Ed Wood, Mad Genius: A Critical Study of the Films

Contemplating Glenda to be Glen’s projected, non-integrated anima, it is sensible that the sincerely drawn girl within the scene is repulsed, for as Jung states, “[A] guy who lives his anima is refrained from through all particularly womanly ladies. ”25 The viewer will realize that the lady was once Sheila, Glen’s sister, however the scene additionally good represents the dynamic among the archetypal girl and her response, understandably horrified, at a guy who dares to question the arbitrary gender demarcation of the day, back utilizing model because the fundamental technique of codification and such a lot brazenly, and comically, encroaching at the female’s sincerely defined gender territory by way of overtly appropriating the authorized models which then defined the psycho-social build classified “woman. ” The scene shifts back, again to what seems to be a go back to a few kind of protagonistdriven narrative series, yet through now the viewer is familiar with larger than to take something with no consideration during this so much circuitous “Chinese Puzzle” of a film. Glen, now dressed as a guy, leafs via his outfits drawer, possibly figuring out which gender to acceptable, as Alton announces, “Glen is a transvestite, yet he isn't a homosexual,” a a bit of emphatic and insecure assertion which underlies the it sounds as if staunch heterosexism which anchors Glen or Glenda? , a heterosexism so that it will finally be undone by way of Wood’s personal, probably unwitting, machinations. Alton subsequent deals a chilly, pedestrian definition of transvestism: “Transvestism is the identify given via scientific technological know-how to these males wanting to put on the garments of the other intercourse, but whose intercourse existence in all situations continues to be relatively normal,” finishing in one other fairly insecure statement of “normality” via the writer. This recurrent reiteration of fierce normality by means of wooden will be an attempt to assuage the latent insecurities of the film’s unique, predominantly male viewers, up to to reassure himself that even if bizarre, he wasn’t “queer. ” as though to undermine all of the commemorated sobriety which has simply ensued, what follows is a hilarious, if disingenuous deceit, and one other of Glen or Glenda? ’s so much subversive makes use of of inventory pictures for natural propaganda reasons. Over a inventory pictures shot which exhibits a laborer scrubbing down a railroad sign tower, itself an overt phallic image noticeable as being “worshipped” and serviced via an obedient male, Alton unearths, “Would you be stunned to benefit that this tough, tricky person is donning purple satin lingerie less than his uniform? he's! ” the probabilities of this being real are nil, yet wooden breathtakingly finds right here the indelible fact man’s mystery wants and fetishes are certainly unknown to his fellow guy. everybody on this planet, beneath their prescribed gender-centric “uniform,” may well in reality be donning “pink satin undies,” or the other permutation which belies and subverts culture’s try to quantify and label gender during the such a lot superficial, and simply corrupted, external codes reminiscent of costume, model, and private grooming. The secrets and techniques of a man’s soul are hidden inside of, below his uniform, his wide awake brain, his poker face, the totality of the “mask” he deals society.