Opengender

Some of Whitaker's respondents did report occupying the masculinised spectatorial position in the relay as a location from which to appropriate the erotic spectacle of the female star

FANNIE: I (identified with) Gordon MacRae in The Desert Song, who seduced a woman by singing to her. (Whitaker, 1985: 112)

GLADYS: I was probably the most sexist [sic] person in the audience looking at almost naked Marlene Dietrich on the silver screen ... I can't say I identified with her. (Whitaker, 1985: 115)

In terms of Mulvey's analysis, these remarks would figure lesbian spectatorship in classically inversionary terms. Most lesbians would probably be reluctant to objectify the female image in such a straightforwardly masculinist way, however. Articulations of desire for the female star through the diegetic perspective of the male protagonist were not only far rarer than identification with (male or female) protagonists but also tended to cite highly glamorised and fetishised (see Mulvey, 1975; Studlar, 1991) representations of the female star in which the artifices of femininity are foregrounded, such as that of Dietrich or Grayson in exotic musicals. Those interviewees who did articulate masculinised identifications in the western genre, on the other hand, tended to emphasise not a sexual desire for the spectacle of the woman, but pleasure in a fantasy of "being strong and independent ... (b)eing free . . ." and having "buddies to ride off into the sunset with" (Whitaker, 1985: 110). Levitin's (1982) overview of female protagonism in westerns unequivocally articulated her own identification with tomboys in terms of a fantasy of action, mobility and the wearing of less restrictive clothing:

I had just seen Annie Oakley emerge from a saloon, leap onto her horse and gallop away, guns waving, and I was inspired. I loved westerns dearly, but they also posed a problem. I identified with the adventurous roles of the heroes, but I knew I was a girl. Annie's magic leap was my rescue. The image of the active Annie offered new possibilities for a girl. A girl could wear buckskin skirts to chase Indians around the back yard. (Levitin, 1982: 95)

Olson similarly articulated her pleasure in Anne Bancroft's image in Seven Women in terms of the qualities of strength, courage and insubordination:

She's tough, bold, intelligent, and doesn't take shit from anyone ... (Olson, 1994: 69)

Sheldon related lesbian pleasure in the tomboy image to the World War II context of a relative economic independence for women (Sheldon, 1994: 17) and described a lesbian 'recognition' in these films as locating in representations of female resilience, strength, and independence:

There is a real need for lesbians to see and know about women who define themselves in their own terms. In the strength of actresses often playing parts in which they are comparatively independent of domestic expectations and of men is found a far greater affirmation than in the kind of "lesbian films" that have been produced. (Sheldon, 1984: 17)

Lesbian spectators may, in fact, recognise a lesbian lifestyle and iconography encoded in tomboy iconography. Tomboys wear male clothing partly for the hell of it and partly for the practical reason that they need to fend for themselves. Their clothes signify masculine occupations, rather than athletic hobbies. Jean Arthur's Calamity Jane in The Plainsman (1936) drives a stage-coach wearing leather trousers, cavalry thigh-boots, a soldier's jacket and cap and toting a horse-whip. In Caught (1931), Calamity wears a man's shirt and neckerchief, spurred boots, and smokes cigars. Doris Day's Calamity wears buckskins and a military cap. In West of the Pecos (1934), the tomboy passes as a male cowboy. The Rose of Cimarron (1952) lives a Native American lifestyle in buckskins, as does the anti-heroine of Soldier Blue. The Woman They Almost Lynched (1953) dresses as a cowboy. Vienna in Johnny Guitar (1954) manages a saloon in jeans and shirts. Anne of the Indies (1951) captains a pirate ship in sailor's attire with a commanding swagger. Montana Belle (1952) robs banks in a man's suit, hat and neckerchief — and all are contemptuous of men, marriage and 'civilised values.'

There are also more entirely fantastic modes of autonomous activity. The Rose of the Rancho (1935) passes, masked, for a swashbuckling hero. Linda Sterling passes as her brother, Zorro, in Zorro's Black Whip (1944). The Wicked Lady (1945) passes for a male highwayman. The Masked Cavalier in The Sword of Monte Christo (1951) is the girls-own tomboy with her political fervour, masked swordplay, impressive horsewomanship and minimal heterosexuality. Claire stands in for her brother in Sons of the Musketeers (1952). All wear weapons and compete more than successfully with men in work skills and the use of weapons. Unlike "performative" transvestites such as Viktor Und Viktoria (1933) and Sylvia Scarlett (1935), whose bodies represent the feminine 'truth' of their crossdressed identity (Kuhn, 1985), western tomboys do not flinch from a fight. The tomboy's masculine clothing signifies a willingness to take on the (male) world in an assertion of social equality based in the development of practical or professional skills.

The iconography which identifies these tomboys is remarkably similar to the codes which publically identified butch lesbians in the bar sub-cultures of the 1950s and 1960s — the wearing of male clothing and use of mannerisms signifying self-reliance and capability. This was clearly not lost on the makers of Calamity Jane who appear to have been making game of the PCA by involving Doris Day's arch tomboy in a comedy of errors (see Merck's analysis, 1980). In this sense, lesbian pleasure is clearly often identificatory — although suture into a male point of view is unlikely to be effected, not least because of the parodic style often associated with the tomboy figure (even in serious dramas), which would disrupt the process of suture. In any event, the ironising effect of the re-coding process mobilised by the lesbian spectator in order to relate to mainstream cinema at all would inevitably disrupt suture. Many of Whitaker's (1985) interviewees articulated feelings of confusion or 'lack of fit' in relation to heterosexual identifications (both male and female) offered by popular films. Moreover, those lesbians who articulated pleasure in the tomboy image by no means all identified as butch (in a subcultural sense) — in fact butch self-identification is only specified in one of the anecdotal lesbian sources in which cinematic masculinised-identifications are cited.

