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Growing Sideways – Queer Childhoods in the Movies

Growing Sideways – Queer Childhoods in the Movies

Justin Aaberg. Billy Lucas. Cody Barker. Asher Brown. Raymond Chase. Tyler Clementi

– These are just a few names representing the many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teenagers around the world who have taken their own lives due to the constant bullying by their peers for the way that they are, or rather, the way that they are not.

The act of bullying against children outside heteronormative standards already starts at a very early age: not just teenagers are affected, but also tweens. Many of the shared stories of queer grown-ups on platforms like It Gets Better Project indicate that children can be very much aware of their own queerness or the queerness of others. This is why educational work has to start at a young age to prevent this early stage of prejudice formation, as well as to inform and familiarize children with alternative life-styles.

Films play an important role in this process. In the last ten to fifteen years, filmmakers have started to make films about queer children aimed at depicting such topics as gender and queer sexuality. Growing Sideways – Queer Childhoods in the Movies aims to present a selection of these films to queer children, their friends, families and teachers to encourage them to familiarize themselves with and discuss the topic of gender and queer sexualities before prejudices are established and bullying begins.

Maxi. Robin. Wilma. Ludovic. Logan. Greg. Jonathan. Spork. Laure

– These names represent children portrayed in films that push the limits of our society’s gender and sex norms. They refuse to unconditionally grow up by our cultural norms, but develop their own breadth of experience and ideas about life and their identity, which they use to challenge and question heteronormative society structures. Rather, these children are growing sideways from what society normally expects from them instead of growing up in the traditional sense of the term.

Coined by Kathryn Bind Stockton in her work, The Queer Child (Duke UP, 2009) the term ‘growing sideways’ is used to describe children that are not growing ‘up’ in a linear course towards full stature, marriage, reproduction and the relinquishing of childish ways in adult life, but who are growing ‘sideways’ alongside these norms, choosing alternative paths, their own pace of development and showing a general attitude to question and challenge those norms that are so often forced upon them.

The children in the films presented – no matter if they choose to live as a male or a female, to fall in love with a boy or a girl, or to simply take pleasure in their position at the margins of the mainstream –learn to benefit from growing sideways. On their journeys, they discover that being different and standing out from the others can be enjoyable and that all that really matters are the people you care about, and the people who care about you. We hope that the audience will learn this lesson as well.

Sources:
Pictures Cover (left to right):
Die Wilden Hühner und die Liebe ( Vivian Nafae, Germany 2006/2007)
Ma Vie En Rose (Alain Berliner, France/Belgium/United Kingdom, 1997)
Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (Auraeus Solito, Philippines 2005)
Wild Tigers I Have Known (Cam Archer, USA 2006)
Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, France 2011)

Pictures Personal Pages (in order of appearance):
Wild Tigers I Have Known (Cam Archer, USA 2006)
Die Wilden Hühner und die Liebe ( Vivian Nafae, Germany 2006/2007)
Franswa Sharl (Hannah Hilliard, Australia 2009)
Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (Auraeus Solito, Philippines 2005)
Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, USA 2003)
Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, France 2011)
No Bikini (Claudia Morgado Escanilla, Canada 2007)
Spork (J.B. Ghuman, Jr., USA 2010)
Ma Vie En Rose (Alain Berliner, France/Belgium/United Kingdom, 1997)
The Closet (Stewart Handler, USA 2008)

Growing Sideways – Vignette – Sketch with pencil

Growing Sideways – Vignette – Sketch

Growing Sideways – Moodboard

Growing Sideways – Visual Exploration

The Queer Child or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century	No Bikini	Ang pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros
Tarnation	Wild Tigers I Have Known	Ma Vie En Rose

Kathryn Bond Stockton: The Queer Child or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2009.

Description:
Children are thoroughly, shockingly queer, as Kathryn Bond Stockton explains in The Queer Child, where she examines children’s strangeness, even some children’s subliminal “gayness,” in the twentieth century. Estranging, broadening, darkening forms of children emerge as this book illuminates the child queered by innocence, the child queered by color, the child queered by Freud, the child queered by money, and the grown homosexual metaphorically seen as a child (or as an animal), alongside the gay child. What might the notion of a “gay” child do to conceptions of the child? How might it outline the pain, closets, emotional labors, sexual motives, and sideways movements that attend all children, however we deny it?

