Perfectly Normal, Eh?: Gender Transformation and National Identity

JWW
62
William Beard
8. My assumptions about the genre are drawing here upon Jim Kitses'
powerful structuralist essay on Western antinomies in Horizons West
(London: Thames and Hudson 1969), especially pp. 7·27.
9. .The same configuration is repeated when, in attempting to right thu
injustice-the murders of Davey and Thirsty-Little Bill whips Ned to
death. The wrong person dies at the hands of "justice", ~he "eye for an
eye" system ofresponse to crime is shown to be all too fallible. This liberal
attitude is the same as that which argues for Claudia's feminine Christian
forgiveness and against the "bad" Munny's masculine Old-Testament
vengefulness as seen in the final scenes.
10. The foundational description of this feature of the genre is in Robert
Warshow's essay "Movie Chronicle: the Westerner" (in The Immediate
Experience, New York: Athenaeum, 1974[1962]), 137-8. Warshow says, "the
important thing about a prostitute is her quasi-masculine independence:
nobody owns her, nothing has to be explained to her, and she is not, like
a virtuous woman, a 'value' that demands to be protected," Note that in
Unforgiven, while the prostitutes (especially Alice) do display a "quasimasculine independence", they are indeed owned by men (though not
.permanently, except by Skinny); and that the film at least holds out the
. notion that they should be promoted to the status of "values that demand
protection." The role of women in the film is a topic which deserves its
own essay.
11. Its unpainted wooden walls and roofrecall the unpainted wooden buildings
of Lago in High Plains Drifter-buildings which arguably also signify a
frontier community which has not been put together right.
12. Warshow,140.
13. E.g., Little Bill: "You'vejust shotan unarmed man. Manny: Well, he should
have anned himself..."
14. Of course I am not referring here (or anywhere else) to the actual Clint
Eastwood ofMonterey, California, but to the "Clint Eastwood" which may
be constructed by examining all the films signed with that name-the
"implied director", or "implied actor", perhaps.
Perfectly Normal, Eh?:
Gender Transformation and National Identity
in Canada
Janice Kaye
IffiSUME
DANS LA COMEDIE CANADIENNE PERFECTLY NORMAL (1991) lL Y A
UN MOMENT CLE DU TRANSVESTISME OU L'ON VOlT UN OUVRIER
SPECIALISE ITALO-CANADIEN SE TRANSFORMER EN OBJET DU DESIR MALE
ET FEMININ. LA FEMINISATION DE RENZO S'ALIGNE AVEC CELLE DU
CANADA: UN SYMBOLE FEMININ, JEUNE ET SANS PUISSANCE, SANS
CULTURE NI HISTOIRE, QUI CONTRASTE AVEC LES ETATS-UNIS COMME
EMBLtlME MALE PLUS AGE BT PUISSANT, PLEIN DE CULTURE, n'HISTOIRE
ET CORRUPTION, TEL QU'INCARNE PAR LE PERSONNAGE D'ALONZO, LE
PARTENAIRE EN AFFAIRES DE RENZO.
T ANDIS QUE RENZO EST snUE DANS
LE PAYSAGE, L'AMERICAIN SOLITAIRE, VOLEUR ET !fORS-LA-LOI, TRAVERSE LES FRONTIERES LlBREMENT, POUR Y IMPOSER LE RAVE AMERICAIN.
CETTE COMMUNICATION DEMONTRE COMMENT LES REPRESENTATIONS
CANADIENNES DES SEXES SE MtlLENT AUX PROBLEMES DE LA CONSTRUCTION D'UNE IDENTITE NATIONALE.
Translation byMichael Dorla~d
n.the climax~fPeife:tlYNormal
~e English-Canadian comedy
I directed
by Yves Simoneau, the main character, Renzo Parachii
(1991),
William Beard is currently an Associate Professor of Film Studies in the
Department ofComparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of
Alberta. He contributed extensively to The Shape of Rage: the Films, of
David Cronenberg, ed. Piers Handling (Toronto 1983). His recent articles
on Cronenberg have appeared in TheJournal ofCanadian Studies, Cinemas,
Mosaic and Post Script.
M.Liitm
(played by Michael Riley), a Canadian factory worker/hockey
player/cab driver, dresses up in a long, blonde wig and a gossamer
sequinned gown to sing the woman's part in an aria from Bellini's
opera, Norma. The spectacle takes place on the opening night of an
Canadian Journal of Film StudieslRettIIe canadienlle d'etudes clntmatographiques Vol 3 N° 2
sm-gw
64
Janice Kaye
Italian restaurant which has been capitalized by Renzo's maternal
inheritance at the insistence of his opportunistic American friend,
Alonzo Turner(played by Robbie Coltrane). Besides being the chef, the
lovable,larcenous Alonzo casts himselfin the male role ofhis theatrical
presentation. At first Renzo categorically refuses to engage in what the
persuasive Alonzo calls "a little innocent cross-dressing." Alonzo asks
him, "What's the big deal? It's just clothes." Yet the incident suggests
a good deal more, for it marks drag, opera, and the homoerotic as a
dynamic space where normative subjective positions based on gender
binaries and national stereotypes can be shaken up and questioned.
For within this restaurant mise-en-scene, both the male protagonist
and Canada are in drag; while Renzo is masquerading as Norma, Canada
itself is masquerading as Italy, a transformation which is purposely
designed by Turner to cast a spell over imagined local working-class
patrons in order to awaken them from their drab Canadian lethargy.
As in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, this awakening becomes
associated with transgressive sexuality. For surprisingly, Renzo's crossdressing proves to be a "turn on" not only to his girlfriend Denise, who
whispers to herselfthat he is "beautiful," but also to his comic nemesis
HobIisch. a.k.a. Hopeless. who becomes erotically mesmerized by the
whole operatic performance. Yet instead of leading to a triumphant
debut for Renzo and his restaurant. the homoerotic attraction qUickly
erupts into a brawl, as Hopeless assaults a hapless diner for making too
much noise during the performance. thereby demolishing the
transformative mise-en-scene.
