THE QUEER SELF: FLUID GENDER IDENTITY IN MOVING IMAGE

A juxtaposition between Andy Warhol Nude Restaurant (1967) and Gaspar Noé We fuck alone (2006)

“The true difference is not the difference between two sexes, but the difference between the human sex
and the ‘nonhuman’ sex.”

Gilles Deleuze

“There is no purely scientific definition of male and female, only culturally circumscribed interpretation of
data that give rise to the scientific canon.”

Tina Chanter

Starting from the cinematic work of Andy Warhol Nude Restaurant (1967) and Gaspar Noé’s short film We
fuck alone (2006) this essay aims to investigate the concept and shift of gender identities in Artist’ Moving
Image by referring to psychoanalytically inspired queer and post-structuralist theories. By creating in
particular to the Molecular Unconscious section in Deleuze and Guattari text Anti-Oedipus. As Cinema is
considered to “teach us how to desire” (Zizek, 2006), the ultimate issue to consider is if Gender can be
differentiated by sexual desire and how many desiring-machine identities can be represented in film.

Gender Identities or gender roles?

Before beginning with the reading with this essay one should acknowledge the following statement

“When I use the term ‘gender’, it’s to refer to a person social role, that is, the set of social and cultural
characteristics considered appropriate to display for men or women.[…] ‘Sex’ is used here in the
scientific sense to denote the physical body as male or female, while gender denotes the person’s
social role.” (Skene Johnson 2003, XV)

Gender representation and identity in film is a recurrent topic, but since the early 1990’s beside the Cartesian
division of Femininity and Masculinity, the umbrella term ‘queer’ has expanded his presence among post-
structuralist cinema theories. The adjective ‘queer’ is currently used to indicate sex and gender minorities
(LGBTQ+) not represented by the normative or ‘majoritarian’, as Deleuze calls it, male and female
heterosexuality, and is thus a slippery territory to be defined. As Judith Butler states, ‘queer’ concept signify
‘outness’ and emerges to represent “those who resist or oppose the heterosexual social form as well as those
who occupy it without hegemonic social sanction.” (Butler 1993, 226)
On the screen this gender ambiguity and fluidity has largely anticipated the post-structuralist ‘queer’
theories, and it is embraced in different and opposite way by the works of Andy Warhol in the 1960’s and
Gaspar Noe in the early 2000’s. Specifically taking into account Nude Restaurant (1967) by Warhol and We
fuck alone (2006) by Noé, it seem clear the different director’s approach to the question of gender, motivated
also by the production’s time gap, almost 40 years, and by distant socio-historical context . Whereas Warhol
seems to anticipate the feminist and queer theoretical discussion of the 1970’s and 1980’s in North America,
Noe has absorbed all the influence of queer studies and European post-structuralist philosophies.

The representation of gender identities in the two films is totally contrasting but seems to find a common
ground displaying the same message

Gender is always already lived, gestural corporeal, culturally mediated and historically constituted. It
is not that we have a core, essential, unambiguous femininity or masculinity struggling to get out, or
to find appropriate expression. Rather there are cultural dictates, according to which subjects
construct themselves, by appropriating and sometimes reinventing or subverting historically situated
gender codes. (Chanter 2006, 3)

Relating Cinematic Gender identities to Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari, another term related to the
unsconscious comes to be prominent: desire, meant in Deleuzian way as a puissant and productive energy,
which is not restricted to the imaginary, as Freud argued, but has a real impact on life. According to Deleuze
and Guattari, the human unconscious is formed by a number of regions and machines. The desiring-machine
is the most ambiguous one as it can be part both of what the Philosopher calls the molar order and stands by
itself, or it can be assigned to the molecular order, in which it become part of the social machine and invest
in the socio-historical context. In other words, Human sexual libido can whether stand by itself or being part
of the realm of imaginary or having social consequences when applied to the narrow cells of ‘type’, as couple,
family or individual. This is applicable also to gender, as before the flowering of queer theories the gender
where consider and represented in Film only in the stereotypical binary Male and Female and physically
related to the person’s sex. In fact, as Deleuze states that “the libido does not come to consciousness except
in relation to a given body a person that it takes as an object” (Deleuze and Guattari,1984).

