
objects."30As the penis "standsin" for the phallus, so in M. Butterfly Gallimard's
relationship with Song, as it "confirms"his "heterosexual"agency, is paralleled
by his career success, his rise from cowed accountant to the head of a "revamped
intelligence division," a position of (patriarchal) authority over those who had
previously threatened, with mocking but barely veiled menace, to break all of his
pencils "in half' (the intimations of symbolic castration here are both unmistakable and, one suspects, entirely intentional). More precisely, it is a career rise
that counterpoints Song's increasing "feminine"abjection before Gallimard'sassertive "masculine"cruelty,his refusal either to see Song or to acknowledge Song's
letters. The twin strandsculminatein the letter in which Song concedes his "shame"
to Gallimard and Gallimard'spromotion to vice-consul. The film straight cuts
from Gallimard being informed of his promotion to his arriving at Song's lodgings, where Gallimardbreathlesslytells Song of his promotion and demands Song's
sexual surrender.
Yet if Song'spenis fetishistically assures Gallimard'sheterosexual sufficiency,
its unmaskingin the paddy wagon renders Song homosexuallytaboo. That during
their relationshipGallimardrespects Song's"modesty"and never, as Song explains
14
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
at Gallimard'strial, sees Song "completely naked"or explores Song'sbody invokes
the paradoxesinherent in Gallimard'ssuggested disavowals.Is Gallimarddefending himself against Song's "castration,"Song's lack of castration, or maybe even
both? The paradoxes resound when Gallimardvisits Song after the episode with
Frau Baden and, "liberated"by his drunkenness, demands that Song strip naked.
Is Gallimardseeking to confront, and possibly deny, his castration anxiety with a
less threatening body, or to confirm what he knows but has disavowed regarding
Song'sbiological sex? Notably,when Gallimardsees Frau Baden's naked body, he
says, with some surprise, "Youlook exactly as I imagined you would under your
clothes." Or is Gallimardin the following scene simply trying to engineer a break
with Song, and thus to repress the anxieties that the relationship has raised?
Accepting the latter,the ambiguitiesof Gallimard'srelationshipwith Song reflect and can be groundedin the ambiguitiesapparentin psychoanalytictheorywith
respect to castrationanxiety,fetishism,and hetero- and homosexuality.Freud admits
that while probablyno male "issparedthe frightof castrationat the sight of a female
genital,"why some men "becomehomosexualas a consequence of that impression,
while others fend it off by creatinga fetish, and the greatmajoritysurmountit, we are
Symptomatically,the quoted passage that opens this
franklynot able to explain."31
like
and
reads
that
a
heterosexual
article,
anxietydream, the returnof a homosexual
an
of
is
followed
by outlining an etiology of homosexualityin which, in
repressed,
to
the
model
of fetishism, fixationon the "ideaof a woman with a penis"
contrariety
We here once more leave stable binarismfor
is "boundto"result in homosexuality.32
the realm of polymorphousness;Freud argues that not only is heterosexuality"a
problem that needs elucidating"rather than "a self-evident fact,"but "all human
beings are capableof makinga homosexualobject-choice and have in fact made one
in their unconscious."33
While the Oedipus complex in its so-called positive form
affectsheterosexualidentification,in its reciprocal,indivisiblenegativeform,the boy
"wantsto take his mother'splace as the love-objectof hisfather"34-hence, possibly,
in M. Butterfly, Song'sshrine to his father'sphotograph.Louise J. Kaplansees the
negativeform of the male Oedipus complex as resultingspecificallyfrom the narcissistic injurythat attends the boy'sexclusion from the primal scene. However, as he
already"so much values his exciting penis," he "mustbe a mommy with a penis,"
This brings us straightback to femust "inventa substitute penis for his mother."35
tishism and to Freud, who writes that the fetish is "precisely"a substitute for the
mother'spenis "thatthe little boy once believed in."36
That "allhuman individuals""combinein themselves both masculineand feminine characteristics"37
again puts gender and sexualityin excess of anatomicaldifference. Moreover, for all that M. Butterfly revolves around the limit of Song's
body, that Song himself laments that he cannot change "intothe body of another,"
this limit is ultimately-if briefly-implied to be mutable. Having in the paddy
wagon revealed his biological sex, Song proceeds to demonstrate his subsequent,
contradictoryclaim that he is "notjust a man." Kneeling before Gallimard, Song
reverts performatively,through the inflection of his voice, his attitude, and his
body, to his "feminine"self, a self that Gallimard acknowledges through Song's
body as he rapturouslytouches Song's face: "This skin I remember. The curve of
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
15
her cheek. The softness of her mouth." Nevertheless, as Gallimardkeeps his eyes
shut, his rapturealso simulateshis preceding disavowaland is explodedwhen Song,
in another mirror of their relationship, draws attention to his physical maleness,
that "beneatheverything,there was alwaysme." Gallimardremoves himself to the
opposite end of the paddy wagon and Song dissolves, with touching irony, into
"feminine"tears.
Earlier,Song prevents Gallimardfrom strippinghim, from exploringhis body,
by claiming that he is pregnant. The claim carriesa manifold dissimulatorycharge.
