This week I can't really be bothered with CT happenings, but I'll have you all know I've been administering the blog in other ways (telling Jackie and DH what to write about, providing photos, letting them know if their jokes are good, etc.). It's also been very hot and humid, which is exhausting and unpleasant and just makes me want to sleep a lot. And watch TV.
As you may have already read, some of us here at CT Scenic (but no necessarily me, duh) have had lesbian drama on the brain, so maybe that's why when I watched Steel Magnolias this morning instead of doing something more productive or even blogging something more productive, I thought the best part of the movie was the hilarious and obviously gay relationship between bawdy old broads Ouiser and Clairee (Shirley McClaine and Olympia Dukakis). After skipping the trite-ass final scene, I hit the internets, hoping to find some ridiculous academic breakdown of the unspoken lesbianism in this movie. It must be out there. Shit, we know people that are gonna be doctors of roller derby. Academia is totally indiscriminate, and you can write whatever batshit thesis you want as long as you cite it proper - OMG that one bit in Mumford where he's all "I have a Ph. D" and she's all "Oh you're not a real doctor," and he's like "No, the fake kind"!
Anyway, I knew that the (male) gays are supposed to love Steel Magnolias in a campy kind of way, and I did find this interesting essay about the disappearing lesbians in the film versions of Fried Green Tomatoes and The Color Purple, but I didn't find any serious lesbian readings of Steel Magnolias through casual googling. However, I was happy to find some good references to Oiser wanting to stick it to Clairee (and to skipping the lame final scene) in this great post from GaysThinkItsFabulous.com, so now I don't feel totally off base.
This movie could have used a good closet-outing dose of Betty White. Damn it, Shelby, quit trying to hook Ouiser up with that timid old man - "You're barking up the wrong lesbian!"
As you may have already read, some of us here at CT Scenic (but no necessarily me, duh) have had lesbian drama on the brain, so maybe that's why when I watched Steel Magnolias this morning instead of doing something more productive or even blogging something more productive, I thought the best part of the movie was the hilarious and obviously gay relationship between bawdy old broads Ouiser and Clairee (Shirley McClaine and Olympia Dukakis). After skipping the trite-ass final scene, I hit the internets, hoping to find some ridiculous academic breakdown of the unspoken lesbianism in this movie. It must be out there. Shit, we know people that are gonna be doctors of roller derby. Academia is totally indiscriminate, and you can write whatever batshit thesis you want as long as you cite it proper - OMG that one bit in Mumford where he's all "I have a Ph. D" and she's all "Oh you're not a real doctor," and he's like "No, the fake kind"!
Anyway, I knew that the (male) gays are supposed to love Steel Magnolias in a campy kind of way, and I did find this interesting essay about the disappearing lesbians in the film versions of Fried Green Tomatoes and The Color Purple, but I didn't find any serious lesbian readings of Steel Magnolias through casual googling. However, I was happy to find some good references to Oiser wanting to stick it to Clairee (and to skipping the lame final scene) in this great post from GaysThinkItsFabulous.com, so now I don't feel totally off base.
This movie could have used a good closet-outing dose of Betty White. Damn it, Shelby, quit trying to hook Ouiser up with that timid old man - "You're barking up the wrong lesbian!"
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Thank for kinda being my friend, travel down the road if it's not raining or you're not feeling exceptionally old that night and back again in the unlikely event you actually went out. Your taste in music is not very tr00 but you're a pal and a confidant provided the secrets hold your interest. If you threw a party and invited everyone you knew, you know I wouldn't show unless there was free beer.
ReplyDeletethank for sharing this lesbian drama. i have a blog for lesbian film here: www.lesbian-drama-movies.com
ReplyDeleteI just watched this film for the first time tonight (I know, about three decades late!) and I also found myself thinking, upon the canter of gay stereotypes in men by the women in the beauty parlor, and in walks Ouiser unwittingly personifying lesbian stereotypes, to which Clairee positively losses it, burying her face in laughter, if Oiser was, in fact, a lesbian, or in the least not entirely heterosexual. And then, when Ouiser was made the butt of the joke, so to speak, in the post-funeral breakdown, she sulks, to which Clairee comes to comfort her in private, telling her "You know I love you more than my luggage," and the two jostle around playfully. Before those words even left her lips, I wondered if they were secretly in a relationship together. Once she said those words, I was sold, then backtracked and kept questioning it. During the Easter egg hunt, Ouiser arrives with Owen, her former boyfriend to whom she did not wed though he remembers her fondly. She tells him that they are at this event together because she must "be sociable." I know she is a rough gal, but this indifference to Owen, yet feeling the need to be seen with him in order to be "sociable" feels like she's presenting heterosexual in a hetero-normative society. It's very possible that Owen's fondness for Ouiser may be, as Ousier stated in response to church gossip, as just friends- or more poignantly, as homosexual confidants helping each other feign heteronormativity in the years past. He may have wanted to be closer to her after his wife's passing not to put the moves on Ouiser, but to have someone in the world close by who knows, understands, and accepts the real him. Back on the topic of Ouiser and Clairee, I honestly think these two "old biddies" may actually be (and please excuse the language for the sake of alliteration) "old lezzies."
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