Since Renzo and Alonzo are narratively and stylistically coded
Canadian and American respectively, their characteristics inevitably
evoke issues of national consciousness and global politics. Although
Renzo is portrayed as searching for a strong masculine identity (as bluecollar worker, taxi driver, and hockey player). the Canadian hero is
nevertheless feminized through the transvestite and homosexual
subtexts-positioned as the object of the male gaze, cast as the passive
player in a European mise-en-scene and American plot, and identified
with Mother Nature (the Canadian landscape). Moreover, these gender
dynamics are mapped onto colonial relationships....with Canada playing
the young subordinate female to the older, more powerful EuroAmerican male who seduces her with his allegedly superior culture and
history.
This essay will explore how representations of gender intertwine
with issues of national identity constructions in Perfectly Normal and
English Canadian film. and it will consider the broader implications of
these dynamics for Canadian cinema. I will argue that Renzo's transvest-
Perfecdy Normal, Ehf..•
65
ism functions as a trope for Canada's post-colonial condition and that
it extends traditional images of the gendered landscape and the
feminized male that began with one of Canada's earliest features.
In Nationalisms and Sexualities, Bve Sedgwick asks provocatively
what distinguishes the "nation-ness" of the United States from "that
ofthe nation-ness ofCanada. the different nation-ness ofMexico. ofthe
Philippines. of the Navajo Nation (within the U.S.), of the Six Nations
(across the U.S.-Canada border); the nationalisms of the non-nation
Quebec...and so forth and so forth?"! She notes that the term
"nationhood" does not take into account the many differences within
and between nations. These are issues which need to be discussed in
terms of national cinemas, especially in relation to Hollywood cinema.
The construct of Canadian identity can by no means be monolithic.
especially iti view of Sedgwick's questions. In fact, certain recurring
cultural definitions imply that "Canadianness" is so tentative as to be
constructed in the negative. i.e. not American, not British. As a country
without a self-defining moment. Canada continues to understand itself
. partly in terms of what it is not. having difficulty deciding what or who
it is. or what it wants to be when and if it grows up.
This tentativeness in identity shows up in many of the heroes
discussed by Robert Fothergill in his influential 1973 article, "Coward,
Bully, or Clown: The Dream Life of a Younger Brother," in which he
identifies three types of male protagonists in English Canadian films.
He ends with this prediction: "The most interesting Canadian cinema
will probably be that which bypasses the terms of my formula altogether."z With Petfectly Normal. this would seem to be the case.
Although Renzo shares some of the uncertain or weak characteristics
ofFothergiWs anti-heroes, he resembles more closely Slipstream's discjockey hero who, Fothergill notes, is neither coward, bully nor clown.
As a new exception to the rule, Renzo opens up a reconfigured space
for the Canadian hero, not simply as a non-loser. but as a figure who
problematizes and yet tries to redefine national and sexual bound~ries
in relation to the United States.
The Gendered Landscape and the Feminized Male
The female has often been identified in the arts as being at one with
nature and tied to the landscape. In Freudian terms, the "feminine" has
been categorized as the "dark continent," the mysterious, the unknown.
a "problem." or a "riddle." In film as well as other narrative forms, the
female/natUre association often translates into mapping feminine
66
Janice Kaye
"territory" as a female body, or as part of the landscape itself. In
interpreting Freud's later work, "Femininity," Irigaray says, "The
enigma that is woman will therefore constitute the target. the object, the
stake, of a masculine discourse."] Or, as Laura Mulvey puts it, "The
female presence works against the development of a story line:'4 Teresa
de Lauretis goes on to argue that male visual pleasure .as pOSited by
Mulvey forms the controlling influence in narrative rum strategy. The
passive female object of desire remains a fixed and unchanging space
through which the active male moves on the way to fulfilling his desire
and his destiny. This is the organization ofall Oedipal narratives: "malehero-human, on the side of the subject; and female-obstacle-boundaryspace, on the other."s Nature/ landscape/female is thus an object to be
used by culture/consciousness/male.
Like the psychoanalytic paradigm they critique, these feminists
tended to analyze the matrix of male narrative and female space in
universal,ahistorical terms, yet more recently there has been a developing interest in cultural specificity. For instance, Gaile McGregor
investigates how nature becomes socially constructed, and maps
Canadian culture through landscape and language (hence her term,
"langscape"). McGregor's comprehensive study notes the antipathy of
Canadian settlers towards the unfriendly landscape, a negative view in
contrast to the American tendency to describe the wilderness as a
garden. "Nature seems more hostile to the Canadian because it is more
hostile," she writes. a point which is addressed directly in Perfectly
Normal. McGregor also sees the ubiquitousness of animal symbology,
connected to our fascination with "a passive role model" in Canadian
literature as an important aspect of the national character.6 Another
exploration is Kay Shaffer's, which looks at representations of women
and landscape in connection with Australian history and culture, relating
the gendered representations to Australian national identity. Like
Canada, Australia is one ofthe Commonwealth Nations, with colonial
ties to Britain and concomitant feelings ofinferiority regarding cultural
identity. Shaffer describes sociological studies on Australia which
"addressed the culture negatively in hostile, defensive or self-m!Jcking
tones." While Shaffer assesses Australia as "masculine," however, I will
suggest, follOWing McGregor, that Canada offers a more "feminine" selfimage/
In many Canadian filmic representations ofmale/female roles, the
male protagonist suffers from inadequacy, and therefore has difficulty
colonizing the female space. More often than not, he is allied with the
female space and thereby feminized. The binary opposition of
female/male, nature/ culture consequently begins to break down. This
Perfectly Normal, Ehf...