Mulvey's account of female pleasure in the image of the tomboy is based in feminine nostalgia. Levitin's account of dressing up in childhood falls, perhaps unconsciously, into the same wistful retreat into an 'age of innocence' in individuals' own psychical lives (with its mythical analogue in the historical life of America) when heterosexual gender ('civilisation') is not, yet, fully enforced. An exploration of Mulvey's feminine nostalgia in more detail may offer insights in theorising the specific mode of lesbian engagement with the tomboy icon. Freud's theorisations of female adjustment and female homosexuality upon which Mulvey relied are too complex to go into fully here. However, in summary, mannishness figures as amounting to a refusal to accept feminine subordination (symbolised by lack of the phallus) which, in Freudian terms, is pathological. This is because feminine subordination is the real state of affairs and so a failure to adjust to that state of affairs is a disavowal &mdahs; a flight from reality (for a full exposition, see Freud, 1905; 1925; 1933). Female masculinity is thus defined by a refusal of the cultural inscription of genital difference as subordination or, in Freudian language, a female's refusal to accept that she does not have a penis. That is, she refuses to accept that she cannot represent any externalisable sign of proactivity or authority.

Lesbian accounts of lesbian identity (including those of Ruston, 1986; Newton, 1984; Penelope, 1986; Nestle, 1987; Faderman, 1991), as I have argued in my previous chapter, tended to interpret lesbianism, including butch identification, as a rebellion against this masculinist state of affairs rather than as an appropriation of male dominance. This form of lesbian rebellion is classically re-signified in the dominant culture in pathologising terms — as the will to become a man. Lesbian-feminist such as Jeffreys (1985: 74) argue that butch identity appropriates male dominance to itself and thus tends to uphold a classical construct of penis envy. There remains, however, an inevitable (if unwelcome) resemblance between Mulvey's Freudian model of female masculinity and the general tendency of lesbian-feminist models of the figure of the butch which emerged in the 1980s (Strega, 1985; Penelope, 1986; Ruston et al, 1986; Faderman, 1991). In terms of these lesbian theorisations the lesbian is not concerned with becoming or mimicking a man, but with refusing to comply with the restrictive requirements of feminine-passivity. Because dominant discourses discipline individuals into gendered identifications by excluding from discourse the possibility of any subject position which does not refer itself to heterosexual gender (in terms of which femininity is defined as subordinate and passive), the impossibility of representing female autonomy produces the masculinised figure of the butch. The assumption by a woman of an authoritative position which is phallic by definition is, by definition, unfeminine. In short, as Mulvey (1981) argued, the female spectator's fantasies of active independence can only be expressed by reference to the trope of the phallus. "Reference to" is not the same as "identification with," however, and Mulvey's heterosexual-feminine spectator is "troubled" and "restless" because she resists suture into the institutionally masculinised position in the relay (as, evidently, does the lesbian spectator).

De Lauretis (1991) criticised Mulvey's assertion of feminine discomfort in the effectively transvestite appropriation of masculinised subject positions on the basis that such discomfort could only be assumed on the basis of a prior, natural, femininity with which it does not "sit." Whilst Lacanian discourse has long been criticised for failing to exit fully from essentialism (Heath, 1978) and Mulvey's conceptualisation clearly does not escape from the naturalising effects of her deployment of psychoanalytic constructs, this would still seem an overstatement of Mulvey's naturalisation of femininity. Mulvey argued, in Freudian terms, that pre-gendered (but conventionally masculinised) phallic-narcissistic identifications did not sit comfortably with the conventional social requirements (not a purported essence) of feminine passivity. In Freudian terms, the girl's pre-Oedipal 'nature' is not feminine-passive but gender-neutral, because libido is undifferentiated and only conventionally (contingently) gendered as masculine. Mulvey merely described a heterosexual-feminine unease with the socially illicit pleasures of the assumption by women of an active, desiring, position.

Feminist theorists have often also been critical towards the psychoanalytic account of narcissism as rooted in a single libido, conventionally designated masculine, which was deployed by Mulvey (1981) precisely because it tends towards the representation of all female autonomy and activity as phallic. Following French feminists such as Kristeva, Montrelay, and Irigaray, Doane (1981a) and Copjec (1981) both suggested the substitution of Freud's account of anaclitic drives for the Lacanian account of narcissistic drives upon which constructs of cinematic pleasure (including Mulvey's) are based. However, any such appeals to bodily motivations, whether anaclitic or narcissistic, "seem to contradict other of their arguments, particularly those in which subjectivity is presented in terms of a linguistic or symbolic construction" (Penley, 1989: 73).

"The risk of essence" unabashedly taken by these alternative theories of the feminine typically involves, however, ignoring the important psychoanalytic emphasis on the way that sexual identity is imposed from the "outside." (Penley, 1989: 76 quoting Doane's (1981a) use of Heath's phrase, 1978)