It "reaffirms"Song to be "female,"Gallimard,crucially,following his experience
with Frau Baden, to be "potent,"and Song and Gallimard'srelationshipto be "indisputably""heterosexual."The dissemblance of Song's"femaleness,"the "confirmation"of his projected "lack,"is enhanced by the intimation of penis envy, the
female subject'slatently hostile, potentially transgressivedesire for a penis, which,
in Freud's words, "slips-along the line of a symbolic equation, one might sayfrom the penis to a baby."38
The female'sadoption of a masqueradeof pliable womanliness is in turn discussed by Riviere in terms of a maskingof her "possessionof
the father'spenis,"39of an inadmissible and punishable phallic "masculinity."This
has a dual, if situationallydisplaced,reference to Song'sdeception. Obviously,Song's
feminine masqueradeseeks to deny that he has a penis, but his affairwith Gallimard
also occurs, in a further foregroundingof the fact of his masquerade,correlativeto
his shift from active contentiousness to dissimulatingpassivity,from his challenging of Gallimard's"imperialism"and lack of education to his assumption of a pose
of cultural inferiority and self-abnegating need, from, to take another tack, his
provocativepresenting of a cigarette for Gallimardto light to his demure, nervous
offering of a teacup. Feminine self-sacrifice, moreover, is a familiar element of
roles played by Anna MayWong. Significantly,Gallimard'sdemand that Song strip
naked, his urge to uncover the "truth"of Song'sbody, is combined with his querying of Song's submissiveness, of Song's use of terms like "slave"as if he "really
meant them."
The dissimulationof Song'ssubmissivenessis compounded by its political effect, Song'sextractionfrom Gallimardof"Americantroop movements"in Vietnam
for the Chinese state. The situation opens up another skein of desire, power, and
dissemblance.With same-sex relationshipsoutlawed in Maoist China, it is implied
that Song'sspying represents an imposed punishment for the "crime"of his relationshipwith Gallimard.Yet Song'sposition paradoxicallyensures him comparative
freedom to continue the relationship,to practice his deception "in order to better
serve the great proletarianstate."It is a shiftingcomplex of power relations,of personal and politicaldesire, highlightedwhen Song requests that a reluctantComrade
Chin find a "Chinese baby with blonde hair" so that Song, in the name of "the
revolution,"may continue his masqueradeand thus the provisionof militaryinformation.As in Song'srelationshipwith Gallimard,the matterof who is dominantand
who subordinateis here not what it might appear.
Masculinity and Misogyny, Politics and Postmodernism. While for Riviere
feminine masquerade disguises the transgressivepossession of the father'spenis,
16
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
for Lacan it works to mask the threat of castration figured by the female body.40
This reflects back on M. Butterfly by placing masquerade as the reciprocal obverse of fetishism; within the Lacanian formulation, masquerade is the means
through which the woman becomes the phallus, "the signifier of the desire of the
Other."4'Heterosexual relations accordingly"turnaround a 'to be"' on the part of
the woman "and a 'to have"'on the part of the man.42No one, however, has-or
can have-the phallus. Heterosexual relations are instead "broughtabout by the
intervention of a 'to seem' that replaces the 'to have"'43:a pretense the woman
complies with as "she finds the signifier of her own desire in the body of him to
whom she addresses her demand for love."44As "the ideal or typical manifestations of the behaviorof each sex, including the act of copulation,"are consequently
rendered performative, become a piece of what Lacan terms "the comedy,"45so,
by extension, masculinity is, no less than womanliness, a masquerade. To quote
Stephen Heath, "the trappings of authority,hierarchy,order, position make the
man, his phallic identity."46
In M. Butterfly,masculinityas masqueradeis in particularforegroundedwhen
the "phallicly"successful Gallimardholds court in a bar about the United States's
propping up the Diem regime in Vietnam. Sitting, with "posed"insouciance, his
arm resting on a raised knee and extravagantlysmoking a cigarette, he speaks before a "captive"audience, complete with a young woman sitting, entranced, at his
feet. Ironically,it is also this "performance"that-flagging Lacan'snotion of "the
comedy"-draws forth Frau Baden's"castrating"sexual interest. We might in addition consider, given the apparentcontingency of Gallimard'smasculine identity,
Lacan'ssuggestive, if almost off-hand, comment that masquerade"hasthe curious
consequence of makingvirile display in the human being itself seem feminine."47
Masculinityas masquerade is equally in play in The Crying Game. Just as Dil
passes as feminine, so Fergus, in his relationship with Dil, passes as "Scottish"
laborer Jimmy, although his previous identity as an IRA volunteer and heterosexual lover of Jude can be regarded as being no more his essential self. The
conditionalityof Fergus's masculine identity is intimated by the arrayof terms by
which he is called. Apart from Fergus and Jimmy,he is addressed as "handsome,"
"soldier,""fucker,""Paddy,""Volunteer,""Pat,""honey,""darling,""hon," "my
sweet,""dear,""stranger,""James,""Hennessy,""Fergie,""Baby,""love,"and"light
of my life." Fergus is also variouslyreferred to as "a good soldier,""a good man,"
"myfriend,""American,""notEnglish,""Scottish,""aregular,""agentleman,""Mr.