67
tendency begins with Canada's first extant feature film, Nell Shipman
and Ernest Shipman's Bacho God's Country (1919), a Canadian-American
co-production (produced, directed by and starring Canadians, and shot
and located in Canada). The heroine, Dolores Lebeau, is seen to be at
one with nature, playing with wild animals, swimming naked under a
waterfall and. as one intertitle puts it, "praying for the day when the
forests will claim her again:' When Dolores' husband Peter is wounded
in the head, she must save them both by foiling the villain and negotiating the frozen wilderness. There are even more examples of injured,
lame, or emotionally or socially incompetent males in Canadian film
than Fothergill cites, from A Racefor Ties (1929) to ~e Grey Fox (1982).
In A Race for Ties, the son uses a crutch and is presented as physically
lacking in traditional male qualities ofpower and sufficiency. His sister
and aunt brave the cold to try to save the family. In The Grey Fox, Kate,
a woman fully aware of her oppression in the vast, uncultured space
ofearly 20th century Western Canada, tells Bill Miner, "In this country,
you're not taken seriously unless you're Caucasian, Protestant and,most
ofall, male." The hero, a convicted train robber, replies softly, "Sometimes even that ain't enough." Bill Miner identifies with the female's
lack of power in society.
Perfectly Normal constructs the Canadian male character as more
feminine than masculine, with Renzo aSSigned traditionally female
characteristics: he is slim, reserved, polite, unassuming, sexually
reticent, shy, passive and accommodating. He is then further feminized
by being mapped onto his cherished parcel ofrural land, with long shots
showing him pacing out the area where he intends to build a house.
Isolated from his male co-workers and boss at the factory, he refuses
to engage in such stereotypically male behavior as drinking at strip bars.
Hven as a hockey player, he plays the most passive position~goalie-a
player often considered to be different from the rest ofthe team, as well
as the literal "goal" ofthe other team ofmen. Inhis feminization, there
can be no doubt that Renz9 stands as a signifier for Canada. He is seen
early in the movie in the middle of a hockey rink with a Canadian flag
above his head, and is constructed so that his life is consumed by three
Canadian stereotypes: dullness, Canadian beer, and hockey.8
The tradition of the inadequate male extends past Renzo to his
hockey coach, Charlie Glesby, who receives a serious head wound,
wears a neck brace and uses a crutch, while his feisty nurse, Mrs.
Hathaway, spurs the boys on to victory. In "The Silent Subject in
English Canadian Film," Seth Feldman explains further "the entire line
T
Janice Kaye
Petfectly Normal, Ehi'...
of losers in English Canadian features:'9 McGregor also notes that
Canadian literature is "overburdened with mutilations and amputations ...not to mention wasting ailments:'ID Renzo, however, is not as
pathetic and inadequate as some other film protagonists described by
Fothergill:
to a policeman placing a parking ticket on Renzo's car. Not only is
Renzo placed in the typically female subject position of the pursued,
but he is immediately punished by an authority figure for his sexual
desire. As he "becomes" more female, Denise moves to the traditional
arena of the "male" aggressor, even beating him at a game ofpooI.
68
It is rare indeed to find an English Canadian film in which a male character
of some worth and substance is depicted as "growing towards selfrealization, achieving or working towards a worthwhile goal, playing a
significant part in any kind ofcommunity, or establishing a mature loving
relationship with a woman."
In contrast to Renzo, however, the American is a hrash selfpromoter. Alonzo drinks wine, not beer, and is unable to distinguish
a hockey practice from a hockey game, He is coded in a way that many
Canadians understand the American presence at its most negative: big,
overbearing, selfish, dishonest, manipulative, vulgar and greedily
capitalistic. Canada is seen as the goal of the male drive, both
narratively and colonially. On the positive side, Alonzo is exciting, bighearted, effusive, confident, unselfconscious and eminently likeable.
First appearing to Renzo out of clouds of mist, like a mythical figure,
he is evasive about his livelihood, saying, "I'm in the people-pleasing
business." Breezing across the border, he takes over Renzo's apartment,
directs his love life, brings in a prostitute, uncovers a hoard of hidden
cash, and talks him into investing in an Italian restaurant where the
servers dress up as characters from grand opera and sing to the
customers. Alonzo assumes domination, control and the imposition of
the American dream as his birthright. Although there is some blurring
of the boundaries, Renzo and Alonzo are basically posed as binary
oppositions of Canada/female, America/male.
Alonzo is not the only character who feminizes Renzoj there is also
a gender reversal between the Canadian characters. Renzo's girlfriend,
Denise, is positioned as "male." Not only is she sexually aggressive, but
when she first sees Renzo at the hockey rink she makes him the object
of her gaze. This situation is confirmed by her friend, Tiff, who
articulates Denise's desire behind Renzo's retreating back. "Take a
picture," she teases. "I was just lookin," replies Denise, whose position
as initiator of the gaze is emphasized by the fact that she is an amateur
photographer. This situation renders Renzo even more traditionally
female-coded, as the object ofthe gaze and sexual desire. Denise is the
one to approach him for a date, with unsolicited help from Alonzo; she
also initiates their two sexual encounters. As soon as they begin to
consummate the act in her apartment (i.e. on her turt), the scene cuts
.. 1
69
Mapping the "Adequate" Female and Feminizing the "Inadequate"
Male in the Canadian Landscape·
Denise belongs to a long tradition of "adequate" females in
Canadian film, begun by Nell Shipman in Back to God's Country, who
have more power than the "inadequate" males, and who take the moral
high road. Julie, the pregnant teen in Nobody Waved Goodbye (1964),
refuses to run away with her boyfriend, Peter, after he has continually
demonstrated his irresponSibility. Sandy in My American Cousin (1985),
although infatuated with her American cousin, Butch, comes to realize
that he is merely a callow youth running away from his parents.
