Performance & Get Carter Comparison Essay - 2019

The New Wave of British Cinema and the Representations of Gender and Sexuality as Ambiguous vs. Stereotypical in Performance (1970), compared with Get Carter (1971).

After the war time preoccupied British cinema from the 40s and 50s, “an aggressive and socially conscious new British cinema emerged that sought to reflect the disillusionment of an angry and alienated post-war working-class youth culture” (Griffiths, 2006, p75). This is described as the New Wave of British cinema, where the narratives of popular films revolved around young, liberal minds that were concerned with the rebellion from the conservative expectations of society at the time, including the discrimination towards homosexuals, women and the lower class. In this essay I will be focusing on how gender and sexuality is presented in Performance (Donald Cammel and Nicolas Roeg, 1970) in reference to the New Wave conventions of film making in the 60s and 70s. Performance is regarded as an experimental film consisting of liberal ideas on the theories surrounding gender and sexuality. I will also be comparing this to Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971) and how this film opposes to the radical beliefs that are symbolised throughout Performance. I will also be analysing Get Carter in reference to the presentations of gender and sexuality.

This New Wave saw “a classlessness actually emerging from the aristocracy itself who were seen as central to the project of Swinging London” (Rycroft, 2002, 577). Causes of the emergence of the New Wave may include homosexuality being decriminalised between consenting adults over 21 in 1967, the contraception pill being released for married women in 1961, then for all women over 16 in 1967. This aided the sexual revolution that then began, in favour of free love and women’s liberation. These ideas merged with cinema, and eventually introduced a new element to the gangster films and caused them to be “highly reflective of and highly responsive to the wider social zeitgeist and changes in the physical environment” (Elliot, 2014, p3). The free-spirited, youth culture of the late sixties is imitated in Performance (1970) among the characters that occupy the Turner house. They spread ideas of free love with no discrimination, sexual freedom and even branch into the use of psychedelic drugs. As the film was actually shot in “autumn 1968, following a spring when the youth culture which had been building since the early 60’s looked set for a brief instant to change all the known rules” (MacCabe, 1998, p49). Performance does exactly that; with Anita Pallenberg diving into the avant-garde, supposed real sex scenes, actual drug taking and James Fox’ real life crimes while on set. Hetero-normative relationship are not as idealised as they were in post war British cinema throughout the 40s and 50s, but instead the New Wave was more concerned with radical depictions of masculinity, and sexual promiscuity with “their central female characters [being] far from the cold, nagging hags that tended to populate other films” (Griffiths, 2006, p78).

Although the New Wave very much “suggested a more radical and self-conscious project, actually founded upon a critique of Swinging materialism” (Rycroft, 2002, p572), it is debated to be embedded within a while male, heterosexual, and misogynistic mindset, with narratives which often centre around the working-class male wanting to depart from the conservative society, into the ‘hippie’ community. This transgression into a new ‘world’ dominates the main narrative in Performance, when Chas (James Fox) must escape his gangster lifestyle and hide away with the “freak show” (Performance, 1970) in his words, that is Turner (Mick Jagger), Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michéle Breton). This is further reinforced with Chas’ homosexual coding, but lack of sexual experimentation with a male, and his living vicariously through the character of Turner while voyeuristically observing this free-loving world which he has been immersed into, as his identity is dissected. Cammel and Roeg “wanted to make a film which would capture the new youth culture and its capital, London” (MacCabe, 1998, p49), which it definitely does. However, the homosexual codings are never verbally acknowledged by the characters, and the narrative revolves around a seemingly straight, white, working-class male, therefore conforming to the debated themes that embody the New Wave of British Cinema.

Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism of the Subversion of Identity (2006) encapsulates the issues that are encountered when trying to define ‘gender’ as an attachment to the sex of the individual. She describes how gender is a cultural phenomenon, constructed through social expectations and stereotypes that have developed through the years. Butler even clarifies that the masculine and feminine gender ‘identity’ can be related to either sex, “with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male” (Butler, 2006, p9). Therefore, gender can be seen as a mere performance which conforms to the social beliefs of what each sex, male or female, should act like. So, when an individual does not conform to the specific traits and characteristics of the gender that is expected of them, they are viewed as abnormal in society, “precisely because certain kinds of “gender identities” fail to conform to those norms of cultural intelligibility, they appear only as developmental failures or logical impossibilities within that domain” (Butler, 2006, p24). This concept greatly applies to Performance and the characters within it, as they represent ‘genders’ which are highly ambiguous when considering the sex of the person. For example, Turner is extremely expressive with his costume, dialogue and all-round personality; such as growing his hair long, wearing makeup, jewelry and portraying typical feminine mannerisms. Therefore, he can appear to be presenting aspects of femininity, which may be read as confusing to the conservative audience member. Jagger plays a washed-up performer, and a character who is greatly confused with what his musical passion is. This may reflect Butler’s ideas of a gender confused individual as being a “failure” in society.

