Film Noir and Mapping Gender

Film noir entails particular projections of sexuality through the characters in the plot, but the sexual identities worn the personalities are not obliged to any categories of expression. This is exemplified in both Gilda and Bound, which offer subtle alternatives to the narrative of heteronormativity that courses so predominantly through the majority of relationships cultivated by movie scripts. Both films reveal expressions of sexuality that defy conventional ideologies working within cultural discourses. Each film works to express sexuality in distinct ways.

In Gilda, sites of interaction revolve around intensely homosocial spaces. The opening scene depicts an all-male space of gambling, not devoid of marked masculine violence. The concentrated male homosociality transcends levels of friendship through the relationship between Johnny and Mr. Bennin. In an early scene when the relationship is beginning to be forged, Mr. Bennin tells Johnny something to the effect of there being no room for women in gambling. Explicitly coding the space male through this comment, a relationship between the two men is further nurtured throughout the length of the film. Johnny is introduced as “lower class”, as exemplified by his casual dress in relation to the tuxedoed men at the casino in an early scene. His scarce tip to the restroom attendant is reflective of is socioeconomic positioning. After being caught cheating in the casino, Johnny is in a vulnerable position, left to the mercy of Mr. Ballin and his financial power. Using smooth words and a promise of faithfulness, Johnny coerces Ballin into taking him under his wing. From that moment on, he is endowed to a life of security, money, and friendship, as long as he remains faithful to Mr. Ballin’s trust. In the article, “Resistance through Charisma”, Richard Dyer discusses how the homosocial bond at stake positions Johnny into the role of the female, while Mr. Ballin inhabits the male role (Dyer, 117). Trust and devotion are the expected elements of reciprocation expected by Mr. Ballin for his monetary generosity, and Johnny pays him such respect with unwavering faithfulness. However, when Ballin supposedly dies, Johnny assumes the role of his heir and therefore moves into the space of “maleness” that he had failed to formerly inhabit. While he did marry Gilda, his failed attention paid to her exemplified his lasting emotional ties to Mr. Ballin. At this point in the film, Johnny dwells in a space of in-betweeness. While Gilda pawns for Johnny’s love, he still has difficulty grappling with the betrayal that his physical and emotional pursuit of Gilda would implicate for relationship with the apparently deceased Mr. Ballin. His inheritance, however, position him into a more blatant space of coded masculinity. These juxtapositions skew normative gender patterns and Johnny is instilled with the capacity to embody a place of ambiguity throughout the film, with more obvious ties of devotion emotionally owned by his relationship to Mr. Ballin. The severe binaries that have historically classified gender norms in films, especially during the epoch in which Gilda was released, are complicated by Johnny’s role in the film. His emotional and physical relationships formed straddle multiple identities, and despite the unspoken subtly of his queerness, it is worn through his relationships with Gilda and Mr. Ballin.

In Bound, the queering of traditional gender roles is a recurring theme that appears throughout the narrative. Homosociality coursing through the veins of the “business” is a predominant theme, and it makes sexual references to getting “fucked”, or getting “done”. Rather than strictly referring to sex, however, such commentary alludes to murder, suggesting a tumultuously unstable relationship between men. The article, “Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme: Bound in Sexual Difference” mentions the fluidity flooding the film, as captured by the symbolic references to water (59). “Sex and crime travel in the same raunchy metaphor (59),” though the blood symbolizes the homo-male bonds, and while water refers to the homo-female relationship. The “purity” of the water is reflected through the final seal of trust in which the female relationship prevails over the bloody expressions of masculine violence. Just as water washes over bloodstains, masculinity is mapped onto Corky’s female body, personality, and presence to blur lines of wearing gender. Violet’s ultimate residence with Corky was telling of the legitimacy of their queer relationship, as the two women in pair trumped the all-male mafia in the money heist, and their sexual expressions fulfilled Violet in a way that her male partner could not.

While the former film, Gilda, may offer some work in the skewing of staunch heteronormative gender boundaries, it offers little sympathy for the race case in its representations. Situated in Argentina, the main characters appear as white figures of privileged economic positions. Their lavish lifestyles, financially provided by Mr. Ballin, are evocative of colonial narratives that place whiteness at the pinnacle of power relations. While Gilda flirts and dances with nonwhite men in the casino, her explicitly suggested affairs occur solely with white men. Her highest compliments are paid to white, American men with high social capital and excessive amounts of money. In Bound, queerness is racialized through the characters, who are of Chinese-American and Jewish origins. In the setting of an Italian mafia, the queer women are further marginalized by their race.