Frequently, this female strength is associated with the land. For
example, Sandy in My American Cousin is mapped onto the landscape
in long shots, sitting silently on the ground, as a natural component of
the land. Her American cousin notices the spectacular British Columbia
scenery, but Sandy takes the view for granted; she is so much a part of
the landscape that she is unable to recognize her "place" in it. Sometimes, however, it is the feminized male rather than the woman who
is primarily associated with nature. This is true not only ofRenzo, but
also of the protagonist in The Grey Fox, as the title already implies. 12
Especially when males and females are portrayed as feminized in the
Canadian landscape, nature is depicted as perverse or unforgiving. In
Back to God's Country, the Canadian winter is described as "sudden and
terrible:' Similarly, in Peifectly Nonnal, Alonzo refers to Canada as "this
cruel, God-forsaken wilderness" and asks Renzo, "How do the various
life forms survive?" The Canadian calmly replies, "Well, it helps to dress
sensibly." The heroes are those who know how to negotiate the
landscape and harsh weather.
In fact, Canada seems historically and culturally preoccupied with
the landscape as an important psychic symbol of its identity. The
physical vastness ofthe country is acknowledged by Northrop Frye as
a crucial aspect of Canada's sense of self:
Janice Kaye
Perfectly Nonnal, Ehf ...
Canada, with four million square miles and only four centuries of
documented history, has naturally been a country more preoccupied
with space than with time, with environment rather than tradition.""
politicians, no Canadian film policy vis-a-vis Hollywood's economic and
cultuta:l contr~l of Canada's film market has dared go against Jack
ValentI, longtime preSident of the Motion Picture Association of
America (MPAA). In 1984, Sandra Gathercole explained the government's repeated failures in negotiations, concluding, "The Americans
h~ve come to know and love us as the country which, given an inch,
wIll take half an inch and go away happy. "16 While one-hundred-andfour countries carry quota restrictions or taxes on U.S. box office
rev~nues, Ca~a~a is the only film-prodUcing country with no protections
for Its films 10 ItS own niarket. 11 Peter Harcourt has noted:
70
A lack of "real" culture has contributed to the situation Frye describes,
because Canadians have often assumed that culture comes from
elsewhere, like the United States or Europe. And where culture is
absent, nature works conveniently to fill the void. But by identifying
male as well as female characters with the landscape, the intimation may
be that male and female gender constructs are not as important as the
overwhelming nature of the territory itself. Ifthis is so, then the psychic
association offemale-landscape, male-consciousness begins to dissolve,
rendering it more possible to blur gender roles as well.
Moreover, Canada's quest for a voice in culture adds to the gender
debate. This quest, sometimes made manifest in characters' search for
a voice, further feminizes the country and its characters because the
pursuit ofa voice, usually associated with power in the symbolic order,
has been a feminist and feminine, not a masculine, issue. Bill Miner, for
example, in The Grey Fox, seems as bereft of a voice as the female has
historically been in history, society and culture. Renzo, however, does
have a voice. When Alonzo stalks down the hall and throws open the
shower door, he reveals Renzo singing an aria in a soprano voice.
Startled, Renzo chokes in the middle ofa high note and hurriedly covers
himself. He is further feminized when his high-pitched aria serves as
the voice-over in the scene where he paces his land. Soon he will
actually become Norma, the erotic spectacle for the male gaze, and his
ultimate feminization. Ironically, when the Canadian male finally
discovers his voice, it is a feminine one.
The Colonial Legacy
Canada's cultural and industrial colonization by the United States,
coincident with and consolidated during the rise of the film medium,
remains an ongoing concern in Canadian culture and politics. In 1922,
Hollywood producer Lewis Selznick wondered why Canadians bothered
making films at all: "If Canadian stories are worthwhile making into
films, companies will be sent into Canada to make them."14 That is
exactly what happened, and at least 95% of Canadian film screens are
still controlled by American product. In his recent book, Hollywood's
Overseas Campaign, Ian Jarvie calls American dominance
entrepreneurship in the arena of supply,15 but the result of the United
States' intentional or inadvertent control resulted in Canadian mms'
exclusion from Canadian screens. Despite repeated efforts by various
saL .ML
71
Ifwe are Nationalists and believe in ourselves as Canadians, the American
product really is the enemy-both in the cinemas and on television: not
because. it is bad in itself (which it obViously isn't) but because by
monopolizing our screens it has colonized our imaginations, offering its
product as ifit were our own...when we don't find those qualities in our
own films, we tend to think of them as inferior.'"
. Long before the twentieth-century cultural takeover by Hollywood
cmema, Canada was physically colonized by both Britain and France
in the sixteenth century. This European heritage is frequently alluded
to in the characters, dialogue and locations of Canadian film. Although
Ca.na~a's cond!tion. no,,:, is post-colonial, i.e. it is no longer a colony of
Bntam, the sItuation IS complicated by the fact of two so-called
"founding cultures" or "two solitudes," English and French. Many
Quebecois films, such as Les ordres (1974), Mon oncleAntoine (1971), and
Le chat dans Ie sac (1964), deal with the control English Canada exerted
over Quebec. The American presence, however, becomes a more
dominant issue in English Canadian films and, although Simoneau is
Que~ecois, Pe1fectly N0rm.al is written and creatively produced by
Enghsh-Canadlans-co-wnters Paul Quarrington and Eugene Lipinski
(Canadian-born, British-based), and Toronto producer Michael Bums.
French is alluded to only once in the film, when Alonzo comes up with
the term "la chauffage humaine," which he seems to intend to mean
human kin~ess or warmth. Alonzo translates this visually as "noogies"
(that peculIarly male show of affection which involves rubbing his
knuckles on Renzo's scalp). Here it is the American who tries to speak
French, not the English-Canadian. Quebec has not resented the
American presence in Canada as much as English Canada h~s, partly
because the language barrier protects their culture. Moreover, there is
the further complication that Canada, as a member of the British
72
Janice Kaye
Commonwealth, achieved independence from Britain peacefully. Unlike
the United States, Canada effectively_ broke away from its parent
without a revolution.
