“For several years certain laboratories have been trying to produce a serum for ‘denegrification’; with all the earnestness in the world, laboratories have sterilized their test tubes, checked their scales, and embarked on researches that might make it possible for the miserable Negro to whiten himself and thus to throw off the burden of that corporeal malediction.”
-Fanon
How does this quote shed light on homosexuality in Far From Heaven?
This quote immediately reminded me of the way Cathy and Frank address his homosexuality. They send him to Dr. Bowman, hoping to make him heterosexual. Today, it seems offensive to think that people once genuinely desired to “cure” people of their blackness, just as it seems offensive that people did (and in some places, still do) very earnestly attempt to “cure” people of their homosexuality. It’s as if a sort of sympathy drives these cures, and it’s interesting that in Far From Heaven, homosexuality is treated with that sense of sympathy, but racial differences are treated so coldly. One scene that comes to mind is the one at the pool.
What is the significance of addressing homosexuality and race in such ways in Far From Heaven?
One thing I find particularly interesting about Far From Heaven is the way that Frank is able to leave his wife and be with his male partner, and yet how Cathy will never be able to share a relationship with Raymond. Wherever they go, even acting just as friends, they will face violence. It’s important to remember that this film was released in 2002- in a time where we like to think of discrimination based on sexuality as being a much more common and existing problem than discrimination based on race. I think, because Far From Heaven portrays a homosexual relationship that’s possible and a bi-racial relationship that can never be, it attempts to highlight the fact that racism is still a problem in a “modern” or “enlightened” society, and that biracial couples are still unaccepted (even moreso than homosexual ones).
I agree with you. A lot of people believed that the victories of "the" civil rights movement ended racism, but really all they did was brush it under a very large rug. Loving v. Virginia (1967), for instance, declared anti-interracial marriage laws unconstitutional, but interracial relationships are still largely considered taboo.
ReplyDeleteI think that Far from Heaven's look at homosexual and interracial relationships--as you say--point to this concept. It also recalls the part of Fanon that discusses the overt and unchangeable nature of the black person's appearance that leads to marginalization that s/he can't escape as opposed to a Jewish person's. Where Fanon used the example of the Judaism, Far from Heaven takes homosexuality as a contrast to the black person. That is, a homosexual can hide his/her sexual orientation like the Jew can hide his/her religion in order to move about normative culture unscathed, but always the black person is in full view and set apart from that culture.