As Butler summarizes, “gender is not a noun, but neither is it a set of free-floating attributes, for we have seen that the substantive effect of gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence.” (Butler, 2006, p34). To condense, she believes that gender can be performed by any individual that displays mannerisms or “attributes” that are accustomed to certain sexes, because of the typecasts that have developed from traditional views. As the title denotes, the main theme of Performance is in fact the act of performance, which is shown through Chas Devlin’s attempts to hide away and fit in with Turner and his lovers and hide his true gangster lifestyle. He is constantly performing as if he is a juggler, to fit into the “entertainment business” as he describes, so they will allow him to stay in their house and so they see a similarity within him. As Griffiths points out “it’s impossible in any analysis of the film to ignore the fact that its underlying premise is to limn social and moral binarisms and the constructed, performative ‘nature’ of gender and sexuality from within a decadent” (Griffiths, 2005, p72). In this case, Chas is pretending to play a performative juggler, however, we have actually seen him performing throughout the film up until this point as a tough-guy gangster character that he does not truly want to be.

Underlying the central narrative of the film, it can be read that Chas is actually homosexual, and is playing the part of the straight, hypermasculine male to fit in with the other gangsters. Ironically, when he has to perform once again to fit in with the hipster lifestyle, he finds his true self. It is this idea of gender as performance from Butler, that ties the narrative together as it is clear that Chas has been performing as a straight male while playing the part of the ‘hard-as-nails” gangster. Instead of performing a gender, Chas has been performing as a hetero-sexual male. Apart from the relationship between Pherber and Lucy, and the references from Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon), there are no other vocally expressive queer characters. However, MacCabe proposes that “it cannot be long before somebody recognizes Performance as the first “queer” film” (MacCabe in Griffiths, 2006, p72). Although Chas never actually has a sexual encounter with another male willingly, he portrays characteristics that are suggested as being typically ‘feminine’, which would lead audiences to believe that he is not entirely straight. The film begins with a slightly awkward sex scene between Chas and Dana (Ann Sidney) with disorientating editing, perhaps to make the audience question Chas’ sexuality from the beginning. The first clue towards Chas’ queerness is seen as he watches himself in the mirror as Dana fellates him. The fetishized hypermasculinity here of Chas watching his own reflection reveals that he is more attracted to the masculine image than the feminine. This “narcissistic fascination with his own erotic image in the mirror, and obsession with order, style and appearance” (Griffiths, 2006, 73) presents an ambiguous coding of Chas’ character from the very start. The gay rape scene involving Chas, intercut with the previous heterosexual sex scene, symbolises Chas’ first homosexual experience as enjoyable. Perhaps the murder of Joey Maddox (Antony Valentine), indicates a homophobic impulse after Joey has discovered Chas’ true sexuality. After hiding his identity from his gangster colleagues and his new hippy roommates, Chas is freed from his confusion when he makes love to the boyish Lucy as “it is the acceptance of the trauma of difference, the recognition of the bodies interchangeability” (MacCabe in Griffiths, 2006, p74). This reflects his realisation that he is not attracted to the sex of someone, but instead it is more the gender that they are displaying. For example, by denying sex from the “voluptuously feminine Pherber” (Griffiths, 2006, p74), it is clear he is not attracted to the typically feminine body, but instead the plainer, more masculine body, but not strictly males. Therefore, the purpose of the whole film is revealed which is to lift “the boundaries of prescriptive gender and sexual identity” (Griffiths, 2006, p72).