Fothergill, in "Coward, Bully, or Clown," compares Canada and
the United States to two brothers, one of whom has always been
dominant, rebellious, prosperous and attractive to women, the other
timid, still suffering from an unresolved Oedipal complex:
Back in their family history, in 1776, while his brother was successfully waging the Oedipal struggle with the father and asserting his
autonomy. he [Canada] refused the combat and stayed dutifully at his
father's side."
j"
f
I
These complex relations are rendered explicit in Peifectly Normal, the
debut English-language feature of Simoneau, who will soon make his
Urst Hollywood movie as well. zo According to Fothergill, the younger
brother, who can never succeed by the elder brother's standards, can
either become absorbed into the larger (i.e. American) mode, or identify
the stronger brother as his oppressor. l1 The brother theme is fully
developed in Peifectly Normal. When a psychic tells Alonzo, as she
previously told Renzo, that she senses he is an only child, Alonzo shows
het Renzo's picture in a newspaper account ofthe hockey victory and
announces proudly, "That's my brother." For the first time in a
Canadian feature, the indigenous male protagonist identifies his older
American "brother" as his oppressor and rebels, thus taking on the
Oedipal battle he previously avoided. Renzo also still drives his dead
father's cab at night, unwilling to give up the patriarchal allegiance.
Alonzo literally takes on the mantle ofRenzo's father when Renzo gives
him his father's "warm and sensible" coat. What is even more unusual
is that Renzo takes on the Oedipal battle from a passive, "feminine"
position. Canada has a double task, then, in resisting the subsumption
of the female in the male, as welt as maintaining resilience in the face
ofAmerican cultural domination. Renzo accepts the challenge. He goes
along with the restaurant scheme only because he decides that, for once,
he should take a chance in life. Renzo initially thinks he needs the
excitement of the American dream, which promises to be so much
better than his own "tiny, little, fizzy dreams." He tentatively submits
the plans for his little house in the country to Alonzo for approval. After
asking sarcastically, "Where does Hop Sing make the victuals?" (areference to the immigrant cook in Bonanza, the popular American TV
series western of the '50s and '60S), Alonzo urges Renzo to design
something which "reflects the basic dichotomy that is you-a strange
i
~-
MLkU@!.J",. £ eM at
Perfectly Nonnal, Ehf'...
73
combination ofR?man elegant and rugged yahoo." Alonzo implies that
the Western motif belongs exclusively to the American mythological
landscape and cannot be appropriated for Canadian use. AlthOUgh he
urges R~nzo to fi~d his own identity, he then proceeds to redesign the
ho~se himself, With the hockey rink as the leitmotif. Renzo listens
poln,ely ~o the. a~vice of his "older brother," but later accuses him of
bargl~g IOta hiS hfe and of having no respect for other human beings:
Amerlca~ frontier individualism- is set against Canada's sense of
c.ommunlty, When Alonzo counters that he is attempting to bring a
httle c,?lture and excitement into duU, drab little lives, Renzo fights
back:"uWho are you to decide that other people's lives are dull and
drab? In t~e end, Alonzo is sent packing across the border and Renzo
re~ms t~ hiS adequate Canadian dream, mapped onto the landscape
With Demse, and framed by the rough outline of his little house.
Renzo's significant rebellion occurs in two main spaces: his
apartment and the Italian restaurant, La Traviata, Like his country
property, the apartment also presents a "feminine" space because it
emphasizes the legacy ofthe mother. The movie begins with the death
ofR~nzo's mother, with whom he lived, alluding to the demise of the
contmental mother culture. Her death marks the begm'ning ofhis q t
t fi d h'
'd'
ues
IS own I entity, free of that part of his past. Although it is
o n
unclear ~~etherRenzo's mother is terminally iII, dies suddenly, or kills
herself, It IS dear that she methodically prepares a box of mementoes
for her son to find. Although Renzo's father leaves him his coat and his
cab, the maternal legacy is much stronger. In addition to the apartment
and the box, she leaves her love of opera, a vast operatic record
coUection, a~d the hidden hoard of cash which launches Renzo on his
en-:epreneunal ,adve~ture with Alonzo. Whereas Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
c1~l~S that patnmomallegacy is central to melodrama, ZJ Perftctly Normal
pnvIleges the matrimonial estate. Renzo would have to drive his father's
cab fo~ years t.o save enough money to build his house, but his mother's
stake Immediately allows him the freedom to have his d
'I
ream or,
temporan y, to join Alonzo in his, His discovery of her bequest
concea!e~ as it is in the jackets of her opera records, hinges upon hi:
apprecI~tlOn of the music, Although it is Alonzo who finds the money
and redirects Renzo's dream, repositioning the Oedipal battle as one
between brothers, the impetus for that battle still comes from the
mot~er. ~en~o'~ alignment with his mother is underscored by Simoneau s. directorial style. Long dolly shots up and down the [grey,
Canadian] hallway, oblique angles, and dizzying zooms are used
Janice Kaye
Perfecdy Normal, Ehf...
repeatedly, as ifRenzo and his mother are constantly caught off-guard.
The technique is repeated in the hockey arena, where Renzo falls on
his back, saying to his dead mother, "I never knew you." It is repeated
again as he and Denise kiss and fall out of frame, from the arena to her
apartment. Renzo's dying mother is intercut with shots of Renzo on
the hockey rink, seeming to look in her direction, a technique which
again links the two. Renzo has been placed off-centre, not only by his
mother's death but by the almost coincident arrival of the American
interloper.
