One of my favorite genres of film is sinister-movie-where-two-women-switch-personalities, i.e, the Queer Persona Merger. Movies in this category stem from the archetypal and titular Mother QPM, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, and include (but are not limited to) Robert Altman’s 3 Women, Barbet Schroeder’s Single White Female, and Sophia Takal’s Always Shine. The QPM is about two women who resemble one another either physically or energetically, with the resemblance becoming a source of both desire and repulsion for one of the women and a physical danger to the other. There is typically a queer-coded woman and a straight-coded one. The queer-coded one desires something from her replica that she feels is lacking in herself and the shape of this felt lack is formed around a deference to the male gaze that the queer character has internalized and believes herself to be excluded from (which is such a classic way to misunderstand one’s own queerness — it’s always ‘why don’t men like me?’, never ‘why don’t I like men?’). The women in question find themselves on two ends of a funhouse mirror and the mirror itself is the trap of femininity. One woman looks in her reflection and sees an acceptance she’ll never attain; the other sees a grotesque emergence of the pain and injury she has worked very hard to hide.
Because to play into expectations around being ‘feminine’, or generally not AMAB or clearly male-presenting, can mean engaging in constant failure. There’s no good way to do it and, very often, even the shape of the trap becomes an eroticized thing. Play into your own objectification and risk the damage that comes with being sexualized, scrutinized, and violated. Rail against it and risk the damage that comes with being resented, misunderstood, and scorned. This is what tortures the queer-coded woman in a QPM — in her mind, she cannot win; she barely knows how to play. What is the other woman doing that keeps her so perfectly in place? What makes her so enviable? In these movies the answer is volume based — the other woman is being quiet. In Persona, Bibi Andersson’s Elizabet quite literally doesn’t speak; in Always Shine, Caitlin Fitzgerald’s Beth only speaks in bashful tones with a downward tilt to her head, an affect that Mackenzie Davis’ Anna imitates to successful results once Beth has gone mysteriously missing. The silence of the straight-coded woman is their most infuriating aspect to their female counterpart and, especially in Always Shine, their most desirable quality to their male audience.
This week we have a Mercury Venus conjunction occurring in the sign of Cancer. Venus and Cancer are two astrological archetypes that get classically associated with femininity. We hear ‘Cancer’ and ‘mother’ in the same sentence, just as we hear ‘Venus’ and ‘beauty’. The messenger planet Mercury becomes soft-spoken when it moves into Cancer and conjoins Venus. The astrological signature is very much that of the Bibi Anderssons, the Shelly Duvalls, the Caitlin Fitzgeralds of the world. One way to construe this transit is as a representation of silent, deferent, ‘correct’ femininity.
But as we’ve established, there is no winning in femininity, nor is there any correctness. Because what happens to these characters in the QPM? They are under constant threat of violence throughout the movie’s runtime until they are killed or simply disappear. Not even silence can save them. In fact, it is their ‘correctness’ that attracts jealousy and violence from their queer counterparts. Because another way you can fail via association with femininity is that if you’re queer, you’re probably a predator.
The failure inherent in presenting as feminine is a knowledge deeply held by those who experience it, and to those who do not experience it and don’t want to know, that familiarity with failure is can be construed as a lack in and of itself — of confidence, fortitude, even softness. Even the failure is a failure. But there is good news because failure is, obviously, gay. I hope that this week the Cancerian message of this Mercury/Venus transit brings us not towards survival-silence but into closer contact with the silly gayness of getting things wrong.
Monday, June 17
Something comes into being through an expression of pain; like a plant that gets its water from a flood of cartoonish Disney Princess tears. Also see: a blue-toned early morning, bread products, moody piano, staring out a window.
Tuesday, June 18
Brooding at home while everyone else is out at some big party.
Wednesday, June 19
An electrical surge powered by glacier runoff. Possibility and plausibility with no conclusions, only options. Not being sure of who you are because you keep confusing yourself with someone you met in a dream.
Thursday, June 20
A ‘no’ that doesn’t matter because you’ve decided to retire. “You can’t fire me! Because I quit!”
Friday, June 21
Soft persuasion and practical movement is belied by or acting as an outlet to an interior galaxy. This is also a good way to describe magic.
Saturday, June 22
An excess of practicality serves as a container for sensitivity and prying, engaging emotionality. It feels rude but it’s actually helpful.
Sunday, June 23
Business not as usual and business above all. A spritely CEO using the corporate ladder to ascend into the ether and never come back.