Hence, the desiring-machine is the nest of sexual desire, which is one of the defining parameters of gender
identity. Deleuze utilize the Freudian term Libido to describe the specific energy of desiring-machine, and he
states that the transformation of this energy are never de-sexualization or sublimation. In this sense, gender
representation in Warhol’s and Noé’s films, whether they are talks around sexuality in the former case or
porn sex intercourse in the latter, are far from having an erotic turn on the spectatorship because the
desiring-machine of the protagonist are blocked, as it discuss later. What remains visible is therefore the
gender, which means social, role that the protagonists of the two movies can perform. This detachment
between sexuality and gender identity represent a shift in the understanding of the two films as well as in
the post-structuralist ‘queer’ studies field.

How, if at all, is the notion of discursive resignification linked to the notion of gender parody or
impersonation? What is meant by under-standing gender as an impersonation? (Butler 2006, 230)

Yesterday response: Nude Restaurant by Andy Warhol (1967)

Filmed in just one day at the Mad Hatter Restaurant in Manhattan, two different versions of Andy Warhol’s
feature length Nude Restaurant (1967) exists: one with just male all naked characters, which was never
publicly released, and a more popular one with all the actors wearing only a G-string. The original concept
was to edit both versions into a final one but was never successful. The G-string version that was first shown
in N.Y. Hudson Theatre included in Warhol's series of sexploitation films or "nudies" as he named them.

Nude Restaurant portrays a group of costumers and two restaurant’s employees, played by actors from the
Factory scene, which blurs the line between fictional dialogues and real conversations among performers
that seems to purely play themselves. Gender ambiguity among the characters is marked not only by the fact
that they do not wear any male or female distinctive garments but also by the script. The dialogue is indeed
the fil rouge of whole film and Viva, the female Waitress, is the main dragger of it. As Stephen Koch writes in
his book Stargazer

Viva plays a waitress, Alan Midgette a waiter... Some of the Spanish-American horrors of Loves of
Ondine reappear, though, mercifully, this time without any garbage to throw. People talk. One can
hardly listen. Other nudes are present. Some leave. Others arrive. They talk. Watching and attending
is laborious. One tries to pay attention. There are numerous shrieking in-camera jump cuts called
'strobe cuts'. The camera weaves around a little. The waiter and waitress move from table to table,
trying without success to think of something amusing to say. […]At one point, Viva turns to the
camera and asks that it be turned off. The camera is turned off and, after the unperceived interlude,
turned on again, so that Viva can continue this monologue. More people arrive. Others go.
(Koch, 2000)

The confusing atmosphere of the film reflects the layered gender conception of Warhol, as Viva and his male
counterpart Taylor Mead reverse the classical Male and Female roles: She performs a mannish but
heterosexual woman and he plays an effeminate man with dubious sex orientation. Gender fluidity in the
film reaches the climax when Viva tries to seduce a costumer who plays the submissive role. She is not only
a classic femme fatale, she’s mocking the feminine role by reading the restaurant’s menu in a seductive way.
She and Warhol are thus playing openly with Gender roles and ‘queer’ identities. Furthermore, the fact that
Viva interacts with the cameraman asking him to switch off the apparatus, erases the fictional barrier and
brings the movie closer to a documentary depicting the sexual freedom and gender fluidity that were
common in Warhol’s Factory.

Deleuze and Guittari's concept of sexuality comes into play in Nude Restaurant as they does not limit it to
the interaction of male and female gender roles, but they instead propose a variety of connection that
"hundred thousand" desiring-machines establish. The Philosophers propose a contrast that matches
Warhol’s work perfectly: they juxtapose ‘non-human, molecular sexuality’ to ‘molar binary sexuality’
affirming that "making love is not just becoming as one, or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand".
( Deleuze and Guattari 1984, 323-325).

Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari define the normative sex as “majoritarian” referring thus to the majority of
the audience, usually white, heterosexual and Judeo-Christian, which is exactly the society layer that Viva
criticizes in her open monologue with Taylor Mead. Political war and Catholicism, or religion in a more Marxist
perspective, are considered in both cases as ‘repressive’ elements for the unconscious. Viva states that
“there’s more heterosexuality inside the church than outside the church, I just met gay since I left the
church”.

It is perhaps for this reason that although showing nude bodies the film is far from being erotic: the sexual
desiring-machine of Warhol’s characters, and of the spectator, are locked by the apathy towards the Socio-
Historical situation and they cannot be proactive. The customers of the Nude Restaurant talk about sex and
politics, which prevents them to have a real intercourse but at the same time displays their true gender
fluidity, meaning their social role. They are all ‘queer’, outsider of the society in which they live, and for this
reason, they can only be collocated under a uni-gender or trans-gender Deleuzian ‘category’.

Ultimately, Warhol’s actors are free to self-define themselves and reject gender binary without performing
any other role, which means without dressing up and drag. By refusing to wear any garments except a G-
string the Nude Restaurant characters dismiss from Society canons and constraints described by Deleuze,
and also from the defining power of their bodies and sex. Nude Restaurant, together with other Warhol’s
films, can be seen as pioneer of Queer Cinema, going beyond gender borders by using irony against gender
roles.

Today response: Gaspar Noé’s We fuck alone (2006)

The recent We fuck alone by the French Gaspar Noé, was originally part of the Art/Porn film series Destricted
(2006). The 23 minute-long film is an experience of modern destructive masturbatory fantasy, both Feminine
and Masculine. The camera shifts from and to two separated rooms, where two characters of the film are
isolated. The opening image is a beautiful naked woman having an intense sex encounter, as the camera pulls
back the spectator discover that it’s a TV screen and the scene focus on a young teenager masturbating lied
on her bed. Later the narrative settles in the other room where a young man is also masturbating. The female
and male protagonist have both a TV monitor in their room, which broadcasts the same pornographic video.
There is no soundtrack or speech, except for a deep beating that evokes the human heart, and the repetition
of strobe lightening generates an altered and hallucinated reality.

In Noé’s film, the juxtaposition of male and female gender roles is evident on the ever-shifting TV medium
where a heterosexual and ‘majoritarian’ sex scene is displayed, but it is not so clear within the two actual
characters. Although the female and male part are relegated in two different rooms, or boxes, they are
indeed performing the same solitary masturbation and alienated by the society in which they are outsiders.
Again, they are ‘queer’ and so is their gender.

The only left mark of different gender roles is purely symbolic: The girl keeps a teddy bear on her bed while
the man has an inflatable plastic sex doll. Towards the end of the film, this symbolism is underlined by the
fact that the man utilizes a gun instead of his genitals to have a sexual act with the inflatable doll. In Deleuzian,
and Marxist term, this final act is also a proof of the characters’ alienation.

Deleuze and Guattari concept of Body without Organs (BwO), becomes also relevant in We fuck alone as it
describes a virtual and potential dimension of the body itself which find a speculative model in the film. The
young girl and the young man are indeed lacking of a desiring-machine since they refuse their personal sexual
imaginary, assimilating a pornographic fixed canon instead. To "make oneself a Body Without Organs then,
is to actively experiment with oneself to draw out and activate these virtual potentials. These potentials are
usually "actualized" through conjunctions with other bodies that Deleuze and Guattari call "becomings", a
condition that results impossible in Noé’s work.