American male spirit journeys through the static Canadian feminized
space, physically and mentally, making changes. Alonzo uses Renzo,
the female-boundary-space, to fulfil his desires, trying t~ convince
Renzo that his colonization (the restaurant) is his own idea. Renzo is
thus placed in the position ofShohat's Western woman who "can simultaneously constitute 'center' and 'periphery,' identity and alterity:'28
The main character is marginalized in his own country. Once Alonzo
has penetrated Canada and Renzo's life, they both enter the privileged,
overdetermined space" of the "other," the restaurant, the space where
sexual desire is played out and sexual boundaries are blurred. 29
Because the restaurant is Italian, its space also represents the
common European heritage ofRenzo and Alonzo, who both have Italian
names. The restaurant, signifying not only where they are going but
whence they "came, is a space where Alonzo can create a microcosm of
his "Italianness:' Until recently, when Asians replaced them, Italians
made up one of the largest single groups of immigrants in Canada. In
fact, at least three recent Canadian feature films, including Petfcctly
Normal, have dealt with Italian Canadians as the main theme. Brown
Bread Sandwiches (Carlo Liconti, 1989) is about an Italian boy who
desperately wants to fit into Canadian lifer, and Leola (Jean-Claude
Lauzon, 1992) is about a French Canadian boy who insists that he is
Italian. Both are set in the 1950s. Because Italian immigrants, once
disdained, have become assimilated into the Canadian mainstream,
perhaps they are now a "safe" group to "use" to illustrate obliquely
certain aspects of Canadian life. Although Italian opera is revered in
Perfectly Normal, immigrants themselves are not. In contrast to the
"American melting-pot," in which immigrants are supposed to dissolve
into the mainstream, the "Canadian mosaic" officially encourages and
funds immigrants to maintain their languages and cultures within
Canada. In the movie, however, immigrants are maligned and discriminated against as much as accepted. Hoblisch, an Eastern European, is
called "Hopeless," and, played by co-screenwriter Eugene Lipinski, is
portrayed both as a vengeful monster (when he sabotages Renzo on the
factory line) and a witless hero (when he scores the winning goal off
his forehead). Denise caIls second-generation Italian Parachii "Parcheesi," bastardizing his Italian name into the game of chance his life will
become. Parachii and Hoblisch are both made "other" through their
immigrant status as well as by their attraction in the homosexual and
transvestite subtexts. Alonzo notices that all the restaurants he sees are
Chinese, a snide allusion not only to the fact that Toronto's
74
Transvestism, Border Crossings, and the Blurring of Boundaries
Renzo's apartment is a place of peace and solitude for him, at least
before Alonzo arrives. [n contrast, La Traviata functions as a place of
wild activity, creativity, displacement and "otherness:' The mise-enscene suggests a lush, hot, exotic locale where glamorous things happen,
and where Renzo becomes free to try out his "female" persona. This
is a marginal and dynamic space which must therefore be conquered
and colonized.
Ella Shohat has illustrated how the masculinist desire of the
Western colonizer penetrates the female virgin landscapes of other
countries, with the United States frequently cast in the role of heroic
explorer/colonizer. 14 Alonzo, as this intruder, convinces his younger
brother to help him penetrate the "other" space of the restaurant, and
also to represent that space, as the "female" boundary-space. Like
English Canada, then, Renzo is not only one ofthe colonizers but also,
as the female virgin landscape, the feminized, colonized other. The
choice of Bellini's opera, Norma, as the performance piece has special
significance: Alonzo plays Pollione, the Roman consul who rules Gaul
and who takes as his lover the Druid priestess, Norma, played by Renzo.
The story takes place against a backdrop of revolt against foreign
domination. At the time Bellini wrote the opera, Italy was controlled
by Austria. Both Norma and La Traviata, which means "the lost one,"
have transgressive themes and both had opening nights which, like the
restaurant, were fiascos.
Because of the close relationship between Canada and the United
States, Canadian movies often depict the crossing and re-crossing of,
as it is so often called, the world's longest undefended border. u These
boundary crossings are frequently accomplished by solitary American
or American-coded intruders or outlaws. 26 These characters frequently
wield some kind of power over the characters in the Canadian subject
position,!7 When Alonzo crosses the U.S.-Canada border, he traverses
a physical, geographical boundary, and becomes a colonizing hero. The
75
76
Janice Kaye
"Chinatown" in the third largest (after San Francisco and New York)
in North America, but that increasing numbers ofEast Asians run food
establishments of all kinds, such as the pizza joint Alonzo and Renzo
visit, which "should" be Italian. The constant displacement of one group
of immigrants by another is foregrounded. The post-colonial legacies
of the United States and Europe are intertwined in the movie with
Canadian culture, emphasizing the differences but blurring the boundaries. The contrast emerges in hockey coach Charlie Glesby's pep talks,
which are delivered in a mixture ofslang and Shakespeare. He tells his
players, "And, upon this charge, kick butt," and "Tell me not in
mournful numbers life is but an empty dream-shit." In the hockey
games, the players skate to (non-diegetic) opera or classical music.
Constant cutting between high and low art-opera and hockey, opera
and country music-serves to set upthe multi-cultural contrasts Canada
tries to negotiate. Just as hockey becomes confused with opera and the
colonizer with the colonized, sexual and national boundaries overlap.
Even the American character becomes feminized at points in the movie,
experiencing a temporary gender reversal: Renzo comes home unexpectedly late and Alonzo adopts the position of a oStereotypical angry
wife whose dinner is ruined. Both Americans and Canadians become
border-jumpers. In the opening shot of Perfectly Normal, Alonzo arrives
hi Canada from Florida on a bus, leaving the same way in the final shot.
This is an ironic reversal in view of the fact that millions of Canadians,
called "Snowbirds," cross the border every year to winter in Florida.
Another border-crosser is the Canadian psychic who goes to the States
3D
only to return, claiming Los Angeles does not appreciate spiritualists.