Nobody,"and, perhaps most eloquently, "awalkingcliche."48In this context, especiallyincongruous,at least retrospectively,is the initialmasqueradeofJody-black,
Antiguan,and (implicitly)the gentlemanly lover of Dil-as a prototypical,drunken
British soldier on the clumsy sexual make. Moreover,not only does Jody,like Dil,
occasionally refer to himself in the third person, but both he and Dil refer behavior to tacit cultural norms. The night before his scheduled execution, Jody asks
Fergus for a cigarette, even though Jody does not smoke, because he "wastold it
was the right thing to do." Dil, during "her"first date with Fergus, inquires at an
Indian restaurantwhether it is not time for Fergus to "makea pass, or something,"
adding, "Isn'tthat the way it goes?"
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
1
7
::::'
!: !,:
.....:
.....
';
.
hI
4YI
Figure 4. "The submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man"-Rene
Gallimard(Jeremy Irons) and Song Liling (John Lone) in M. Butterfly. Courtesy
BFI Collections.
18
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
Jody'ssoldier identity carries particularpolitical weight. It personalizes, on a
sexual level, the expropriatingoppressiveness of British colonialism, the alienating, coopting power of which is intimated by Jody'sposition as himself a colonized,
working-classWest Indian. M. Butterfly similarlyrelates oppressive masculinityto
colonialism. The film quite self-consciously dramatizes the accepted reciprocity
between patriarchaldominance and the colonialist discourse of Orientalism, in
which the Orient is familiarlyregarded as submissively feminine, "asa sexualized,
and sexually compliant, space that is ripe for conquest and rule."49Not only can
Song be seen reflexivelyto fashion what he describes as one of the "favoritefantasies" of the Western male, "the submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white
man,"but Gallimardprojects into the political sphere his presumed sexual success
in winning and subjugatingSong, advisingthe French ambassador(Ian Richardson)
that "deep down" the Chinese are "attractedto us" and that "the Oriental will
always submit to the greater force."50
But as both films criticize the imperialist right, so they represent the revolutionaryleft as rigidlyoppressiveand intolerantof difference. In M. Butterfly,Song's
punishment by the Communist state is exacerbated by the advent of the Cultural
Revolution, which sentences Song to heavy labor, burns the costumes and trappings of the Beijing Opera, and replaces traditionaltransvestitetheater with Maoist
model drama. In The Crying Game, the IRA is represented as patriarchal,racist,
and having a callous disregardfor human existence. Witness, respectively,the subordination of Jude at the hideout, where she is reduced to a domestic role and
commanded by Peter to "shutthe fuck up";Jude'sfranticbrushing of herself after
physical contact with Jody, or her derisory description of Dil as the "wee black
chick";and the organization'slack of compunction about using Dil's life as lever"
age doubly to ensure that Fergus attempts to assassinate some judge."51Hownot
is
the
as
a
member
of
the
British
colonialist
ever,
establishment, a
only
judge,
"legitimatetarget,"but he is placed as patriarchally/sexuallyexploitative:he is targeted at a brothel where he "visitshis ladies."It is a negative representation of the
English middle class reinforced by that of the racist, misogynistic, and economically expropriativeDeveroux.
Reactionary patriarchalroles are represented as no less oppressive for the
men who have to fill them. Note, in M. Butterfly, Gallimard'snervous unease when
he first meets his newly subordinate intelligence staff or the "masculine"strain
implied by his weary comment to Song, after his "unmanning"episode with Frau
Baden, that "I'mnot what you think I am."In The Crying Game, not only is Fergus
reminded by Jude, in no uncertain terms, that "you'renever out" of the IRA, but
because he managed to "fuckup" Jody'sexecution he is offered, as an alternative
to having a bullet put through his head, the opportunity to redeem himself by
suicidally participatingin the assassinationattempt.5 It is a situation whose connotations compound those of Jody being run over by a British troop carrier,his
being killed by his "own side."
Likewise notable are the tensions apparent in Peter's masculinity. His upset
anger over Fergus's growing closeness to Jody-"because tomorrow we might
have to shoot him"-is far from the attitude of "the cold and emotionless IRA
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
19
killer"described by Edge,53as is his ready sympathy toward Fergus's request "to
guard the prisoner"during Jody'slast night. Similarly,Peter's stubbing of a lighted
cigarette onto Fergus's hand, which he follows with a blow to Fergus's face, combines, in its unpleasant imposition of symbolic castration, a somewhat friable and
revealingly overinsistent affirmation of phallic authority with a denial of "feminine" weakness: "I'm getting emotional, and I don't like getting fucking emotional." The assassination sequence represents Peter's masculinity as finally
destructive both to others and to himself. In a potent mix of the political and the
(psycho-)sexual, the film cross-cuts between Fergus bound to Dil's bed and Peter, faced with Fergus's nonappearance and probable IRA retribution (Jude notes
to Peter that "we are" dead), deciding "emotionally"to undertake the assassination himself: between the "feminized" Fergus's erotically inflected struggle as
Dil holds him at pistol point and the gun-toting Peter's "active,""masculine,"
phallic assertion. Peter shoots the judge and one bodyguard but is shot by a second bodyguard, Peter's body jerking orgastically as it is penetrated by bullets.
