A partner in my life, Queer Documentary
SHIN Hyo-jin Editor
I don’t remember cleary, but maybe it was when I was in the 3rd or 4th year of the elementary school. My mother who loved movies sat me in front of TV which was showing <Terminator 2>. Most people must think of the terminator’s fingers with the line of “I will be back” at the end of the movie but I cannot forget the scene in which Arnold Schwarzenegger appears first. I felt strangely excited watching him knocking down gangsters with his muscular body naked. I didn’t recognize it at that time but looking back now, it was the first time I felt sexually aroused watching same gender’s naked body.
Was it my mother’s influence? The boy who marveled at the terminator’s rear appearance grew into a gay young man who likes movies. Looking back, it seems like I don’t have many happy memories in my adolescence. By a standard which we even don’t know who determined, the society called as a school discriminated and oppressed people who deviated from the standard. Because I (and even my feelings layed bare by others) could become an object of disgust if I had revealed what was deep in my mind, I chose to live like the majority rather than as minority in order to survive.
It was a clear self-censorship. However, just as all self-censorships, my case was also based on ‘normality’ imposed by the school. It reminds me of two documentaries. They are <Lesbian Censorship In School 1, 2005> and (Out: Smashing Homophobia Project, 2007) which are representative queer documentaries dealing with the social reality where sexual minority in adolescence cannot help being isolated, produced by ‘Feminist Video Activists : WOM’ which pursues ‘feminist movement through videos’. These documentaries communicate with the audience about how scary it is to live as a minority in the normative life style of school, using the method of self camera. Girls who are honest to their own feelings cannot continue a normal school life. On a day when their love letters are found or their school bags are inspected, they are called to teachers’ office and scolded with words saying their feelings are wrong and a school notification which even defines fabricated characteristics and appearances of Yiban[1] is distributed. Schools’ restriction on queers is a clear censorship and some call it ‘Yiban censorship’. These movies sharply point out a school which forces discrimination and isolation and the violent structure of this society through a private story of teenage lesbian girls.
The school was a Procrustean bed. Due to Yiban Censorship, I also tried to live in a way the society wants while hiding my true self continuously. The memory that I was ridiculed and criticized continuously just because I was feminine and struggled to overcome this is still vivid. People instantly noticed my being different through my voice. I went to see otolaryngologist to correct my voice in order to not be picked on and sound like others. It was not just me. The protagonist(also director, David Thorp) in the opening movie of the 15th Korean Queer Film Festival(KQFF), <Do I Sound Gay?, 2014> agonizes with the same trouble as me. The director continues to make efforts to correct his feminie voice which is his complex in this movie which begins by asking a question, why try to change feminie voice, Is there gay voice? I also used to feel that I could live in an ideal way the society wants by changing my voice and then my life could become a little bit easier. While doing phonation practice, I came to think, “What’s wrong with my voice? Even though it sounds weird, why do I have to conform to other people’s standard?”
<Do I sound gay ?> is a movie which portrays an issue related to social norm which a gay man would have thought once in a pleasant way. I think that (gay)audience could have pride watching the director’s courage facing worries eroding himself and overcoming them. I also went through the same process as the protagonist in the movie. I don’t worry over my voice and behavior which may look strange a bit any more. What if I look a bit feminie? In fact, femininity and manliness themselves exist in various forms and the boundary defined by the society is extremely relative.
This ‘girly’ boy with strange ’voice’ couldn’t hang out with friends and so after school, he used to watch art exhibitions in Insa-dong gallery or spent time watching movies in movie houses in the outskirt of Seoul. Art and movie were the only escape for the boy during difficult years. Faced by attractive images and interesting stories, he didn’t have to worry anything. After spending 3 high school years that way, I chose art as major without hesitation when entering into university. The study was interesting but one day when I struggled under pressure about the future, a professor gave a question, “Describe studium and punctum which appear in self-portrait of photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe” in the mid-term test of modern art theory.
Not long after I submitted homework(frankly written in my own way), the professor gave me a picture book of an exhibition titled as ‘masquerade’ as a gift. I guess that he felt sorry for me having to wear a thicker mask than others. Robert Mapplethorpe is an artist fairly meaningful to me in that he made me have rare experience, a coexistence of shamefulness and gratitude. Therefore, <Black White+Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, 2007> shown in ‘Docu-choice’ section of the 8th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival came special to me. The movie enables us to get a sense of then art scene in New York through a story of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and his lover, Sam Wagstaff. It is meaningful in that we can learn Sam Wagstaff who is a collector and curator relatively less known than Mapplethorpe. But above all, it is meaningful in that we can see photos of Mapplethorpe on screen who tried to escape from political restraints by capturing models such as black queers and AIDS patients in photos.
I am now 29 years old. Though I don’t make a lot of money, I live my life hard in my own way, struggling at work. My father who has lived his whole life in patriarchic society prompts me to get married whenever he has a chance, saying “when are you going to get married? The earlier you marry, the better you are when you get old”. Whenever he does, I talk to myself, “Dad, the marriage recognized legal in Korean society is impossible for me.” When watching <My Fair Wedding, 2014>, a documentary by director jang Hee-seon which portrayed the wedding process of movie director, Kimcho Kwang-soo and his partner, Kim Seung-hwan, I become lost in thoughts over myself in the future. Can I get married in my life?
The documentary contains a social message for legalization of same sex marriage but the true worth of this documentary are small events in daily life which show two characters having conflict of opinions and comforting each other’s saddened heart like other couples looking forward to marriage. Watching the two characters further maturing through experiencing various events before marriage, the audience becomes to wish blessings for their love and for not being suppressed. In addition, the audience cannot help giving a big hand to this couple who didn’t give up having an open same sex wedding despite various hurdles and finally achieved it.
New government took office thanks to various voices in square. Sexual minority in Korea is an invisible being with unheard voice to the extent that politics related to minority is a representative one ‘put on back burner’. At least, the issue of sexual minority is just a minor variable in public politician’s political formula. Votes suffering a big loss in going after a small gain. In this reality, what kind of role can a queer documentary do?
The role of documentary is too complicated to say simply but one clear thing is that it can be used as a means to represent the socially vulnerable and the minority. Therefore, many people holding complaints about the world and a hope that the world will become better pick up cameras. And those documentaries awaken the audience. I hope that a variety of documentaries which can give courage for minority like me to connect and live together with stories will be produced and shown a lot and that these documentaries will change the world into a place embracing minor but various people. I am looking forward to more documentaries echoing rainbow color voices.
[note 1] A term used when sexual minority calls themselves in Korea. It came from calling sexual minority ‘Yiban(二般)’ in order to differentiate from heterosexuality being called ‘Yilban(一般)’. As sexual minority movement begins in late 1990s, the meaning of Yiban extended and became to use to mean ‘異般’ which means that sexual minorities are different[異] people from heterosexuality and since 2000s, it is understood to mean all sexual minorities different from heterosexuality and is also used as translation of ‘queer'(Korean Gay Men’s Human Rights Group, Chingusai’s term dictionary)
[note 2] Studium and punctum are concepts which appear in <Camera lucida> of Roland Barthes. Studium is a conventional information when people feel watching photos and punctum means a ‘piercing’ effect of photos, that is, subjective interpretation,