영화로 읽는 주디스 버틀러: 젠더, 섹스, 몸의 새로운 가능성 논점에 대하여

Abstract

The essay is trying to raise and explore complex questions about sex, gender, and sexuality theorized in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and then her critical ideas are analyzed and understood through several queer films. Butler’s theories focus on articulating gender as performative and offering a radical critique of sex as natural and innate in order to activate the possibility of subverting compulsory heterosexuality. The introduction calls into question gender as a norm, introducing Butler’s short speech on gender. The chapter II explores the concepts of cultural intelligibility, performativity, drag, parody, and butch/femme identity, analyzing Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas on gender and sex. The films of Farewell My Concubine (1993), Paris is Burning (1990), Like a Virgin (2006), Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991), The Kids Are All Right (2010), and The Incredibly True Adventure of 2 Girls in Love (1995) are analyzed. The chapter III focuses on the relationship between sex and gender, and shows sex not as natural category but as political one. The films of You Don’t Know Dick (1997), The Crying Game (1992), M. Butterfly (1993), and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) are discussed. In the conclusion, new possibilities on gender, sex and body are presented, based on the ideas of the impossibility of relying upon the sex/gender system as a marker of identity and the fluidity of sex and gender categories.