The sight of Peter's dead body cuts to that of Fergus, still bound, subsiding into
"postcoital"quietness.54
The sequence explicitly opposes destructive, politically related phallic masculinity with (here literally) "life-saving,"apolitical feminization. Through this, it
further indexes concerns common to The Crying Game and M. Butterfly-the
undermining of phallocentric essentialism before the contingency of gender and
identity, along with the stressing of polymorphousness as against exclusive Oedipal or hetero- and homosexual norms and the critical collapsing of repressive
psychosexual and reactionary political structures. These shared concerns carry
an epistemological charge that variously evokes a line of philosophical-cum-cultural positions. Moving chronologically,they imply the critical fusion of the psychic and the social apparent in, for example, the writings of Wilhelm Reich and
Herbert Marcuse,but most especially,in its expressdemonizationof Oedipalization,
and its dismissive association of dominant right and left politics, that apparent in
the (highly Reich-derivative) work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari;this despite in M. Butterfly les evenements of May 1968, with which the writings of
Deleuze and Guattariare intimatelylinked,being dismissed,summarilyandwithout
contestation, by a drunk (Michael Mehlmann), to whom Gallimard laments his
life since leaving China, as "fucking students" "playingat being Chinese Communists."55The work of Deleuze and Guattari has in turn been generative of
certain strands of postmodern thought. Among other links, both identify schizophrenia as the defining condition of late capitalism, although what for Deleuze
and Guattari is an existential actuality tends, within theories of the postmodern,
to be more a matter of discursive disjunction, "a breakdown in the signifying
chain."56This breakdown is posited on what BarbaraCreed, summarizing JeanFrancois Lyotard, has described as "a collapse of the grands recits," or master
narratives57:that is, a failure of the overarching, explanatorycoherence of those
bodies of thought that have hitherto dominated Western patriarchalculture. In
effect, the phallus as "the despotic signifier"58has been dethroned, leaving the
field open for the contingent, the polyvalent, and the heterogeneous.
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Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
This usurpation founds the positive assertions made regarding the possible
progressiveness of postmodernist culture. In particular,it is a deessentializing imperative that postmodernism has been claimed to share with feminism.59It is in
relation to sexualpolitics, however, that the compromised transgressivenessof The
Crying Game and M. Butterfly, which are themselves very much products of
postmodernist culture, becomes jarringlyapparent.
Consider again the representation of Jude in The Crying Game.60Apart from
her unsympathetic aggressiveness toward Jody,Jude is from the beginning of the
film misogynisticallyrepresented as sexually insatiable. Hence her coming on to
Fergus outside the hideout, as part of which she leeringly notes, a propos her
seduction of Jody and despite her racism, that "one of you made me want it."
Jude'saggressiveness and insatiabilityare reified by her "tougherlook"in London,
explicitly suggesting an archetypalfigure of the phallic woman, the femme fatale.
The implication is underscored by the film noirish shadows and blue-black lighting of the scene in which she appears in Fergus's room, during which, while grabbing his genitals,she unabashedlyrequests,"Fuckme, Fergus."The noirintimations
bring us back, with more pejorative implications, to the issue of masquerade. In
her "phallicness,"the femme fatale is an exemplar of dangerouslydeceptive womanliness. The figure's evocation in relation to Jude thus reflects back, with somewhat loaded overdetermination,on the "masculinity"dissembled by the receptive
femininity through which Jude entraps Jody (during which the pistol-as-symbolic
phallusis held by/displacedinto the possession of Fergus) and which breaksthrough
in Jody'spistol-whipping. By contrast, although Dil is biologically male, "her"masquerade, as it consistently presents a patriarchallyamenable womanliness, can be
seen, in a likewise more questionable separationof gender from biology, to underpin "her"continued acceptability as a partner for Fergus.
