7 minute read
SCIENCE FRICTION
Emily Wood plays Sally in " THE GENDERCATOR." • photo Joslyn Virgin Crowe
SCIENCE
A Conversation with “Controversial” Indianapolis Filmmaker Catherine Crouch
by Mark Harper, Film Selection Committee Chair
atherine Crouch and I have served together on the Indianapolis LGBT Film Festival for four years, three of them on the selection committee. Along with the other dedicated committee members, we’ve worked hard to bring a top-notch queer film festival to Indianapolis with something to please everyone. It’s been my pleasure to interact with an individual like Catherine. She enjoys films for what they are, but always asks challenging questions that help everyone on the committee think about what films could be. We don’t always see eye-to-eye on the merits of a particular film, yet I have nothing but respect for her cinematic intelligence as both an artist and a critic.
This year, Catherine finds herself at the center of controversy with her new film THE GENDERCATOR, which the festival will proudly screen Saturday afternoon. In May/June, this 15 minute science fiction short hit headlines from Seattle to New York City when Frameline (San Francisco’s main LGBT film festival) made the unprecedented decision to yank THE GENDERCATOR from the festival’s program due to outrage in the local trans community over the film, just three weeks before opening night.
Since then, the film has made it to screens at queer film festivals in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, but only to encounter hot debate at each screening. Labeled everything from “transphobic” to “visionary,” THE GENDERCATOR has brought so much tension to theater audiences that, in August, an LGBT community center in Milwaukee cancelled a screening of the film after a local transactivist declared the short “toxic” while The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, a Harvard publication, ran a cover story on the controversy this fall.
Why is all this happening? Catherine and I talked about it one evening in late September over bowls of ice cream.
(M) Why don’t you say a few words about what this short film is about?
(C) THE GENDERCATOR is a short, satirical take on gender and social norms. The story uses the “Rip van Winkle” model to extrapolate from the past into a possible future. In 1973 a group of hippie women are celebrating Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs. They are partying in the rural woods outside of Bloomington, Indiana. Our heroine Sally is a simple minded, sporty type who overindulges at the party and passes out under a tree. Sally wakes up 75 years later in 2048 to discover (amongst other social changes) that feminism has failed utterly and completely. Sex roles and gender expression are rigidly binary and enforced by law and social custom. When Sally chooses to dress in flannel and jeans, the doctor at the emergency room calls in “Tork,” aka the “Gendercator,” a government official who informs Sally that butch women and sissy boys are no longer tolerated—gender variants are allowed to choose their gender, but they must choose one and follow its rigid constraints.
(M) So, in this futuristic dystopia, the “The Gendercator,” like “The Terminator,” might represent some sort of totalitarian control?
(C) My reactions to the language of the petition were: shocked, thrilled, ashamed, furious, and stunned. I am not an “ignorant transphobic Midwesterner.” I am from the South :-) and my film does not portray any character as a “monster” or “science fiction freak." (C) “The Gendercator” is a government/medical person whose job it This film represents the POV of one middle aged lesbian artist, period. is to indicate the gender of a person who exhibits gender variance. In this 2048 reality, most of Tork’s clients are children, since children are (M) I’ve enjoyed looking at your website on the film. I noticed “gendercated” at age 8. The film is a satire about the future and that you added some statements such as one remarking on how, where we are headed given three factors: the rise of religious “Things are getting very strange for women these days. More fundamentalism in governments all over the world—all of whom find and more often we see young heterosexual women carving their homosexuality an abomination and would have it abolished; the bodies into porno Barbie dolls and lesbian women altering increasing medicalization of our society themselves into transmen.” Do you think where every problem is seen to have a that THE GENDERCATOR really has the medical solution—if you suffer “discomfort” potential to open up the discussion on from being a woman in a misogynistic these issues as they relate to the trans society, here is one solution (!) ; and identity community and women? politics, whereby whatever I declare myself to be is my truth, uninfluenced by any other (C) Recently, we have seen other instances of considerations. transpolitics in conflict with gay and lesbian identities. In Chicago, for example, instances (M) When I watched the film to review it wherein persons who declare themselves for this year’s line-up, I thought that parts women demand access to women-only of it were pretty funny, though! It spaces, or persons declaring themselves men reminded me a lot of Woody Allen’s movie demanding access to male-only spaces such Sleeper. Why are some of those people as male sex clubs. People in the alphabet protesting the film not seeing or getting the humor in this piece? community are often in the front of gender issues and these new conflicts are often the impetus for clarifying our understandings. As (C) Satire is frequently misunderstood when audiences interpret the well, feminists will always speak out when they see “issues” around metaphor literally and become angry that the author is seriously women’s bodies and health. I am sure that together we can and will suggesting what she intended as a far fetched farce meant to figure it all out and lead the world in gender sensitivity. highlight a logical distinction.
(M) I agree. It takes a healthy balance between screen and audience for satire to work . . . and then I understand that a lot of people protesting the film haven’t even seen it . . . which is nothing new! But I still can’t believe that your film was cancelled in San Francisco—“gay mecca”—in a decision that was the first of its kind for Frameline. And it’s all because of a local petition from the transgendered community. What do you think about that decision?
(C) I was so surprised. It seemed to have come out of nowhere. Later I surmised that two of the filmmakers who objected to THE GENDERCATOR at a screening in Chicago [early May through Chicago Filmmakers] must have contacted Frameline and/or the transactivist community in San Francisco (hereafter: the naysayers). I was not in San Francisco so I couldn’t really imagine the level of pressure that the artistic director and programming director must have felt in order to take such a drastic measure to prevent the film from screening in their festival. I felt then as I do now, that it was a rash decision that reflected poorly on Frameline and the naysayers who circulated and signed the petition. I am disappointed in Frameline, that they did not stand behind their programming decision, and their artist.
(M) I know that it must have been very upsetting for you. How did it feel?
Cinematographer Jason Boyer, Sound Recordist Ryan Conly, Director LEFT TO RIGHT Catherine Crouch, Actors Bob Berry, Kelly Gerard & Joel Umbaugh rehearse a scene from THE GENDERCATOR. • photo Joslyn Virgin Crowe
(M) Well, evidently you are an artist who now knows about conflict. Any thoughts on how the art of film seems to hit these chords?
(C) Film is a subjective art form. Audiences receive cues based on their own life experiences and perceptions of reality. I am not responsible for every potential audience reaction. I am responsible to be honest and deep with my truth only, not every truth. So, the subjective response of the naysayers is not my priority. It does speak to the power of the medium and the force of the issue at this time. I believe the uproar is beyond me and my film and I try to remember that with a bit of distance.