Engaging and challenging the work of sociologists, legal theorists, and historians, Stockton coins the term “growing sideways” to describe ways of growing that defy the usual sense of growing “up” in a linear trajectory toward full stature, marriage, reproduction, and the relinquishing of childish ways. Growing sideways is a mode of irregular growth involving odd lingerings, wayward paths, and fertile delays. Contending that children’s queerness is rendered and explored best in fictional forms, including literature, film, and television, Stockton offers dazzling readings of works ranging from novels by Henry James, Radclyffe Hall, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, and Vladimir Nabokov to the movies Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Hanging Garden, Heavenly Creatures, Hoop Dreams, and the 2005 remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The result is a fascinating look at children’s masochism, their interactions with pedophiles and animals, their unfathomable, hazy motives (leading them at times into sex, seduction, delinquency, and murder), their interracial appetites, and their love of consumption and destruction through the alluring economy of candy.

About The Author
Kathryn Bond Stockton is Professor of English and Director of Gender Studies at the University of Utah. She is the author of God Between Their Lips: Desire Between Women in Irigaray, Brontë, and Eliot.

(Source: Duke University Press)

No Bikini
Canada, 2008, 9 minutes
Director: Claudia Morgado Escanilla; Cast: Matreya Fedor, Apollonia Vanova, Christina Lippa, Cole McLeod
suitable for age 6 & above

A look back at a few glorious days in Robin’s childhood that shaped her life.
When she was seven, she spent her holidays as a swimming camp. She
decided to do without her bikini top – and managed to pass for a boy for
several weeks on end. (Source: Berlin International Film Festival)

Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros
Philippines, 2005, 100 min
Director: Auraeus Solito; Cast: Nathan Lopez, JR Valentin, Soliman Cruz
suitable for age 12 & above

This film pits the purity of first love against the poverty and corruption that dominate the slums of Manila. The Philippine capital is home to twelve-year-old Maxi, who comes from a poor family. Maxi cleans the house, cooks, washes clothes and repairs tattered jeans for his relatives, who are all petty thieves. He even supplies them with the odd alibi, when needed. Maxi’s homosexuality is accepted by his nearest and dearest. Loved and protected by his relatives, Maxi has a calming influence on the family and is the one in charge of the day-to-day running of the household. Things work out fine until Maxi meets Victor, a respected, principled policeman who awakens Maxi’s dreams of a better life – on the straight and narrow. This is a recipe for disaster as far as the family is concerned, and it is not long before the situation incurs the wrath of his father, his brothers and his sisters. (Source: Berlin International Film Festival)

Tarnation
USA, 2003, 91 minutes
Director: Jonathan Caouette
suitable for age 12 & above

Appeared at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Fashioned from the wreckage of his childhood, Jonathan Caouette presents a confessional cinematic memoir, therapeutic in its creation, audacious in its honesty and exhilarating in its execution. At age 31, Caouette tells the story of his mother and his youth, a family saga of shock therapy, rape, foster homes, abuse and attempted suicide, told by artfully splicing together old photos, Super-8 film, videos and phone messages. The result is a unique testament to the power of art; “a masterpiece” (Slate) “so raw that it bleeds” (Village Voice).
(Source: Sundance Channel)

Wild Tigers I Have Known
USA, 2007, 81 minutes
Director:Cam Archer; Cast:Malcom Stumpf, Patrick White, Max Paradise, Hailey Anne Nelson, Tom Gilroy
suitable for age 12 & above

Wild Tigers I Have Known enters the tumultuous world of middle school, a particularly difficult time for Logan (Malcolm Stumpf) in this coming-of-age film set in the 1980s. Logan is a soft spoken, lonely 13 year old boy with a crush. Unlike his equally lonely friend Joey, who obsesses over the sexual exploits of the popular boys, Logan is fixated on the boys themselves, particularly Rodeo Walker. Rodeo is the only one of the group of cool kids who shows any friendliness towards Logan. As they strike up a mismatched friendship, Logan’s infatuation with Rodeo inspires him to create a new persona named Leah. Leah and Rodeo grow close through whispered late night phone calls, and when Leah agrees to meet Rodeo face to face it is Logan who must finally prove that he can ask for what he so achingly wants. Executive produced by Gus Van Sant. (Source: SundanceNow)

Ma Vie en Rose
France/Belgium/Great Britain, 1997, 88 minutes
Director: Alain Berliner; Cast: Michèle Laroque, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Hélène Vincent, Georges Du Fresne, Jean-François Gallotte
suitable for age 6 & above

Ma Vie en Rose is a film about being different. It’s about a little boy, Ludovic, who thinks he’s a little girl. What seems normal to him doesn’t seem that way to other people. Some things are done and some are not, no matter how natural they may feel to us. It is also a film about a mother and father who don’t know how to deal with the strength and tenacity of their child’s belief. The parents react as best they can, but they are hurt by the disapproval that shows in their neighbours’ faces. It’s about a peaceful neighbourhood that discovers difference, the fear of strangeness, lack of understanding and rejection. It is about dreams, magic and hope. (Alain Berliner)
(Source: uniFrance)

Growing Sideways – Work Plan

Project Background:

Justin Aaberg. Billy Lucas. Cody Barker. Asher Brown. Raymond Chase. Tyler Clementi

– these are just a few names representing the many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teenagers around the world who have taken their lives due to the constant bullying by their peers for the way they are, or rather, the way they are not.