A similar,and similarlyquestionable, favoringof Song's"femininity"is offered
in M. Butterfly.While the performativityof Song's"feminine"self renders his early
"Communist"attackson Gallimardand his later praise of "exciting"Western ways
equally disingenuous, the text delights in Song's manipulationof his punishment,
particularlyas his "feminine"wiles trump the stolid-but still feminist-sententiousness of the masculinized Comrade Chin.61We might in addition ponder the
textual elision of the possibly troublesome presence of Jeanne Gallimard, who
disappears, and is largely forgotten, after the opening half-hour. Not only is the
characterplayed by a well-known actress but Sukowacarries with her a history of
radical and feminist filmmakingwithin the New German Cinema.62
As both texts seemingly challenge phallocentrism,so the penis as phalluswould
neverthelessappearto be tacitlysustainedin its role of privilegedsignifier,albeit in a
furtive,even perverse, guise: "In short, the only good woman is a man"63-or,more
precisely,a man masqueradingas a woman. If, with regardto M. Butterfly,this invites a negative reconsiderationof Song'sassertion of male knowledge of "proper"
femininity,then The Crying Game might be read to demonstrateJody'sclaim that
"womenare trouble."(Dil, by contrast,is, "notrouble,no trouble at all.")TheCrying
Game approachesa familiar,twin-prongedpostfeministmisogyny,wherebythe masculine assumptionof "feminine"qualities is marriedto an often brutal dismissalof
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
21
the assertivewoman. Moreover,despite their respective"feminization,"both Fergus
and Dil are allowed, when necessary, and unproblematically,to exercise residual
masculine aggression.Witness Fergus'scalculatedand efficient assaulton Dave, or
his implacablethreateningof Deveroux.64Dil'sfatalshootingof Judeis both unblinking and implicitlyjustified byJude's threateningintrusion.Both Simpson and Edge
compareJude with the characterof Alex (Glenn Close) from a much-cited example
of 1980s cinematic misogyny,Fatal Attraction(AdrianLyne, 1987).65Further,Dil's
eliminationof Jude, "her""monstrousopposite,"66
whom "she"shoots, like a monster, in the throat,implicitlyreprisesthat film'sending, in which the "good,""feminine" woman, Beth (Anne Archer), shoots and kills Alex, her "bad,"transgressive,
and, in the case of Alex, explicitlyderanged alter ego.67
Jude's death is accordingly of a piece with the reassertion of patriarchalauthority that marksthe closing stages of The Crying Game and M. Butterfly. This,
along with the texts' implicit upholding of the phallus, can be read to confirm
more negative evaluations of postmodernist culture: that despite, and in, its discursive heterogeneity and play, it lacks the progressive political agency elsewhere
claimed. From this perspective, the central postmodern aesthetic of allusion and
pastiche, the (readily commodified) requotation of the already represented, is
complicit in not only the maintenance but the expansion of the dominant order
into areas hitherto uncolonized, economic or otherwise.68This, it could be argued,
is what is evinced, both diegetically and textually,in the play of masqueradein The
Crying Game and M. Butterfly. By the same token, it is perhaps not so much that
the grands recits have collapsed but that they are, within the accelerated cultural
extension and appropriationsof late capitalism, in a condition of transition and
flux. Once more to adduce Deleuze and Guattari,postmodernism is correlatively
less the desired break from psychic and social repression than the acme of what
they characterize as the dual movement of "modern societies," which, while "defined"by the "decodingand deterritorialization"of existingstructuresand regimes,
do so only with the proviso that "what they deterritorialize with one hand, they
reterritorializewith the other."69
An Ending (of Sorts). Yet again,more needs to be said. The issues examined and
the tensions raised in The Crying Game and M. Butterfly cannot be closed off so
easily.In The Crying Game, as Dil shoots Jude "she"bitterly complainsabout Jude
using "thosetits and that ass"to trapJody.While this plainlyintimateshomosexual/
transvestiteenvy,it also hints at more general male inadequacybefore female presence and potency. As this, like Gallimard'sfinal rejection of Song in M. Butterfly,
reinstates the body, in spite of everything, as an insurmountableboundary,so we
come back to the context of masculine gender crisis.70Moreover,if the elimination
of the threatening female is offered as one (highly familiar)solution to this crisis,
the alternativepresented by The Crying Game and M. Butterfly-that of being or
becoming feminine-is, whatever its ideological connotations, seemingly fraught
with existentialanxiety,a mutual fascinationand fear that can be regardedas a motive force behind its detailed elaborationin the texts at hand as well as in the other
texts that constitute their representativefield.
22
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
The reestablishment of patriarchal authority in The Crying Game and M.
Butterfly correspondinglyconveys less the impression of necessary,punitive retribution or of oppressive or even unconvincinglyimposed closure than of the need
for a space for relief and rumination, as though protagonists and texts had spent
too much time in, and ventured too far into, dangerous territory.In M. Butterfly,
not only can the Cultural Revolution be considered implicitly as "summoned"by
Song'scontinued, unrestrained"femininity,"but the trialof Gallimard,while nominally for espionage, centers, as represented, on his relationshipwith Song. In The
Crying Game, Fergus's self-referential comment, which he speaks to the photograph of Jody after wiping Dil's incriminating fingerprints from his pistol, resonates equally strongly:"Youshould have stayed at home."
Compounding these connotations, the final scenes of both films, as they
efficiently roundoff a number of textualpatternings,hold a significantand summary
glass to preceding concerns, tensions, and contradictions. In M. Butterfly,
Gallimard's"big performance"-his on-stage "becoming" of "Madame Butterfly"-maintains, to the end, the representation of gender as masquerade, being
the literal embodiment of what Gallimard describes to Song in the paddy wagon
as "theperfect lie," "awoman created by a man."However,it is a lie that clarifyingly
reflects back on the truth denied by his preceding disavowals and hubristic
phallocentrism:that Song is a man and that Gallimard'soverconfident Orientalism
has been encouraged and exploited by the Chinese; that, in fact, Gallimard has
been in the "feminine"position in both relationships; and that, like Cio-Cio-San
in Madame Butterfly, he has "sacrificed" everything "for the love of a man."
