Guess what my mind is preoccupied with 24/7--yes, it's time for one of these posts
Still trying to get to the bottom of how perfect Connie's androgyny is and I just keep crashing into incomprehension. How in the fuck can someone be so perfectly androgynous while wearing a moustache and tuxedo?!?
It made me think that the most perfect androgyny, IMHO, isn't a caricature. It isn't actually that difficult for a woman to be really butch or for a guy to be really camp. Anyone can be an exaggeration, a stereotype of the opposite sex. But to take the more subtle qualities of that whole spectrum and not overdo it requires a very special... I was about to say "skill", but you kind of have to be born with it, I think. I mean, if it's really blatant stuff then it becomes something else--it becomes a queer statement, it becomes ironic, it becomes play. But when it's something that's not meant to be a drag act, when it seems natural--that subtlety is what makes it more powerful, I feel. Even in that classic movie era, where you got other actors doing androgyny, Connie is still the only one I can think of who had that perfect blend and fluidity. I mean, Leslie Howard could be a complete, outrageous doll but my brain reads that as camp and therefore not exceptional (if exceptionally pretty) and Marlene Dietrich was made of unf in a tux and powerful as hell, but that was very definitely a woman in a tux underlining the connotations of a woman in a tux. And they're cool. I like them. But Connie--what the fuck? I mean, he had a couple of films in the early 30s when he slipped into outrageous camp, so it wasn't like he was free of it. But from 1934 or so (and it really fucking hurts me that this happened exactly after the Nazis got him and god knows what they did to him), the flounciness was gone and it had been sublimated into his own type of masculinity, that one I can only ever refer to as that of the tomcat. (And again, I am trying so very hard not to think that it was the Nazis and his new home in England and his new career in British films that beat his gay side into submission and what we see in the movies that followed was *only* a result of a naturally flappity bisexual guy repressing half of what he really was. He sounded like such a powerful, larger-than-life personality that I hope it wasn't as bad as that.) I just... when he wears a moustache and moves and speaks like a woman, it's the moustache and the tuxedo that are almost ironic and dragtastic, almost.
But... augh... how? How does he do that thing where he is both a seductive, fluid and soft woman (without being effeminate or simpering) and strong, imperious, commanding (but not gruff or macho) man at the same time? He's not just a beautiful and powerful guy; he's the sort of woman at whose feet I swoon as well. And I've never seen the like combined in one person. FFS. HOW CAN YOU BE MY TYPE TWICE? BASTARD. (That would explain my madness for him, because he's sexually and erotically more than what one person throws at you.)
Perhaps I shouldn't try and penetrate certain mysteries too deep. Things like these happen on such a primal level, going back to when you're like one year old and start getting impressions (or manifesting inborn tendencies) of gender and the things you like in people. But I am hopelessly nerdy about everything I love, so I keep thinking and wondering. But it's more in the sense of a religious mystery than anything else, something that you know to be too huge for you to ever fathom or dissect or file into neat categories. And anything truly numinous is liminal and fills you with awe and goes beyond categories kind of by default--I mean, that's the defining characteristic of something divine. Motherfucker was transcendent.
And now I'm going to go on Tumblr and analyse his teeth. No, really. This is getting out of hand. *sobs*
It made me think that the most perfect androgyny, IMHO, isn't a caricature. It isn't actually that difficult for a woman to be really butch or for a guy to be really camp. Anyone can be an exaggeration, a stereotype of the opposite sex. But to take the more subtle qualities of that whole spectrum and not overdo it requires a very special... I was about to say "skill", but you kind of have to be born with it, I think. I mean, if it's really blatant stuff then it becomes something else--it becomes a queer statement, it becomes ironic, it becomes play. But when it's something that's not meant to be a drag act, when it seems natural--that subtlety is what makes it more powerful, I feel. Even in that classic movie era, where you got other actors doing androgyny, Connie is still the only one I can think of who had that perfect blend and fluidity. I mean, Leslie Howard could be a complete, outrageous doll but my brain reads that as camp and therefore not exceptional (if exceptionally pretty) and Marlene Dietrich was made of unf in a tux and powerful as hell, but that was very definitely a woman in a tux underlining the connotations of a woman in a tux. And they're cool. I like them. But Connie--what the fuck? I mean, he had a couple of films in the early 30s when he slipped into outrageous camp, so it wasn't like he was free of it. But from 1934 or so (and it really fucking hurts me that this happened exactly after the Nazis got him and god knows what they did to him), the flounciness was gone and it had been sublimated into his own type of masculinity, that one I can only ever refer to as that of the tomcat. (And again, I am trying so very hard not to think that it was the Nazis and his new home in England and his new career in British films that beat his gay side into submission and what we see in the movies that followed was *only* a result of a naturally flappity bisexual guy repressing half of what he really was. He sounded like such a powerful, larger-than-life personality that I hope it wasn't as bad as that.) I just... when he wears a moustache and moves and speaks like a woman, it's the moustache and the tuxedo that are almost ironic and dragtastic, almost.
But... augh... how? How does he do that thing where he is both a seductive, fluid and soft woman (without being effeminate or simpering) and strong, imperious, commanding (but not gruff or macho) man at the same time? He's not just a beautiful and powerful guy; he's the sort of woman at whose feet I swoon as well. And I've never seen the like combined in one person. FFS. HOW CAN YOU BE MY TYPE TWICE? BASTARD. (That would explain my madness for him, because he's sexually and erotically more than what one person throws at you.)
Perhaps I shouldn't try and penetrate certain mysteries too deep. Things like these happen on such a primal level, going back to when you're like one year old and start getting impressions (or manifesting inborn tendencies) of gender and the things you like in people. But I am hopelessly nerdy about everything I love, so I keep thinking and wondering. But it's more in the sense of a religious mystery than anything else, something that you know to be too huge for you to ever fathom or dissect or file into neat categories. And anything truly numinous is liminal and fills you with awe and goes beyond categories kind of by default--I mean, that's the defining characteristic of something divine. Motherfucker was transcendent.
And now I'm going to go on Tumblr and analyse his teeth. No, really. This is getting out of hand. *sobs*