In and Out, or “The Ambiguity of the Jewel”

Abstract

You cannot keep birds from flying over your head but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.-Attributed to Martin LutherTo be penetrated is to abdicate power.-Leo Bersani, Is the Rectum a Grave? (1987)1In a remarkable coincidence, two unusually frank films involving male homosexuality opened within a day of each other in Western Europe. Anders als du und ich (§175) (Different from you and me [§175], dir. Veit Harlan, West Germany) premiered in Austria on 29 August 1957 under its original title, Das dritte Geschlecht (The Third Sex), and can justly be criticized for being virtually as homophobic as Jud Sus (Jew Suss, 1940)- its director's notorious Nazi-era feature-is anti-Semitic. The following day, however, the surprisingly gay-positive Les oeufs de l'autruche (The eggs of the ostrich, dir. Denys de La Patelliere, France) appeared in its country of origin. Had they been released two years apart, rather than a single day, one might be tempted to consider the latter a deliberately produced countertext to the former. Ultimately, despite a number of striking similarities, the French film offers a very different attitude than does its German correlate toward nonnormative sexualities, attitudes that are expressed through crucially divergent narrative and cinematic approaches.In terms of the films' similarities, both involve repressed, authoritarian fathers who suddenly find themselves confronted with the horrifying (for them) specter of a homosexual son. Additionally, both present their risk adolescents as being on the crucial threshold of manhood-although still living at home, each is eighteen years of age.2 Each son is further characterized by a strong interest in modernist aesthetics, something regarded in the films as being fundamentally connected to the young men's budding gay subjectivities-at least by the reactionary fathers. Furthermore, in both films, the outraged patriarchs are contrasted against more-or-less tolerant male peers on the one hand and more-or-less levelheaded wives on the other. Finally, each film was accorded a commercial release in the United States not long after its European debut and enjoyed some level of success within the nation's art-film markets. Beyond these considerations, however, differences, rather than similarities, command one's attention.A number of gay characters are visible on screen throughout Harlan's conservative German drama, if pathetically and/or demonically portrayed. By contrast, while constantly discussed and often fiercely defended by pro-gay (or at least nonhomophobic) characters, the homosexual Parisian, like his friends and fellow travelers, remains off screen throughout the comedic French feature. Ultimately, while both motion pictures can be said to feature happy, if compromised, endings, at least on their own terms, the happiness posited by one is very different from that proposed by the other. The German film's outcome proudly showcases a decisively cured, ex-gay child, whereas its French counterpart ends with the still offscreen son still flamboyantly queer;3 his father, thoroughly chastised, has come to accept the reality of the situation. Sadly enough, whereas the homophobic Anders als du und ich has been remembered, becoming commercially available on DVD, and, in at least one case, defended from a queer-studies perspective,4 the subtly radical, pro-queer Les oeufs de l'autruche has faded from sight, at least in the Anglophone world. Neither Parker Tyler nor Vito Russo mentioned the latter film in their landmark, formative work on homosexuality in the cinema.5 Contemporary queer histories seem unaware of its existence, as well.One might have expected the films' fortunes to have been reversed. At the time of its American premiere in 1959 as The Third Sex,6 Anders als du und ich was accorded faint praise atbest; more often than not, it received curt dismissals. Although the Baltimore Suns review begins by mentioning the film's landmark status-Well, at last it's here-a motion picture devoted almost exclusively to the subject of sex deviation-its author ultimately conveys something less than astonishment with the film itself, allowing, simply, that it achieves some interest value through the novelty of its subject matter. …