Gallimard'sperformance completes the film's references to Puccini's opera, allusions that serve as a counterpointing structuring device throughout. Hwang's
declared intention was to write "a deconstructivist Madame Butterfly,"7' and
while Gallimard implicitly and unreflectively uses the opera as the template for
his relationship with Song (note, say, Gallimard'spoint-of-view "identification"
with a record-cover illustration of Pinkerton or his repeated, insistent question
"Areyou my Butterfly?"),his final appearance as Butterfly is matched by Song's
converse positioning as Pinkerton (apart from having ultimately used Gallimard,
Song is shown, in a series of cross-cut shots, again dressed as a man and boarding a plane that will return him to his homeland). Cio-Cio-San commits seppuku;
Gallimard slits his own throat. He does so, moreover, with the mirror through
which he becomes and in which he regards himself as Madame Butterfly.72The
act effectively pathologizes gender instability, equates the loss of stable masculine identity, of the phallus, with death-thus, perhaps, the text's emphasis on
fetishism and disavowal. Gallimard's death is also played out before a packed
and variously raucous, amused but largely absorbed all-male prison audience.
This not only presents an ironic parallel with the captive audience that receives
his performance of masculinity in the bar, but offers a reflexive figure both for
the film'spresumed masculine spectatorship and for that spectatorship'sassumed
interest in the gender problematic addressed in the film.
The pathologizingof gender instabilityfinds reflection in The Crying Game in
Dil's disablingblood "condition,"which carries implicationsof AIDS. However, in
CinemaJournal 42, No. 4, Summer2003
23
contrastto Gallimard,Fergus ends The Crying Game alive and with his real name
and, seemingly,and seeminglyreciprocally,a stableidentityand his phallicmasculinity restored.The latter restorationeven tacitlyprecedes the "official"reassertionof
patriarchalauthority,when Fergus retrieveshis pistol,the symbolicphallus,from Dil
and waits, in a heroicallymasculinegesture, to be arrestedfor Dil's killingof Jude.
In the film's closing scene, the protective space implicitly facilitated by the
reestablishment of patriarchalorder is rendered actual by the glass cell that separates Fergus from Dil. The cell and the surroundinglarge-windowedvisiting room
recall the film's other glassed site of imprisonment:the greenhouse in which the
IRA holds Jody. Fergus's imprisonment upholds to the end the text's network of
parallels and reversals by continuing the many linkages between him and Jody
(both are "gentle" men misplaced in military organizations;both have "simple
tastes";both have relationshipswith Dil; both are, at different times, held at gunpoint with their hands bound; each calls the other "soldier";and so on). Fergus in
addition repeats Jody'sparable about the scorpion and the frog. The tale, which
describes how a scorpion suicidallystings a frog that is carryinghim across a river
because he "can'thelp it,"because it is "in"his "nature,"is told by Jody to demonstrate two fundamental types of people: the destructive and the kind. An
essentializing, binaryposition, this sits uneasily with the text'sextensive representation of identity as contingent and culturally determined and serves further to
compromiseits coherence and potentiallyprogressivetransgressiveness.AfterJude
hits Jody,Fergus apologizes, saying, "She can't help it"-to wit, "The sole woman
in the film becomes the representative scorpion."73Against this, Jody characterizes Fergus's "nature"as "kind,"and Fergus retells the parable to explain to Dil
why he is "doingtime" for "her."Does this mean that Dil, too, is a scorpion? And
how does this relate to Dil's drunken,pitiful, and dependent plea as Fergus moves
to leave "her,""I can't help what I am"? Nevertheless, as Fergus recounts the
parable, and the film'sdialogue finishes, markedly,with the words "I can't help it.
It's in my nature," we simultaneously hear Lyle Lovett singing "Stand by Your
Man":that is, a prototypical expression of feminine suffering and loyalty is being
sung by a heterosexual, male country singer.
Notes
1. SigmundFreud,"Onthe SexualTheoriesof Children"(1908),in AngelaRichards,
UK:Penguin,1991),194.
ed., On Sexuality,trans.JamesStrachey(Harmondsworth,
2. ChrisRodley,ed., Cronenbergon Cronenberg,rev.ed. (London:Faberand Faber,
1997),183.
3. For a synopsisof "TheSoldier'sWife,"see JaneGiles, The CryingGame(London:
BFI, 1997),19-21.
4. For a relevantdiscussionof genderand sexualityin science fictionand horror,see
BarbaraCreed,"FromHere to Modernity:Feminismand Postmodernism,"
Screen
28, no. 2 (spring1987):47-67. For an accountof genderandsexualityin the modern
horrorfilmanda summaryof someof the appropriations
of its concernsandrepresentationsin mainstream
cinema,see CarolJ.Clover,Men,Women,andChainsaws:Gender in the Modern Horror Film (London: BFI, 1992).
24
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
5. Kristin Handler, "SexingThe Crying Game: Difference, Identity, Ethics," Film Quarterly 47, no. 3 (spring 1994): 33, 40.
6. Slavoj zizek, "'Do Not Compromise Your Desire': Figures of Ethics in Cinema," National Film Theatre program, October-November 1996, 39.
