From: "Sadie" <Sadiec-AT-brookers.co.nz>
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 12:26:53 +1200
Subject: another thought


Hello again. I just had another idea about an Australian movie called 
"Priscilla Queen of the Desert". This is a fairly lightweight but 
pleasant movie (saved by great costumes and some sensitive acting 
from Terrence Stamp) about 3 queens who travel to a gig across 
Australia, performing a couple of times along the way in small town 
pubs. It's mostly about the bigoted reactions of the "country hicks" 
to the performers, but part of the plot is a love story between 
Terrence Stamp's transexual character and a small-town mechanic whose 
wife leaves him because he is hampering her own performances.

This all comes about when the 2 Queens of the Desert get dressed up 
to perform at the local pub (with some reluctance). They greeted with 
indifference, but the crowd gets going when the "stage" is taken over 
by the mechanic's wife, who starts off with a similarly over the top 
routine to the trio but soon gets into crowd-pleasing activities such 
as firing ping-pong balls from her vagina, and opening bottles of 
beer with it also! Our heroes realise that they can't compete with a 
real woman on this front and depart, but with some admiration on the 
part of the most camp of the 3.

Make of this what you will. The 3 ARE portrayed throughout the film 
as heroic in their role as spectacle, and the film does seem to 
suggest that the real woman performing in this way is a bit tacky, 
whereas the men are dignified in their performance. But can men only 
be heroic as spectacle when pretending to be women? I dunno.

I definitely feel that women are stilled the viewed object in our 
society, the muse to the male viewer. There is an ad on NZ television 
at the moment which plays on this. I was getting annoyed when I first 
watched it because it features a big posh car driving along, from the 
point of view of the driver, who keeps being ogled by all these 
model-like young women. This would be a typical bloody car ad, as it 
generally seems only men are allowed to want cars (just like only men 
are allowed to enjoy rock music - just look at all the album covers 
featuring women thrusting their breasts out, completely 
gratuitously), but the twist is that when the car door opens we see 
that the driver is a young woman. (Just so we don't get confused and 
think she might be a lesbian due to all the attention she has been 
getting, she gets out of the car to greet her two small children - 
but no man, which is refreshing). In this case it seems the woman is 
a spectacle, but in a sort of heroic kind of way.

That other film I mentioned, The Virgin Machine, should interest you 
as the stripper in it is never condemned for performing for a living. 
In fact the heroine is shown to have been overly romantic in 
expecting love from her, as she was just doing her job.

Sorry if I'm a bit incoherent, I'm in a hurry to get away for a 
holiday!

I hope some of this ramble has been of use.


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