In response to the high amount of suicides among queer teenagers during the last couple of months in the United States, the author Dan Savage and his partner Terry created in September 2010 a YouTube video, telling their own story and hoping to make young people who face harassment more optimistic. Their message was simple: it does get better.

Their video marked the beginning of the It Gets Better Project, which has turned into a worldwide movement, inspiring nearly 10 000 user-created videos that were seen more than 30 million times all over the world. These videos and personal stories finally provoked a discussion on why queer teenagers form one of the highest group among teenagers who commit suicide and why the structure and institutions of the society have not reacted to the many deaths caused by ignorance and intolerance.

Browsing through the vast amount of videos, it becomes obvious that the act of bullying against children outside heteronormative norms already starts at a very early age: not only teenagers are affected, but also tweenagers. Many of the shared stories indicate that children are very much aware of their own queerness or the queerness of others. This is why educational work has to start at a young age to prevent this early stage of forming prejudices, as well as to inform and familiarize children with alternative life-styles. Films play an important role in this process since there are similarities between how social groups are treated in filmic is part and parcel for real life, as Richard Dyer explained in his introduction to The Matter of Images:

“How a group is represented, presented over again in cultural forms, how an image of a member of a group is taken as representative of that group, how that group is represented in the sense of spoken for and on behalf of (whether these represent, speak for themselves or not), these all have to do how members of groups see themselves and others like themselves, how they see their place in society, in their right to the rights a society claims to ensure its citizens. Equally re-presentation, representativeness, representing have to do also with how others see members of a groups and their place and rights, others who have the power to affect that and place and those rights. How we are seen determines in part how we are treated; how we treat others is based on how we see them; such seeing comes from representation.” (Dyer, 1)

While there have been many films that represent gay and lesbian teenagers since the 1980s, only in the last ten to fifteen years filmmakers have started to make films about queer children aiming to produce films for children depicting such topics as gender and sexuality. This project wants to present a selection of these films to queer children, their friends, families and teachers to encourage them to familiarize themselves with and discuss the topic of gender and queer sexualities before prejudices are established.

Project Goals:

As mentioned above, the goal of this project is to create and present a collection of feature films and documentaries about children growing up outside society’s gender- and sexuality norms. The platform is created for a broad audience interested in the field of Gender and Queer Studies, Queer Cinema and Pedagogy. However, the project’s main interest is to introduce children, parents, and teachers to alternative concepts of gender and queer sexualities, through films.

The project does not intend to create a (film-) historical, aesthetic or formal overview of Queer Cinema. Although a film’s aesthetic, formal, and artistic value is considered during the collection process, the main focus is on the quality of their presentation and discussion of the relevant field in Gender and Queer Studies. Also, the films need to be suitable for children between the age of 8 and 14. Some of the films presented will only be suitable for children aged 12 or older. For this reason, all films will have an age recommendation.

In addition to the basic information about the film and its main character, meaning the queer child, this project attempts to provide its visitors with links to the film trailer, film stills and additional film material, as well as with more information on the topic discussed in the relevant film, where to find guidance and support or networks to communicate with others, like the It Gets Better Project. Ideally, the finished project will become part of a network that serves both as a starting point for an individual’s examination of the topic, or provide additional/new insights to people interested in Queer Cinema, as well as Gender and Queer Studies.

Project Presentation:

The project will be presented in form of a digital Friendship Book. Every film/character will get one double-page. If a film has more than one queer character, they might be given their own page. The book introduces the film and its topic through the main character and its fictional entry in the book. The first page will provide the visitors with the main facts and interest of the character through the casual questions one finds in such a book. The second page will contain links to the trailer, additional information, reviews, fan-pages and relevant networks. A double-page description will be dedicated to projects like It Gets Better at the end of the book or close to a relevant film. The Friendship Book will be designed by Lena Dischinger. See examples of two Friendship Books below.

Example Friendship Book – Cover:

Example for a personal page in a Friendship Book:

Growing Sideways – Queer Childhoods in the Movies

Curator: Philipp Dominik Keidl

Designer: Lena Dischinger

Subject: A collection of films depicting the lives of children growing up outside heteronormative society-structures.

Theoretical Framework:
Kathryn Bond Stockton: The Queer Child or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2009.

Film Examples:

Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros ( Auraeus Solito, Filippines 2005)

Die wilden Hühner und die Liebe (Vivian Naefe, Germany 2007)

Ma Vie en Rose (Alain Berliner, Great Britain/France 1997)

No Bikini (Claudia Morgado Escanilla, Canada 2007)