7. Ironically,whereas criticsof The Crying Game tend towardreductivebinarism,Marjorie
Garber in her discussion of the play M. Butterfly in Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing
and Cultural Anxiety (New York:Routledge, 1992) refuses the text's accommodation
of such reductiveness by focusing on the figure of the transvestite, a "third"that "questions binary thinking and introduces crisis" (11). The play is discussed in the chapter
"Phantomsof the Opera: Actor, Diplomat, Transvestite, Spy,"234-66. For an analysis
of The Crying Game that explicitly places the film as exploding binary delimitations
and that, to a degree, shadows what is presented in this article, see Patrick McGee,
Cinema, Theory, and Political Responsibility in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 79-160. For an analysisof the film M. Butterfly that refuses a homosexualreading, and that, in its Lacanianmethodology,frequently
counterpoints that which is presented here, see Rey Chow, "The Dream of a Butterfly,"in Diana Fuss, ed., Human, All Too Human (New York:Routledge, 1996), 61-92.
8. Given this, no claims are made regarding the originality of the following paragraph,
which largely reiterates, reciprocates, and develops points made elsewhere.
9. Jordan has referred in discussing the Fergus-Jody hostage situation to a pair of Irish
literary precursors, Frank O'Connor's 1931 short story "Guests of the Nation" and
Brendan Behan's 1958 play The Hostage. See Neil Jordan,The Crying Game (London:
Vintage, 1993), viii. For a discussion of the relation of the texts to The Crying Game,
see Giles, The Crying Game, 17-19.
10. What gendered pronouns to use to designate Dil and Song is clearly open to debate.
Following the texts' comparative dissimulation and openness with regard to the characters' maleness, Dil will be referred to with feminine pronouns, in quotes, Song with
masculine pronouns.
11. JonathanRomney,"TheCrying Game,"Sight and Sound 2, no. 7 (November 1992): 40.
12. Mark Simpson, Male Impersonators:Men Performing Masculinity (London: Cassell,
1994), 164; Diane Sippl, ". . . Even as also I Am Known:Vicarious Miscegenation on
PostcolonialScreens,"CineAction33 (1994): 38; SarahEdge, "'WomenAre Trouble,Did
YouKnowThat Fergus?':Neil Jordan'sThe Crying Game,"FeministReview 50 (summer
1995): 174; Slavojzizek, The Metastasesof Enjoyment:Six Essays on Womenand Causality (London:Verso, 1994), 105;JoyJames,"BlackFemmesFatalesand SexualAbuse in
Progressive'White' Cinema: Neil Jordan'sMona Lisa and The Crying Game,"Camera
Obscura 36 (September 1995): 38-39; Jack Boozer, Jr., "Bending Phallic Patriarchyin
The Crying Game,"Journal of Popular Film & Television22, no. 4 (winter 1995): 173;
Handler,"SexingThe Crying Game,"36; and Lola Young,"'NothingIs as It Seems': Reviewing The Crying Game,"in Pat Kirkhamand JanetThumim, eds., MeJane:Masculinity, Movies,and Women(London: Lawrence and Wishart,1995), 278.
13. Amy Zilliax, "The Scorpion and the Frog: Agency and Identity in Neil Jordan'sThe
Crying Game,"Camera Obscura 35 (May 1995): 48.
14. While the representation of race in The Crying Game is not a particular concern of
this article, it has received a good deal of (mainly negative) discussion. See, for example, Handler, "Sexing The Crying Game";Sippl, "... Even as also I Am Known";
James,"BlackFemmesFatales and SexualAbuse";and Young,"'NothingIs as It Seems."'
Also note Frann Michel, "Racialand Sexual Politics in The Crying Game," Cineaste
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
25
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
20, no. 1 (July 1993): 30-34, and Darrell Moore, "Now You Can See It: The Liberal
Aesthetic and Racial Representation in The Crying Game,"CineAction 32 (fall 1993):
63-67.
Giles, The Crying Game, 69.
David Lugowski,"GenreConventions and Visual Style in The Crying Game,"Cineaste
20, no. 1 (July 1993): 35.
Jacques Lacan, "The Signification of the Phallus"(1958), in Ecrits: A Selection, trans.
Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock,1977), 287.
Peter N. Chumo II, "The Crying Game, Hitchcockian Romance, and the Quest for
Identity,"Literature/Film Quarterly 23, no. 4 (1995): 249.
Ibid., 248, 249.
J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (1967), trans. Donald
Nicholson-Smith (London: Hogarth, 1973), 251.
Jacques Lacan, "The MirrorStage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in
PsychoanalyticExperience" (1949), in 1crits, 2.
Chumo, "TheCrying Game,"249.
Handler, "SexingThe Crying Game,"38.
Rebecca Bell-Metereau writes, "'TheCrying Game' was originallydone by Dave Berry
and the Cruisers, an androgynous-lookinggroup whose costumes and elaborate hand
gestures Jaye Davidson effectively imitates in his lip-synching of the song." BellMetereau, HollywoodAndrogyny,2d ed. (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1993),
326 n.64.
Joan Riviere, "Womanlinessas a Masquerade"(1929), in Victor Burgin,James Donald,
and Cora Kaplan,eds., Formations of Fantasy (London: Methuen, 1986), 35.
MaryAnn Doane, "Filmand the Masquerade:Theorisingthe Female Spectator,"Screen
23, nos. 3-4 (September-October 1982): 87.
Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, 118.
Song's "invention"is also given an implicit, and complementary, cultural reference:
the magazine cover featuring the illustration of Anna May Wong carries the caption
"AnnaMay Wong'sChinese Love Code."