Her trip also indicates that women can cross boundaries, and although
herjourney is not seen to be successful, neither is Alonzo's, and the two
losers end up on the same bus. It is often said in Canada that Canadians
become famous at home only after they have been recognized south
ofthe border. Here, both the male American and the female Canadian
have failed in their bids for success in the neighbouring country. It is
not only male Americans who succeed and feminized Canadians who
fail. The edges begin to blur. The fact that Renzo first meets both
Alonzo and the clairvoyant in his father's cab reiterates the importance
of the Oedipal aspect ofthe compulsive border-crossings. The inevitability of the conflict is further signified by the psychic's psychometric
vision of Renzo in a blonde wig and a long sequinned gown. The
matemallegacy and the female psychic's prophecy activate his transvestism, which seems to be sealed by fate.
More than simply coded feminine, Renzo becomes transformed
through transvestism. He is not the first Canadian male "hero" to show
(
kU
Q
Perfectly NonnaJ, Ehf'...
77
up in drag: a feminization of the lUale occurs in Outrageous (1977), the
story of a drag queen/star impersonator and his female friend. Renzo,
however, is not primarily a performer, even though the moment of
male-male attraction happens while he is on stage. The attraction is
indicated earlier in the factory through Hopeless' unmotivated act of
sabotage against Renzo, which could be interpreted as a cover for
homosexual attraction. Director Simoneau is gay himselfand deals with .
the attraction quite sensitively, with a result which is touching, rather
than cruel, sniggering and homophobic, the way such references are
often handled in film. The accompanying music from Prokofiev's
"Romeo andJuliet" utilizes the grand passion and drama ofopera, ballet
and classical music to underscore Hopeless and Renzo's connection. It
is Hopeless himself who sets in motion the hockey team's trip to La"
Traviata and his subsequent desire for Renzo. The attraction of both
Hopeless and Denise to Renzo also exemplifies Freud's position on
bisexuality, "as though an individual is not a man or a woman but
always both."ll One could emphasize a gay reading ofSimoneau's work
even more strongly, taking into account his other work, Les fous de
bassan (1986), Dans le ventre du dragon (1988) and, especially, Pouvoir
intime (1985). Here, however, I am concentrating on the implications
of the building of a national identity construction, rather than on an
auteurist reading.
Mary Ann Doane discusses the female spectator as the site of an
oscillation which invokes the metaphor of the transvestite, while the
male is, in contrast, locked into sexual identity. She sees male transvestism as "an occasion for laughter.'m Although the Renzo/Hopeless
moment is cut short by a fight, the attraction is neither played defensivelyfor laughs and nor, as indicated, marred by homophobia (although
the injured Charlie, when he sees Renzo dressed up, does suggest that
he wants to go back to the hospital). All the women and men in Renzo's
life-both from the factory and the hockey rink-attend his grand
opening and are fascinated by the restaurant decor and by his appearance. Transvestism has caused Renzoto move from his own assessment
of himself as perfectly normal to "perfectly Norma." This transformation is visually encapsulated in the opening credits of the film, where
the "I" in "Normal" falls to the right, causing its lower portion to dangle
below the horizontal line supporting the other letters."
Although Renzo is placed in a feminine subject position as the
erotic spectacle of the gaze, he returns from this boundary crossing
renewed, refreshed, unthreatened, and ready to carry on with his
Janice Kaye
78
Canadian dream, secure in the knowledge that it is the correct one for
him. He returns, once again, to his "perfectly normal" state, before
American intervention. His transvestism, however, can be seen as a
trope for the post-colonial condition ofCanada, one which encompasses
and is informed in multiple and complex ways by the issues of history,
culture, gender, sexuality and nationalism.
NOTES
My thanks to Blaine Allan, for whom I wrote an undergraduate essay which
formed the basis of these ideas; to the Ontario Film Development Corporation
and Telefilm Canada for the 1992 Gerald Pratley Award which helped me
develop them; and to Marsha Kinder who guided me through an independent
study which rcsulted in this paper. Thank you also to Peter Harcourt and Joan
Nicks for their cncouragement. This is a revised version ofthe paper I presented
at thc·1993 conference of the Film Studies Association of Canada.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Eve Scdgwick, Nationalisms and Sexualities, Andrew Parker, Mary Russo,
Doris Sommer and Patricia Yaeger, eds. (New York, London: Routledge,
1992), 3.
Robert Fothergill. "Coward, Bully, or Clown: The Dream Life ofa Younger
Brother." Canadian Film Reader, ed. Seth Feldman and Joyce Nelson
(Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1977), 234-250.
In discussing the "feminine" and "masculine" construct, it is important
to note that the connections made are representations within culture, not
properties of the biological sexes. As Freud notes, "What constitutes
masculinity -or femininity is an unknown characteristic which anatomy
cannot lay hold of." Quoted by Irigaray, Luce. Speculum ofthe Other Woman.
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. Translated by Gillian C. Gi11)~ 13-15.
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Movies and
Methods II, Bill Nichols ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1985), 309.
Teresa De Lauretis, "Desire in Narrative," Allee Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics,
Cinema. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 121.
Gaile McGregor, The Wacousta Syndrome: Explorations in the Canadian
Langscape. (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University ofToronto Press, 1985),
47,206,201. Although these brief quotes are representive of only certain
parts of McGregor's study, it should be noted that some of the features
identified in this article as characteristic of Canadian film were already
identified by her as features of Canadian literature.
Kay Shaffer, Women and the Bush: Forces ofDesire in the Australian Cultural
Tradition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),5, 6.
Perfectly Normal, Ehi'...
79
8.
Producer Michael Bums is quoted as saying the movie should be <tdvertised
as "Perfictly Normal: The Story of Canada." In Maclean's (September 10,
1990).
9. Seth Feldman, ed. "The Silent Subject in English Canadian Film," Take
Two. (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1984), 54.