Some critics believe that “Performance clearly takes the gangster genre as a source for quotation and viewer expectations” (Frey, 2006, p371). However, I would argue that the gangster genre to begin the film is completely necessary and allows for an accurate presentation of theoretical ideas about gender and sexuality that concerned the British New Wave. The gangster genre is the perfect genre to use in a film exploring the homophobic nature of a queer man hiding his sexuality and portraying a false hypermasculine persona, as the conventional gangster film revolves around “the man’s acquisition of attributes that prove his masculinity and differentiation from the feminine” (Bruzzi, 2012, p93). It is the very act of performance from Chas, when trying to prove a false sexuality within the gangster persona, even among other gay gangster men, that expresses a homophobic nature. He is seen intimidating and harassing other men, with piercing sounds overlaying and low angles to represent his dominance and to embody the “hetero-masculine identity” (Griffiths, 2006, p74). He is even suspected by the appropriately named, homosexual boss Harry Flowers when he says, “I’ve known a few performers in my time” (Performance, 1970). This performance of a straight male that Chas plays while he is a gangster, is mimicking the conventional gangster films that have passed as holding underlying homosexual messages.

Crime films during the 60s “were gloomily pessimistic about the pervasiveness of crime and the ethical problems involved in combating it effectively.” (McFarlane, 2013, p170). However, Performance instead choses to focus on the toxic masculinity within the crime world. This is reflected in the music video show by Jagger in Memo from Turner, where he is able to strip down the gangsters of their emasculated fronts in a “hallucinatory, dionysiac frenzy, tauntingly exposing the latent homosexuality within the gangsters strutting machismo” (Brown, 1999, p123, in Griffiths, 2006, p75). This abstract allegory of gangsters hiding their sexuality and putting on a hyperbolized image of masculinity, explains the ambiguous coding we have seen of Chas. Within this music video sequence, there is a close up shot of homosexual magazines on Flowers’ desk, which is then covered up with bullets by Jagger, symbolising the true sexuality that many of the men are hiding with their emasculated gangster image. We then see Turner look at his own image in the mirror, as he is dressed as a gangster, possibly displaying that Turner actually longs for the tough-guy, macho image that many of the gangsters obtain, as he was previously so concerned with Chas’ “butch persona” (Griffiths, 2006, p74). This image may also be symbolic of how easy it is to perform as a gangster and put on a hyper-masculine front. Overall, Performance uses the ambiguous coding and the expressive personality of Turner compared to the gangsters, to reflect the toxic masculinity within the crime world, and that it is stereotypically unaccepting of homosexuals. It also presents an opposition to the conventions of the typical British gangster film throughout the New Wave.

An example of a typical British New Wave crime film is Get Carter (1971), as it perfectly embodies a classic gangster film, with representations of emasculated men, suppressed women and a more realist approach to the crime world. As MacFarlane suggests, crime films were “invigorated by New Wave concerns for realism and authenticity” using “the switch from black and white to colour” (McFarlane, 2013, p170) to aid in the realist effect that many directors of the New Wave would strive or. Get Carter explores the gangster lifestyle through a renowned gangster Jack Carter (Sir Michael Caine), as he travels to Newcastle to investigate the suspicious death of his brother. The idea of a middle-class, straight, white male branching out of his daily routine to unchartered territory conforms to the conventions of the New Wave in some way with “location shooting, and lack of stylization [adding] to their feel of representing a seedy, run-down Britain” (Chibnall, 1999, p5). The gangster New Wave conventions that seeped into Performance (1970) pushing the boundaries of censorship by experimentation with elliptical narrative structure, rapid disjunctive editing and improvisations, were lost with Get Carter as director Mike Hodges preferred to focus on “the queerly masochistic and potentially violent undercurrent that permeates many of the New Wave narratives” (Griffiths, 2006, p81). Using long-distance lenses, Hodges strived for the documentary style when filming Get Carter, and actor Sir Michael Caine “was determined to show a more minimalistic and realistic, less "pornographic" form of violence than was generally depicted on-screen” (IMBD, 2019) therefore approaching the film with realism rather than fiction. The violence is still very much prominent in the film, as is examples of over-represented hyper-masculinity and anti-feminism, perhaps returning to the conventions of post-war time cinema.