Sigmund Freud, "Fetishism"(1927), trans. James Strachey,in On Sexuality, 353.
Ibid., 354.
Ibid.
Freud, "On the Sexual Theories of Children," 194.
Sigmund Freud, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905), trans. James
Strachey, in On Sexuality, 57 n.l, 56 n.l (quoted material was added by Freud in
1915).
Sigmund Freud, "Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes" (1925), trans. James Strachey,in On Sexuality, 333.
Louise J. Kaplan, Female Perversions: The Temptationsof Madame Bovary (London:
Pandora, 1991), 63.
Freud, "Fetishism,"352.
Freud, "Some Psychical Consequences," 342.
Sigmund Freud, "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex" (1924), trans. James
Strachey,in On Sexuality, 321.
Riviere, "Womanlinessas a Masquerade,"37.
For a discussion of the concept of masqueradein relation to both psychoanalytictheory
and psychoanalyticfilm theory and criticism, see John Fletcher, "Versionsof Masquerade," Screen 29, no. 3 (summer 1988): 43-70.
26
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
Lacan, "The Signification of the Phallus,"290.
Ibid., 289.
Ibid.
Ibid., 290.
Ibid., 289.
Stephen Heath, "JoanRiviere and the Masquerade,"in Formations of Fantasy, 56.
Lacan, "The Signification of the Phallus,"291.
Similar points are made by Chumo, "The Crying Game,"252, and Giles, The Crying
Game, 69.
Marina Heung, "The Family Romance of Orientalism: From Madame Butterfly to
Indochine," in Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar, eds., Visions of the East:
Orientalism in Film (London: Tauris, 1997), 160.
For more on how the two "discursivestrategies"of "colonizationof the feminine" and
"feminizationof the colonized" inform M. Butterfly, see Asuman Suner, "Postmodern
Double Cross: Reading David Cronenberg'sM. Butterfly as a Horror Story,"Cinema
Journal 37, no. 2 (winter 1998): 51-56.
For a discussion of the relation between the representation of the IRA in The Crying
Game and established stereotypes of the IRA (and of Irishness), see Edge, "'Women
Are Trouble,"'174-79.
McGee sees the representation of revolutionarynationalism in The Crying Game as
implying self-sacrifice in the name of "a symbolic republic that may be nothing more
than an imaginaryconstructioncamouflagingthe death drive."McGee, Cinema, Theory,
and Political Responsibility, 119.
Edge, "'WomenAre Trouble,"'178.
With regardto Edge's discussion of the representation of the IRA in The Crying Game,
Peter might be considered better to embody a variant of another IRA stereotype, to
which she relates Fergus, of "the fundamentallydecent IRA man who has doubts about
his violent deeds" (ibid.).
See Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, trans. V. R. Carfagno, 3d ed.
(London: Souvenir, 1972); Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical
Enquiry into Freud (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956); and Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari,Anti-Oedipus:Capitalismand Schizophrenia,trans. Robert Hurley,
Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (London: Athlone, 1984).
Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,"New
Left Review 146 (July-August 1984): 71-72.
Creed, "From Here to Modernity,"50; Jean-Francois Lyotard,The Postmodern Condition:A Reporton Knowledge,trans. Geoff Bennington and BrianMassumi(Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984).
Deleuze and Guattari,Anti-Oedipus, 351.
See, for example, Creed, "From Here to Modernity."
The discussion of Jude'srepresentation is especially indebted, and I hope complementary,to Handler,"SexingThe Crying Game,"36-38, and Edge, "'WomenAre Trouble,"'
173-84.
Even so, the representation of Comrade Chin is much more sympathetic than in the
play M. Butterfly. Whereas in the film Chin is, at worst, dutifully dull, in the play she is
a virulently drawnhate figure, a reductive, aggressive, and homophobic ideologue who
causes Gallimardto flee from the stage. In "recompense,"she is the obtuse object of
arch and misogynistic retorts and asides. For more on this, see Garber,Vested Interests, 248-49.
Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003
27
62. Perhaps most pointedly, Sukowaplayed the title role in Rosa Luxemburg(Margarethe
von Trotta, 1986).
63. Michel, "Racialand Sexual Politics,"34.
64. Fergus is also, in the opening sequence, and in the cause of the IRA, seen to kick Jody
in the head. Indeed, with respect to Edge's attributionof IRA stereotypes, it is Fergus
rather than Peter who tends to be "cold and emotionless" in his violence.
65. See Simpson, Male Impersonators, 167, and Edge, "'WomenAre Trouble,"'181.
66. Edge, "'WomenAre Trouble,"'177.
67. See also Simpson, Male Impersonators, 169-70.
68. The locus classicus of this perspective is Jameson, "Postmodernism."
69. Deleuze and Guattari,Anti-Oedipus, 257.
70. For a further argument about the body as limit in The Crying Game, see Zilliax,"The
Scorpion and the Frog," 34-39.
71. David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (Harmondsworth,UK: Penguin, 1989), 95.
72. For a somewhat contrastinginterpretationof Gallimard'ssuicide by mirror,see Chow,
"The Dream of a Butterfly,"83-86.
73. Handler, "SexingThe Crying Game,"37.
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Cinema Journal 42, No. 4, Summer 2003