10. McGregor, 206.
11. Fothergill, 240-1.
12. Feldman,55.
13. Northrop Frye, Divisions on a Ground (Toronto: Anansi Press, 1982), 167.
14. Quo~ed by Peter Morri~, Embattled Shadows: A History ofCanadian Cinema,
189J-1939 (Montreal: Queen's University Press, 1978),5·7.
15. Ian Jarvie, Hollywood's Overseas Campaign: The North Atlantic Movie Trade,
1920-19JO. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
16. Sandra Gathercole, "The Best Film Policy This Country Never Had,"
outlines the progression of futile legislation which various Ministers of
Culture & Communications have tried to implement to remedy the
situation, Take Two, 36-46.
17. From Sandra Gathercole's article, "Statement from the Council for
Canadian Filmmakers" in Canadian Film Reader (reprinted from Criteria,
February 1976), 364.
18. Peter Harcourt, Movies and Mythologies (Toronto: CBC Publications, 1977),
165.
19. Fothergill, 243.
20. The best known ofSimoneau's previous features, which are all in French,
are: Dans Ie ventre du dragon (1988), Les fous de bassan (1986), and Pouvoir
intime (1985).
21. Fothergill,244-5.
22. That Canadians are "nice" and polite, but duU and humourless, has become
fodder for a whole set of "Canadian jokes," such as: What is a Canadian's
favourite colourr Grey. Favourite roomr The haIlway. How do you get 40
Canadians out of a swimming pool? You say, "Everybody out of the pool,
please." There are also several references in the movie to various characters' lack of a sense of humour, a stereotype which flies in the face of the
fact that many "American" comedians are Canadian.
23. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, "MinneUi and Melodrama." In Homeis Where the
Heart Is, cd. Christine Gledhill (London: British Film Institute, 1987)-, 71.
The melodramatic music in PClfrctly Nonnal could also be examined, since
it Is highly overdetermined in the scenes with Denise, the hockey/
restaurant scenes, and the Dickensian beer factory scenes.
24. Ella Shohat, "Gender and Culture ofEmpire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography ofthe Cinema," Quarterly Review ofFilm &- Video, Vol. 13 (103), 45-84.
25. Rhona Berenstein discusses the blurring ofCanadian and American borders
In the Brenda Longfellow film Our Marilyn (1987), through the image of
the waters of Lake Ontario. "Quoting Women's Bodies: Our Marilyn and
rn: rzvn
80
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
Janice Kaye
Cultural Mediations," Canadian journal ofPolitical and Social Theory (#14,
November 1990), 40-52.
Just some of the films which feature such figures are: The Grey Fox (1982),
My American Cousin (1985), One Magic Christmas (1985), Canada's Sweetheart:
The Saga of Hal C. Banks (1985), and Alias Willjames (1988). See Blaine
Allan's "Canada's Sweethearts, or Our American Cousins,"
Canadian journal ofFilm Studies, Vol 2, Nos 2-3, 67-80.
Examples of such situations include Butch over Sandy in My American
Cousin, the angel Gideon over Ginny in One Magic Christmas, and Hal Banks
over everybody in Canada's Sweetheart.
Shohat, 63.
Similarly, Butch's Americanness in My American COllsin succeeds in "seduci ng" Sandy's Canadian identity, at leasttemporarily, until his parents come
to take him back to the U.S.
This can be read in at least two ways: one, as an ironic comment on a
Canadian's lack of understanding, on one level, ofthe United States, since
Los Angeles has a psychic on Virtually every other comer; and two, as a
comment on the insensitiVity of Hollywood philistines.
. Luce lrigaray, 14.
Mary Ann Doane, "Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female
Spectator," in Film Theory and Criticism, 4th ed., Gerald Mast, Marshall
Cohen and Leo Braudy, eds. (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992), 758~772.
I amindebted to former fellow student Mike Craig at Queen's University.
Kingston, Ontario, for these observations on the title.
Janice Kaye is a doctoral student in Critical Studies, Department ofCinemaTelevision, at the University ofSouthern California, Los Angeles.
Canadian Film-Makers' Distribution Centre:
A Founding Memoir
Robert Fothergill
Redpath ZJ-Redpath for the manufacturer of sugar cubes, 25 from
the formula for LSD-really was the movie that started it all. John
Hofsess's ten minute, erotic-psychedelic reverie wasn't by any means
the only low budget, independent, borrowed-Bolex, little masterpiece
from around Toronto in the summer or fall of 1966-far from it. David
Cronenberg was making Transfer, Sami Gupta and I were putting
together Oddballs; Don Shebib brought Revival and The Duel back from
UCLA; lain Ewing was shooting Picaro; Michael Hirsh and friends were
at work on The Greeks Had A Word For It; Glenn McAuley (where are
you nowl) completed This; Clarke Mackey was filming On Nothing Days;
John Straiton in Oakville was drawing the beautiful Portrait ofLydia. But
it was Hofsess, with his extravagant riot of colour, his multiple, incamera superimpositions, his exotic sensuality, his (shamelessly pirated)
rock soundtrack-"My Generation"-who seemed to announce the
beginning of a local movement.
Needless to say, while those ofus were making our first 16mm films
in 1966 may have imagined that we were Canadian pioneers, other
people had been taking much bolder steps than ours. Beside the
"veteran" documentary directors working within the NFB and CBC,
filmmakers like Don Owen, ClaudeJutra, Gilles Carle, and Gilles Groulx
had made their first features, as had Larry Kent and David Secter, whose
Winter Kept Us Warm, made for about $25,000 at the University of
Toronto, was a direct spur to lain Ewing. In the experimental field,
people like Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland were already active, but
their work was probably not much known outside the College of Art.
Documentary filmmakers such as Dick Ballentine and Julius Kohanyi
were working in Toronto. And of course there was a major surge of
innovative movie-making in preparation for Expo 67. All the same, the
Canadian Journal of Film Studles!RfVlje canadlennc d'etNdcs cinematographiqut.l Vol 3 N° 2