On the conservative side of British New Wave cinema, juxta-positioning the radical, there are clear “patriarchal values, unsavoury portrayals of women and celebrations of unreconstructed masculinity” (Chibnall, 1999, p2), which is seen prominently in Get Carter. Jack Carter embodies the “ultimate expression of 1970s masculine cool” (Chibnall, 1999, p2), by drinking hard liquor, dressing smartly and being well respected by others. He conforms perfectly to the ‘gender’ of the masculine, by performing these attributes “among culturally and historically specific sets of relations” (Butler, 2006, p14). This hyper-masculine representation in Get Carter is much more stereotypical and returns to conventions seen in war-time cinema of macho men protecting women, rather than the representations in Performance which are more ambiguous and effeminate. There are no ambiguous connotations to suggest a homosexual aspect to the character of Jack Carter, as he is simply the straight, hyper-masculine persona that is commonly associated with gangster personas. However, one shot of Con and Peter where it seems as though they are in between Carter’s legs may suggest a homosexual coding in the slightest.

Although, more sexual connotations are in favor of the women in the film, as their role is to solely please the male audience. Laura Mulvey suggests in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), that the female is constructed for the gaze of the male. This explains the low angles on Glenda (Geraldine Moffatt)’s cleavage as Carter peers over her, the scenes of her thriving in the bath and the POV shots of Margaret (Dorothy White) as she undresses when Jack instructs her too. This allows for the voyeuristic pleasure of the male audience as they can secretly observe the forbidden acts seen on screen. The undressing of Margaret takes place immediately before her death, perhaps giving the male audience fetishistic scopophilia as they anticipate the horrendous act about to take place. Women are therefore represented as objects for men’s perversion and sexual fantasies throughout the film. As well as the male audience observing the women characters, the male characters on screen have no trouble with repressing women and treating them as slaves for their own benefit. Jack seems to have total control over all women in the film, from bossing around his own landlord to having sexual relations with 3 out of 4 of the main female characters in the film. This dominance over women defines them “in terms of their sex and extolling men as the bearers of a body-transcendent universal personhood” (Butler, 2006, p13). They serve no other purpose other than sexual objects. Although this seems like a step backwards from the radical views of the New Wave, it may portray women’s sexual revolution of the 60’s, and how they were freer to explore their sexuality and promiscuity. “This bold portrayal of women, rejecting domesticity and marriage, was almost unheard of – conveying the ways in which cinema pushed boundaries for British women for the future.” (Bullin, 2018). Conveying the dominant ideology that women are therefore allowed to be sexually promiscuous, but it must only be in the favour of other men.

Overall, in both films, women are seen as sexually promiscuous characters, due to the new laws and radical beliefs regarding the sexual revolution of the time, however they are still ultimately in control by the men. All the female characters in Get Carter follow Jacks every word, while Pherber and Lucy in Performance would not be anything without Turner, as they display no talents or success on their own. Both film exhibit conventions of the New Wave, however Get Carter focuses more on the conventional gangster genre, and the gender representations that follow, while Performancetends to break the stereotypes and rules of the gangster genre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Bruzzi, S. (2012). Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies.

2. Butler, Judith (2006) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New York: Routledge).

3. Chibnall, Steve and Robert Murphy (1999) “Parole Overdue: releasing the British crime film into the critical community”. In Steve Chibnall and Robert Murphy (eds.), British Crime Cinema. London and New York: Routledge.

4. Elliot, Paul (2014) Studying the British Crime Film (New York: Columbia University Press)

5. Frey, M. (2006). London à la mod: Fashion, Genre, and Historical Space in Performance. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 23(4), pp.369-375.

6. Griffiths, Robin (2006) “Sad and angry: Queers in 1960s British cinema”. In Robin Griffiths (ed.), British Queer Cinema. London and New York: Routledge. 71 -90

7. IMDb. (2019). Get Carter (1971) - IMDb. [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067128/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv [Accessed 7 May 2019].

8. MacCabe, Colin. (1998). Performance. London: BFI. 47-56.

9. McFarlane, B. (2013). The encyclopedia of British film. 4th ed. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press.

10. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. 3rd ed.

11. Rycroft, Simon (2002) ‘the Geographies of Swinging London,’ Journal of Historical Geography, 28:4, 566-88

FILMOGRAPHY

1. Performance. (1970). [film] Directed by D. Cammel and N. Roeg. United Kingdom: Warner Bros.

2. Get Carter. (1971). [film] Directed by M. Hodges. United Kingdom: MGM.