In Noé’s film sex is de-sexualised and sublimed at the same time: the spectators watches a pornographic
video and a double masturbation but no desire and consequently eroticism is shown through it. Similarly, the
gender binary is highlighted yet erased: the Female and Male identity are kept separated, but their gender
role is not normative at all. The girl and the man cover the same anti-social role, unable to contribute actively,
they lack their gender recognition, “becoming asexual and a-gender and embodying non-reproductive sex”
to an ultimate extent. (Skene Johnson 2003, 194)

The Ultimate Identity

Bonding Warhol’s Nude Restaurant (1967) and Noé’s We fuck alone (2006), other than technical similarities
such as the ‘strobe’ effect and the waving shooting style of the camera, one sees clearly how the two films
engage with the gender question, providing a ‘queer’ response. If Warhol suggests a sort of inter-gender or
pan-gender identity coherent with the ideology of the 1960’s, Noé propose a post-modern gender
‘alienation’ aiming to an a-gender identity of the individual.

In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari disagree with Freud, according to whom there is eventually only one
sex and one gender, the masculine one, of which the feminine is defined as a lack or absence, creating
women’s ‘castration’ complex. Freud’s phallocentric theory might be applied to Warhol’s Nude Restaurant
and his anti-feminine female characters, but fails entirely with Noe’s We fuck Alone where is the man who
feels the need of using a gun as an extension of his sex. “Women can recuperate equality in affirming
difference […] but the idea that there are two sexes, after all, is no better.”(Deleuze and Guattari, 1984, 295)

Following Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of a ‘non-human sex’ and ‘desiring-machine’, one acknowledges how
in the two films the external society acts as a constraint to free sex definition, and so gender expression.
However, while in Warhol an ideological revolution is happening and the characters are trying to free
themselves from the real Western Judeo-Catholic influence, Noé shows a desperate cinematic space that
suggest a hopeless, self-referential and decadent world. In both works, a fragmentation of the Society and of
the individual is central.

Furthermore, in the two films labour and social status defines more gender identity than the body itself.
Transgender identity come into play as long as the social environments forces the individual to be multi-
tasking and cover different roles at the same time. In contrast to the psychoanalytic conception, Deleuze’s
schizo-analysis assumes that the ‘libido’ does not need to be de-sexualised or sublimated as it happens in We
Fuck Alone, in order to adopt economic or political factors. "The truth is that sexuality is everywhere: the way
a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the
way the bourgeoisie fucks the proletariat; and so on. [...] Flags, nations, armies, banks get a lot of people
aroused." In terms of classical Marxism, the desire is part of the economic and infrastructural foundation of
society, not an ideological, subjective "superstructure”. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1984).

Hence, if sex spreads into every social layer, how is it possible to give a limited definition of gender identities?
Gaspar Noé and Andy Warhol’s works seems both to suggest that it is impossible to do so, but it is certainly
conceivable to play with gender roles to erase, or reaffirm, the dualistic gender binary of Female and Male.
It is ultimately when femaleness and maleness are very close or very distant to each other that one adopts
the term ‘queerness’. Nude Restaurant and We Fuck Alone utilize the medium of cinema to represent a
stratified and complex gender impersonation, which is continuously shifting inside and outside the screen.
References

Books

- Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", New York and
London: Routledge
- Davis, Nicholas (2013)The desiring-image, Oxford Press University
- Deleuze Gilles and Félix Guittari, (1984) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizofrenia, London: The
Anthlone Press. Originally published as L’Anti Oedipus (1972) by Les Editions de Minuit
- Chanter, Tina (2006, Gender Key Concept in Philosophy, London: Continuum International Publishing
Group
- Koch, Steven (2000), Stargazer: The life and work of Any Warhol, New York: Marion Boyars Publisher
- Osterweil, Ara (2014), Flesh Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press
- Skene Johnson, Olivia (2003) The sexual rainbow- exploring sexual diversity, London: Fusion Press

Journal

- Delphy, Christine (1993), Rethinking Sex and Gender. Women Studies International Forum. Vol.16,
no.1-9

Film

- Zizek, Slavoj (2006) in The Pervert guide to Cinema, directed by Sophie Fiennes