by Anna
Ammonite (2020)
With Ammonite's trailer now familiar and the film and Kate Winslet continuing on the festival and press rounds, there's been buzz aplenty for Francis Lee’s follow-up to the excellent God’s Own Country. That said, there are some who have a quibble or two. Jill Gutowitz expressed mild annoyance, asking:
(She followed up by saying she’ll be seeing Ammonite.) It is a good question. And why are so many recent WLW-themed works period pieces?
The Favourite (2018)
Sure, we’ve seen some modern-day queer female films like Disobedience, Hearts Beat Loud, Booksmart, and The Half of It in recent years but overall, most of them arren’t set in this century. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Summerland, Tell It to the Bees, The Favourite, Vita and Virginia, Carol, The Handmaiden, Elisa & Marcela, Bessie, Wild Nights with Emily, Colette, The Girl King, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Battle of the Sexes… these are just a handful of WLW-themed period pieces released within the last five years. And that’s not even focusing on television! While Orange is the New Black and Euphoria are set in the present day, most of the television projects aren't. You have the likes of Black Sails, Masters of Sex, Gentleman Jack, Harlots, Dickinson, and the episode “San Junipero” from Black Mirror. Once again, not a single one of those titles is contemporary set.
Why are there so many films set in times of high oppression? Historically female homosexuality wasn’t criminalized with the same severity as male homosexuality was, so perhaps that why there isn’t that overwhelming sense of shame looming over the characters in these titles. Perhaps there’s also an interest in seeing women from earlier time periods bucking the trend of becoming little more than housewives and mothers. Perhaps it’s a way to show that there were in fact queer women throughout history, even if historians try to eschew or outright erase such proof. Even with all those possibilities, they still don’t quite provide a thorough explanation.
High Art (1998)
One would think the legalization of same-sex marriage throughout various parts of the world in recent years would make storytellers more inclined. The current period-piece fascinationg is especially jarring when you look at works from the likes of Rose Troche, Jamie Babbit, Lisa Cholodenko, and Patricia Rozema from the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s and early Aughts, most of which were set in the (then) present day.
There's another current trend in queer media – more so in WLW-themed works – that irks me somewhat: a lack of diversity both in front of and behind the camera. So many of them are about and/or told by white women. If it wasn’t for the likes of Dee Rees, Desiree Akhavan, Alice Wu, and Cheryl Dunye telling such stories over the years (with Akhavan and Dunye starring in theirs, no less), there would be a number of queer women of color feeling seriously underrepresented. (Also, isn’t it strange how very few of the previously mentioned titles actually feature queer actresses?)
And tying this in with the countless period dramas, why are so few of them actually about queer women of color? Lord knows there were many throughout history – Billie Holiday (her bisexuality isn’t mentioned in Lady Sings the Blues), Frida Kahlo, and Bessie Smith have had biopics to name a few famous examples – but why the reluctance to tell other stories? Is it because – in the case of famous queer women – not much is documented about their private lives because of how they identified sexually? Or is it because of a racial bias within the queer community, still (frustratingly) prevalent today.
Bessie (2015)
If I had to take a guess at why period pieces became the norm, I would say that it might have some correlation with novelist Sarah Waters becoming of note during that same time period (and her books’ respective BBC adaptations soon after adds some support to this thought). It also might be the simple desire to show that queer women, both famous and forgotten, have existed throughout the annals of history.
What do you make of this 'depressed women-who-love-women in bonnets' trend?